#I say as I am a mobile user
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This is me posting btw
#I say as I am a mobile user#lynx#lynx therian#therian#therians#therianthropy#funny#humor#otherkin#alterhumans#alterhuman
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youtube
Kochen mit Sparks (2008)
#now available on youtube thanks to @maelwives!#I am taking my earlier post of the video down as tumblr didn't seem too happy about it#(it looks fine on mobile but on desktop it says the post violates tumblr's user guidelines)#kochen mit sparks#russell mael#ron mael#sparks#sparks (band)#2008#00's#Youtube
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my energy has been low lately so i've stuck to just liveblogging chapter releases, but i was thinking earlier about why lore olympus really nettles me and it's truly indicative of a wider issue.
it's disappointing that a major ancient religion that is still practiced by some people today has been reduced to a caricature of itself, and i say this knowing that there are thousands of reinterpretations of the greek myths, there will always be a new opinion or retelling of them. retelling the myth of hades and persephone isn't necessarily the issue, so much as the constant and dripping disdain to the cultural roots. we don't need to be greek to appreciate the story, but why remove everything greek from it? why westernize every aspect and remove ties to the cultural roots? why whitewash everything from a myth thousands of years old?
part of the reason these myths continue to resonate with us is because the themes are still relevant today. the loss of a child, the struggle against impossible forces, the (often patriarchal) powers against you, a mothers love. these stories hold power, they gave hope and inspiration, they created meaning and connection, and they were vital to the people who lived in that time, in that place. they will resonate with us for many years still, but stripping the roots and core of it out only makes it a hollow, shallow imitation. it's reality tv with neon colours, no love or heritage present; it's cold and shiny and plastic, and it insults what it claims to portray.
#anti lo#anti lore olympus#i have more thoughts actually but putting them down coherently? difficult#also im procrastinating doing the dishes lmao#anyways i can remember in undergrad studying the greek myths and early playwrights#and the prof was talking abt the trojan war#and the way he explained was that the power of this myth was that it vastly exceeded greece#it reached further beyond the borders it stretched so far that the entire world knew of achilles and paris and hector#everyone knew helen everyone knew priam#when priam kisses achilles hands and says#for I have steeled myself as no man yet has ever steeled himself before me#and have raised to my lips the hand of him who slew my son#??? like? the raw grief and power of that???#and it is that grief of a father to the killer of his son that resonates with us still in modern times#but their home was still the ancient world in the dust and sea of greece and troy#they wore clothing and ate food and drank wine that was theirs#and when we strip it away we remove the core of the story#a father in troy whose son stole a greek bride and must watch as his family and people are destroyed#anyways idk what these tags are i am so sorry mobile users
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so i'm helping my mom clear my grandparents' old house and i find the coolest cane
now i have been considering getting a mobility aid for a few months because my body has been on auto-destruction mode for the past two years and i'm having a very hard time walking
and my mom WON'T let me have it
because "she's sure i'll get better"
but i'm not better right now!!! it would be so much easier to exist if i could use a cane :(
#i am so anrgy#it's so painful to walk i could really use the extra help#chronic pain#joint pain#cane user#i wish i was one#lmao#can we please get rid of the societal norms that say a young person can't use a mobility aid#rant post
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I need to spread my Wendy cane user hcs further but I feel like it's important to note that I also hc Wilson as a cane user and that these two hcs are so vital to pair together for my happiness
#rat rambles#starve posting#like look Im not the biggest wendy wilson dynamic enjoyer they kind of just exist but I do like giving them random similarities#in particular I am not a father figure wilson believer but I am a wilson being a weirdly good influence completely unintentionally#as in the ways he does help is unintentional his idea of helping is saying the word science 60 timed like that does anything#also I find the image of him bragging about his scientific discovery of the walking cane to the other survivors amusing#just him being like with the power of science walking has never been easier!#and no one believing him but then he makes them their own canes and they're like holy shit.#I do hc wilson and wendy as using canes for different reasons tho#wilson is cause of chronic pain and wendy is because of a poorly healed hip injury#Ill probably add more survivors to the cane user squad in due time partly because I think itd be funny if they were just a fun echo chamber#speed bonus is actually just code for mobility aid theyre all disabled cane users babey
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Was thinking about booking tickets to the semi final despite it being a terrible idea but because it's at the stadium I can't just go book wheelchair tickets like you usually can, I need to sign up for the access scheme and as always I don't have the right fucking paperwork.
#i need to ask for a letter which clearly lays out that i am diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome and use a wheelchair and uses my legal#name when i go to the gp on Thursday#i have one but it's several years old and although it talks about mobility issues because i wasn't a wheelchair user at the time it doesn't#mention it explicitly it just says i have mobility issues#also it uses my chosen name instead of my legal name which makes it very difficult to use#and even then it won't count as evidence half the time#the letter i have is from the chronic fatigue clinic but because it uses my chosen name i can't use it to apply to something like the acces#card#also it's four years old which makes it a bit too old anyway not that I'm magically going to get cured from an illness I've had for over 10#years but whatever#maybe that's just an indication that i really really ought to get around to changing my name lol
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i am SO IRRITATED with @support @staff right now
like this detaching a post from its link to each individual reblog in a chain is a NIGHTMARE
-> new hyperfixation, and i'm trying to backread some of the associated blogs that have been around a while, yeah?
and i'm on mobile, which is relevant because hey fuck app users is i guess the motto?
so used to, if you wanted to read a few months/years back on a blog you could: find a tag of theirs, click on a post that was around the time you were interested in, be ported to the blog's dash AS OF THAT TIME IN THE PAST, and just scroll along
but now, because tumblr, for whatever moronic reason, has isolated posts so that
clicking takes you to an individual pane for *only* that post, not where it is on the blog timeline
AND NOW you CANNOT reach a previous reblog from clicking on the username in the reblog (only the og post)
the ONLY way to get back to older posts is to SCROLL MANUALLY FOR LITERAL HOURS
if i want to see posts from 2017, finding an old post and clicking on it does NOTHING to help me - it has been snipped out of its native environment and shown to me, but the other posts available as links at the bottom pane are just whatever tumblr algorithm thinks are 'relevant', not access to the rest of the blog timeline
this is true EVEN ON MY OWN BLOG and
I HATE IT
either make the Archive function work on mobile or GIVE BACK THE FUNCTIONALITY THAT WE HAVE ALWAYS HAD
#tumblr#GODDAMMIT my hand is tired#i KNOW that on desktop you can hotkey around THAT IS WHY I AM COMPLAINING#the are always desktop workarounds for everything it's only mobile users that get treated like trash#give me back a way to click back to 'prev tags' or whatever and GIVE ME BACK A WAY TO 'GO BACK IN TIME' ON A BLOG#that is the entire FUNCTION of a blog or did you blackout everything you know about wordpress somehow?#the point of a blog as opposed to pure 'social media' say twitter is that it fuctions as a RECORD#posts are supposed to remain accessible not vanish never to be accessed after a few days except by direct link#and direct links don't even work anymore!!! bc now you're requiring people to sign in to see posts and comments#plus a native shared link now takes people to the crappy default 'mobile' view of a post not the ACTUAL BLOG POST#that someone made on their ACTUAL BLOG that has their custom theme and header sidelinks bio etc#nowdays if in my notifications someone says something to me referencing my own tags on a post#and i click on that - i CAN NOT navigate back to my own post to see what my tags even were if i don't remember my exact wording#i have to exit notifications go back to my blog and just ... scroll until i reach that old post just to have a reference#like what the fuck tumblr?#i will say it again: STOP FUCKING WITH THE SITE NAVIGATION we NEED that shit this is not tiktok we find posts on OUR OWN#there's a difference between making something accesdible for new people and flat out ruining original infrastructure
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as exciting as it is to do this little thing I agreed to I'm so intimidated by ao3
#lloyds meowing#like dawg i gotta log in to my account through my shitty laptop to use it because god forbid sites are mobile accessible anymore#is it too fucking late to say ill write too because honest to fuck i dont know if im gonna be able to handle submitting an image#what the fuck does any of that shit MEAN am i seriously THIS stupid??#good god man...im like worlds dumbest internet user at the moment
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downloaded that simple translate extension not expecting it to work for my mother tongue language (the one i spoke during qsmp language day) and it worked INCREDIBLY well. like i was shortening words and speaking like im texting others who are familar w the language thus dont need words to be spelt in full. and the translator WORKED. and translated them ACCURATELY oh this is so cool
#is there such a thing called language euphoria bc i am going thru that now#kinda sad the extension only works on desktop since im more of a tumblr mobile user#but fr its making me want to speak my own mother tongue language more#still so flabbergasted that it worked really accurately. god i would love to play w the life translation mod on minecraft too#say what you will about qsmp but it fr makes you want to explore language. whether its one youve heard of or not. one thats yours or isnt#man it really does give you confidence#these are the language barriers quackity's aiming to break. i could not be more grateful about that
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I love the lack of timestamps on posts on tumblr. I am a newbie in the grand age of tumbr as I have only been here a few years so I love getting posts from fandoms who have ben around since the sawn of this hell site and I wonder how long has this post been traveling. How long has it made its rounds to come on my dash and be seen by fresh eyes and appreciated like it's something new and never seen before.
This is just a great example of how time is relative and art is eternal.
#was this whole post inspired by Stucky fanart#i will never say#random thought#also i know there are ways to see the timestamp of the post but i dont care#i think it is cool#also (dont shoot me) i am mostly a mobile tumblr user
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Incidentally, I resent the fact that most web traffic comes from mobiles in this day and age.
Incidentally, I also resent Tumblr Live being A Thing. The degradation of the mass mind continues.
#personal#Am I saying that I personally resent 61% of Baccano! Wiki's traffic in the past 30 days coming from mobile vs 38% desktop?#Yes.#Yes I am#Listen! I do not want to cater web pages to mobile users! Bah humbug!#Don't mobile users know how cookie-invasive FANDOM is? Better to use it on desktop#where one can employ more privacy-conducive extensions#And ad-blocking. I forget what the average UE is like because my adblocker + logged-in account erase all ads in FANDOM wikis.#The times I try visiting logged-out and w/o ad-blockers are horrible!#Unfortunately no community and revenue exist for making a non-FANDOM wiki a thing.#Even wiki forks for (more popular IPs than Narita's works) have sputtered out.#“Ye gads!” Why must I improve my ~coding~ skills by learning how to cater to mobile users! I ~resent~ self-improvement.
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I spent the evening looking into this AI shit and made a wee informative post of the information I found and thought all artists would be interested and maybe help yall?
edit: forgot to mention Glaze and Nightshade to alter/disrupt AI from taking your work into their machines. You can use these and post and it will apparently mess up the AI and it wont take your content into it's machine!
edit: ArtStation is not AI free! So make sure to read that when signing up if you do! (this post is also on twt)
[Image descriptions: A series of infographics titled: “Opt Out AI: [Social Media] and what I found.” The title image shows a drawing of a person holding up a stack of papers where the first says, ‘Terms of Service’ and the rest have logos for various social media sites and are falling onto the floor. Long transcriptions follow.
Instagram/Meta (I have to assume Facebook).
Hard for all users to locate the “opt out” options. The option has been known to move locations.
You have to click the opt out link to submit a request to opt out of the AI scraping. *You have to submit screenshots of your work/face/content you posted to the app, is curretnly being used in AI. If you do not have this, they will deny you.
Users are saying after being rejected, are being “meta blocked”
People’s requests are being accepted but they still have doubts that their content won’t be taken anyways.
Twitter/X
As of August 2023, Twitter’s ToS update:
“Twitter has the right to use any content that users post on its platform to train its AI models, and that users grant Twitter a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to do so.”
There isn’t much to say. They’re doing the same thing Instagram is doing (to my understanding) and we can’t even opt out.
Tumblr
They also take your data and content and sell it to AI models.
But you’re in luck!
It is very simply to opt out (Wow. Thank Gods)
Opt out on Desktop: click on your blog > blog settings > scroll til you see visibility options and it’ll be the last option to toggle
Out out of Mobile: click your blog > scroll then click visibility > toggle opt out option
TikTok
I took time skim their ToS and under “How We Use Your Information” and towards the end of the long list: “To train and improve our technology, such as our machine learning models and algorithms.”
Regarding data collected; they will only not sell your data when “where restricted by applicable law”. That is not many countries. You can refuse/disable some cookies by going into settings > ads > turn off targeted ads.
I couldn’t find much in AI besides “our machine learning models” which I think is the same thing.
What to do?
In this age of the internet, it’s scary! But you have options and can pick which are best for you!
Accepting these platforms collection of not only your artwork, but your face! And not only your faces but the faces of those in your photos. Your friends and family. Some of those family members are children! Some of those faces are minors! I shudder to think what darker purposes those faces could be used for.
Opt out where you can! Be mindful and know the content you are posting is at risk of being loaded to AI if unable to opt out.
Fully delete (not archive) your content/accounts with these platforms. I know it takes up to 90 days for instagram to “delete” your information. And even keep it for “legal” purposes like legal prevention.
Use lesser known social media platforms! Some examples are; Signal, Mastodon, Diaspora, et. As well as art platforms: Artfol, Cara, ArtStation, etc.
The last drawing shows the same person as the title saying, ‘I am, by no means, a ToS autistic! So feel free to share any relatable information to these topics via reply or qrt!
I just wanted to share the information I found while searching for my own answers cause I’m sure people have the same questions as me.’ \End description] (thank you @a-captions-blog!)
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People take the word ambulatory wheelchair user, and say it means exclusively part time wheelchair users and run with it.
I’m an ambulatory wheelchair user. But I’m not a part time wheelchair user. I use my wheelchair EVERY SINGLE day. That means that I’m not a part time wheelchair user, because I use it more than part time. A lot more than part time.
There seems to be this new rhetoric, that ambulatory = part time. And for most, this isn’t the case. Ambulatory does not mean part time, it simply means that you can walk.
I can walk around my room unassisted by any mobility aids. I cannot walk to the lunch room which is literally up the hall without a mobility aid. I’m almost a full time crutch user, and I’m an ambulatory wheelchair user.
I am not a part time mobility aid user, and I hate that people have come to the “agreement” that ambulatory means part time, when that is quite literally, not true.
#zebrambles#physically disabled#cripplepunk#crippled#cripple punk#hypermobile#joint issues#autism mobility problems#ambulatory wheelchair user#ambulatory mobility aid user#ambulatory crutch user#ambulatory#part time mobility aid user#Zebplanet
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the great reddit API meltdown of '23, or: this was always bound to happen
there's a lot of press about what's going on with reddit right now (app shutdowns, subreddit blackouts, the CEO continually putting his foot in his mouth), but I haven't seen as much stuff talking about how reddit got into this situation to begin with. so as a certified non-expert and Context Enjoyer I thought it might be helpful to lay things out as I understand them—a high-level view, surveying the whole landscape—in the wonderful world of startups, IPOs, and extremely angry users.
disclaimer that I am not a founder or VC (lmao), have yet to work at a company with a successful IPO, and am not a reddit employee or third-party reddit developer or even a subreddit moderator. I do work at a startup, know my way around an API or two, and have spent twelve regrettable years on reddit itself. which is to say that I make no promises of infallibility, but I hope you'll at least find all this interesting.
profit now or profit later
before you can really get into reddit as reddit, it helps to know a bit about startups (of which reddit is one). and before I launch into that, let me share my Three Types Of Websites framework, which is basically just a mental model about financial incentives that's helped me contextualize some of this stuff.
(1) website/software that does not exist to make money: relatively rare, for a variety of reasons, among them that it costs money to build and maintain a website in the first place. wikipedia is the evergreen example, although even wikipedia's been subject to criticism for how the wikimedia foundation pays out its employees and all that fun nonprofit stuff. what's important here is that even when making money is not the goal, money itself is still a factor, whether it's solicited via donations or it's just one guy paying out of pocket to host a hobby site. but websites in this category do, generally, offer free, no-strings-attached experiences to their users.
(I do want push back against the retrospective nostalgia of "everything on the internet used to be this way" because I don't think that was ever really true—look at AOL, the dotcom boom, the rise of banner ads. I distinctly remember that neopets had multiple corporate sponsors, including a cookie crisp-themed flash game. yahoo bought geocities for $3.6 billion; money's always been trading hands, obvious or not. it's indisputable that the internet is simply different now than it was ten or twenty years ago, and that monetization models themselves have largely changed as well (I have thoughts about this as it relates to web 1.0 vs web 2.0 and their associated costs/scale/etc.), but I think the only time people weren't trying to squeeze the internet for all the dimes it can offer was when the internet was first conceived as a tool for national defense.)
(2) website/software that exists to make money now: the type that requires the least explanation. mostly non-startup apps and services, including any random ecommerce storefront, mobile apps that cost three bucks to download, an MMO with a recurring subscription, or even a news website that runs banner ads and/or offers paid subscriptions. in most (but not all) cases, the "make money now" part is obvious, so these things don't feel free to us as users, even to the extent that they might have watered-down free versions or limited access free trials. no one's shocked when WoW offers another paid expansion packs because WoW's been around for two decades and has explicitly been trying to make money that whole time.
(3) website/software that exists to make money later: this is the fun one, and more common than you'd think. "make money later" is more or less the entire startup business model—I'll get into that in the next section—and is deployed with the expectation that you will make money at some point, but not always by means as obvious as "selling WoW expansions for forty bucks a pop."
companies in this category tend to have two closely entwined characteristics: they prioritize growth above all else, regardless of whether this growth is profitable in any way (now, or sometimes, ever), and they do this by offering users really cool and awesome shit at little to no cost (or, if not for free, then at least at a significant loss to the company).
so from a user perspective, these things either seem free or far cheaper than their competitors. but of course websites and software and apps and [blank]-as-a-service tools cost money to build and maintain, and that money has to come from somewhere, and the people supplying that money, generally, expect to get it back...
just not immediately.
startups, VCs, IPOs, and you
here's the extremely condensed "did NOT go to harvard business school" version of how a startup works:
(1) you have a cool idea.
(2) you convince some venture capitalists (also known as VCs) that your idea is cool. if they see the potential in what you're pitching, they'll give you money in exchange for partial ownership of your company—which means that if/when the company starts trading its stock publicly, these investors will own X numbers of shares that they can sell at any time. in other words, you get free money now (and you'll likely seek multiple "rounds" of investors over the years to sustain your company), but with the explicit expectations that these investors will get their payoff later, assuming you don't crash and burn before that happens.
during this phase, you want to do anything in your power to make your company appealing to investors so you can attract more of them and raise funds as needed. because you are definitely not bringing in the necessary revenue to offset operating costs by yourself.
it's also worth nothing that this is less about projecting the long-term profitability of your company than it's about its perceived profitability—i.e., VCs want to put their money behind a company that other people will also have confidence in, because that's what makes stock valuable, and VCs are in it for stock prices.
(3) there are two non-exclusive win conditions for your startup: you can get acquired, and you can have an IPO (also referred to as "going public"). these are often called "exit scenarios" and they benefit VCs and founders, as well as some employees. it's also possible for a company to get acquired, possibly even more than once, and then later go public.
acquisition: sell the whole damn thing to someone else. there are a million ways this can happen, some better than others, but in many cases this means anyone with ownership of the company (which includes both investors and employees who hold stock options) get their stock bought out by the acquiring company and end up with cash in hand. in varying amounts, of course. sometimes the founders walk away, sometimes the employees get laid off, but not always.
IPO: short for "initial public offering," this is when the company starts trading its stocks publicly, which means anyone who wants to can start buying that company's stock, which really means that VCs (and employees with stock options) can turn that hypothetical money into real money by selling their company stock to interested buyers.
drawing from that, companies don't go for an IPO until they think their stock will actually be worth something (or else what's the point?)—specifically, worth more than the amount of money that investors poured into it. The Powers That Be will speculate about a company's IPO potential way ahead of time, which is where you'll hear stuff about companies who have an estimated IPO evaluation of (to pull a completely random example) $10B. actually I lied, that was not a random example, that was reddit's valuation back in 2021 lol. but a valuation is basically just "how much will people be interested in our stock?"
as such, in the time leading up to an IPO, it's really really important to do everything you can to make your company seem like a good investment (which is how you get stock prices up), usually by making the company's numbers look good. but! if you plan on cashing out, the long-term effects of your decisions aren't top of mind here. remember, the industry lingo is "exit scenario."
if all of this seems like a good short-term strategy for companies and their VCs, but an unsustainable model for anyone who's buying those stocks during the IPO, that's because it often is.
also worth noting that it's possible for a company to be technically unprofitable as a business (meaning their costs outstrip their revenue) and still trade enormously well on the stock market; uber is the perennial example of this. to the people who make money solely off of buying and selling stock, it literally does not matter that the actual rideshare model isn't netting any income—people think the stock is valuable, so it's valuable.
this is also why, for example, elon musk is richer than god: if he were only the CEO of tesla, the money he'd make from selling mediocre cars would be (comparatively, lol) minimal. but he's also one of tesla's angel investors, which means he holds a shitload of tesla stock, and tesla's stock has performed well since their IPO a decade ago (despite recent dips)—even if tesla itself has never been a huge moneymaker, public faith in the company's eventual success has kept them trading at high levels. granted, this also means most of musk's wealth is hypothetical and not liquid; if TSLA dropped to nothing, so would the value of all the stock he holds (and his net work with it).
what's an API, anyway?
to move in an entirely different direction: we can't get into reddit's API debacle without understanding what an API itself is.
an API (short for "application programming interface," not that it really matters) is a series of code instructions that independent developers can use to plug their shit into someone else's shit. like a series of tin cans on strings between two kids' treehouses, but for sending and receiving data.
APIs work by yoinking data directly from a company's servers instead of displaying anything visually to users. so I could use reddit's API to build my own app that takes the day's top r/AITA post and transcribes it into pig latin: my app is a bunch of lines of code, and some of those lines of code fetch data from reddit (and then transcribe that data into pig latin), and then my app displays the content to anyone who wants to see it, not reddit itself. as far as reddit is concerned, no additional human beings laid eyeballs on that r/AITA post, and reddit never had a chance to serve ads alongside the pig-latinized content in my app. (put a pin in this part—it'll be relevant later.)
but at its core, an API is really a type of protocol, which encompasses a broad category of formats and business models and so on. some APIs are completely free to use, like how anyone can build a discord bot (but you still have to host it yourself). some companies offer free APIs to third-party developers can build their own plugins, and then the company and the third-party dev split the profit on those plugins. some APIs have a free tier for hobbyists and a paid tier for big professional projects (like every weather API ever, lol). some APIs are strictly paid services because the API itself is the company's core offering.
reddit's financial foundations
okay thanks for sticking with me. I promise we're almost ready to be almost ready to talk about the current backlash.
reddit has always been a startup's startup from day one: its founders created the site after attending a startup incubator (which is basically a summer camp run by VCs) with the successful goal of creating a financially successful site. backed by that delicious y combinator money, reddit got acquired by conde nast only a year or two after its creation, which netted its founders a couple million each. this was back in like, 2006 by the way. in the time since that acquisition, reddit's gone through a bunch of additional funding rounds, including from big-name investors like a16z, peter thiel (yes, that guy), sam altman (yes, also that guy), sequoia, fidelity, and tencent. crunchbase says that they've raised a total of $1.3B in investor backing.
in all this time, reddit has never been a public company, or, strictly speaking, profitable.
APIs and third-party apps
reddit has offered free API access for basically as long as it's had a public API—remember, as a "make money later" company, their primary goal is growth, which means attracting as many users as possible to the platform. so letting anyone build an app or widget is (or really, was) in line with that goal.
as such, third-party reddit apps have been around forever. by third-party apps, I mean apps that use the reddit API to display actual reddit content in an unofficial wrapper. iirc reddit didn't even have an official mobile app until semi-recently, so many of these third-party mobile apps in particular just sprung up to meet an unmet need, and they've kept a small but dedicated userbase ever since. some people also prefer the user experience of the unofficial apps, especially since they offer extra settings to customize what you're seeing and few to no ads (and any ads these apps do display are to the benefit of the third-party developers, not reddit itself.)
(let me add this preemptively: one solution I've seen proposed to the paid API backlash is that reddit should have third-party developers display reddit's ads in those third-party apps, but this isn't really possible or advisable due to boring adtech reasons I won't inflict on you here. source: just trust me bro)
in addition to mobile apps, there are also third-party tools that don’t replace the Official Reddit Viewing Experience but do offer auxiliary features like being able to mass-delete your post history, tools that make the site more accessible to people who use screen readers, and tools that help moderators of subreddits moderate more easily. not to mention a small army of reddit bots like u/AutoWikibot or u/RemindMebot (and then the bots that tally the number of people who reply to bot comments with “good bot” or “bad bot).
the number of people who use third-party apps is relatively small, but they arguably comprise some of reddit’s most dedicated users, which means that third-party apps are important to the people who keep reddit running and the people who supply reddit with high-quality content.
unpaid moderators and user-generated content
so reddit is sort of two things: reddit is a platform, but it’s also a community.
the platform is all the unsexy (or, if you like python, sexy) stuff under the hood that actually makes the damn thing work. this is what the company spends money building and maintaining and "owns." the community is all the stuff that happens on the platform: posts, people, petty squabbles. so the platform is where the content lives, but ultimately the content is the reason people use reddit—no one’s like “yeah, I spend time on here because the backend framework really impressed me."
and all of this content is supplied by users, which is not unique among social media platforms, but the content is also managed by users, which is. paid employees do not govern subreddits; unpaid volunteers do. and moderation is the only thing that keeps reddit even remotely tolerable—without someone to remove spam, ban annoying users, and (god willing) enforce rules against abuse and hate speech, a subreddit loses its appeal and therefore its users. not dissimilar to the situation we’re seeing play out at twitter, except at twitter it was the loss of paid moderators; reddit is arguably in a more precarious position because they could lose this unpaid labor at any moment, and as an already-unprofitable company they absolutely cannot afford to implement paid labor as a substitute.
oh yeah? spell "IPO" backwards
so here we are, June 2023, and reddit is licking its lips in anticipation of a long-fabled IPO. which means it’s time to start fluffing themselves up for investors by cutting costs (yay, layoffs!) and seeking new avenues of profit, however small.
this brings us to the current controversy: reddit announced a new API pricing plan that more or less prevents anyone from using it for free.
from reddit's perspective, the ostensible benefits of charging for API access are twofold: first, there's direct profit to be made off of the developers who (may or may not) pay several thousand dollars a month to use it, and second, cutting off unsanctioned third-party mobile apps (possibly) funnels those apps' users back into the official reddit mobile app. and since users on third-party apps reap the benefit of reddit's site architecture (and hosting, and development, and all the other expenses the site itself incurs) without “earning” money for reddit by generating ad impressions, there’s a financial incentive at work here: even if only a small percentage of people use third-party apps, getting them to use the official app instead translates to increased ad revenue, however marginal.
(also worth mentioning that chatGPT and other LLMs were trained via tools that used reddit's API to scrape post and content data, and now that openAI is reaping the profits of that training without giving reddit any kickbacks, reddit probably wants to prevent repeats of this from happening in the future. if you want to train the next LLM, it's gonna cost you.)
of course, these changes only benefit reddit if they actually increase the company’s revenue and perceived value/growth—which is hard to do when your users (who are also the people who supply the content for other users to engage with, who are also the people who moderate your communities and make them fun to participate in) get really fucking pissed and threaten to walk.
pricing shenanigans
under the new API pricing plan, third-party developers are suddenly facing steep costs to maintain the apps and tools they’ve built.
most paid APIs are priced by volume: basically, the more data you send and receive, the more money it costs. so if your third-party app has a lot of users, you’ll have to make more API requests to fetch content for those users, and your app becomes more expensive to maintain. (this isn’t an issue if the tool you’re building also turns a profit, but most third-party reddit apps make little, if any, money.)
which is why, even though third-party apps capture a relatively small portion of reddit’s users, the developer of a popular third-party app called apollo recently learned that it would cost them about $20 million a year to keep the app running. and apollo actually offers some paid features (for extra in-app features independent of what reddit offers), but nowhere near enough to break even on those API costs.
so apollo, any many apps like it, were suddenly unable to keep their doors open under the new API pricing model and announced that they'd be forced to shut down.
backlash, blackout
plenty has been said already about the current subreddit blackouts—in like, official news outlets and everything—so this might be the least interesting section of my whole post lol. the short version is that enough redditors got pissed enough that they collectively decided to take subreddits “offline” in protest, either by making them read-only or making them completely inaccessible. their goal was to send a message, and that message was "if you piss us off and we bail, here's what reddit's gonna be like: a ghost town."
but, you may ask, if third-party apps only captured a small number of users in the first place, how was the backlash strong enough to result in a near-sitewide blackout? well, two reasons:
first and foremost, since moderators in particular are fond of third-party tools, and since moderators wield outsized power (as both the people who keep your site more or less civil, and as the people who can take a subreddit offline if they feel like it), it’s in your best interests to keep them happy. especially since they don’t get paid to do this job in the first place, won’t keep doing it if it gets too hard, and essentially have nothing to lose by stepping down.
then, to a lesser extent, the non-moderator users on third-party apps tend to be Power Users who’ve been on reddit since its inception, and as such likely supply a disproportionate amount of the high-quality content for other users to see (and for ads to be served alongside). if you drive away those users, you’re effectively kneecapping your overall site traffic (which is bad for Growth) and reducing the number/value of any ad impressions you can serve (which is bad for revenue).
also a secret third reason, which is that even people who use the official apps have no stake in a potential IPO, can smell the general unfairness of this whole situation, and would enjoy the schadenfreude of investors getting fucked over. not to mention that reddit’s current CEO has made a complete ass of himself and now everyone hates him and wants to see him suffer personally.
(granted, it seems like reddit may acquiesce slightly and grant free API access to a select set of moderation/accessibility tools, but at this point it comes across as an empty gesture.)
"later" is now "now"
TL;DR: this whole thing is a combination of many factors, specifically reddit being intensely user-driven and self-governed, but also a high-traffic site that costs a lot of money to run (why they willingly decided to start hosting video a few years back is beyond me...), while also being angled as a public stock market offering in the very near future. to some extent I understand why reddit’s CEO doubled down on the changes—he wants to look strong for investors—but he’s also made a fool of himself and cast a shadow of uncertainty onto reddit’s future, not to mention the PR nightmare surrounding all of this. and since arguably the most important thing in an IPO is how much faith people have in your company, I honestly think reddit would’ve fared better if they hadn’t gone nuclear with the API changes in the first place.
that said, I also think it’s a mistake to assume that reddit care (or needs to care) about its users in any meaningful way, or at least not as more than means to an end. if reddit shuts down in three years, but all of the people sitting on stock options right now cashed out at $120/share and escaped unscathed... that’s a success story! you got your money! VCs want to recoup their investment—they don’t care about longevity (at least not after they’re gone), user experience, or even sustained profit. those were never the forces driving them, because these were never the ultimate metrics of their success.
and to be clear: this isn’t unique to reddit. this is how pretty much all startups operate.
I talked about the difference between “make money now” companies and “make money later” companies, and what we’re experiencing is the painful transition from “later” to “now.” as users, this change is almost invisible until it’s already happened—it’s like a rug we didn’t even know existed gets pulled out from under us.
the pre-IPO honeymoon phase is awesome as a user, because companies have no expectation of profit, only growth. if you can rely on VC money to stay afloat, your only concern is building a user base, not squeezing a profit out of them. and to do that, you offer cool shit at a loss: everything’s chocolate and flowers and quarterly reports about the number of signups you’re getting!
...until you reach a critical mass of users, VCs want to cash in, and to prepare for that IPO leadership starts thinking of ways to make the website (appear) profitable and implements a bunch of shit that makes users go “wait, what?”
I also touched on this earlier, but I want to reiterate a bit here: I think the myth of the benign non-monetized internet of yore is exactly that—a myth. what has changed are the specific market factors behind these websites, and their scale, and the means by which they attempt to monetize their services and/or make their services look attractive to investors, and so from a user perspective things feel worse because the specific ways we’re getting squeezed have evolved. maybe they are even worse, at least in the ways that matter. but I’m also increasingly less surprised when this occurs, because making money is and has always been the goal for all of these ventures, regardless of how they try to do so.
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Fanfic Thieves on Youtube
A collection of youtube channels have been uploading preexisting fanfictions in videos with little to no credit to the original authors. These are not podfics, these channels copy-paste the fics into text-to-speech readers then upload the unaltered audio over static or unrelated backgrounds, either art that is also stolen or mobile game footage. In addition to not naming the authors, they alter the title to make it that much harder for readers to recognize or find the original uploads. Some go so far as to pretend they themselves are creating the fics in question. Many claim that their stealing actually helps give fics "exposure" despite the intentional steps they take to conceal the origins of the fics they profit off of. However, this practice has lead many authors to discontinue fics after the frustration of having their hard work stolen. Many of these channels claim they will remove videos upon request, but will either argue with the author in order to keep it up, or simply unlist the video for a time until they think the author isn't paying attention anymore. And their solution to receiving strikes against their channels in the past has been to further obfuscate the origins of their content instead of even considering asking first.
”I got caught stealing, so instead of not stealing anymore, I’m doubling down on stealing even more so it’s harder for people to find out and prove I’m stealing. Stealing doesn't count if the specific person I stole from didn't call me out. I am the real victim.”
That, plus the incessant tag scumming in all the videos (spamming unrelated tags in order to appear in more search results) proves to me that these are lazy attention seekers who don't want to put in creative effort when they could just leech off of the passion of others.
In order to report them, go to their channel's "About" page and click the flag icon. Said icon might be behind the three dots in the top bar on mobile. Go to "Report User" at the bottom and tick the "spam and scams" button. This will allow you to list multiple videos as offenders instead of reporting them individually. Youtube's policy states that video spam constitutes:
Massively uploading content that you scraped from other creators.
Auto-generated content that computers post without regard for quality or viewer experience.
If you recognize one of your fics among the stolen, say so in the additional comments box, and perhaps call out the channel directly in the video's comments. If you recognize someone else's fic, please let the original author know so they can report the channel as well. Many have been confronted for stealing previously and refuse to admit wrongdoing.
Most of what I've found has been My Hero Academia fics since that's my fandom and those are the ones I can recognize as stolen, but there are many other channels that steal from other fandoms, so I invite anyone and everyone to reblog this with their own findings.
The reality is that this extremely low-effort content and new youtube channels are both very easy to make, so most likely they'll start new channels once the ones on this list are run through. But hopefully, if we all work together and keep whacking these moles, perhaps we can instill that same defeatism they caused so many creators who didn't deserve it, and eventually they'll give up.
My sincerest thanks to everyone who helped bring additional channels to my attention. A special thanks to ao3 user InArduisFidelis who brought the initial attention to the issue, and @owlf45 whose work was stolen.
Links under the cut.
YurikoFanfics - Not only stole content, but acted in comments as though they were the one writing these stories.
https://href.li/?https://www.youtube.com/@YurikoFanfics
What-IF-Anime - Has the exact same "disclaimer" about not being the original author as the one above. Either they're the same person or the thieves are stealing from each other.
https://href.li/?https://www.youtube.com/@What-IF-Anime
quirkywhatif7 - Either an alt of the above, or all these people are talking to one another because this one made a community post identical to a comment the one above made in response to being called out (the above screenshots).
https://www.youtube.com/@quirkywhatif7/about
DekuFanfic - It's the same fucking guy again.
https://www.youtube.com/@DekuFanfic/about
InfiniteParadoxfanfics - Nothing notable, same deal as the others.
https://href.li/?https://www.youtube.com/@InfiniteParadoxfanfics/about
WhatIfAnimeChannel - Admits in their community posts that other people write the fics they post but still doesn't give credit. Migrated to a new channel after issues with youtube, likely being flagged previously.
https://href.li/?https://www.youtube.com/@WhatIfAnimeChannel/about
WhatIfAnimeAll - Alt of above.
https://href.li/?https://www.youtube.com/@WhatIfAnimeAll
FWNWorld - Makes sure to tell you that the videogame footage is theirs, but can't bother to credit anyone else.
https://href.li/?https://www.youtube.com/@FWNWorld/about
WTFW - Claims to have "[A] team of talented writers, voice actors, and artists work together to create immersive fan fiction stories that are sure to captivate your imagination." Just the same test-to-speech stolen content over videogames. So straight up lying claiming that everything is theirs (and that anything they make is quality).
https://href.li/?https://www.youtube.com/@WTFW
MHA2.0Fanfics - Lots of crossover theft.
https://www.youtube.com/@MHA2.0Fanfics/about
Collerwhatiif - Pretty sure this one is the same guy as the previous 2, also has one for another fandom.
https://www.youtube.com/@Collerwhatiif/about
https://www.youtube.com/@GoJoFanfiction/videos
ko_sensei - Another that claims to have a "team" that makes the stories they steal: " passionate about creating compelling and engaging fanfiction that explores the various "what ifs" in the anime universe."
https://www.youtube.com/@ko_sensei/about
FantasticWhatIf - Multifandom stealing, uses the exact same bs disclaimer as many others.
https://www.youtube.com/@FantasticWhatIf/about
LettuceHeadFanfics - No credit, no acknowledgement of anything. Next one is an alt.
https://www.youtube.com/@LettuceHeadFanfics/about
brocollifanfics - Alt of above, once again admits to stealing with a declaration of "☆If you want to takedown any videos. You can mail us or leave a comment below the video☆"
https://www.youtube.com/@brocollifanfics/about
whatifofficial786 - Focuses on MHA/Naruto crossovers. Identical format.
https://www.youtube.com/@whatifofficial786/about
NotWhatIf - I've lost track of who's an alt of who but yet another identical format, descriptions, and bullshit claims of "enhancing the viewer experience" by putting a robot voice over bootleg fortnite footage.
https://www.youtube.com/@NotWhatIf/about
weebxds - Same again.
https://www.youtube.com/@weebxds/about
ItachiFanfics - Naruto channel, we can at least confirm that this one is run by a human given the rare different descriptions and a real voice at the beginning of videos before the robot comes back.
https://www.youtube.com/@ItachiFanfics/about
WhatIfDN - As if mockingly, a bunch of videos have a "credit" section in their descriptions that is of course blank.
https://www.youtube.com/@WhatIfDN/about
SpiceandBooks and spiceandfiction - Apparently Youtube itself has started picking up on the bullshit, because this multifandom channel is being dinged as ai spam so they started a new one.
https://www.youtube.com/@SpiceandBooks/about
https://www.youtube.com/@spiceandfiction/about
theoriginalastra - Doesn't even bother with disclaimers, the following are multiple alts/potential alts for different fandoms.
https://www.youtube.com/@theoriginalastra/about
SillySenpai12 - Highschool DXD alt.
https://www.youtube.com/@SillySenpai12/about
RosieRealms - Naruto alt.
https://www.youtube.com/@RosieRealms/about
DekuWhatIfs - Potentially another astra alt but not sure, doesn't matter because all these channels do the same thing anyway.
AnimeStark688 - No credits or disclaimers.
https://www.youtube.com/@AnimeStark688/about
Please take the time to report these channels, spread this post around, and reblog with any additional offending channels you find.
#my hero academia#boku no hero academia#naruto#highschool dxd#the debacle#mha#bnha#mha fanfiction#bnha fanfiction#naruto fanfiction
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As an ambulatory wheelchair user I have so many thoughts about how people draw/write disabled!Scar. This is sort of a guide/insight from a disabled person about writing/drawing disabled people.
Specifically in regards to wheelchair users.
Do not get me wrong, this fandom is genuinely probably the best group of people I have ever seen when it comes to drawing wheelchairs. I do not believe I have ever seen Scar fanart where he is in a completely unusable, horrible, hospital chair. It is so clear people have taken the time and energy to research into wheelchairs and I love it. I am in no way saying stop that.
I just think people could maybe put a little bit more consideration into him being disabled beyond visual appearance.
I saw a really amazing artwork of SL!Scar and he is in a sports chair. Which is really cool, in many ways, as it shows some thought being put into the setting. If I were in combat, I would in fact like to not be knocked from my chair or have my chair tipped over.
Yet, you have very limited mobility in a sports chair. It is, by design, made to prevent you from tipping over. Which means that you are incapable of going over bumps, really, let alone natural terrain.
Just in general, there really is not any wheelchair that exists in our world that would allow wheelchair users to exist in a setting like the life series.
So, I have some ideas:
- Horses. Hands down my biggest suggestion. Especially with Secret Life they fit in very well with the setting, everyone uses them, and it fits the bill perfectly for what he would need. Especially considering Scar is an archer, it makes a lot of sense for him to be on horseback. It suits him and his style of fighting so well.
- Some sort of redstone power chair. There are all sorts of ways you could design something like this. Perhaps with pistons that push down against the ground, allowing for jumps. Perhaps just a series of pistions functioning as like a bunch of little spider legs. There are a lot of things you can do with that, you can get very creative.
- For my Vex!Scar lovers, you could have magic be used as a mobility aid. Perhaps a magic wheelchair, or perhaps a magic exoskeleton.
And with all of the ideas, considering how they fit into the setting really changes everything. What are the strengths? What are the draw backs?
With horses, they are strong and fast and agile. But they are big, it is hard to fit into small spaces, and they can be killed.
With some sort of redstone chair, I feel as though it would make sense for it to be robust and strong. Depending on how it is constructed, something fast and agile or perhaps something a bit slower and more clunky. Is it loud? How would stealth work in something like that?
When it comes to any sort of magic you do not want it to fix the disability. It is a mobility aid like any other. Not perfect, not the same as not being disabled, just another tool with its own unique draw backs. Perhaps magic is draining or it takes concentration. Would he tire quicker than others? Would he require food quicker than others? Is it possible for him to lose focus on it in a stressful situation, leaving him stuck until he can calm himself down?
Other things to consider are really specifically the setting as well as what disability you are giving him.
I feel as though on Hermitcraft an option like a redstone chair just makes a lot of sense. Multiple redstone chairs, even, all constructed differently for different uses. Such as ones for building. How does long distance travel work with the chair and how you lore your setting? Is it something he can put in his inventory? Is it something he remains in when using an elytra? Does that have any draw backs, such as being slower or needing more rockets or being less coordinated in the air?
I feel as though in the life series a mix of vex magic and horses makes a lot of sense. The magic is good for small spaces and short trips and emergencies, but it is too tiring to travel across the map with and too much effort to maintain when he needs to concentrate on battles. That would be where the horse comes into play.
As for what disability, well, it truly depends. Most of my rambles here have been based upon paraplegia, because I often times see people making him an ambulatory wheelchair user just because they do not know what to do otherwise.
Not that making him an ambulatory wheelchair user is a bad thing by any means. I am one and I adore reading stories like that. It is just a bit clear that a lot of you are quite lost as to how to navigate hurdles disabled people face, so you make it so he can walk over those hurdles. Which, once again, I am not shaming you for! This post is just to show there are other options
But in the case of him being an ambulatory wheelchair user: why is he one?
Mobilities aids are disabling unless you need them. You cannot access spaces or you do not have hands free or any number of things. What to the Scar you are writing makes using mobility aids helpful instead of a hindrance? What times are they more trouble than help, and what cost is there for not using it?
A good example is if Scar can walk around short distances with minimal difficulty/drawback, but long distances are painful or physically not possible.
Look into different disabilities and consider it. A lot of people tend to default to chronic pain because that tends to be quite a common one across a lot of disabled people, but there are a lot more different reasons why.
It could also be that he is very slow because of his disabilities. I have muscle weakness sometimes because of my FND, and it is like moving through sludge whenever I try and move.
It could also be that the mobility aids are a preventative measure. He does not need to use his wheelchair, unless he has done too much walking and then his body refuses to support his weight. He does not need to use his wheelchair, but when he does not he is a lot more likely to dislocate something and then yeah he can't walk. He does not need to use his wheelchair, but he is a fall risk especially after a lot of walking or running. Him being in his wheelchair prevents him from falling! (And if he's a fall risk, maybe he's strapped in too!)
I just have so many thoughts and I wanted to share them.
I see so many of you putting in effort already and it warms my heart. It is why I feel comfortable enough to make this post, because clearly you all care a lot about representing disabled people well.
:]
If you have read this far thank you so much. Let me know what you think or if you have any questions.
Edit: I made a rough redstone wheelchair design. It is one of the few reblogs that has comments, if you filter for that you should be able to find it. If not, reply to the post and I can send you the link to it. :]
#Mod Tim (He/Him)#Sort of#MCYT#GTWS#scar#goodtimeswithscar#life series#mcyt#secret life#hermitcraft#hc#disabled#disabled scar#actuallydisabled#representation#disabled!scar#wheelchair#wheelchairs#ambulatory wheelchair user#fantasy wheelchairs
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