People often fall into the trap of chasing new, “promising” tools, hoping to secure a head start over their peers, whether for professional advantage or social points. The trap springs when we invest so much of ourselves into mastering the novelty that we neglect to sharpen the tools that got us here in the first place. More often than not, the new tool turns out to be a dud. Usually right after we’ve finally learned how to use it.
Novelty That Never Was
The latest in a long line of duds arrived disguised as a policy update. Overnight, some of the most widespread portfolio platforms - Behance, ArtStation, even the once-beloved hobby-lobby DeviantArt, publicly pivoted and declared ownership over the media they host, along with the right to use it to train their own AI image-generation models.
Don't worry, this is not an AI-rant. I’m not fundamentally against AI, even in artistic contexts (up to a point). The real issue is simpler and more uncomfortable: we assumed these companies were above this. Turns out, they weren’t.
Neo-Feudalism
Digital goods were always destined to belong to their providers. We’re just paying rent. Subscription services, ad-supported freemium models, game libraries... ownership has been an illusion for a while now. Every now and then Disney quietly 'un-cancels' content on Plus by swapping out a dishwasher for a crate (true story), so why wouldn’t some rando do the same with data sitting on their servers the moment an opportunity appears? There was never anything truly Non-Fungible about Non-Fungible Tokens.
Smaller websites routinely pass registered user data to third parties, and it’s barely even considered a gray economy. We’ve always known this. The same friend who, 15 years ago refused to get a smartphone because 'they want to track your every step' is now urging me to try that new messaging app that does loopity-loop! He’s still afraid of being tracked - but 'Loopity' gets a pass.
What now?
None of this is necessarily evil. Everyone’s fighting for their slice of bread, and nobody wants to be the caveman reminiscing about the good ol' days.
But we should stop taking these models for granted. The moment we crown a platform as an “industry standard,” we hand it monopoly power. Monopoly erases the need for accountability towards users, and that’s when the most outrageous moves suddenly become possible.
By chasing easy exits and recycling someone else’s hashtags, we help building systems that are hard to escape. Sometimes it’s worth retracing our steps and see what we left behind. If Loopity 2.0 is overcrowded, where are the 1.0 folks at?
Maybe some of them are in desperate need of a seasoned illustrator.