#Pillowfort

[geopsych]

A hill and a farm road, June 2017

Okay, so I've received lots of wonderful comments and messages—Thank you so much!— and I may answer some individually over the next week, but for now I've been talked into leaving my blog up and continuing to post. Too many people told me that the pictures I post made their days better or were meaningful to them for me to leave. One person said basically not to let bad drive out the good. And maybe it wouldn't be that bad for AI pictures to have hints of beautiful eastern Pennsylvania. But I've also made a Pillowfort account called Geophile. I'm not sure how Pillowfort works or how much I'll use it but I like their anti-AI stance. Find me there if you join. Further thoughts and comments are welcome. 🌿🌼🌳🌷🌈

[benji-media]

Kinger

[sandy-bw]

Claylex visiting Lonesome flats

Twitter hates me(destroyed the quality) so tumblr can have the cuties

[cuppajj]

Pillowfort is currently prohibiting AI art on its site!!

It may not be a clean stance against AI because who knows what goes on behind closed doors, but this is already a step up over tumblr which could make it a good alternative in case things go south. It's safe to say for now that they are against scraping as well, if they are also against AI art. Stay on the lookout for any privacy policy and TOS changes, but in the meantime, this may be the most ideal place for people moving away from the hellsite.

[pigeonneaux]

Full on my pillowfort

[nights-at-crystarium]

As a twitter/tumblr user since 2010-2011, I believe I have sufficient grounds to say that currently we as a community are living through the scariest, shittiest time yet. This post isn’t trying to fearmonger, no I’m not leaving tumblr until it literally keels over, but I suggest that we don’t put all our eggs in one basket.

If twitter/tumblr stay usable, great! In the worse scenario, you’d have kept posting on a new platform and stayed ahead of the curve.

This post shares my personal experience with three potential “new”* fandom places, and is aimed to help fellow content creators. I’m an artist fully depending on internet to survive, my reasoning may not apply to you if you’re a hobbyist. Do your own research, it’s always healthy. * Pillowfort and mastodon have been around for 5+ years, bluesky is ~2 years old.

Discovering new people to follow kinda sucks on all three platforms, twitter and tumblr are eons ahead, but, given the recent chaos and uncertainty, I’m willing to be patient, keep posting on those, and feel safer than I would’ve otherwise been. More baskets good, one basket bad.

All three have poor visual customization, don’t expect custom tumblr themes.

This list starts with the least popular, but most human and easy to join, and what I personally trust the most. All three allow nsfw if labeled properly.

✦ Pillowfort is a barebones tumblr. Intuitive, cozy, but currently very, very small. Be patient with its clunkiness or lack of some features, it’s made by an AO3-like team. I’d personally love if the fandom crowd managed to redirect its attention to it instead of the sus bluesky.

Joining: is free, invite-only, but the waitlist is nearly instant.

Lurk around on their official tumblr: @/pillowfort-social

✦ Mastodon, for me personally, is impossible to explain directly. I’ll use several comparisons.

- Discord but all servers can interact. You’re still on a server curated by some human(s) that might tell you what you can and can’t post, BUT, if you don’t like that server’s policy, you can move to a new one while keeping your followers. - Email, users A and B may be registered on different domains, still they can talk. It’s a weird comparison, but fediverse (please I’m not explaining THAT but it’s a good thing) in general looks like another email story: unlike big sites that come and go, it might stand the test of time. - Someone compared mastodon’s structure to xiv’s dc and servers, if you look at its domain names that way, it might be easier to understand.

Depending on user, mastodon may feel gatekeepy/snowflakey. I haven’t spent enough time on there to form a proper opinion yet, but a warning’s due.

An actually good and hopeful thing about mastodon AND tumblr: the two might start interacting in future. Ever lamented that your fav asian artists don’t use tumblr? If they use misskey, or any other place on the fediverse, it might be possible to follow them directly from tumblr in future, and vice versa.

Joining: is free, however some servers close for new members sometimes, and have human moderators reviewing your request.

✦ Bluesky is a twitter without Musk: today’s average internet user reads this, drops everything and already looks to register there. It’s still sus, but people flock to it like crazy. Most likely to become the next big fandom place in my eyes, even if I’m not happy about that.

I personally have no good feelings about bluesky. Same as twitter, which I hated even before the 2018 tumblr exodus, yet the crowd decided to make it The New Fandom Place, and, grudgingly, I had to give up and also join them in 2022. During the year I haven’t stopped despising twitter, yet, I can’t deny that it helped me survive. I estimate half of my patrons, and, hell, even tumblr audience, comes from twitter. So, if bluesky ends up being the next hot shit, I’ll have to keep up because internet pays for my living.

Joining: is free but hell, invite-only, the waitlist is a lie, your best chance to join is a direct invite.

This’s all I’ve got to say for now. If you have a correction or an addition, replies/reblogs are welcome!

Screenshots of the current interfaces under the cut, you may spy on my profiles o/

Pillowfort

Mastodon.art

Bluesky

[missaethe]

REMEMBER THAT PILLOWFORT STILL EXISTS, ALLOWS NSFW ART AND CONTENT, HAS BETTER NSFW TOOLS THAN TUMBLR, AND HAS A FULL 100% BAN ON ANY AI RELATED CONTENT. IF YOU'VE FORGOTTEN ABOUT THEM NOW IS A GOOD TIME TO GIVE THEM A SECOND VIEW

They might not have flashy blog themes like Tumblr but they're doing the best they can with a small team of people.

[lindwurmkai]

hey, have you heard that pillowfort has ✨ drafts ✨ now? (as in, the ability to save your posts as drafts.) they're still working on the queue feature (update: it's done!), but drafts are a big step forward!

in case you missed it so far, pillowfort is like a cross between tumblr and dreamwidth/livejournal, with a simplified dashboard reminiscent of old school tumblr and some classic livejournal features such as communities, threaded comments, and the ability to make individual posts followers-only or mutuals-only.

what are communities? basically, central hubs for posts about any subject you want that, unlike hashtags, can be moderated. they may have rules, such as "[subject matter] must be tagged" for example. you can post directly to a community or reblog existing posts to it!

since the site is currently experiencing some financial trouble, i thought i'd help out by spreading the word once again.

edit: the fundraiser was a success! crisis averted! i knew we could do it :D

why you should give pillowfort a chance:

no ads

no venture capitalist funding

no spying on the users

completely free to use except for optional premium features

nsfw is allowed except for sexual depictions of minors. if you're unsure what exactly that means, their tos may help

communities and the privacy controls mentioned above are excellent features

great community, low drama compared to other websites (so far)

the site's features themselves encourage genuine connection and good-faith conversation over endless "discourse"

every blog can automatically be filtered by original posts only or reblogs only

reasons not to join:

if you enjoy algorithmic social media. there is no algorithm at all

if you want to post or look at machine-generated art. they're still finalising the wording and personally i hope some exception will be made for models trained on ethically sourced images, but basically an anti-AI rule is in the works (update: finished!)

if you cannot live without reblog additions (reblogging with comment). all discussions on a pillowfort post take place in the comments section, and only your own followers see your tags. this has its pros and cons for sure! a similar feature to scratch that itch may be implemented in the future, but it will never be exactly like on tumblr.

if you need everything to be an app. the website works fine in a mobile browser and a progressive web app will hopefully be released soon (basically it's like an app in your browser and on mobile these can be added to the homescreen like real apps i think? they have push notifications!), but there's not going to be a native app available through official app stores due to the restrictions of those stores.

other factors to consider:

yes, the userbase is still small. depending on your interests, activity may be very slow. but we can change that! and on the plus side, reblogging your post to a community is a good way to easily get more eyes on it; way more effective than simply adding tags imo

the site culture is a bit different than on tumblr. many people read everything that's been posted since the last time they were online and don't follow more users/communities than they can keep up with. it's still somewhat lacking in shitposts and heavy on "essays" but don't be afraid to post whatever 😅

there are no blog themes like we have them on tumblr as yet, but you can customise your blog's colours and use html/insert links and images in your blog description

likes literally do nothing except to let OP know you enjoyed their post. you can't look at a list of all your likes. beware!

the staff is small and development is slow. some highly anticipated planned features other than the aforementioned queue include: - multi-account management - dashboard filters/reading lists - post bookmarking (since likes don't work that way) but we don't know how soon any of those will be implemented.

there is a user-developed browser extension (well, a userscript) called tassel available that adds additional features much like tumblr's beloved xkit :)

✨ okay, so how do i sign up? ✨

if you're interested but confused by the sign-up process or still under the impression that you need to pay to sign up (false), i'll put some clarifications and invite codes under the read more below. plus a note on donating, premium features, the paypal issue etc.

in a nutshell:

it's free

signing up without an invite code is possible, but you may have to wait a short while - supposedly less than an hour atm. just submit your email to the waitlist

if you don't feel like waiting, you can either use an invite code from an existing user or pay $5 to sign up instantly

every user gets plenty of invite codes and we're all willing to hand them out at the drop of a hat. they're really not hard to come by

some invites to get you started (just click the link):

invite 1 ▪ invite 2 ▪ invite 3 ▪ invite 4 ▪ invite 5

invite 6 ▪ invite 7 ▪ invite 8 ▪ invite 9 ▪ invite 10

invite 11 ▪ invite 12 ▪ invite 13 ▪ invite 14 ▪ invite 15

invite 16 ▪ invite 17 ▪ invite 18 ▪ invite 19 ▪ invite 20

i'll try to periodically check if any have been used and cross those out.

...paypal issue?

ok so paypal doesn't like working with sites that allow nsfw. as a result, you need a credit card in order to donate to pillowfort, buy one of those insta-registration keys, or subscribe to premium features*. i personally happen to have a credit card and would be willing to help out anyone who trusts me enough to send the money to me via paypal, but i realise chances are only my friends will do this.

some users are currently organising various activities for the purpose of letting people who only have paypal contribute to the site's survival. it's not super relevant for new users and won't get you access to premium features, but i thought i'd mention it anyway in case someone loves the concept of the site so much they want to support it immediately. a fundraising community has been created to collect posts of that nature!

*premium features are strictly limited to two categories of things:

fun little extras that no one truly needs

higher image upload limits, because obviously big images take up bandwidth and are therefore a reason for increased costs

you will never need to pay for vital accessibility features or anything of the sort. :)

[pillowfort-social]

IMPORTANT: AI-Generated Content Ban

Hello Pillowfolks,

We’re ready to announce our decision regarding AI-Generated content on our platform. After careful consideration, our team at Pillowfort has decided we will be enacting a total content ban on all AI-Generated images and writing on Pillowfort. 

An update to our Terms of Service will be released with our next site update, which we are aiming to have ready to launch in the next couple of weeks. At that time our updated policy regarding AI-Generated content will go into effect. (Note: You do not need to delete previously posted AI-Generated content. This ban will only affect AI-Generated content posted after the next Terms of Service update.)

This decision was not made lightly. We wanted to make sure, without a shadow of a doubt, we were making the best decision for the Pillowfort community that could be enforceable by our Terms of Service.

Part of the delay in deciding on a total ban of AI-Generated content was that we worried that a total ban might contradict our other site policies and general philosophies. It’s important to us that our users have as much control over the kind of content they see for both our users’ own comfort, as well as to enable our users to have the freedom to post what they want.  A total ban on AI-Generated content seemed contradictory to our “post and let post” philosophy. Ultimately, however, we decided it would be in the best interest of our entire community to move forward with a ban for the following reasons: 

Our Terms of Service already prohibits copyright violations, which includes reposting other people’s artwork to Pillowfort without the artist’s permission; and because of how AI Generators draw on a database of images and text that were taken without consent from artists or writers, all AI-Generated content can be considered in violation of this rule.

Our community made it loud and clear: AI-Generated content is not welcome on Pillowfort. We had an overwhelming response over the last several months from our users urging us to take action on AI-Generated content. A significant portion of those users requested a total ban. It only seemed logical to support our artist & writer community by striving to do right by our users. We stand in full support of all creatives who make Pillowfort their home. 

We apologize to the users who may be disappointed in our decision.  If you want a refund on your last subscription payment or registration fee as a result of this upcoming change in our policy we will honor refund requests for any payments made within the last 60 days.

We will do our best to answer any questions you may have regarding our decision. Don’t hesitate to ask. Feel free to leave your question below or send in an e-mail at info@pillowfort.social.

Best, Staff

[chipper-smol]

Y'know I made a pillowfort account like...

back in 2019

but I just re-found my email and password so i'm going to start migrating my stuff over and start to try posting regularly over there

The biggest issue I had with it has been patched and honestly i'm pretty excited to start moving things over. It's gonna be A Lot, but we'll see

It's got the "Made by fans for fans" like Ao3 and the tag search system and culture like tumblr.

If ya'll can find me there at https://www.pillowfort.social/Chip 👍

[plaquerat]

What's pillowfort like? Im not good at looking for new places

i honestly really think it's a good alternative to tumblr. when you join you're immediately put in a community for introductions. when you post there, you'll pretty quickly get comments from older users with resources to help you along. pillowfort101 is a community i highly recommend looking into on there as well.

there is a tag system, but pillowfort's circles mostly function as communities. tumblr is actually kind of ripping that off currently, haha. you can join communities and post/reblog to them, or do so directly on your account. i like to read posts in the web discussions community along with a few more fandom-leaning ones.

like and followers/following are private. nsfw is allowed and ai content is not. the culture is very much to curate your experience and honestly blocking and blacklisting are actually useful. you can also toggle nsfw content on and off.

you can have a little frame on your avatar and free badges- the site runs on donations and if you like you can get higher image resolutions, options more multiple avatars, and some more frames. staff is pretty transparent and unlike the other very popular tumblr alternative, there's actual management of their finances and they don't foster an incredibly parasoical environment.

i'd say the only real downside is it can be quiet, but i don't think that should be a reason not to join. if more people don't try it, it won't get much bigger! i enjoy it a lot and that's part of why i'm trying to get more people to check it out, especially since tumblr is getting worse and worse.

[pick-a-plush]

[beautiesofbygoneeras]

Lisa Welch, Playboy's Miss September 1980 Appearing In An Italian Playboy Calendar, January 1985.

[loverboyfemboy]

tumblr is going to implode on itself eventually, shit is not going well for them with a lot of queer people migrating to cohost and/or pillowfort, which i'd say is a good portion of their userbase, and even moreso now after a bunch of trans women getting terminated

[kjscottwrites]

Well for one I'M not going anywhere, but lets say for no particular reason that Tumblr does bite it...

I don't mean this as any sort of doomsaying, because I'm staying here and will stay here indefinitely. This is where my community is. But, I am curious if people are feeling inclined to relocate!

Feel free to add your other socials to this thread as well!

[astrrorat]

Made a pillow fort bcs i have no bed