A Call for Social Play
(Librecast’s No AI Policy)

Published: 2026-11-14

TLDR: We don’t use LLMs here. Please don’t use Generative AI in our spaces. We don’t want to work with people who must use LLMs. This is not the project you are looking for.

The Rhinocerous is Dead

The rhinocerous is dead. I think we can all agree on that.

You didn’t kill it. The tiny ivory pendant you’re holding in your hand is only a small piece. Whether you buy it or not will not bring the rhino back to life. The other pieces of its corpse are scattered far and wide.

Still, you have a choice. Do you buy it and fund, even in a small way, this extractive industry? Do you wear it, displaying your endorsement of this practice to your friends, colleagues, strangers, children? Will other people see you wear it, and feel they need one too? Will you make it harder for people to justify not wearing one?

It looks pretty, sure, but you don’t need it. You can do without it, as you did before. It is certainly the height of fashion this season, but do you want to bind your self to the people who are doing this?

No one needs LLMs. Every use is an endorsement of the people peddling this shite and their fascist ideals. The two are inseparable.

The good news is you really can stop any time. How about now?

A Little History

Over the past few years some of us who work on Librecast have expressed their thoughts about LLMs and generative AI. We do not imagine anyone has been under the impression that Brett or Esther have been supporters of generative AI, i.e Diffusion or Large Language models.

Other projects have made it very clear the harms that are done with LLMs and diffusion models, how they scrape our work. How the model builders increase our bandwidth cost, DDOS us, and how affordable computing is now being priced out of reach.

Other projects have mentioned the issues of cognition and discouragement of thinking, which are a result of these technologies.

The take up of LLMs within Free and Open Source Software is a symptom of a different problem. As a group we’ve forgotten why we chose FOSS. We chose this calling to help to make the world a better place. But we also chose FOSS to create something together. We chose a different path from proprietary software. We chose to reject corporate priorities. We chose to try to improve the world and give our code to the world.

Perhaps that is why some of us elders got a little lost. Perhaps that is why some of our younger folks never chose FOSS. We chose to work on the technology without considering the social ramifications of the tech we were building. We chose not to look deeply into the ethics of how our software could be used. We chose to not consider how our worldview harms other communities around the world. We chose to sign up to one idea of how our networks and technology should work. We argued that our politics and beliefs don’t matter as long as we do good work. We found the work of community too hard, too boring to do compared to producing code. We only thought about how we can code everything, model everything and then we can build the ultimate machinery.

We forgot our basics. We forgot that to actually help the world, to make it a better place, we need to talk to the people who we are trying to design and build systems for. We forgot that we need to build community so that other people will care enough to help us. We forgot that we need to be welcoming to the folks around us.

We are in a war for the commons and our humanity. We have chosen to pick a side, we’ve chosen to reject evil.

Humans Are Social Animals

When we create art we are being social. We use our brains to create something and then give it to the world. What we should also consider is that when other folks see a painting, or go to a play, they are joining in the creativity as well. When we see a play in a theatre, we are participants as much as the actors are. We suspend our reality to watch a story’s reality. We take part in a contract with the actors during the duration of the play. We create a space together.

When we read a book, we’re imagining the world and the people that story takes place in. Even listening to stories we’re imagining worlds, we’re participants as we aren’t passively taking it in. It’s all sharing our time and imagining. It’s social.

This is the reason AI feels wrong to so many of us who create. It’s not social at all. There’s no play, there is no collaboration, no empathy in the process. It’s not social at all.

Generative AI is an antisocial technology. Yes, it can give a developer power to create a project in a weekend. But at what cost? How maintainable is it?

It scratches an itch and then we end up with abandoned projects. People can drive-by contribute with code, a security report and with enough numbers overwhelm a project. The person using the AI gets a buzz from a contribution, without the hard work and care. The person using the AI does not care about the project it is overwhelming. They’re onto their next fix already. They’ve objectified the project and themselves as we become overwhelmed by the slop contributions.

It is desirable to guard against the possibility of exaggerated ideas that might arise as to the powers of the Analytical Engine. . . .The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything.

It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths. Its province is to assist us in making available what we are already acquainted with.

  • Ada Lovelace - Note G

Our ability to think, reason and create is what makes us human. Our creativity is necessary to pass down history and to try to change the world around us. When we read or create, we are engaging our brains. Our brains are being engaged right now as we write this piece and review what we put down.

When we write code from scratch, we have thought about what we need to write and why. There’s a lot of care and thinking that goes into every part of this project. We want contributions yes, but we want you to take as much care in your contributions. We want to be social, and we want you to join us in a group. We want group communication and human participation in our groups. We need our ability to think. We need to create.

LLMs and diffusion models do not create. Their builders steal our work and regurgitate them back out. Their users are engaging in the theft of our commons. If they are collaborating, they are collaborating with fascists.

Librecast and Code

Code, much like other forms of creativity, comes from our humanity. Creativity is a process. As Mexican film director Guillermo del Toro recently pointed out, AI generative tools interfere with that process. He used the development of the monster of Pan’s Labyrinth as an example.

The three quarters of the process that gave you the chance to think of the idea that people don’t think about without that process. Meaning, AI can get you to the middle really fast, but there’s a dialectic with the process that gets you to that top 10%. I’ll give you an example with the Pale Man.

We sculpted it as an old man, with a face. And then I said, Let’s take out the face. This happened because I saw a photo of a manta ray and the poster for Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm. That combination, which happened at two different times during a week or a month, are not permutations that are chemically part of an equation. They are alchemy. And then I said, Take out the face, and then I said, Let’s put the eyes on the hands. This triangulation happens because I spent a month or two months living with the idea of this creature. And it’s not linear.

AI is like a super-fast engine that makes semi-sentient permutations of things that are already done. Creation is things that have never been done. Coming to exist.

Guillermo del Toro Reddit AMA September 2026

When we code an idea or a solution to a problem, it doesn’t appear fully formed in our heads. No idea does appear fully formed with implementation. As we code, we may find boundaries or limitations. Our thinking adapts and adjusts as we work together. The idea isn’t perfect. It doesn’t have to be. But sometimes the answer is found where we do not expect it to be, created in a moment.

It’s our thoughts, our politics, our ideals that help to make Librecast what it is. It’s important that we never lose sight of that.

“What characterizes intellectual activity, over and beyond activity that is merely intelligent, is the person’s building and having a theory, where theory is understood as the knowledge a person must have in order not only to do certain things intelligently but also to explain them, to answer queries about them, to argue about them, and so forth. A person who has a theory is prepared to enter into such activities; while building the theory the person is trying to get it.”

Peter Naur building on Gilbert Ryle’s theory.

LLMs and diffusion models are a short cut to a solution that may not really be a solution. What those tools represent are stagnation. They are antisocial because they are created by antisocial means and used by the most antisocial people on the planet.

LLMs are a bland tool, exuding blandness for people who have forgotten why we are in FOSS. We want to create projects together. We want to be social, we want to help humanity and be a part of humanity. It’s messy, it’s not neat, we do not aim for comfortable blandness.

We want to open our arms to the world. To communicate with humanity. To us using LLMs or Diffusion models isn’t humane. Those models are a fascist technology wielded by fascists. They steal the commons voices and art. Code is as much an art as drawing or writing.

We’re sorry you have forgotten that joy of creativity and collaboration with your peers. We’re sorry you may never have learned to play with others. We’re sorry you never experienced that joy of creating with other people as part of a communal movement. It makes us so sad you’ve thrown your ability to be social with others and create away.

Here we wish to make a call to your humanity. We call to folks who may wish to join us.

Any community that forms needs some community norms. Community norms include stating our values and our boundaries.

Librecast Community Norms

In ten years a computer will be world chess champion unless it is barred from competition.

Herbet Simon 1958

While the chess community uses computers to train chess players, its use in friendly games and in professional competition is cheating. Cheating hurts the chess community. It’s antisocial. The chess community rightly looks down hard on cheaters because of their antisocial nature. What is the point of playing together when the other player doesn’t want to follow the rules, but merely wishes to cheat to win?

There is no point. So the only option is to not play.

It is time for our project to state our boundaries. We are exercising our Human Right of Freedom of Association.

Librecast as a project works from Human Rights before we start to code. We believe in Humanity.

AI specifically LLMs and Diffusion models are antisocial technology. It’s anti Humanity.

When we look across our community landscape we can see the harm it does and the harm it reveals.

It overloads already overloaded maintainers, it keeps our projects inaccessible to outside our demographic. It relies on draining our potable water and power. It damages our habitable ecosystem. It exploits labour in the Global South. Use of LLMs harms the Human Rights of everyone as it is an anti-democratic technology. You cannot separate the politics of the creators and providers of this technology. Every time you use Generative AI you support companies that cozy up to authoritarian leaders. There is no neutral use of this technology. You are giving your tacit support to fascists every time you use it.

We utterly reject fascists. They have no place in this project and neither do the slop tools they want us to use.

We believe LLMs and Diffusion models interfere with our creativity. We prefer to build on our thoughts and on the thoughts of the community of folk that choose to join us.

Generative AI is the antithesis of everything Librecast stands for. If you use LLMs and Diffusion models to contribute to communities you are not welcome here. Their use is barred from our spaces. If you wish to help us, please do not use these technologies.

This decision is not so much a call to exclude.1 It’s more of an invitation. We are making a call to folks who feel like we do. Who wish to create together like we do. To bounce off each other and create something new. We’re hanging out a light and inviting folks into our space.

Final words

We do not want AI contributions. We will not accept code, diffusion graphics or generated problem reports.

If you submit code that’s generated from an LLM we will not accept it and we will consider it a code of conduct violation. Depending on the severity it may merit a ban from our spaces.

This is our communities’ right of Freedom of Association. We’re a human rights project first and a technology project second.

Further Reading

  1. Apart from Fascists. You are not welcome here.↩︎