@Cooper7trooper Was definitely interesting to see all sorts of tech advance so quickly. And retrospectively a lot of that jank from back then has a nostalgic component now where exactly that kind of stuff feels comforting, despite some of the very embarassing to even watch content.
The 90s were more iconic, too, as without internet there were far less influential, known celebrities out there to guide pop-culture and trends. Whereas nowadays everyone and their mothers have some followings on multiple social media platforms, so influence on one another has become much more "noisy" by an extreme amount where it kind of averages out in general mainstream.

@Cooper7trooper Yeah, it was basically virtual globalization that made the world a very small place all of a sudden and distorted so many perceptions of common/rare, normal/strange, good/bad
Web 1.0 was the early stages, where it's only concept was to serve as a library of knowledge. Much easier to set in stone. You could see a read-only version of wikipedia as just that basically. But comparing web 1.0 to web 2.0 is like comparing a comicbook to videogame with emphasis on the transition to interactive content and no longer passive-consume-information-only use :D

Before reacting to this I wasn't even aware of having such insights to share about the subject, so it's in a way feeling novel to me as well, despite being the one writing it, if that makes sense.

@Cooper7trooper good example with forums! During the early days of consumer internet everyone kind of spread all across it, had to check out every "interesting" weird page someone made. Everyone had some outrageously tasteful myspace page and was on every other remotely social-representative page, just because. But over time it entirely reversed, for one due to misuse of private info, as the violation of privacy became more and more lucrative to the point of being a standard nowadays, where fines make for such a small fracture of the profits that it's not in the slightest discouraging to the big corps.
And also for the simple reason that the internet became so huge that no one has enough time to keep on top of everything really, so people went back to seeking smaller groups of like-minded people to engage in some specific interest in.

Like, just a random example, a bunch of AI-nerds gathering on some page to share their AI-stuff. Sounds far fetched, but even weirdos like that exist... somewhere.

Strange times indeed :D

@Cooper7trooper Yeah, open source is definitely one step in that direction of showing that people, no matter where from, can contribute to something and work on it together to make it better and better without any profits involved without anyone getting ripped off in the process. Just out of passion for the thing or fun while doing so. Definitely sounds like step out of the dystopic standards going on in general.

But with groups and opinions it's difficult these days as many people just seek to get away from all mainstream that is obnoxiously prevalent in so many areas, which is insulting and manipulative, to me at least.
So it's almost comparable to how groups of people secluded themselves, hidden away, from the public eye in the middle ages, as opinion outweighed facts to a dangerous degree, where interest in herbs and medicine would get you burning on the stake.

With AI-image-gen, due to how little most people actually know about it, as it's still a very new thing—and on the level we practice it, not very accessible to the average consumer—only high-light news articles serve as a means of information, which usually don't feature the boring/normal stuff, but focus on what generates most sensation, clicks and ad revenue in turn, so what do you think would they report on in conjunction with AI images?...
Same as with news about flights; only ever about planes crashing. That just distorts popular opinion so much, it's ridiculous and sad.
SD3's lobotomy was the result of just that basically.

Sorry about, yet another, rudely giant wall of text. I'm just compulsively verbose sometimes :D

@Cooper7trooper I think they have to in order to retain any level of relevancy. Their decision on appeasing ignorant masses by lobotomizing their model and the additional ToS trying to profit off of everything resulting in conjunction with that only looks erratic and desperate from an outside point of view. I don't know the details of their inner politics and whatever divergence in philosophies eventually lead down that cliff, but changing the ToS would at least allow for a minimal level of redemption.
Basically advertising a blunt knife as being extra safe and charging extra for it was, mildly put, delusional to begin with.

I think the comfy team's model has great potential as it is an actual group effort closely tied to the enthusiast user base and focused on the progression of the technology with all possible degrees of freedom. That's really all one could hope for. And depending on the way it's going to be organized and the amount of competence and contributive effort they can accumulate I believe it can become something impressive.