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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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NSFW AI-art project Unstable Diffusion has been axed by Kickstarter, despite already hitting their funding goal. This one isn't too suprising, as KS doesnt allow NSFW and a DIY pornomaker probably was never gonna slip by that filter even if it didn't ship with visible nipples.

Kickstarter took it a step further, however, formally amending their ToS and affirming that "Kickstarter must, and will always be, on the side of creative work and the humans behind that work."

It now appears that Unstable Diffusion is being driven off Patreon too, who dont have a no-NSFW excuse. Almost certain to follow the same pattern, at this point; there are too many established artists on that platform who are willing to boycott.

The twitterati taking responsibility for the bannings are targetting payment processor Stripe next. Seems like a textbook swarm governance action.

Ks:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/unstablediffusion/unstable-diffusion-unrestricted-ai-art-powered-by-the-crowd/community

Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/unstablediffusion

Current fallback:

https://equilibriumai.com/index.html

I am a human. I have creativity. What I don't have is the talent/skill to bring the things I imagine to life without it looking incredibly misshapen, distorted, and low-quality.

Kickstarter is against the side of my creative work and me as a human who would be behind that work if I had AI assistance. This seems like the classic problem of the existing industry have superior lobbying power against potential future industry which doesn't yet exist as an organized group and doesn't have lobbying power.