CivitAi recently made announcement about changes to the site 12 hours at time of writing. As part of this it was announced that CiviAi would be moving toward decentralised instances.
CivitAi also provided a survey for people interested in running their own community, but given that comments are focused on reactions to the other announced changes, including one that was rolled back hours later, there wasn't a provided space for people to discuss and network about joining together for one or more potential decentralised instances*.
...so that's what this article is for. That or potentially starting up something entirely separate if there's enough support for that.
After all, if decentralised instances or a new alternative site is to happen, there is a funding side of things at play and so it is most likely to get off the ground if a group of people organise together, instead of expecting a single person to come along and fund the whole thing.
Whether you're interested in running a small private instance and are willing for a few other people to join in on it, or interested in contributing to something more akin to reforming Civitai on a larger scale, feel free to discuss below.
Maybe this article will see use, maybe it won't, but at least it is here in case there is interest. Should there be interest I could do another article listing proposed instances and anyone willing to contribute in some way towards them.
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Personal Thoughts
Personally, I am interested in giving setting up a deCivitai instance a try. I can at least document what that process involves to help other interested in learning whether it could work or is too limited.
I am personally interested in providing some financial support towards and organising or helping to organise an instance or even an entirely separate site focused on NSFW-content with as few limitations as possible. This means direct processing via credit cards is out and so I was thinking if something at larger scale was organised of partly going by the SubscribeStar model and supplementing this, if there was interest, though more, ahem, creative avenues than Civitai appears to have considered.
I know there are people who really, really want to pay via credit cards and the only way that is able to work is indirectly. Maybe it means subscriptions being alternatively enabled through memberships on sites such as Gumroad where the account there doesn't post anything that goes against its policies. Maybe it could even mean stuff like providing credit in exchange for buying stuff made by people on the site who also create non-NSFW things for fundraising purposes that can be more broadly distributed. Creative approaches can be considered.
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