As many of you know— I've been someone who's extremely supportive of the site and it's community— usually creator first approach and focus. And I'm very much someone who despises anger, outrage, and doomer talk.
That being said; I have serious, honest worries about the most recent changes to the way the site is being run. And— frankly it's probably not what you think.
Take one look at Featured right now. Honestly, do it— it's so obvious it's picking from an LLM now rather than the staff picks we had before, it's Twitter tier slop with a few people who figured out the way it works making fun of it and feature baiting.
They deleted feedback.civitai.com— seriously it's gone.
(Edit: I should have clarified, I actually SOMEWHAT understand the logic, and don't believe it to be malicious.
The site was very poorly designed from a UX standpoint and when they had more staff was much more manageable I'm sure— they clearly didn't have the ability to keep up with it; it's still a horrendous look— and I believe that at the very least keeping the feedback LINK to direct link to feedback tickets is a good idea EVEN IF the tickets queue is still quite heavy.)
And while there are some cool things down the pipeline, even small things like the style of image used in these feature announcements is just...
I'll be frank— it feels like without certain staff, the site is already making turns into a Tech Bro run haven who missed what the potential was for an awesome, creatives driven platform. Instead we are gonna just have another slop machine that fuels so much of the negativity and harassment that's permeated the zeitgeist for over half a decade now.
I want to be wrong, desperately I do. But are we really just going to make everything "claude do this" and miss the point?
I mean sure, you can choose to cater to that userbase if you want— but they weren't the ones who supported and wanted to stick it out through the last absolutely insane year.
For the meantime, I'll still post here— but my focus will be shifting as I turn to branch out more heavily to other platforms as well. I just don't know if I want to put in the same effort I was for a site that seems to want to shift to a mentality that I joined because I disdain.
Again I'm not going anywhere, but I just can't have it be "civit is the core of my content" any longer. And I'm not giving up hope. Just being realistic, and sharing my concerns.
Personal request: I'd appreciate if we keep comments nice, don't say rude things or personally attack the staff I find that to be absolutely disgusting behaviour.
As always you can catch me on my maker community and public discord
Cheers, Val.