Yesterday, Civitai moderation removed an image I created using Flux.2. The image featured the current American president in an obvious satire - which is protected under the copyright law of any civilized country - on the US withdrawal from the nuclear weapons agreement.
I found it very strange. Civitai's terms say that it is expressly prohibited to publish any image with real people's faces https://civitai.com/content/tos, it's a fact:
Prohibited Content Includes (but is not limited to):
(a) Content that uses, reproduces, or is based on the likeness of real people - living or deceased - including public figures, celebrities, influencers, and private individuals, in any context.
This is per se wild. As I said, sattire are legal and fully protect by law in all civilized world and any measure against it is pure censorship.
But whatever. It also says that it is forbidden to show weapons pointed at people (which was not the case with the blocked image; there was a nuclear bomb and some random soldiers, nothing gory or that you can't find in a one minute search here).
But in practice, this is not what happens all over the community. In fact, there are countless images with well-known figures, examples only in politics:
International terrorist https://civitai.com/images/4436140
American politician https://civitai.com/images/9896581
American politician https://civitai.com/images/4356304
American politician https://civitai.com/images/1887151
American politician (same of my blocked image) https://civitai.com/images/9282450
Chinese politician https://civitai.com/images/5175087
Ucranian politician https://civitai.com/images/1742565
This is to keep on politicians. Actors, musicians, I could do it all day.
Before even starting the review request, I took the initiative to delete my LoRas of real people – I had published some Brazilian personalities.
The plot thickens
But to my surprise, moderation not only didn't agree to keep the original image, but also searched my gallery and deleted two other images: another version of the same image with the American president made with Sora, and an old image of the current Brazilian president - also a sattire.
It's a Brazilian politician in a sattire.
And it gets stranger and stranger, because after removing those other two pictures, there's a lot of other real people images on my gallery. Some are political sattire, other are innocent imagery. I won't remove it just for the sake of this discussion, but to make moderation life easier, here they are:
A Brazilian ex-president https://civitai.com/posts/1815521
A Brazilian ex-judge https://civitai.com/posts/1650753
Another Brazilian ex-president https://civitai.com/posts/597836
One more Brazilian ex-president https://civitai.com/posts/481698
Brazilian TV star https://civitai.com/posts/392212
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So, my question to Civitai moderators is not about the terms of use, it's about criteria. Do you have a common criteria, what is it? Or is it more like "I'll remove what I don't like and let others violate the terms because who cares?"
THIS POST DOES NOT QUOTE OR SHOW THE FACES OR LIKENESSES OF REAL PEOPLE