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If you haven't already heard, Janitor is banning all NSFW bot thumbnails. Any images of nudity or implications of sex are not allowed. Here are my thoughts about this:

For those who don't know, NSFW thumbnails are banned. No nipples, tits, cocks, pussies, or "implications of sex". They have to be completely censored with black bars, or the thumbnail will automatically be replaced with a generic filler thumbnail (probably a stupid wolf).

This is allegedly to prevent the spread of CSAM material (underage content). That's what the devs claim, at least, even though they have seemingly tried nothing else to help prevent the issue. Although apparently NSFW images are allowed in the description of the bot, just not the thumbnail?

NSFW/smut bots are still allowed. Just no naughty thumbnails.

I am not the best writer in the world, so I'm just going to do some stream-of-conscious rambling.

First, the Janitor website is entitled to host whatever sort of content they like. If they don't want NSFW thumbnails, they are allowed to ban it. While I obviously enjoy making NSFW thumbnails, I wouldn't be angry at the devs for doing what they think is right for their site.

JanitorAI is a business. We as a community do not know how Janitor makes money, but they are trying to make money...somehow. No one spends tens of thousands of dollars per day on a site that makes no money. There is no stupidly rich investor who is keeping Janitor funded out of the goodness of their heart. The devs are not your pookie-wookies who give you a free LLM just because they love you so much.

I don't think it's a sin to want to make money. AI sites deserve to make money if they provide a good product. That being said, the lack of transparency from the JanitorAI devs regarding the financial situation is concerning. Not once in my year on this site have I heard a single thing from the devs about how they plan to make money or how they keep the website afloat. It makes me believe that Janitor has some sort of financial plans that would make the userbase upset to know about.

I'm going to be blunt: I believe that removing NSFW imagery is the first step in the devs plans to turn the site fully SFW. It's happened before with many other AI sites, and it all starts the same way:

The devs add a small amount of censorship.

They get backlash.

The devs then downplay the censorship, saying: "it's not that bad", or "you guys never needed that anyway", or "wait, you losers actually liked that stuff that was a foundation of our site for years?" (they are always condescending about it, it happens every time).

The devs imply that this is a temporary measure, or that this is the only thing they have to change. They never use definitive language. They always say: "this change is probably temporary" or "it's likely that this measure will be reverted in only a few weeks".

Weeks or months pass, and things are never reverted.

Eventually, something else gets censored.

The cycle repeats until all NSFW content is banned.