Topic: Introduction to MakeFox Group

Posted under General

Hi everyone!

You might have heard that the site is now run by MakeFox Group. We're a US non-profit doing AI research, with a focus on creative freedom and open expression. Until now our main project has been MakeFox.bot, a furry-focused generative AI bot that lives on Telegram.

We're a board of three people and about a dozen volunteers, with no shareholders to keep happy and no quotas to meet. I'll leave it open for the other board members to introduce themselves if they'd like.

I wanted to introduce myself and give you an idea of what we plan to do here, and what we don't.

What changed

We've taken over the business side of the site: day-to-day operations, hosting and infrastructure. We're not replacing anyone. The admins, moderators and volunteers who run the community are still the ones running it.

Update, Nov 7: the previous moderation team has left. MakeFox now runs the site directly, with a new volunteer team. More details as things settle. The full statement is here.

We started fresh, using only the publicly available data from e6ai.net. We never had access to any private user data from the original site.

Funding

The site runs on our existing MakeFox infrastructure, which we run in-house to keep costs low. For now it's paid for entirely by our sponsors and the memberships on MakeFox.bot. There's a small donation link at the bottom of every page if you'd like to help. Down the road, if we need more funding, we may talk about bringing back minimal, unobtrusive banner ads, or possibly some kind of rewards for donations. Nothing is planned yet.

Policies

Because of who we are and the move to a new home, we've adjusted some site policies. At heart they're still the same.

Privacy

MakeFox exists to support research and education around AI. In time, that could include studying how people make and respond to AI art, or building tools that help judge output quality. Anything like that would be anonymous, and your private information, like your email address, IP address and messages, stays out of it. Nothing is planned yet, and we'd work through any of it with the site's staff long before it happened.

What we won't change

We don't want to change anything about the spirit of the site, or the moderation standards that have been in place for a long time. We have no intention of locking anything behind paywalls, or adding obnoxious third-party ads or sponsors.

What's next

Over the coming weeks and months we'll be watching how the site runs and looking for ways we can help.

I personally think MakeFox Group and the volunteers here are a perfect fit. We both want a place where people can create and share, and I think we can help each other do that well.

I'm more than happy to answer any questions you might have.

Updated

hinoserm said:
Hi everyone!

You might have heard that the site is now run by MakeFox Group. We're a US non-profit doing AI research, with a focus on creative freedom and open expression. Until now our main project has been MakeFox.bot, a furry-focused generative AI bot that lives on Telegram.

We're a board of three people and about a dozen volunteers, with no shareholders to keep happy and no quotas to meet. I'll leave it open for the other board members to introduce themselves if they'd like.

I wanted to introduce myself and give you an idea of what we plan to do here, and what we don't.

What changed

We've taken over the business side of the site: day-to-day operations, hosting and infrastructure. We're not replacing anyone. The admins, moderators and volunteers who run the community are still the ones running it.

We started fresh, using only the publicly available data from e6ai.net. We never had access to any private user data from the original site.

Funding

The site runs on our existing MakeFox infrastructure, which we run in-house to keep costs low. For now it's paid for entirely by our sponsors and the memberships on MakeFox.bot. There's a small donation link at the bottom of every page if you'd like to help. Down the road, if we need more funding, we may talk about bringing back minimal, unobtrusive banner ads, or possibly some kind of rewards for donations. Nothing is planned yet.

Policies

Because of who we are and the move to a new home, we've adjusted some site policies. At heart they're still the same.

Privacy

MakeFox exists to support research and education around AI. In time, that could include studying how people make and respond to AI art, or building tools that help judge output quality. Anything like that would be anonymous, and your private information, like your email address, IP address and messages, stays out of it. Nothing is planned yet, and we'd work through any of it with the site's staff long before it happened.

What we won't change

We don't want to change anything about the spirit of the site, or the moderation standards that have been in place for a long time. We have no intention of locking anything behind paywalls, or adding obnoxious third-party ads or sponsors.

What's next

Over the coming weeks and months we'll be watching how the site runs and looking for ways we can help.

I personally think MakeFox Group and the volunteers here are a perfect fit. We both want a place where people can create and share, and I think we can help each other do that well.

I'm more than happy to answer any questions you might have.

based and awesome, letting our little self-moderated anarchy have a home without many strings attached. I hope the thousand helps keeps the lights on for a few months.

We're very grateful you guys stepped in! Il definitely be donating once I have the capacity to do so ๐Ÿ˜

leeto said:
Which ones?

The Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and... I'm struggling to remember. Oh, the takedown policy, to include the updated legalese.

Hello, and thank you for coming to the rescue, it's greatly appreciated. ๐Ÿ‘

Thank you guys for this. ๐Ÿ’–
Are you going to follow the release channel updates of the e621ng?

You should make a specific donation page for blep with a monthly costs counter and I would donate (I run local models, so any kind of online generation stuff is of little interest to me). Any kind of donation stuff really needs transparency on what the hosting actually costs (FA running up debt is a good example on what not to do).

Updated

smaugthedragon said:
Thank you guys for this.

You should make a specific donation page for blep with a monthly costs counter and I would donate, as any kind of donation stuff really needs transparency on what the hosting actually costs (FA running up debt is a good example on what not to do).

We don't really have the technology to separate individual running costs for the hardware side of things, nor do I really want to create a feeling that donations are being used strictly for only one project or another.

We need the freedom to allocate funding where it needs to go; if that makes some people uncomfortable about donating, we fully understand.

But I absolutely do intend to set up a donation system specific to the site, with tracking so we know how much is being donated, and once the site's been up for a while we can try to get some estimates and set a "goal" to display.

Right now the donation link at the bottom of the page here is only used primarily from this site, and we are recording them so they can be attributed properly.

We're also working toward greater financial transparency, and my hope is soon we'll be able to publish our financials on a regular basis.

This sounds great, I am sure to scrounge up a few euros for you guys stepping in so quickly.

Well done to those who got this up and going, and thanks for taking up this endeavor.

There's a good question from SmaugTheDragon, "Are you going to follow the release channel updates of the e621ng?"
I'm curious about it also

Ill keep my Membership on your bot up where i can afford it. The bot has been a great service and hearing that you picked up blep makes me even happier and happier to keep supporting.

I heard about you guys from a bunch of artists I follow mentioning how much they liked using MakeFox bot on Telegram, and now you swoop in and rescue our small community in its darkest hour.

Thank you so much for everything.

It's impressive how quickly the replacement went up, thanks so much for keeping it alive!

sil

Member

Much appreciated for everything you guys have done for the site. Donated what I can as a token of gratitude and will do so from time to time.

hinoserm said:

What we won't change

We don't want to change anything about the spirit of the site, or the moderation standards that have been in place for a long time. We have no intention of locking anything behind paywalls, or adding obnoxious third-party ads or sponsors.

What's next

Over the coming weeks and months we'll be watching how the site runs and looking for ways we can help.

I personally think MakeFox Group and the volunteers here are a perfect fit. We both want a place where people can create and share, and I think we can help each other do that well.

I'm more than happy to answer any questions you might have.

Thank you for being involved with the community and rescuing it from deletion.

"We don't want to change anything about the spirit of the site, or the moderation standards that have been in place for a long time."

Could we have clarification for what this means? Certain moderation standards, specifically the ones regarding cub content, were only in place because of restrictions placed upon us by the previous host. Will you be upholding these standards simply because they were already in place (appeal to tradition), or are staff and community members free to scrutinize if prior restrictions are no longer justified?

Considering your stance on creative freedom and open expression, I believe such discussions closely align with your organization's goals.

Beerwolf

Privileged

You're absolute legends for taking up the mantle and creating a seamless transition.

Truly appreciate it. ๐Ÿ™‚

Sijah

Member

haruinfigaru said:
Certain moderation standards, specifically the ones regarding cub content, were only in place because of restrictions placed upon us by the previous host.

I too would like to know if there's any chance of that overly subjective rule getting removed since the people who were against it are no longer in charge.

haruinfigaru said:
Could we have clarification for what this means? Certain moderation standards, specifically the ones regarding cub content, were only in place because of restrictions placed upon us by the previous host. Will you be upholding these standards simply because they were already in place (appeal to tradition), or are staff and community members free to scrutinize if prior restrictions are no longer justified?

Considering your stance on creative freedom and open expression, I believe such discussions closely align with your organization's goals.

We're staying out of those decisions, at least for now. I can't say if or when that'll change, but if it does, it'll only be after a lot of thought and real discussion with both my team and the volunteer staff here.

ayokeito said:
Please consider adding crypto as a way to donate.

Oh! I didn't even realize the donation page didn't already offer this!

Our MakeFox.bot service has offered crypto purchases through PayPal's crypto service for a while now; I guess it never made it to the donations page.

Give me a few days to work on it (feel free to DM me if it doesn't get done soon enough, I have a terrible memory)

Ash

Member

Oh wow, I didn't expect to see Hinoserm after all these years!

ash said:
Oh wow, I didn't expect to see Hinoserm after all these years!

Do I know you from somewhere else?

hinoserm said:
We're staying out of those decisions, at least for now. I can't say if or when that'll change, but if it does, it'll only be after a lot of thought and real discussion with both my team and the volunteer staff here.

Thank you for clarifying.

quistinius said:
well, there goes a nice post already. WHO DOESN'T LOVE CENSORSHIP!

nah, i'll just stick with perchance instead.

and no, i don't care about the bs excuses for censorship. there is no such thing as good censorship.

and i especially do not want any part of anything that treats fictional non-human content the same as it would photos of irl human children.

This is not helpful. The previous rule was not put in place by staff, nor did they treat cub as CSAM. MakeFox already draws a clear line between the two. The issue in question is achieving consistency between MakeFox and Blep.artโ€”ideally in the non-regressive direction that fosters creative freedom and open expression.

Ash

Member

hinoserm said:
We don't want to change anything about the spirit of the site, or the moderation standards that have been in place for a long time.

post #184348

5. Content Standards

The Platform may host fictional, artistic, mature, and sexually explicit material, subject to applicable law and our Content Policy.

[...]

Users may not submit or distribute:

[...]
Unlawful intimate imagery, including applicable categories of nonconsensual AI-generated intimate depictions.

Does that mean non-con is generally not allowed?

This has devolved from the topic enough to now need a move to a new one and not clutter its original topic IMHO.

This sounds like a match made in heaven! I'm so glad to see this collaboration. It will be fun to see where ideas from both sides can see to add to this community too.

So glad the staff found a better partner. Thanks to all involved in making blep exist! You all rock!

Situation is unclear. Going to see what happens.

Updated by hinoserm

Since we're no longer tied to the former e6ai team, I'd like to ask whether the booru may potentially allow non-AI content in the future?

soverign said:
Since we're no longer tied to the former e6ai team, I'd like to ask whether the booru may potentially allow non-AI content in the future?

I'm not going to make any promises or say no, but I feel like that wouldn't really align with the purpose and mission of the site.

It would need to be something my team discusses, and certainly not anytime soon.

fs

Member

hi. i hope public discussions are kept on the forums and not done entirely on third party platforms like discord or telegram.

requiring people to sign up for other apps just to talk about the website just adds unnecessary barriers for open discussion, imo.

it looks like there's already some drama brewing and it would suck to get updates and info that is filtered by closed channels and misinformation.

hinoserm said:
I'm not going to make any promises or say no, but I feel like that wouldn't really align with the purpose and mission of the site.

In before people start making their own art and trying to pass it off as AI

orangeleaf said:
In before people start making their own art and trying to pass it off as AI

The horror! We need a dedicated team of anti-human specialists to spot human-generated content. Let's call it the Replicant Nexus.

Nexus Lead said:
Over time, I started learning new tricks through independent study of humanity. I became familiar with human habits, their technical limitations, and their artistic shortcomings.

haruinfigaru said:
The horror! We need a dedicated team of anti-human specialists to spot human-generated content. Let's call it the Replicant Nexus.

And shall the last words ever muttered be,

"Ahhh yes! It finally worked!"