emptymasks

[emptymasks]

Yet another AO3 bot situation - please spread the word!

Hi, it's me again, the person who wrote that viral post about fanfiction plagiarism! Today I'm here to warn you about abuse perpetrated by bots who have stolen AO3 usernames.

There's currently an epidemic of bots going around leaving (apparently random) horrible, hateful comments on people's fics. This isn't the first time bots have invaded AO3, but the big problem with this wave is that they're using real AO3 usernames to do it.

I learned about this when another writer contacted me after receiving the following comment on their story:

Now, while that is my username, I DEFINITELY did not leave this comment (and anyone who would leave something like that on a fic should be slapped! What an awful thing to post). This fic is in a completely unrelated fandom that I have never participated in, nor has that author participated in any of my fandoms, so the probability of it being some intentional fandom drama thing to make me look bad is also low.

The writer whose fic the comment was left on enlisted the aid of some friends and tracked down other guest comments with unrelated usernames attached, which is pretty strong evidence that they are being left by bots at random.

The TL;DR: If you receive a cruel comment from a (Guest) with an actual AO3 username attached, it's most likely from a bot. Please do not lash out at or dogpile the AO3 user who owns that name, and who in all likelihood has no idea that their name has been hijacked for evil.

If finding this kind of comment on a fic, even left by a bot, is likely to upset you, I would recommend changing your comment settings so that only users who are logged in can leave comments. To do this, edit your story settings, and under "Privacy," select the radio button that says "Only registered users can comment," as shown below.

Please spread the word to other AO3 users! And if you see mean guest comments on other fics, maybe let the author know that it's probably from a bot and not a real person who thinks their writing is bad.

[emptymasks]

twitter doodles um i just think they could do experiments on each other

[emptymasks]

His worst obstacle is tall furniture

[emptymasks]

thinkin bout them again :^/

[emptymasks]

[emptymasks]

Gentle reminder to not reblog stuff from this person. Their whole blog is full of stolen art, some of it even has thousands of notes.

They did this with their former blog @bestwitchsam , but i guess too many ppl caught onto their bs so they remade into @queenwitchsam

This isnt a bot account, its an actual person that has been told over and over again that this behaviour is not ok, they just dont care. Pls just block them.

[emptymasks]

happy birthday mikuuuu..... from- from me, enki.

[emptymasks]

your spirit and my voice, in one combined

[emptymasks]

In the wake of the TikTok ban and revival as a mouthpiece for fascist propaganda, as well as the downfall of Twitter and Facebook/Facebook-owned platforms to the same evils, I think now is a better time than ever to say LEARN HTML!!! FREE YOURSELVES FROM THE SHACKLES OF MAJOR SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS AND EMBRACE THE INDIE WEB!!!

You can host a website on Neocities for free as long as it's under 1GB (which is a LOT more than it sounds like let me tell you) but if that's not enough you can get 50GB of space (and a variety of other perks) for only $5 a month.

And if you can't/don't want to pay for the extra space, sites like File Garden and Catbox let you host files for free that you can easily link into NeoCities pages (I do this to host videos on mine!) (It also lets you share files NeoCities wouldn't let you upload for free anyways, this is how I upload the .zip files for my 3DS themes on my site.)

Don't know how to write HTML/CSS? No problem. W3schools is an invaluable resource with free lessons on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and a whole slew of other programming languages, both for web development and otherwise.

Want a more traditional social media experience? SpaceHey is a platform that mimics the experience of 2000s MySpace

Struggling to find independent web pages that cater to your interests via major search engines? I've got you covered. Marginalia and Wiby are search engines that specifically prioritize non-commercial content. Marginalia also has filters that let you search for more specific categories of website, like wikis, blogs, academia, forums, and vintage sites.

Maybe you wanna log off the modern internet landscape altogether and step back into the pre-social media web altogether, well, Protoweb lets you do just that. It's a proxy service for older browsers (or really just any browser that supports HTTP, but that's mostly old browsers now anyways) that lets you visit restored snapshots of vintage websites.

Protoweb has a lot of Geocities content archived, but if you're interested in that you can find even more old Geocities sites over on the Geocities Gallery

And really this is just general tip-of-the-iceberg stuff. If you dig a little deeper you can find loads more interesting stuff out there. The internet doesn't have to be a miserable place full of nothing but doomposting and targeted ads. The first step to making it less miserable is for YOU, yes YOU, to quit spending all your time on it looking at the handful of miserable websites big tech wants you to spend all your time on.

[emptymasks]

This is for all 5 of you who care about this show 😌

[emptymasks]

HADES II gifs (7/?) Ares, God of War

[emptymasks]

Actually my fave thing abt the new update is how Ares art is similar to one of my favourite statue of him lmao

[emptymasks]

Hello! First of all, thank you SO much for the fantastic resources you have been putting together. I've been squealing with delight every other minute since I started going through it. SUCH amazing resources. Thank you for taking the time and the effort to put the master list together - you've given me an afternoon of sheer joy. Now, my questions: Do you happen to know if there is a recording of the 2022 Festival Bruxellons version of Elisabeth? Sorry for bothering you with this! <3

oh of course! i'm glad people find them helpful. and sadly no there is no official cast album or video recording of the bruxellons production, encora.it lists 13 bootleg audios and 0 videos.

[emptymasks]

[emptymasks]

[emptymasks]

Sailing my way into your heart 🖤🛥️⚓️

Happy Valentine's Day to my pookies.

[emptymasks]

Draw a character from something you like. The catch? It has to be from a piece of media you NEVER drew fanart for!!

Good luck! 💕

Erm I'm getting into Transformers and I'm reading More That Meets The Eye as my introduction and erm... these robots are hard to DRAWWWW so take my attempt at Swerve! MY LOVE! MY LIGHT!