#THIS IS FUCKED UP

[procrastiel]

Funny how he said he did this to “help” ppl with dyslexia/eye problems etc and yet charges money for it?!

If you really want to help you’d offer this for free forever. Even then it would be a concern because you’re using works that aren’t your own & you use them without permission, but at least then I could believe the good intentions you said you have.

All that aside, ai am heartbroken because damage is already done. AI has been fed and we can’t delete that information any more. And the more this happens, the better these programs will become. I think of it like a cancer or a bacterial infection. If you keep eating , let’s say sugars, the bacteria will keep feeding and growing. You have to cut off the source to make it stagnate, but that’s impossible, since sugar is in almost every food. You have to eat to survive so you will feed the cancer, too, even if you’re slowing down the growth. So, the best way is to cut the whole thing out. That would be a ban or law on using AI technology. Why has this not happened yet?

I think fighting in this instance is hugely important and I will check my own works, too, but it feels like we’re only fighting the symptoms here. If that guy can do it, someone else will, too. And eventually it will be too many to fight them all.

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

I am on my knees begging you to reblog this post and to stop reblogging the original ones I sent out yesterday. This is the complete account with all the most recent info; the other one is just sending people down senselessly panicked avenues that no longer lead anywhere.

IN SHORT

Cliff Weitzman, CEO of Speechify and (aspiring?) voice actor, used AI to scrape thousands of popular, finished works off AO3 to list them on his own for-profit website and in his attached app. He did this without getting any kind of permission from the authors of said work or informing AO3. Obviously.

When fandom at large was made aware of his theft and started pushing back, Weitzman issued a non-apology on the original social media posts—using 

his dyslexia; 

his intent to implement a tip-system for the plagiarized authors; and 

a sudden willingness to take down the work of every author who saw my original social media posts and emailed him individually with a ‘valid’ claim,

as reasons we should allow him to continue monetizing fanwork for his own financial gain.

When we less-than-kindly refused, he took down his ‘apologies’ as well as his website (allegedly—it’s possible that our complaints to his web host, the deluge of emails he received or the unanticipated traffic brought it down, since there wasn’t any sort of official statement made about it), and when it came back up several hours later, all of the work formerly listed in the fan fiction category was no longer there. 

THE TAKEAWAYS

1. Cliff Weitzman (aka Ofek Weitzman) is a scumbag with no qualms about taking fanwork without permission, feeding it to AI and monetizing it for his own financial gain; 

2. Fandom can really get things done when it wants to, and 

3. Our fanworks appear to be hidden, but they’re NOT DELETED from Weitzman’s servers, and independently published, original works are still listed without the authors' permission. We need to hold this man responsible for his theft, keep an eye on both his current and future endeavors, and take action immediately when he crosses the line again. 

THE TIMELINE, THE DETAILS, THE SCREENSHOTS (behind the cut)

Sunday night, December 22nd 2024, I noticed an influx in visitors to my fic You & Me & Holiday Wine. When I searched the title online, hoping to find out where they came from, a new listing popped up (third one down, no less):

This listing is still up today, by the way, though now when you follow the link to word-stream, it just brings you to the main site. (Also, to be clear, this was not the cause for the influx of traffic to my fic; word-stream did not link back to the original work anywhere.)

I followed the link to word-stream, where to my horror Y&M&HW was listed in its entirety—though, beyond the first half of the first chapter, behind a paywall—along with a link promising to take me—through an app downloadable on the Apple Store—to an AI-narrated audiobook version. When I searched word-stream itself for my ao3 handle I found both of my multi-chapter fics were listed this way:

Because the tags on my fics (which included genres* and characters, but never the original IPs**) weren’t working, I put ‘Kara Danvers’ into the search bar and discovered that many more supercorp fics (Supergirl TV fandom, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor pairing) were listed.

I went looking online for any mention of word-stream and AI plagiarism (the covers—as well as the ridiculously inflated number of reviews and ratings—made it immediately obvious that AI fuckery was involved), but found almost nothing: only one single Reddit post had been made, and it received (at that time) only a handful of upvotes and no advice. 

I decided to make a tumblr post to bring the supercorp fandom up to speed about the theft. I draw as well as write for fandom and I’ve only ever had to deal with art theft—which has a clear set of steps to take depending on where said art was reposted—and I was at a loss regarding where to start in this situation.

After my post went up I remembered Project Copy Knight, which is worth commending for the work they’ve done to get fic stolen from AO3 taken down from monetized AI 'audiobook’ YouTube accounts. I reached out to @echoekhi, asking if they’d heard of this site and whether they could advise me on how to get our works taken down.

While waiting for a reply I looked into Copy Knight’s methods and decided to contact OTW’s legal department:

And then I went to bed.

By morning, tumblr friends @makicarn and @fazedlight as well as a very helpful tumblr anon had seen my post and done some very productive sleuthing:

@echoekhi had also gotten back to me, advising me, as expected, to contact the OTW. So I decided to sit tight until I got a response from them.

That response came only an hour or so later: 

Which was 100% understandable, but still disappointing—I doubted a handful of individual takedown requests would accomplish much, and I wasn’t eager to share my given name and personal information with Cliff Weitzman himself, which is unavoidable if you want to file a DMCA.

I decided to take it to Reddit, hoping it would gain traction in the wider fanfic community, considering so many fandoms were affected. My Reddit posts (with the updates at the bottom as they were emerging) can be found here and here.

A helpful Reddit user posted a guide on how users could go about filing a DMCA against word-stream here (to wobbly-at-best results)

A different helpful Reddit user signed up to access insight into word-streams pricing. Comment is here.

Smells unbelievably scammy, right? In addition to those audacious prices—though in all fairness any amount of money would be audacious considering every work listed is accessible elsewhere for free—my dyscalculia is screaming silently at the sight of that completely unnecessary amount of intentionally obscured numbers.

Speaking of which! As soon as the post on r/AO3—and, as a result, my original tumblr post—began taking off properly, sometime around 1 pm, jumpscare! A notification that a tumblr account named @cliffweitzman had commented on my post, and I got a bit mad about the gist of his message :

Fortunately he caught plenty of flack in the comments from other users (truly you should check out the comment section, it is extremely gratifying and people are making tremendously good points), in response to which, of course, he first tried to both reiterate and renegotiate his point in a second, longer comment (which I didn’t screenshot in time so I’m sorry for the crappy notification email formatting):

which he then proceeded to also post to Reddit (this is another Reddit user’s screenshot, I didn’t see it at all, the notifications were moving too fast for me to follow by then)

... where he got a roughly equal amount of righteously furious replies. (Check downthread, they're still there, all the way at the bottom.)

After which Cliff went ahead & deleted his messages altogether. 

It’s not entirely clear whether his account was suspended by Reddit soon after or whether he deleted it himself, but considering his tumblr account is still intact, I assume it’s the former. He made a handful of sock puppet accounts to play around with for a while, both on Reddit and Tumblr, only one of which I have a screenshot of, but since they all say roughly the same thing, you’re not missing much:

And then word-stream started throwing a DNS error.

That lasted for a good number of hours, which was unfortunately right around the time that a lot of authors first heard about the situation and started asking me individually how to find out whether their work was stolen too. I do not have that information and I am unclear on the perimeters Weitzman set for his AI scraper, so this is all conjecture: it LOOKS like the fics that were lifted had three things in common:

They were completed works;

They had over several thousand kudos on AO3; and

They were written by authors who had actively posted or updated work over the past year.

If anyone knows more about these perimeters or has info that counters my observation, please let me know!

I finally thought to check/alert evil Twitter during this time, and found out that the news was doing the rounds there already. I made a quick thread summarizing everything that had happened just in case. You can find it here.

I went to Bluesky too, where fandom was doing all the heavy lifting for me already, so I just reskeeted, as you do, and carried on.

Sometime in the very early evening, word-stream went back up—but the fan fiction category was nowhere to be seen. Tentative joy and celebration!***

That’s when several users—the ones who had signed up for accounts to gain intel and had accessed their own fics that way—reported that their work could still be accessed through their history. Relevant Reddit post here.

Sooo—

We’re obviously not done. The fanwork that was stolen by Weitzman may be inaccessible through his website right now, but they aren’t actually gone. And the fact that Weitzman wasn’t willing to get rid of them altogether means he still has plans for them. 

This was my final edit on my Reddit post before turning off notifications, and it's pretty much where my head will be at for at least the foreseeable future:

Please feel free to add info in the comments, make your own posts, take whatever action you want to take to protect your work. I only beg you—seriously, I’m on my knees here—to not give up like I saw a handful of people express the urge to do. Keep sharing your creative work and remain vigilant and stay active to make sure we can continue to do so freely. Visit your favorite fics, and the ones you’ve kept in your ‘marked for later’ lists but never made time to read, and leave kudos, leave comments, support your fandom creatives, celebrate podficcers and support AO3. We created this place and it’s our responsibility to keep it alive and thriving for as long as we possibly can.

Also FUCK generative AI. It has NO place in fandom spaces.

THE 'SMALL' PRINT (some of it in all caps):

*Weitzman knew what he was doing and can NOT claim ignorance. One, it’s pretty basic kindergarten stuff that you don’t steal some other kid’s art project and present it as your own only to act surprised when they protest and then tell the victim that they should have told you sooner that they didn’t want their project stolen. And two, he was very careful never to list the IPs these fanworks were based on, so it’s clear he was at least familiar enough with the legalities to not get himself in hot water with corporate lawyers. Fucking over fans, though, he figured he could get away with that. 

**A note about the AI that Weitzman used to steal our work: it’s even greasier than it looks at first glance. It’s not just the method he used to lift works off AO3 and then regurgitate onto his own website and app. Looking beyond the untold horrors of his AI-generated cover ‘art’, in many cases these covers attempt to depict something from the fics in question that can’t be gleaned from their summaries alone. In addition, my fics (and I assume the others, as well) were listed with generated genres; tags that did not appear anywhere in or on my fic on AO3 and were sometimes scarily accurate and sometimes way off the mark. I remember You & Me & Holiday Wine had ‘found family’ (100% correct, but not tagged by me as such) and I believe The Shape of Soup was listed as, among others, ‘enemies to friends to lovers’ and ‘love triangle’ (both wildly inaccurate). Even worse, not all the fic listed (as authors on Reddit pointed out) came with their original summaries at all. Often the entire summary was AI-generated. All of these things make it very clear that it was an all-encompassing scrape—not only were our fics stolen, they were also fed word-for-word into the AI Weitzman used and then analyzed to suit Weitzman’s needs. This means our work was literally fed to this AI to basically do with whatever its other users want, including (one assumes) text generation. 

***Fan fiction appears to have been made (largely) inaccessible on word-stream at this time, but I’m hearing from several authors that their original, independently published work, which is listed at places like Kindle Unlimited, DOES still appear in word-stream’s search engine. This obviously hurts writers, especially independent ones, who depend on these works for income and, as a rule, don’t have a huge budget or a legal team with oceans of time to fight these battles for them. If you consider yourself an author in the broader sense, beyond merely existing online as a fandom author, beyond concerns that your own work is immediately at risk, DO NOT STOP MAKING NOISE ABOUT THIS.

Again, please, please PLEASE reblog this post instead of the one I sent originally. All the information is here, and it's driving me nuts to see the old ones are still passed around, sending people on wild goose chases.

Thank you all so much.

[lobster-lover]

stuff i treated myself to drawing this week (for my birthday)

[incorrectjujutsukaisen]

Gojo when he gets free:

[sevikasenby]

i wanna cry. i wanna cuddle her 😕😭

AGELESS BLOGS, MINORS AND MEN DNI

[malin-la]

I just realized Fyodor and Atsushi have never actually fully met before ohmygod this is it folks im gonna be sick im

[rvspecter]

HE'S GONNA BREAK HE'S GONNA BREAK HE'S GONNA BREAK

[helpimsleepdeprived]

welp time to crack out ye old dans #1 selling book about mental health bc it does very much feel like we're #doomed

[flymmsy]

Durgetash Baby (Headcanon/Bullet Fic)

The Dark Urge sees Enver Gortash with his child in his arms. Notes: Dark. TW infanticide (Non-descriptive but could be triggering for some). Nsfw. Slight dub-con but ultimately consensual. Imagined with a fem Durge in mind.

I can absolutely see Gortash in an arranged marriage situation which Durge would of course have very complicated feelings about. ‎‎‎‎‎‎ㅤㅤ

But Gortash is not one to shrug off appearances. He fulfills his husbandly duties and his wife provides him with an heir. ㅤ

Throughout the pregnancy, Durge is very distant. The violent urges and jealousy (which they tell themselves is merely due to their Bhaalspawn breeding instinct) are an extreme threat to their alliance with Gortash. ㅤ

When the child is finally born, Durge and Gortash fall back into their old routine for a time. Patriar children are rarely around their parents anyway, Durge does not anticipate it to be an issue. ㅤ

But one night, Durge slips into Gortash’s chambers (through the window, as they usually would), and sees him with the child in his arms. A tiny babe. And Gortash speaks to it like it is the whole world, like he would give it the whole world. Durge slips back out completely unnoticed. ㅤ

The next thing Durge can remember, it is night again and they are standing in the nursery of Gortash’s estate, their hands covered in blood. The Urge begins to recede from their mind, and they faintly hear a woman’s scream receding down the hall. ㅤ

By the time Gortash arrives in the doorway, their mind is clear. He is measured, but there is something in his eyes that Durge has not seen before. Boots clatter down the hall, but they are waved away by Gortash as he steps inside and closes the door. ㅤ

Once they are alone, Gortash lunges forward. Admittedly, it catches Durge by surprise, and Gortash gets much further than he should in his attack because of it. They slam into the ground together, a flurry of fists. It is their first real, physical fight against each other. ㅤ

All movement ceases when Durge's knife glints in the dim light. They have managed to get Gortash beneath them, knife pressing into his throat. He is covered in streaks of blood - his blood, Durge's blood, and the blood of his child. ㅤ

Durge's head is pounding as they begin to roll their hips against Gortash's body, knife still firmly at his throat. His voice is venomous as he chokes, "What are you--" ㅤ

"Mine." Durge's voice is sharp and dangerous as they press their hips down harder against Gortash, "You are mine, Gortash." ㅤ

They throw their knife to the side and replace it with their hand around Gortash's throat, the blood of his child on their hands now mixing with his own from his wound. Anger still burns in his eyes, but he does not move. Durge knows this - knows him - knows he is assessing, trying to understand. ㅤ

They kiss him then, but he remains stiff against them. It is only when their other hand begins to slide down his body does he begin to stir. ㅤ

"You are mine, Gortash," Durge repeats, a whisper against Gortash's lips, "And your children will be mine." ㅤ

He pauses for just a moment longer before meeting them in a suddenly charged kiss. Durge is unsurprised to feel him harden quickly at their words. ㅤ

He takes them there, on the floor of the nursery. He brutally fucks his seed into them, a demand for a child to replace the one he lost. ㅤ

The Dark Urge is satisfied, but they are never truly forgiven.

[nowshesdoingitallthetime]

the way I’d blow my entire bank account HAPPILY if I was there😭

[philly-interlude]

[11:51 AM]

"have you ever thought of leaving her?"

"...why do you ask?"

"i'm asking you a question"

"...sometimes-"

you heard two men chatting behind the slightly opened door of the rooftop, surely it was your boyfriend jisung and his bestfriend.

your hands grip the handles, hesitating whether you'll go there or nah, well you don't wanna interrupt their chattering.

you didn't hear the next words coming from his mouth as you left downstairs with the lunch tight on your arms, you didn't know why you left though your mind tells you to listen more of it.

he thought of leaving me sometimes? am i too much for him...or am i not enough...?

you have now overthink

on your way down, you bumped with ara—jisung's ex-crush which is also your... bestfriend? maybe.

"oh? y/n, be careful you have lunch with you, is that for jisung?" she smirked teasingly as she lifted her brow teasing you more, but honestly, it doesn't give you butterflies on your stomach.

without a word, you smiled and just nodded respectfully knowing she's the president of your class lol, "well i have to go somewhere sorry" she was about to say something but you ran from her not wanting to speak more.

oh god how you despised listening to her speaking his name in front of you, you despised how she acts in front of your boyfriend when she borrows his bike, how you despise her in every way whenever she interacts with jisung.

you were never jealous, but when it comes to both of them, jealousy flares anywhere. you just wanna cry and curl up like a baby thinking that they both have feelings for each other but you trust jisung, you love him.

unknown to you, you were crying already from the thought of them having conversations behind your back, but you know she won't betray you because she already has her man, so why cry over jisung cheating with ara? that's just stupid.

or maybe it was just the stereotype that jisung would cheat with her since he liked her before and that he also has a photo with her that we willingly took and posted it on social media with 70 reactions with the caption "true love is with the president" and just- but he hasn't done that with you.

in addition to that, his mother has seen it and more people did, too, especially his and her relatives and close friends and that hurt you more now.

you don't like overreacting when it comes to this but you fished your phone from your skirt pocket and went to your social deleting the highlight you had with both of you and jisung.

"that's radioactive jealousy you have there my friend" a familiar voice interrupted your thoughts and hid the screen of your phone hastily, it was too late as you looked up and saw jisung's bestfriend raising his eyebrows with a small smile towards you.

you stood up and rolled your eyes on him, "shut up, where's jisung?" you plainly asked. he crossed his arms in front of you with a stoic gaze, "you were just sobbing about him and then you're finding him now? the fuck is that mood"

"just answer me"

"nuh-uh let's go somewhere else for you to clear your mind, crying about him and finding him after your rage won't help for the sake of your peace-"

you interrupted him with your index finger touching his lips shutting him up as you inhaled gritting your teeth, "fine let's go" you went past through him and he followed like a dog behind you.

a voice oh-so-familiar caught your ears and halted both you and jisung's friend's steps, him almost bumping into you letting out a small 'ow'

"y/n!" it's jisung, obviously, but he isn't the one that caught your attention- "see i told you we shouldn't walk this path y/n you're so hard-headed-" jisung's bestfriend whispered annoyingly beside you.

you wanna furrow your eyebrows but you don't want to give a negative impression towards your boyfriend especially since it's the only free time you can be with him.

"hi sungie" you hugged each other as you trained your eyes to ara, of course she went with her 'cutie patootie' persuasion just to borrow your boyfriend's bike again.

might as well smell the seat of your bike after she sits on it. your evil side spoke but you shook your head not wanting to be mad and jealous again, you have the worst personality when you get jealous, you know that so you limit your craziness to prevent...homicide.

"have you eaten yet?" jisung asked, "no" you briefly but straightforwardly answered. "attitude, miss" he deadpanned, "what's with you again?" questioned him.

"nothing lol" you giggled and pinched his cheeks and was about to go away from his arms and tell some invalid reasons yet he gripped your arms tightly but softly forcing you to stay with him, that man's dead serious and he ain't ballin'.

jisung pulled you somewhere hidden (a/n: it's not what you think it is-) and cornered you on the wall, he looked at you dead in the eye, "go on what's with the attitude? i know you y/n don't trip me" he lowly said.

but you're a bit prideful, "you know me? then you gotta know when to avoid people i despise too, i'm not being possessive, i honestly don't care sung but when it comes to her it's a different story.

it's a fucking different feeling because i feel like you still have those sparks on your eyes whenever you look at her whenever she speaks to you like- whenever...i don't know i can't trust you with her, i am jealous, of course i admit that i hate everything you did to her that you didn't do to me...i-

i hate to think that you liked her more before than you do to me as your...girlfriend", your knees went weak and eventually gave up from being overwhelmed, you hate crying in front of him over a small thing.

he went down you slowly, his glittery eyes looking at you sadly, but the words that came out from his mouth surprised you.

"you're overreacting again" he pulled you close to him and brought you back to the classroom.

[justawasteoftime1122]

I was bored and curious bc I've been talking about a lot of the weird ass family ships so you know what I searched?

YOU KNOW WHAT I FUCKING DID TO MYSELF?!

I searched Charlie x Lucifer...

The first thing that came up was a short smut story.

NEVER again

(I'm gonna do it again cuz I hate myself 😭)

[thowawayuntilfurthernotice]

Vivienne Medrando is an objectively horrible human being with little to no redeeming qualities.

The fact that nobody within the entertainment industry is willing to hold her accountable for her actions is downright sickening.

I don't give a shit if you like her shows, this type of behavior shouldn't be normalized.

[cobalt-axolotl]

I m sorry but this is kinda spot of the fnaf fandom regarding Cassidy.

Ahh yes let’s hate this

LITERAL CHILD

for doing something

COMPLETELY JUSTIFIED!

THIS IS JUST FUCKED UP!

[churrosbitxh]

Let's talk about Charlie Dalton, because why not

it's mostly my headcanons and his relationship with Neil and Todd though

I just think he is a chaos junkie who desperately starves dopamine all the time, never misses to surprise everyone- whether in a good way or a bad way. His pranks are troublesome, but he is 16- so let's cut him some slack.

Today I am going to rant about my headcanons about Charlie and his relationship with Neil and Todd.

Neil and Charlie- It's implied that Neil and Charlie definitely were friends even before Welton, so maybe I thought they might be neighbors- or at least, their parents were close friends so the children got to hangout whether they liked it or not kind of friend. Charlie is the manifestation of the kind of friends that Mr. Perry never wants Neil to hang out with, but he seems pretty chill with Charlie befriending Neil. Though maybe Charlie acts a little less chaotic and knows how to behave when he has to (except with Nolan), I like to imagine Mr. Perry is just letting Neil be friends with Charlie just because of his family name and wealth. It is mentioned that his family is filthy rich and Mr. Perry is implied as a self-made man, he needs connections with upper classes, and whether he likes or not, Charlie is useful for him. I think Charlie was the closest to Neil, even more than Todd did- since he was the most understanding with Neil's interest in acting, knew Neil and his problems. And it's not implied enough in the movies, but Charlie is the one who encourages Neil to talk to Keating, and acting upon it since he knows damn well that his friend has no idea what to do in such situations, which explains how much he knows about Neil.

That is why every time I think about Neil's death, I think Charlie would never be the same as he was, still a rebel, yes, but he would be more cynical and pessimistic- as he has lost hope for authority, and as he grows up, it's going to happen even more. With his childhood friend is literally ripped out of his life, being 16, that's TRAUMA. My headcanon is that he never contacted any of the boys after being expelled, or at least not in person- until they have all grown up.

Todd and Charlie - Their relationship is kinda rocky, since they are the exact polar opposites in literally everything. Charlie is loud, Todd is not. Charlie likes to push his limits, while Todd tends not to, Charlie is the definition of extrovert (he picked up two girls lurking in the dark how else can I explain) and Todd is the embodiment of an introvert. But Charlie seems to like Todd despite of his indecisiveness, which show how he treats Todd and Cameron differently even though they are basically the same on some parts, being overly cautious, and Todd doesn't try to befriend them at all, and he might not have talked to any one of them if Neil wasn't in the way. The way he responses differently towards Todd and Cameron in the same situation, shows that he is more tolerant towards him.

And I bet that Charlie was definitely the first to know something was up between Neil Perry and Todd Anderson *cough*

well everybody knows that Anderperry is real but Charlie's eyes when he looks at Todd just hits the spot

Which goes to the day when Charlie had to break the news to Todd about Neil's death- with dried up tear stains and his voice all croaked up.

I think as much as he couldn't, he knew he was the only one who can bring the courage and will to tell Todd the tragedy, since he knew how Todd was going to react. He understood his raw emotions and the sudden shock of losing Neil- as they were both, on different ways, the closest to Neil. That's why he was the one to tell Todd, and why he was the one who had to break the news. That's why he kept distance with him when Todd ran off to the snowy yards, waving the boys off to keep distance as well. He knew Todd was going through some bad shit, and since he had to stay strong for the rest of the boys, he gave Todd the chance to grief on his own way.

Which concludes on my headcanon about Charlie's absence after his expulsion, I think the boys are left with serious trauma, and the two main pillars who kept them together, Charlie and Neil both gone, they might still be friends, but the dynamics are going to shift. I like to think inside the little brain of mine that Charlie writes to Todd sometimes, not often, but whenever he reminisces of Neil- nothing very fancy, but writes about how much he misses his friend, and his current state without him by his side, since he knows more than anyone that Todd will feel the same way as he does.

And I like to canonize Charlie bonding closer with Todd- but in a very toxic way. (don't judge me let me enjoy it)

And that is the end of my TED Talk thank you for reading this crazy rant.

putting in a clip of happy boys because I don't want to end this angsty

[eyedrateanatomy]

im gonna cry