Meanwhile the wild geese,

Now let me be clear - Gen AI is awful and most people agree that it has no place in creative spaces, but that's besides the point. I'm not here to debate AI in creative spaces, I'm here to talk about the moderators who feel the need to investigate and punish writers who they believe use AI.

I'm going to start by reminding people of two important things:

There is no way for anyone to know for certain if someone is using AI to write - unless they tell you they are. The common "tells" that are cited online are found in the work of people who have excellent control of functional grammar, good vocabularies, and an excellent control of sentence structure. AI is trained on the work of talented writers.

There is no way for an author to defend themselves against a claim that they are using AI, especially in an online environment. Nor should an author have to. The rule should not be "prove you are innocent or we will find you guilty!"

I feel very passionately about this and have for quite some time. I've seen fandom witch hunts before, and I know how easy it is for some people to climb to moral high ground and punish those they believe are doing the wrong thing.

My friend recently chose to leave a discord server after the mod team contacted them to announce that there had been reports made by people who wished to be anonymous who suspected their work was AI generated. The mods explained that they had investigated these claims by looking over their writing, and although they admitted they could not be 100% certain the work contained AI, they were issuing a strike/warning to them in accordance with their discord rules because they believed they might have.

The investigation involved them reading some of their work. 

That was it. 

They read their work and decided that, in their own words, they thought it might be AI so they were issuing a strike. They then proceeded to delete the writing they had shared on the server without any opportunity for this person to retrieve it.

There was no communication prior to them issuing a strike. My friend was not told about these accusations ahead of time, the moderators did not talk to them about the accusations or raise concerns, and did not stop to ask themselves why the people making these claims wished to do so anonymously.  

Perhaps if they had, they would have learned that members of their discord had been harassing this person via Tumblr anons about this issue. Instead they chose to give the bullies anonymity, to deny a writer a chance to have open communication, and issued a punishment for a rule infraction that they themselves admitted they could not be certain had been broken.

When my friend gave the names of beta readers and editors who had worked with her in real time, these moderators chose not to engage with them or seek clarification, and instead doubled down and tried to justify their decision.

My friend asked for the evidence they had that their work contained AI content, and it was not provided to them. Instead they supplied a generic statement about how they had made their decision based on their use of syntax, grammar, tone, and word choice was rolled out. But again, they did not give examples or explain this. 

As someone who admins and mods several creative spaces, this kind of behaviour worries me. Actually,  it terrifies me. Because anyone can be next: you, me, the brand new writer eager to share their work,  or the fandom oldie. 

It sets a dangerous precedent for fan spaces and the policing of creative works, because it leaves writers in these spaces open to harassment, bullying, intimidation, and censorship under the guise of keeping fan spaces "AI Free". Anyone can accuse  someone of using AI to write, and this can be used to bully people out of fan spaces. 

Moderators are supposed to keep fan spaces safe for members, not take it upon themselves to play detective and police creative works in case someone is using AI. In fact, mods taking it upon themselves to police writers in fan spaces by handing out warnings and bans are making fan spaces unsafe and encouraging social exclusion. This kind of behaviour will actively scare and intimidate writers into simply walking away - because who wants to hear an accusation that their work is AI?

Facilitating AI witch hunts is killing fan spaces.

Attempting to police the writing of others is alienating writers. 

So putting aside the not-so-gentle slide the argument of "guilty until proven innocent" is into fascist thinking (which is honestly another good reason to sit and re-evaluate this position if you have it), here we go.

I'm a labor organizer. I've not been terribly vocal about that on tumblr, but that's been my job for the last 10 years, and so I'm approaching this through a lens of workplace justice to highlight just how fucked up it is to "do an investigation" that never involves asking the accused a single goddamn question.

Just imagine for me showing up to work one day, and your boss pulls you into their office. You sit down, maybe a little nervous, and your boss slides a piece of paper across the desk stating you have been formally written up and this is your first of three strikes. Three strikes and you're fired.

The offense? A coworker claimed they felt like you were eating someone else's lunch.

No one ever stopped to ask you, "are you eating coworker's lunch?" The person who's lunch was being eaten was also never asked if their lunch was being eaten. All the mattered was the feelings of the person who reported it, and the boss who decided well, you could have done it and so they issued you formal discipline, and now you are that much closer to being out of a job.

But the thing is, you never ate anyone's lunch. You make your own lunch, it's clearly labeled "my own fucking lunch" — yet none of that mattered, and no one even bothered to ask.

You'd be furious, right? That's not what a proper investigation is. The standard in any space should not be: we are presumed guilty and must, therefore, prove our innocence. But in my fictional scenario — and in the real life scenario above — the accused was never even granted the chance to prove their innocence. In my fictional scenario, I'd be writing up the grievance yesterday and I would fight that case all the way to arbitration and I'd fucking win in five minutes.

The notion that we must police other people's creative works in creative spaces and issue strikes (especially without doing any actual fucking investigation that is an actual fucking investigation) is harmful and you know what, fuck it, I'm not gonna go soft on anyone's ass — it promotes fascist thinking. If you engage in this type of behavior, if you believe that people must prove their innocence to you (while denying them the opportunity to do so), you are that much closer to being a fascist. You're not saving creativity, you're not a champion of what is just and good in this world.

me: (gestures to this)