There may be some merit to the argument that people who get off on this stuff can do so without harming an actual child. Of course, there’s the counter argument that this stuff can normalise this sort of abuse and make it more likely to occur to a real child. There’s also the fact that these AI gen tools are trained on existing data, they’re not making this shit up, they don’t have imagination. So I’m pretty sure that the training data will have included lots of material of actual children being harmed. Certainly there are real children in need, and yes they need help. But this sort of material being published should concern all of us. What happens when your activism on behalf of hungry children is met with people pointing to these torture videos and saying “Lol could be worse!”

Yeah, and you want time for the stuffing to cook properly too.

Also, it’s quicker and I don’t have to talk to anyone.

Yeah, I think this is a common experience. I quit a couple of years ago when they did the API thing, but the impression I get is that loads of people have been getting banned for similarly ridiculous reasons. Seems kinda self destructive. I left voluntarily, but I’d been there a long time, over ten years, think I had almost a million comment karma. This is also the case for many of the people getting banned - users who’d been there a really long time and who were mostly people who contributed content and comments. Maybe management thought they don’t need the old school users now they have bots, and bots that can slip in product endorsements and try to manipulate political opinion. In fact, a lot of the people who’d been around the longest and contributed most were probably more likely to notice and complain about the huge influx of bots and bullshit.

Still seems self destructive, though, but I guess after the IPO short term gains are more important than community. Their loss is Lemmy’s gain. Like you say, fuck em.