#Corporate Transparency Act

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 26, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

DEC 27, 2023

On December 26, 1991, the New York Times ran a banner headline: “Gorbachev, Last Soviet Leader, Resigns; U.S. Recognizes Republics’ Independence.” On December 25, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned, marking the end of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, often referred to as the Soviet Union or USSR.

Former Soviet republics had begun declaring their independence in March 1990, the Warsaw Pact linking the USSR’s Eastern European satellites into a defense treaty dissolved by July 1991, and by December 1991 the movement had gathered enough power that Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine joined together in a “union treaty” as their leaders announced they were creating a new Commonwealth of Independent States. When almost all the other Soviet republics announced on December 21 that they were joining the new alliance, Gorbachev could either try to hold the USSR together by force or step down. He chose to step down, handing power to the president of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin.

The dissolution of the USSR meant the end of the Cold War, and those Americans who had come to define the world as a fight between the dark forces of communism and the good forces of capitalism believed their ideology had triumphed. Two years ago, Gorbachev said that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, "They grew arrogant and self-confident. They declared victory in the Cold War." 

The collapse of the USSR gave the branch of the Republican Party that wanted to destroy the New Deal confidence that their ideology was right. Believing that their ideology of radical individualism had destroyed the USSR, these so-called Movement Conservatives very deliberately set out to destroy what they saw as Soviet-like socialist ideology at home. As anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist wrote in the Wall Street Journal: “For 40 years conservatives fought a two-front battle against statism, against the Soviet empire abroad and the American left at home. Now the Soviet Union is gone and conservatives can redeploy. And this time, the other team doesn't have nuclear weapons.”

In the 1990s the Movement Conservatives turned their firepower on those they considered insufficiently committed to free enterprise, including traditional Republicans who agreed with Democrats that the government should regulate the economy, provide a basic social safety net, and promote infrastructure. Movement Conservatives called these traditional Republicans “Republicans in Name Only” or RINOs and said that, along with Democrats, such RINOs were bringing “socialism” to America. 

With the “evil empire,” as President Ronald Reagan had dubbed the Soviet Union, no longer a viable enemy, Movement Conservatives, aided by new talk radio hosts, increasingly demonized their domestic political opponents. As they strengthened their hold on the Republican Party, Movement Conservatives cut taxes, slashed the social safety net, and deregulated the economy. 

​​At the same time, the oligarchs who rose to power in the former Soviet republics looked to park their illicit money in western democracies, where the rule of law would protect their investments. Once invested in the United States, they favored the Republicans who focused on the protection of wealth rather than social services. For their part, Republican politicians focused on spreading capitalism rather than democracy, arguing that the two went hand in hand.

The financial deregulation that made the U.S. a good bet for oligarchs to launder money got a boost when, shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Congress passed the PATRIOT Act to address the threat of terrorism. The law took on money laundering and the illicit funding of terrorism, requiring financial institutions to inspect large sums of money passing through them. But the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) exempted many real estate deals from the new regulations. 

The United States became one of the money-laundering capitals of the world, with hundreds of billions of dollars laundered in the U.S. every year. 

In 2011 the international movement of illicit money led then–FBI director Robert Mueller to tell the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City that globalization and technology had changed the nature of organized crime. International enterprises, he said, “are running multi-national, multi-billion dollar schemes from start to finish…. They may be former members of nation-state governments, security services, or the military…. These criminal enterprises are making billions of dollars from human trafficking, health care fraud, computer intrusions, and copyright infringement. They are cornering the market on natural gas, oil, and precious metals, and selling to the highest bidder…. These groups may infiltrate our businesses. They may provide logistical support to hostile foreign powers. They may try to manipulate those at the highest levels of government. Indeed, these so-called ‘iron triangles’ of organized criminals, corrupt government officials, and business leaders pose a significant national security threat.”

In 2021, Congress addressed this threat by including the Corporate Transparency Act in the National Defense Authorization Act. It undercut shell companies and money laundering by requiring the owners of any company that is not otherwise overseen by the federal government (by filing taxes, for example, or through close regulation) to file with FinCEN a report identifying (by name, birth date, address, and an identifying number) each person associated with the company who either owns 25% or more of it or exercised substantial control over it. The measure also increased penalties for money laundering and streamlined cooperation between banks and foreign law enforcement authorities.

But that act wouldn’t take effect for another three years. 

Meanwhile, once in office, the Biden administration made fighting corruption a centerpiece of its attempt to shore up democracy both at home and abroad. In June 2021, Biden declared the fight against corruption a core U.S. national security interest. “Corruption threatens United States national security, economic equity, global anti-poverty and development efforts, and democracy itself,” he wrote. “But by effectively preventing and countering corruption and demonstrating the advantages of transparent and accountable governance, we can secure a critical advantage for the United States and other democracies.” 

In March 2023 the Treasury told Congress that “[m]oney laundering perpetrated by the Government of the Russian Federation (GOR), Russian [state-owned enterprises], Russian organized crime, and Russian elites poses a significant threat to the national security of the United States and the integrity of the international financial system,” and it outlined the ways in which it had been trying to combat that corruption. “In light of Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine,” it said, “we must redouble our efforts to prevent Russia from abusing the U.S. financial system to sustain its war and counter Russian sanctioned individuals and firms seeking to exploit vulnerabilities in the U.S. financial system.” 

The collapse of the USSR helped to undermine the Cold War democracy that opposed it. In the past 32 years we have torn ourselves apart as politicians adhering to an extreme ideology demonized their opponents. That demonization also helped to justify the deregulation of our economy and then the illicit money from the rising oligarchs it attracted, money that has corrupted our democratic system. 

But there are at least signs that the financial free-for-all might be changing. The three years are up, and the Corporate Transparency Act will take effect on January 1, 2024.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[nationallawreview]

Triggers That Require Reporting Companies to File Updated Beneficial Ownership Interest Reports

On January 1, 2024, Congress enacted the Corporate Transparency Act (the “CTA”) as part of the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020 and its annual National Defense Authorization Act. Every entity that meets the definition of a “reporting company” under the CTA and does not qualify for an exemption must file a beneficial ownership information report (a “BOI Report”) with the US Department of the…

[cannabisbusinessexecutive]

Will the Corporate Transparency Act Smother the Cannabis Industry?

Mandating “true owners’ identity disclosure” to prevent using shell companies to conceal criminal revenue, the Corporate Transparency Act creates myriad cannabis industry headaches. By Steve Schain Mandating “true owners’ identity disclosure” to prevent using shell companies to conceal criminal revenue, the Corporate Transparency Act, 31 U.S.C. Section 5336, et. seq. (CTA) creates…

[businesslawcorner]

How to Comply with The Corporate Transparency Act

Russo Law LLC discusses the newly enacted #CorporateTransparencyAct and what #businesses, #investors, #shareholders, and #officers and #directors need to do to comply with it in 2024. #corporatelaw #compliance #businesslaw #businessowner #lawyer #law

The Corporate Transparency Act (“CTA”) has ushered in significant changes in the corporate landscape, affecting a wide range of stakeholders, including business owners, investors, shareholders, limited liability company members, officers and directors, and legal professionals like corporate lawyers and business lawyers. In this business lawyer blog post, we’ll delve into the CTA’s impact on these…

[devilsskettle]

i feel like i’ve been WAITING for the other shoe to drop wrt people’s opinions about watcher for this very reason. not that i think the reaction is completely not understandable but the greater the parasocial relationship, the greater the fallout as soon as public opinion shifts. you don’t have a relationship with these people they’re just content creators, chill

[ericahall123]

2025 FINCEN Reporting Deadline Approaches: What Businesses Must Know

The US Treasury has established a new beneficial ownership information reporting under the Corporate Transparency Act for businesses. The purpose of this report is to help prevent financial crimes such as money laundering, human trafficking and shell companies.  This new rule also helps minimize the burden placed on small businesses and other reporting organizations. This training will provide a comprehensive outline of the BOIR reporting rule, what must be included in the report, and the specific categories of owners.

SESSION HIGHLIGHTS:

An Overview of The FinCen Reporting Requirements for businesses

Learn about the new alert that was just released by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and how to protect your company

Who is required to file and critical upcoming deadlines

What is the FinCen reporting rule and how to comply

Frequently Asked Questions Surrounding Beneficial Ownership reporting

Why You Should Attend:

Non-Compliance with The Beneficial Ownership reporting requirement could result in steep daily fines and even up to two years of imprisonment. This training will provide key information that organizations need to know about filing deadlines, penalties, and an overview of Beneficial Ownership reporting details.

Who Should Attend:

All levels of HR

Safety Managers

Business Owners

CFO’s

CEOs’

Managers

Supervisors

Business and Financial Officials

During the Q&A session following the live event, ask a question, and get a direct response from our expert speaker.

Important Notice for our “Live” Attendees: If you have enrolled in the “Live Webinar”, you will get your instruction kit before 24 hours of the live class.

For Recorded and E-transcript Participants: If you have signed up for the “Recorded” class or for the “E-transcript”, you will get access to the “Recording link” or the “PDF” within 24-48 hours of the live class.

[thetaxguyin]

Zomato Limited Faces GST Demand: A Closer Look at the Recent Development

In a recent disclosure, Zomato Limited revealed receiving a significant GST order from the Deputy Commissioner of State Tax, Gujarat, concerning the fiscal year 2018-19. The order, demanding a substantial GST payment along with penalties and interest charges, has sparked attention and raised questions about compliance in the digital marketplace. Overview of the Order: According to Zomato’s…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The real problem with anonymity

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then San Francisco (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

According to "the greater internet fuckwad theory," the ills of the internet can be traced to anonymity:

Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/greater-internet-fuckwad-theory

This isn't merely wrong, it's dangerously wrong. The idea that forcing people to identify themselves online will improve discourse is demonstrably untrue. Facebook famously adopted its "real names" policy because Mark Zuckerberg claimed to believe that "Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity":

https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/05/14/facebook-and-radical-transparency-a-rant.html

In service to this claimed belief, Zuckerberg kicked off the "nym wars," turning himself into the sole arbiter of what each person's true name was, with predictably tragicomic consequences:

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/

Facebook is, famously, one of the internet's most polluted reservoirs of toxic interpersonal conduct. That's not despite the fact that people have to use their "real" names to participate there, but because of it. After all, the people who are most vulnerable to bullying and harassment are the ones who choose pseudonyms or anonymity so that they can speak freely. Forcing people to use their "real names" means that the most powerful bullies speak with impunity, and their victims are faced with the choice of retreat or being targeted offline.

This can be a matter of life and death. Cambodian dictator Hun Sen uses Facebook's real names policy to force dissidents to unmask themselves, which exposes them to arbitrary detention, torture, and extrajudicial killing. For members of the Cambodian diaspora, the choice is to unmask themselves or expose their family back home to retaliation:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/meghara/facebook-cambodia-democracy

Some of the biggest internet fuckwads I've ever met – and I've met some big ones! – were utterly unashamed about using their real names. Some of the nicest people I know online have never told me their offline names. Greater internet fuckwad theory is just plain wrong.

But that doesn't mean that anonymity is totally harmless. There is a category of person who reliably uses a certain, specific kind of anonymity to do vicious things that inflicts serious harm on whole swathes of people: corporate bullies.

Take Tinyletter. Tinyletter is a beloved newsletter app that was created to help people who just wanted to talk to others, without a thought to going viral or getting rich. It was sold to Mailchimp, which was sold to Intuit, who killed it:

https://www.theverge.com/24085737/tinyletter-mailchimp-shut-down-email-newsletters

Tinyletter was a perfect little gem of a service. It cost almost nothing to run, and made an enormous number of peoples' lives better every day. Shutting it down was an act of corporate depravity by some faceless Intuit manager who woke up one day and said "Fuck all those people. Just fuck them."

No one knows who that person was. That person will never have to look those people in the eyes – those people whose lives were made poorer for that Intuit executive's indifference. That person is the greater fuckwad, and that fuckwaddery depends on their anonymity.

Or take @Pixsy, a corporate shakedown outfit that helps copyleft trolls trick people into making tiny errors in Creative Commons attributions and then intimidates them into handing over thousands of dollars:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/24/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator/

Copyleft trolling is an absolutely depraved practice, a petty grift practiced by greedy fuckwads who are completely indifferent to the harm they cause – even if it means bankrupting volunteer-run nonprofits for a buck:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/02/commafuckers-versus-the-commons/

Pixsy claims that it is proud of its work "defending artists' rights," but when I named the personnel who signed their names to these profoundly unethical legal threats, Pixsy CEO Kain Jones threatened to sue me:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/13/an-open-letter-to-pixsy-ceo-kain-jones-who-keeps-sending-me-legal-threats/

The expectation of corporate anonymity runs deep and the press is surprisingly complicit. I once spent weeks working on an investigative story about a multinational corporation's practices. I spent hours on the phone with the company's VP of communications, over the course of many calls. When we were done, they said, "Now, of course, you can't name me in the article. All of that has to be attributed to 'a spokesperson.'"

I was baffled. Nothing this person said was a secret. They weren't blowing the whistle. They weren't leaking secrets. They were a corporate official, telling me the official corporate line. But they wouldn't sign their name to it.

I wrote an article about for the Guardian. It was the only Guardian column any of my editors there ever rejected, in more than a decade of writing for them:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/05/14/anodyne-anonymity/

Given the press's deference to this anodyne anonymity, it's no wonder that official spokespeople expect this kind of anonymity. I routinely receive emails from corporate spokespeople disputing my characterization of their employer's conduct, but insisting that I not attribute their dubious – and often blatantly false – statements to them by name.

These are the greater corporate fuckwads, who commit their sins from behind a veil of anonymity. That brand of bloodless viciousness, depravity and fraud absolutely depends on anonymity.

Mark Zuckerberg claimed that "multiple identities" enabled bad behavior – as though it was somehow healthy for people to relate to their bosses, lovers, parents, toddlers and barbers in exactly the same way. Zuckerberg's motivation was utterly transparent: having "multiple identities" doesn't mean you "lack integrity" – it just makes it harder to target you for ads.

But Zuckerberg couldn't enshittify Facebook on his own. For that, he relies on a legion of anonymous Facebook managers. Some of these people undoubtably speak up for Facebook users' interests when their colleagues propose putting them in harm's way for the sake of some arbitrary KPI. But the ones who are making those mean little decisions? They absolutely rely on anonymity to do their dirty work.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/04/greater-corporate-fuckward-theory/#counterintuit-ive

[reality-detective]

MON. 2 DEC. 2024 ILLUMINATI BLOODLINE FAMILIES AND THE GREAT AWAKENING

· Thirteen Illuminati Bloodline Families, headquartered in Venice, Italy, once ruled the world through their control of the global monetary system, all while practicing dark rituals and Satanic worship. This cabal, now often referred to as the Deep State, orchestrated a global network of child sacrifice, sex orgies, and mind control experiments on kidnapped and produced victims.

· These families, who claim descent from Cain, included infamous names like Poseur, Kennedy, Rockefeller, Onassis, Carnage, Bush, and Rothschild.

· By 1832, they had seized control of the Vatican Bank and established dominance over major central banks worldwide, such as JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, HSBC, and Chase.

· In 1871, they enacted the Act that created the Corporation of the US of America, effectively erasing the original Constitution.

· The turning point came in 1903 when Nikola Tesla and Van de Graaf began unraveling the Deep State's secrets.

· By 1914, they had signed a 99-year lease on the Chinese Elder’s gold, using the Federal Reserve, IRS, and other financial institutions to launder US taxpayer money, while their operations extended through the Vatican Bank, notorious for its role in child trafficking, drug, and gun running.

· By 1993, their lease on the Chinese gold expired, and by the early 2000s, the Alliance was formed to dismantle the Cabal.

· By 2008, the Cabal’s reliance on a fiat US dollar led to a manufactured mortgage crisis, which further drained US taxpayers. This prompted the formation of the BRICS Alliance, aiming to restore a gold/asset-backed financial system. On March 21, 2013, the Gold Treaty was signed by 209 nations.

· In 2018, President Trump enacted the National Quantum Initiative Act, establishing a new Quantum Financial System and a transparent voting system.

· On October 16, 2019, US Marines and Special Forces rescued over 2,100 children from beneath the China Lake Navy facility in California, uncovering a network of deep underground bases funded by the Cabal.

· The Vatican was raided in October 2019, revealing the global elite’s money laundering operations. Over 650 plane loads of gold and cash were seized and repatriated to the US Treasury.

· By March 2020, the Alliance had eliminated the heads of the thirteen Illuminati families in Venice, initiating arrests and military tribunals for US political elites.

· This Alliance, as of 2020, included President Trump, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, Narendra Modi, influential figures of Q, QAnon (headed by JFK Jr?), Pentagon Generals, NSA, and Interpol.

· Expect further developments, with significant disclosures and arrests anticipated in the coming months. By late 2024, global changes will unfold as the remnants of the Cabal are dismantled and justice is served. 🤔

[verdantcreek]

thinking about the reboot mw games collectively and it’s so sadly unfortunate because like. when put up against the other two, mwiii fails so visibly.

first of all you’ve got their thesis/emotional core, right. for mw19, it’s all about the personal motivation of being a solider, the cost of war on an individual. what it means to fight and discovering the importance of what you’re fighting for. for mwii, it’s about trust. the importance of knowing that your team has each others backs, the weight that it has between individuals. what happens when that trust is broken and how it’s found again through vulnerability, because that’s how you truly know you’re there for each other.

and then there’s mwiii..? you should let your sergeant kill a prisoner illegally so said prisoner, when he breaks out of maximum security prison, doesn’t kill your sergeant 4 years later? you should illegally kill people who piss you off (shepherd)? sure there’s the whole “never bury your enemies alive”, but where does that come in to play outside of the soap/makarov interaction? it’s definitely not a valid reason for price to kill an american general in his own office. they could’ve used it for graves if they wanted to take it a step further, but no— graves doesn’t betray the team again, for whatever reason. we’re expected to consider him just a much a member of the team as anyone else, and the narrative treats him as such outside of a few bristly reactions to his involvement.

secondly i take a huge issue with how characters were handled in mwiii. literally everyone is here, and there is no reason for several of them to be. alex felt like a cameo— you see him actually on screen for maybe 30 seconds. farah’s missions feel forced for the sake of her involvement. not that farah shouldn’t be in this game, but makarov’s flimsy reasoning for targeting the ulf is so clearly an excuse to involve her. it feels very random and transparent as a decision to reuse her character because she’s familiar. again with graves— why is he here? i still genuinely do not understand why they decided to retcon his death. it was a perfect arc for mwii to kill him, and him being alive adds absolutely nothing to the story. he has nothing to do in mwiii and there is zero reason for his involvement other than “people liked him in mwii and he has a cool accent.”

within the 141, it’s mostly rehashing of the growth/personality that each of them showed in previous games. none of them have an arc, except maybe price if you’re willing to call the *post credit scene* where he commits cold blooded murder a completion of an arc. gaz, soap, and ghost are static versions of themselves that simply are just … there for most of the plot. they’re not out of character or ruined, but none of them individually have anything going on that can’t be tied back to price.

i think a lot of it comes down to the way they tried to shoehorn mwiii into the original trilogy’s storyline. people loved those games, and nostalgia sells. i don’t think it’s a coincidence that makarov was a big marketing factor for this game— and that’s not to say that mw19 or mwii didn’t abuse that either, but in execution you can feel the difference. price, gaz, soap and ghost are all their own characters miles away from their original trilogy counterparts. makarov… isn’t. he’s a poorly written villain riding on the success of the original trilogy— he’s scary because he’s *makarov*, not because he’s a real threat. it’s cheap. the knockoff “no russian” mission felt insulting. it’s a callback with no real impact in the story, just simply “look! remember when we did this in 2009 and everyone loved it?”

and all of it culminates into a shit ending with shock factor that it tries to make you feel emotional. i’m not sad over this character death. i’m mad, because it’s unearned and lazy. i realize it’s a lot to ask a multi-billion dollar corporation to actually put effort into their stories, but… it’s such a let down when the previous games actually had at least an ounce of passion. i’m just still so disappointed with this game ruining what could’ve been a really interesting and unique story.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

As his riding appears poised to elect a candidate who lobbied for the Coastal GasLink pipeline, a BC Green Party candidate in Prince George is calling for stronger conflict-of-interest regulations aimed at reducing corporate influence over government. While B.C.’s Lobbyists Transparency Act requires a two-year “cooling-off period” before a public office holder can engage in lobbying, there is no similar restriction on lobbyists seeking public office. “It raises all sorts of issues,” Green candidate James Steidle told The Tyee in an interview. “If I get elected, I’d like to close this loophole and require lobbyists to take a two-year pause before they run for public office.” Steidle is running in Prince George-Mackenzie, a riding that has consistently elected BC Liberal candidates since it was formed 15 years ago.

Continue Reading

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[nationallawreview]

Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Vacates Its Own Stay Rendering the Corporate Transparency Act Unenforceable . . . Again

On December 26, 2024, in Texas Top Cop Shop, Inc. v. Garland, No. 24-40792, 2024 WL 5224138 (5th Cir. Dec. 26, 2024), a merits panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued an order vacating the Court’s own stay of the preliminary injunction enjoining enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act (“CTA”), that was originally entered by the United States District Court…

[cannabisbusinessexecutive]

Attention, Canna Companies! CTA Filing Deadline this Month

By Vince Sliwoski, Managing Partner Harris Sliwoski For anyone that has not yet met their Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) filing requirements, now is the time! The deadline for entities created or registered before January 1, 2024, is less than a month away, on December 31, 2024. In July, we published a blog post covering questions on the CTA. The full text of that post is included…

[theedoctorb]

Dungeons & Dragons Content Creators Summit and Being a Corporate "Shill"

I was invited to attend the Dungeon & Dragons (D&D) Creator Summit in early April, and I happily accepted. I initially wasn’t going to publicly say anything about attending because I didn’t see any need. However, in the last week, numerous conversations on various internet platforms have both tacitly and overtly accused anyone in attendance of being a Wizards of the Coast (WotC) “shill” or “clout chaser” who will agree with anything WotC says because they:

Paid for attendees’ travel.

Included a per diem to cover meals and incidentals while traveling.

Have given past promotional materials to many of the people in attendance.

May offer us further financial opportunities in exchange for refusing to challenge currently proposed ideas and materials.  

This is not only reductive, but further divides a community still reeling in the wake of the recent uproar over the leaked, proposed Open Gaming License (OGL) revisions which resulted in targeted harassment of individual studio employees and content creators, especially those of marginalized identities, despite the fact that most of those who were harassed had no authority over the business decisions which caused the initial uproar.

What is a Summit?

Summits are opportunities to have open dialogues and share opinions towards a common goal. They’re common in academia and politics. Good summits are about synthesizing new ideas and challenging old ones. They’re often heavily structured and moderated with specific strategic goals, and the good ones deliberately invite people with vastly different perspectives on a topic.

To put it mildly, summits aren’t something to organize if you want people to pat you on the head and tell you that you’re doing just great! They’re often extremely heated because people passionately and vehemently advocate for their perspectives and priorities which may be in direct opposition to others’.  

What’s different about this summit is that it ostensibly possesses a level of transparency which I haven’t experienced before. Summits are often closed-door conversations, so that the people in attendance can speak candidly about topics or strategies currently in the planning stages. 

My invitation email specifically stated that the goals of the D&D Content Creator Summit are:

To gather feedback on how the D&D team can improve the experience of making D&D content.

To gather feedback on upcoming products such as the D&D Rules Update and D&D VTT.

For content creators to have more opportunities to interact with D&D staff in-person.

The email invitation specifically stated that this summit is based on consistent feedback WotC has gathered since PAX Unplugged 2022, and that this is a “first step.” Additionally, no one in attendance will be expected to create any content regarding the summit, WotC will not be taking any footage, photos, or recordings of the summit for any purpose, and any information shared with attendees may be shared with the community. That last part is notable, because it means that people in attendance – all of whom have platforms of varying sizes – can frankly offer feedback now and in the future on what is discussed, as well as how D&D incorporates the feedback.

Who is Going? Why Were They Invited?

I don’t fully know who is going.  I also don’t know why certain people were invited and others weren’t. No one I know of – outside the organizers and those who helped them – does, and anyone else is likely acting on various degrees of speculation. I strongly suspect questions about inclusion and exclusion criteria will be some of the first things asked at the summit. I’m especially curious about this criteria, given that content creation isn’t my primary job – consultation and education on mental health are, though that role sometimes extends to matters of content creation.  

Some creators announced their attendance publicly out of excitement at being included or with the intent of gathering questions from their communities. Some creators kept their attendance privately known only among industry members and friends. Of those I know who have kept their attendance private, the fear of being the target of harassment is a commonly cited reason, but an even more common reason was a desire to attend and push for change. 

Many of the people I know who plan on attending are staunch advocates for various topics such as inclusion, accessibility, and representation of marginalized individuals in D&D and other tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs). Some of them have directly consulted with WotC before and offered frank feedback as part of their consultant role. Other attendees built their platforms on advocacy and haven’t been shy about calling out perceived missteps. In short, they’re not people who are afraid to voice their opinions.

It’s worth noting that – of the attendees I know – nearly every single one is marginalized in one or multiple ways, whether it’s ethnicity, gender identity, orientation, neurotype, medical/disability status, or a variety of other identities. Nevertheless, who is and who isn’t in attendance is absolutely worth noting, once we have all the facts. Who has a seat at the table is always poignant and important feedback.  

Isn’t Your Objectivity Compromised by Receiving Compensation for Attendance? Coercive Rewards and Role Clarity

Some of the online discourse supposes that those of us in attendance will kowtow to WotC’s efforts because they paid for travel, offered a per diem, and many of us have received promotional materials in the past on which we’ve built content. Is that true? Is our objectivity compromised? Probably not, and here’s why. In the psychology field, there are two concepts we talk about frequently: coercive rewards and role clarity. Coercive rewards are often discussed in terms of psychology research. Participants in research are generally compensated in some way for their participation, but the compensation cannot be so great as to compel or coerce them into saying yes when they might otherwise refuse. To give some perspective on the level of compensation, I live in the same geographical region as WotC headquarters, so travel costs aren’t covered for me. I am still receiving a per diem for food and incidentals during the summit. However, I’m taking two days away from both my day job and my private practice. While I can reschedule some of my clients, I won’t be able to reschedule all of them, so I’m going to end up losing money by attending, and I’ll have to make up other work at my day job. To put it bluntly, per diem and travel costs (if I were traveling), and occasional promotional material are not enough to coerce an endorsement from me, especially if I think something is actively harmful and the goal of the summit is to offer critical feedback. 

Instead, my attendance is driven by my love of the D&D community, what it’s meant to me, and my desire to help improve that community and help it thrive by bringing as many people to the table as possible. Most of the people I know planning to attend are in similar situations and of similar mindsets – taking time off from work and essentially losing money because the goals of this summit are important to them. The travel compensation and per diem simply help to minimize losses for some people.

One summit attendee I spoke with noted that there is also an equity issue at play. Without offering compensation for travel and a per diem, it limits attendance to those of a certain socioeconomic level. That negates the possibility of wider community feedback. Also, how many memes and Twitter threads exist about creators being “paid” in exposure? Offering compensation hints to me that WotC takes this feedback seriously and is willing to treat everyone in attendance like a professional.  

Beyond pure dollars and cents, many of the summit attendees are either immunocompromised or have family members who are. They are literally taking health risks to attend because they believe in the purpose of this summit and improving the D&D community as a whole. If that’s not a sign of how dedicated some of the attendees are to improving the community, then I don’t know what is. Now let’s talk about role clarity. There are a lot of different jobs in psychology, just like there are in games and content creation. In psychology, a person might be a therapist, evaluator, expert witness, consultant, teacher, researcher, or any number of other roles. To perform any of these roles effectively, they must be crystal clear on what that role entails and what is outside its scope. It’s the same thing here with the summit. Based on the invitation email, it seems that the role is similar to one of a consultant – to critically evaluate what is presented and offer feedback based on one’s experience and expertise. Thankfully, this is a role in which many of the attendees I know have a wealth of experience.

Some readers might retort with, “But you might get other jobs by being there!” Yes. Yes, we might. This is a professional invitation with an expected, professional role, and if we perform that role well, we might get future professional opportunities. That’s what should happen when one performs their job well, and it should be true regardless of the industry and context. However, the reality is that those jobs are both hypothetical and not likely to happen overnight. It's more likely that these jobs would be one-off consultations, collaborations, or the like. 

While jobs like that are appreciated and welcome, they are not steady employment. Summits are not generally real-life versions of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory whereby the one attendee who is most skilled and virtuous will be given control of WotC. Anyone who plans on attending with the fantasy that they will be instantly rewarded with their dream job is probably going to be disappointed.    

Is This Summit Solely to Do Public Relations Damage Control?

Ignoring the fact that a lot of the people attending this summit are generous with their opinions, for good or ill, some in the community have asserted that the D&D Content Creator Summit is simply WotC’s attempt to repair damage to the D&D brand in the wake of the bad business decisions during the recent OGL controversy. Events like this summit take a long time to organize, so I actually believe the email I received when they said that this is based on feedback they’ve received from as far back as late November/early December 2022.

At the same time, WotC would be foolish to avoid using this as a step towards what they pledged they would do at the tail-end of the OGL controversy: obtain and incorporate direct, community feedback. After all, the ability to follow through on proposed behavior changes is what we want when we have problems with people and companies, right? If the goal is to simply do damage control after a public relations nightmare, inviting a bunch of opinionated people with platforms to give feedback isn’t great if one doesn’t intend to actually listen. 

No one attending has forgotten the OGL situation, regardless of where they stood on it. If WotC is doing things well, they’ll learn that from the feedback. If WotC is going in a direction that irks folks at the summit, they’re going to learn that too, and if it’s the latter, that’s not going to help WotC, because the folks in attendance have platforms and haven’t signed any non-disclosure agreements.

Final Thoughts

All in all, what is the D&D Content Creator Summit going to be, and what is going to come out of it? I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does. 

Much like in D&D, we can’t know the outcome of things before the action. That said, there are going to be a lot of talented, caring, observant, insightful content creators present asking hard questions and offering critical feedback. Content creators, especially advocates like those I know are going, work damn hard to produce what they do, and it cheapens their hard work, especially the advocacy work, to call them corporate shills and assume that they’re going to agree with anything presented. Agreement isn’t the assignment. Neither is the assignment for us to listen to WotC. The assignment is for WotC to listen to us.

If we want to see change from people and companies, we have to be willing to note when they take steps to change, even if it’s just the first step. That’s not to say we can’t be critical at the same time. We should be critical, in fact, but critical isn’t the same as unyielding vitriol, universal condemnation, and us-versus-them. Critical means noting both mistakes and successes and pushing for constant improvement. No person or company is going to go from badly messing up to doing everything perfectly. 

As far as I know, WotC is trying something new with this summit, and it represents a shift in how they produce their products. I don’t know if it’s going to lead to sustained changes, but I’m willing to see if it does. I hope it does. More than that, I hope it’s exactly what they said it is: the “first step” in a new strategy of involving the community. My biggest fear is that if they see overwhelming, unflinching condemnation of anything they attempt, especially when it’s violence and threats from the community they’re trying to get input from, then they may stop trying to engage at all, and then we’re left with only anger and unfulfilled hopes. 

[allwormdiet]

Thinking about Worm (Arcs 1 to 7)

I was thinking about making a post where I stop reading for just a second and think aloud about what's happened so far. I was told, while navigating around spoilers, that Arc 7 was the right place to cut it off, and looking at the cliffhanger in 7.12 and Interlude 7 I can guess why. This is the last thing we're going to have something resembling the status quo or a minute. So, let's talk.

The thing that I knew about Worm in an academic sense was that it's in a near-constant process of escalation as the story goes on, starting with one big dragon guy and upping the scale and severity of the threat from there. What I didn't realize was how this would feel during the reading; I keep begging for Taylor and everyone else to just have an arc, half an arc, where they don't have any looming threat over their heads or simmering anxiety beneath the surface, but fuck me I guess because the spaces to breathe keep feeling less and less like they're enough to cool down from the last threat. How much fluffy slice-of-life fic is there in this fandom, and how much of it is from the dire need to see these kids get a fucking break? Every time I go read something sappy or play mindless games (reinstalled 2048 on my phone, still fun), it feels like I'm coming up for air.

And Taylor... I don't think she realizes how much that story about her mom and the balding guy has already become applicable. The only person she has that could even theoretically act as an anchor for her is her dad, and the moment he put any effort into making her fess up to anything she basically ran away from home. Everyone else in her life are her literal partners in crime; they're not going to check her on her bullshit unless it is some extreme bullshit, and even then it's not guaranteed. The fact that she's horrified and outraged by Dinah's situation is evidence enough that she hasn't fully lost her grip, but "being upset by a guy who kidnapped a twelve-year-old and keeps her drugged up in his bunker" is kind of a low bar? It's taken her very little time to plunge into the villain life, to such a degree that she has nowhere else to go when she's faced with the possibility that she can't stay with it.

Now that I've read that back over, I wonder. Is it something about parahumans that pushes them to separate from their normal lives? Everything we've seen about Protectorate heroes suggests that they're basically unmoored from everything except each other and the PRT, the Wards have some semblance of a life outside their status as heroes but that's probably because it's harder to explain them dropping out of school than it is to just maintain the charade. Taylor was, briefly, the only Undersider to commit to a regular school life, and Brian is only pretending to have a normal job outside the team in order to improve his chances of becoming Aisha's guardian. The ABB capes were all full-time members with no pretense of a separate life, the closest thing we've seen to a maintained connection is Purity's apparent job as an interior decorator (I wonder how many of her former clients would get their houses redone if there wasn't about to be a fucking kaiju attack); even Kaiser, as the CEO of a pharmaceutical corporation, is using his fucking Nazi street gang to enhance his power and wealth as an extension of the company (although that's still fucking stupid for reasons I muttered about during Arc 7). Even New Wave, for all that they pride themselves on operating openly and transparently, seems to be kind of insulated, and I have to imagine that an all-parahuman family is a fucking nightmare of overlapping and incompatible traumas. Five bucks says one of the kids explicitly triggered because of their parents, honestly. If we take seriously the idea that this is a cosmic horror story that's mimicking a superhero story (which I'm pretty sure it is), it would suggest... hmm. Maybe whatever Crystal Superpower Cthulhu wants out of parahumans (if it wants anything) works more efficiently if they're unmoored from human society, or maybe there's something about suddenly being some indeterminate percent crystal alien that makes parahumans feel less connected to the rest of the species. I could be getting really far ahead of myself with this, but I'm not going to let the Crystal Superpower Cthulhu fucking slip out of my mind any time soon. That's a final boss-ass entity if I've ever seen one.

It might have been harder for Taylor to detach entirely from civilian life if there was much of a life there. Winslow High School utterly failed her at every turn, her first, oldest, only friend turned into a vicious sadist over the course of, what, a week? Less than a month? There's nothing but Danny to keep her moored to that side of her life, and the first reason he gives her to feel like he's betraying her, she lets go of that bond and leaves.

Looking at the shape of the arcs, the impression I get is that this rundown through the major gangs of Brockton Bay is going to be kind of the last time we sweat about gangs in general for a while. ABB gone, Empire in disarray, Coil acting as a boss for both the Undersiders and Travelers, and that leaves, what, the Merchants? The gang nobody likes or respects? They'll probably end up being a speed bump compared to the fact that we're about to be dealing with a fucking Endbringer (Leviathan, iirc). The Undersiders have already tangled with the most dangerous gang in the city, and although it wasn't an ironclad win or loss, things are about to get a lot more serious. All I can do is hope that the Endbringer fucking obliterates them and I never have to sweat their ongoing existence ever again.

Then that would just leave Coil, of course. Fucking Coil. Oh how I hate this man. If/when I get around to writing fanfic he's going to be taken out every single time, him and the Empire both. Utterly wretched to deal with, smarmy and grandiose but no substance, using people's dependencies to keep them under his thumb, shortsighted and cruel and letting both of those things foul up his pointless little schemes. I hope he dies screaming.

Anyway, that's the broad strokes stuff. I'm gonna make a post after this where I talk about each specific character that's given me anything to think about, so stay tuned for that.