CEASE & DESIST? NO WAY! (first published in ‘Medium’)

You’re telling me stop drawing attention to violations of your own community standards? Are you crazy?

When the user of a popular AI text-to-image community ‘art’ platform — in their capacity as support chat room host —sends you a ‘friendly’ cease and desist warning about being removed from the room if you don’t stop making a fuss about the avalanche of scantily clad pin-up girls in your feed … Well, you know you’ve touched a raw nerve. When that support chat room host (who clearly isn’t well suited to the task) then blocks you from accessing their account when you hadn’t the slightest inclination to try anyway

… Well, you know she’s hiding something.

After three hours of intermittent, deeply disillusioning text exchanges about whether or not the community ‘art’ platform is violating its own safety standards, and you announce to a moderator who has by then joined the ‘conversation’ that they’ve just provided enough hard evidence to support a complaint to the Consumer Protection Commission (at which point they backpedal) … Well, you know you’re on the right track!

Doing the right thing in a social media-type environment is uncomfortable. It’s exhausting. More often than not it makes for a lonely virtual existence. But someone has to do it. More should.

Having naively ventured into the world of AI text-to-image ‘artists’ without considering the possibility of there being a darker side (and then discovering there is), what do I do next?

A rhetorical question, of course. The options are to close my account in a huff (which is probably what the powers that be are hoping I’ll do) — or to keep it ticking over so I can gather more evidence and make a fuss whenever a blatantly offensive image finds its way into my feed.

My account is set for safe browsing, so I’m not supposed to encounter pin-up girls unless I go looking for evidence of them (which I don’t now, having been told they receive special treatment and are generally considered safe viewing). Which means they’re in my face by platform-imposed default!

What would you do?