Hi Besti, thank you for bringing up this topic.
I’m feeling really mixed emotions right now, because although you mentioned Bambu Labs doesn’t do much against this, I was actually penalized last night for allegedly gaining points unfairly, and the punishment isn’t minor:
- I have a temporary ban.
- Points were taken away from my account.
- I can’t earn new points from downloads, boosts, etc., for a whole week.
So, you might wonder how this happened? The truth is, I don’t know either. After six months of uploading, with only three models that got some attention, I finally earned enough points to order a gift card, which I did last week. Last night, Bambu Labs penalized me, and after I appealed, I received a message saying they might handle my appeal within a few days.
Here’s the situation:
Half a year ago, I bought a Bambu P1S along with three friends. That’s four households—none of us live near each other, and each has their own printer. Also, my wife here at home has a 3D printer, but it’s not a Bambu Labs machine.
We’re all on social media, and one of the three friends and I both design our own models. I’ve occasionally used an AI generator to create models and made videos about it, as 3D-generated models aren’t print-ready. You still spend many hours in software (in my case, MeshMixer) making the model printable and ensuring it looks good. “Good” is subjective, of course, but to me, it means I’d be proud to display the print in my collection. So, I optimized and printed all my models, including those created with AI.
Since we’re all in the same Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube groups and channels, we know what each other is working on. So it’s common for me to get likes from my friends, just like I do from other people in those groups. The only exception is my wife’s account because we live together, and we’ve agreed not to interact between our accounts to avoid issues. With two accounts on the same IP address, we don’t want any trouble.
Now I got penalized last night with a list of possible reasons, and the only two thing I can think of is that I have some models where I tell I used an AI generator to create the model (I also tell that I had to do a lot of work in MeshMixer before the model got printable) or my friends (the three of them) have liked almost every model I uploaded. Not that you get points from that—at least, I don’t think so—but I can’t think of another reason from their list that would make me deserve a penalty.
Of course, I sometimes download a model from a friend because I want to print it myself, and yes, my friends have occasionally printed my models to keep at home. But is that against the rules? If so, I’m concerned for a lot of people who share models on MakerWorld. Many of these people also share their new models on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or other channels, just like I do. So far, I haven’t even reached 100 downloads, while some have generated hundreds of thousands of downloads this way. Is that wrong? I don’t think so—I think they’re good designers making beautiful work. I’m not there yet; I’m not a good designer yet, but I hope to be one day. And still, I’ve been penalized.
The frustrating part of this penalty is that you can appeal it (which I did, of course), but it takes at least a few days for them to respond. And I truly have no idea what I did wrong. I honestly don’t know.
My guess is that I’ll have to tell my friends to stop downloading my models, and that I’ll just send them the files via WhatsApp or email if they want to print them. But that feels really strange, because what am I doing differently than all those people sharing their models with large groups? The only difference I see is that my group isn’t that large yet. But hey… I’m still a beginner.
