First of all, this is not a rant. I find this post valuable and timely. In a way this give many of us, who are not artists, clarity on what is acceptable to the community in general and what is perhaps frowned upon.
I consider myself a consumer of art. I am attached to the local fine arts museum, and I buy paintings frequently. I will have no problem paying $500 for the Broken Native piece... if my wall scenario is acceptable. What I am trying to communicate is as a consumer of art, I get to decide what I buy. Similarly I get to decide what I vote on the platform. That part is simple.
Where it gets complicated is because of a HW blacklist or ban, when a true artist gets discouraged by the manual curators from getting curated. For a lot of people, that is not only a hit at their true "reputation" (not talking about the strange number next to your name), but also at their earning, due to the monetary nature of this platform. I think anyone can make a mistake. An artist can make a mistake, similarly HW can make a mistake. As long as we are being adults and willing to correct our mistakes I think we can make a difference together.
Well I guess it felt like a rant while I was writing it lol! Thanks for taking the time to read, hopefully it can spark some reflection, I think sometimes we can stuck in a rut or routine and it may take a little kick to re-evaluate things and decide how to best move forward :)
(Thanks azircon for your comment).
Referring to your post. I would like to know which artist was yesterday falsely accused as you avoided giving any details of it so we could all see and check up validity of your claim ourselves.
Also, just because there is pervading deception, dishonesty, content theft and plagiarism being spread around all social media making stealing or plagiarizing someone's art, photography or writing becoming a norm, it does not mean that it should be allowed on Hive.
No one pays you on other social media/blogging platforms for publishing content. Sot hey all steal and plagiarise.
Once there is any possibility of earning added to any of these social media/bogging sites out there, they introduce strict rules about use of someone else's content and have repercussions for not following these rules (banning, stopping earnings, removing the content, etc).
Hive is not Facebook or Reddit. We get paid a buck here to post honest and original work.
Also, just because image is from Pexels it does not give a right to someone to use deception directed at the community making their post look like they are author of that photography (by avoiding giving a source of photo) or making post look like they are complete author of the artwork making it look like they have completely drawn it from scratch (while they actually used the photo which they traced so most of work was already done for them).
So if I take your photo or drawing from your Facebook/website (even some that you forfeited your rights or sold to Pexels or Shutterstock), put it in App to use as under layer and then use this app to trace all the lines over and add new colors, then I will be all fine to publish it on Hive without any mention of the source. Making my "art" and post look like am the whole creator of this craft without use of any help?
I cannot draw or paint at all. I am completely useless when it comes to such artistic skills. I tried that app once though. You just put random photo there and used few tools that 8 years old can master. I traced the lines of the photo, added some colors and auto generated patters. And the final piece looked like really nice legit piece of digital art. It took about 15 mins to create. App did most of the work for me.
Some of the things you're saying here are why there are problems I think.
Even if someone traces a photo "most" of the work is not done for them. Tracing is only helping you place the elements, and as Julia points out in her post, plenty of master painters and contemporary illustrators trace. I guarantee that if I give someone Photoshop or Sketchbook or some similar application and they have no artistic ability, if all they use it to do is trace, they will not be able to create anything that looks good.
Artificial Intelligence apps are a different story. You can import a photo, do a single click and get something that looks really nice.
This is just not really how art works. Nobody sits in front of a blank canvas and just pours out a ton of information from nowhere. It's all built on something else, reference, research, inspiration, etc. So this way of looking at it is flawed from the jump.
I think we need some clear definitions and standards and those need to be created by people that have experience in a particular area. Artists for art, writers for writing, etc. I'd be happy to work with you guys and the rest of the community to standardize something so that we can all work together better.
I don't want to take on the burden of doing all the moderation by myself. Especially as my Community starts getting into the thousands of active users, but I also want to minimize false positives, and weed out all the misinformed ideas.
Interesting thing about the AI art is there are 1 click apps but also I have met a lot of people recently who are programming their own algos and textures to apply to images which is a lot of work, trial and error. Even with a trained eye it would be hard to know which is which sometimes. (although artists who are integrating that kind of tech are usually very upfront and proud about their methods). We are at an interesting intersection of art and tech!
Even the one click ones can be used in creative and interesting ways. I don't have anything against the tech. I think it's really cool and interesting, but there's a spectrum of uses. For every person using them in interesting and cool ways, I think there's probably 10 who care nothing about making art or something creative. They just see an easy way to get some rewards which they then will rinse and repeat constantly. It's why I think something like that should be judged by the Community they post in.
I didn't mention the user because he was unbanned and I didn't feel like he needed more negativity or scrutiny on his posts. I replied to the hive watchers account with a link to this post in his comments section so whoever I was discussing his case with can find it that way.
This post is not about that specific incident. It is my thoughts in general about how we can improve the experience on hive for artists and hopefully retain more of them. It was meant to illustrate that while we indeed have abuse it is a lot more nuanced and I think there are grey areas where users need not be banned outright and called frauds.
This is a piece of art at my local school. I took it with my phone right now during my evening walk. If I post it as a blog post I will make $20 on it. If I self vote I will make $30. Questions is do I do it? Am I adding value to the chain?
Point is I choose not to post it for rewards. Some others might.
As Albus Dumbledore said; it’s your choices that makes you who you are.
This is pretty much my view. As the Admin of a pretty big community, I do definitely need help with moderation. So as long as we're all working together and being grown ups I think we'll be stronger together.