#best place to learn html for free

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Utah’s getting some of America’s best broadband

TOMORROW (May 17), I'm at the INTERNET ARCHIVE in SAN FRANCISCO to keynote the 10th anniversary of the AUTHORS ALLIANCE.

Residents of 21 cities in Utah have access to some of the fastest, most competitively priced broadband in the country, at speeds up to 10gb/s and prices as low as $75/month. It's uncapped, and the connections are symmetrical: perfect for uploading and downloading. And it's all thanks to the government.

This broadband service is, of course, delivered via fiber optic cable. Of course it is. Fiber is vastly superior to all other forms of broadband delivery, including satellites, but also cable and DSL. Fiber caps out at 100tb/s, while cable caps out at 50gb/s – that is, fiber is 1,000 times faster:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/why-fiber-vastly-superior-cable-and-5g

Despite the obvious superiority of fiber, America has been very slow to adopt it. Our monopolistic carriers act as though pulling fiber to our homes is an impossible challenge. All those wires that currently go to your house, from power-lines to copper phone-lines, are relics of a mysterious, fallen civilization and its long-lost arts. Apparently we could no more get a new wire to your house than we could build the pyramids using only hand-tools.

In a sense, the people who say we can't pull wires anymore are right: these are relics of a lost civilization. Specifically, electrification and later, universal telephone service was accomplished through massive federal grants under the New Deal – grants that were typically made to either local governments or non-profit co-operatives who got everyone in town connected to these essential modern utilities.

Today – thanks to decades of neoliberalism and its dogmatic insistence that governments can't do anything and shouldn't try, lest they break the fragile equilibrium of the market – we have lost much of the public capacity that our grandparents took for granted. But in the isolated pockets where this capacity lives on, amazing things happen.

Since 2015, residents of Jackson County, KY – one of the poorest counties in America – have enjoyed some of the country's fastest, cheapest, most reliable broadband. The desperately poor Appalachian county is home to a rural telephone co-op, which grew out of its rural electrification co-op, and it used a combination of federal grants and local capacity to bring fiber to every home in the county, traversing dangerous mountain passes with a mule named "Ole Bub" to reach the most remote homes. The result was an immediately economic uplift for the community, and in the longer term, the county had reliable and effective broadband during the covid lockdowns:

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-traffic-light-town-with-some-of-the-fastest-internet-in-the-us

Contrast this with places where the private sector has the only say over who gets broadband, at what speed, and at what price. America is full of broadband deserts – deserts that strand our poorest people. Even in the hearts of our largest densest cities, whole neighborhoods can't get any broadband. You won't be surprised to learn that these are the neighborhoods that were historically redlined, and that the people who live in them are Black and brown, and also live with some of the highest levels of pollution and its attendant sicknesses:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/10/flicc/#digital-divide

These places are not set up for success under the best of circumstances, and during the lockdowns, they suffered terribly. You think your kid found it hard to go to Zoom school? Imagine what life was like for kids who attended remote learning while sitting on the baking tarmac in a Taco Bell parking lot, using its free wifi:

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/02/elem-s02.html

ISPs loathe competition. They divide up the country into exclusive territories like the Pope dividing up the "new world" and do not trouble one another by trying to sell to customers outside of "their" turf. When Frontier – one of the worst of America's terrible ISPs – went bankrupt, we got to see their books, and we learned two important facts:

The company booked one million customers who had no alternative as an asset, because they would pay more for slower broadband, and Frontier could save a fortune by skipping maintenance, and charging these customers for broadband even through multi-day outages; and

Frontier knew that it could make a billion dollars in profit over a decade by investing in fiber build-out, but it chose not to, because stock analysts will downrank any carrier that made capital investments that took more than five years to mature. Because Frontier's execs were paid primarily in stock, they chose to strand their customers with aging copper connections and to leave a billion dollars sitting on the table, so that their personal net worth didn't suffer a temporary downturn:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/frontiers-bankruptcy-reveals-cynical-choice-deny-profitable-fiber-millions

ISPs maintain the weirdest position: that a) only the private sector can deliver broadband effectively, but b) to do so, they'll need massive, unsupervised, no-strings-attached government handouts. For years, America went along with this improbable scheme, which is why Trump's FCC chairman Ajit Pai gave the carriers $45 billion in public funds to string slow, 19th-century-style copper lines across rural America:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/27/all-broadband-politics-are-local/

Now, this is obviously untrue, and people keep figuring out that publicly provisioned broadband is the only way for America to get the same standard of broadband connectivity that our cousins in other high-income nations enjoy. In order to thwart the public's will, the cable and telco lobbyists joined ALEC, the far-right, corporatist lobbying shop, and drafted "model legislation" banning cities and counties from providing broadband, even in places the carriers chose not to serve:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/19/culture-war-bullshit-stole-your-broadband/

Red states across America adopted these rules, and legislators sold this to their base by saying that this was just "keeping the government out of their internet" (even as every carrier relied on an exclusive, government-granted territorial charter, often with massive government subsidies).

ALEC didn't target red states exclusively because they had pliable, bribable conservative lawmakers. Red states trend rural, and rural places are the most likely sites for public fiber. Partly, that's because low-density areas are harder to make a business case for, but also because these are also the places that got electricity and telephone through New Deal co-ops, which are often still in place.

Just about the only places in America where people like their internet service are the 450+ small towns where the local government provides fiber. These places vote solidly Republican, and it was their beloved conservative lawmakers whom ALEC targeted to enact laws banning their equally beloved fiber – keep voting for Christmas, turkeys, and see where it gets you:

https://communitynets.org/content/community-network-map

But spare a little sympathy for the conservative movement here. The fact that reality has a pronounced leftist bias must be really frustrating for the ideological project of insisting that anything the market can't provide is literally impossible.

Which brings me back to Utah, a red state with a Republican governor and legislature, and a national leader in passing unconstitutional, unhinged, unworkable legislation as part of an elaborate culture war kabuki:

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/24/1165975112/utah-passes-an-age-verification-law-for-anyone-using-social-media

For more than two decades, a coalition of 21 cities in Utah have been building out municipal fiber. The consortium calls itself UTOPIA: "Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency":

https://www.utopiafiber.com/faqs/

UTOPIA pursues a hybrid model: they run "open access" fiber and then let anyone offer service over it. This can deliver the best of both worlds: publicly provisioned, blazing-fast fiber to your home, but with service provided by your choice of competing carriers. That means that if Moms for Liberty captures you local government, you're not captive to their ideas about what sites your ISP should block.

As Karl Bode writes for Techdirt, Utahns in UTOPIA regions have their choice of 18 carriers, and competition has driven down prices and increased speeds. Want uncapped 1gb fiber? That's $75/month. Want 10gb fiber? That's $150:

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/15/utah-locals-are-getting-cheap-10-gbps-fiber-thanks-to-local-governments/

UTOPIA's path to glory wasn't an easy one. The dismal telco monopolists Qwest and Lumen sued to put them out of business, delaying the rollout by years:

https://www.deseret.com/2005/7/22/19903471/utopia-responds-to-qwest-lawsuit/

UTOPIA has been profitable and self-sustaining for over 15 years and shows no sign of slowing. But 17 states still ban any attempt at this.

Keeping up such an obviously bad policy requires a steady stream of distractions and lies. The "government broadband doesn't work" lie has worn thin, so we've gotten a string of new lies about wireless service, insisting that fiber is obviated by point-to-point microwave relays, or 5g, or satellite service.

There's plenty of places where these services make sense. You're not going to be able to use fiber in a moving car, so yeah, you're going to want 5g (and those 5g towers are going to need to be connected to each other with fiber). Microwave relay service can fill the gap until fiber can be brought in, and it's great for temporary sites (especially in places where it doesn't rain, because rain, clouds, leaves and other obstructions are deadly for microwave relays). Satellite can make sense for an RV or a boat or remote scientific station.

But wireless services are orders of magnitude slower than fiber. With satellite service, you share your bandwidth with an entire region or even a state. If there's only a couple of users in your satellite's footprint, you might get great service, but when your carrier adds a thousand more customers, your connection is sliced into a thousand pieces.

That's also true for everyone sharing your fiber trunk, but the difference is that your fiber trunk supports speeds that are tens of thousands of times faster than the maximum speeds we can put through freespace electromagnetic spectrum. If we need more fiber capacity, we can just fish a new strand of fiber through the conduit. And while you can increase the capacity of wireless by increasing your power and bandwidth, at a certain point you start pump so much EM into the air that birds start falling out of the sky.

Every wireless device in a region shares the same electromagnetic spectrum, and we are only issued one such spectrum per universe. Each strand of fiber, by contrast, has its own little pocket universe, containing a subset of that spectrum.

Despite all its disadvantages, satellite broadband has one distinct advantage, at least from an investor's perspective: it can be monopolized. Just as we only have one electromagnetic spectrum, we also only have one sky, and the satellite density needed to sustain a colorably fast broadband speed pushes the limit of that shared sky:

https://spacenews.com/starlink-vs-the-astronomers/

Private investors love monopoly telecoms providers, because, like pre-bankruptcy Frontier, they are too big to care. Back in 2021, Altice – the fourth-largest cable operator in America – announced that it was slashing its broadband speeds, to be "in line with other ISPs":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/27/immortan-altice/#broadband-is-a-human-right

In other words: "We've figured out that our competitors are so much worse than we are that we are deliberately degrading our service because we know you will still pay us the same for less."

This is why corporate shills and pro-monopolists prefer satellite to municipal fiber. Sure, it's orders of magnitude slower than fiber. Sure, it costs subscribers far more. Sure, it's less reliable. But boy oh boy is it profitable.

The thing is, reality has a pronounced leftist bias. No amount of market magic will conjure up new electromagnetic spectra that will allow satellite to attain parity with fiber. Physics hates Starlink.

Yeah, I'm talking about Starlink. Of course I am. Elon Musk basically claims that his business genius can triumph over physics itself.

That's not the only vast, impersonal, implacable force that Musk claims he can best with his incredible reality-distortion field. Musk also claims that he can somehow add so many cars to the road that he will end traffic – in other words, he will best geometry too:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Geometry hates Tesla, and physics hates Starlink. Reality has a leftist bias. The future is fiber, and public transit. These are both vastly preferable, more efficient, safer, more reliable and more plausible than satellite and private vehicles. Their only disadvantage is that they fail to give an easily gulled, thin-skinned compulsive liar more power over billions of people. That's a disadvantage I can live with.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/16/symmetrical-10gb-for-119/#utopia

Image: 4028mdk09 (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rote_LED_Fiberglasleuchte.JPG

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[snewdraws]

if yall want to have fun on the internet while feeling like apart of a community you should join neocities and make your own personal website im so srs.

you’ll need to learn html coding but there are loads of free templates you can use! this layout generator is a great place to start, and neocities also has their own starter guide. i promise coding is not as scary as it looks, once you learn the basics it is rewarding & fun!

having a personal website on neocities is like having a little virtual house that you can freely customise how you want then you can go and visit other ppls virtual houses. it’s comfy, slow-paced and very welcoming compared to current social media.

if you don’t want to join, i still recommend checking out peoples websites ^_^ they are interactive works of art! keep in mind most are best viewed on a computer rather than mobile.

here is my website if you’d like to check it out :3

[captdedeyes]

Friendly reminder that Wix.com is an Israeli-based company (& some website builders to look into instead)

I know the BDS movement is not targeting Wix.com specifically (see here for the companies they're currently boycotting) but since Wix originated in Israel as early as 2006, it would be best to drop them as soon as you can.

And while you're at it, you should leave DeviantArt too, since that company is owned by Wix. I deleted my DA account about a year ago not just because of their generative AI debacle but also because of their affiliation with their parent company. And just last month, DA has since shown their SUPPORT for Israel in the middle of Israel actively genociding the Palestinian people 😬

Anyway, I used to use Wix and I stopped using it around the same time that I left DA, but I never closed my Wix account until now. What WAS nice about Wix was how easy it was to build a site with nothing but a drag-and-drop system without any need to code.

So if you're using Wix for your portfolio, your school projects, or for anything else, then where can you go?

Here are some recommendations that you can look into for website builders that you can start for FREE and are NOT tied to a big, corporate entity (below the cut) 👇👇

Carrd.co

This is what I used to build my link hub and my portfolio, so I have the most experience with this platform.

It's highly customizable with a drag-and-drop arrangement system, but it's not as open-ended as Wix. Still though, it's easy to grasp & set up without requiring any coding knowledge. The most "coding" you may ever have to deal with is markdown formatting (carrd provides an on-screen cheatsheet whenever you're editing text!) and section breaks (which is used to define headers, footers, individual pages, sections of a page, etc.) which are EXTREMELY useful.

There's limits to using this site builder for free (max of 2 websites & a max of 100 elements per site), but even then you can get a lot of mileage out of carrd.

mmm.page

This is a VERY funny & charming website builder. The drag-and-drop system is just as open-ended as Wix, but it encourages you to get messy. Hell, you can make it just as messy as the early internet days, except the way you can arrange elements & images allows for more room for creativity.

Straw.page

This is an extremely simple website builder that you can start from scratch, except it's made to be accessible from your phone. As such, the controls are limited and intentionally simple, but I can see this being a decent website builder to start with if all you have is your phone. The other options above are also accessible from your phone, but this one is by far one of the the simplest website builders available.

Hotglue.me

This is also a very simple & rudimentary website builder that allows you to make a webpage from scratch, except it's not as easy to use on a mobile phone.

At a glance, its features are not as robust or easy to pick up like the previous options, but you can still create objects with a simple double click and drag them around, add text, and insert images or embeds.

Mind you, this launched in the 2010s and has likely stayed that way ever since, which means that it may not have support for mobile phone displays, so whether or not you wanna try your hand at building something on there is completely up to you!

Sadgrl's Layout Editor

sadgrl.online is where I gathered most of these no-code site builders! I highly recommend looking through the webmaster links for more website-building info.

This simple site builder is for use on Neocities, which is a website hosting service that you can start using for free. This is the closest thing to building a site that resembles the early internet days, but the sites you can make are also responsive to mobile devices! This can be a good place to start if this kind of thing is your jam and you have little to no coding experience.

Although I will say, even if it sounds daunting at first, learning how to code in HTML and CSS is one of the most liberating experiences that anyone can have, even if you don't come from a website scripting background. It's like cooking a meal for yourself. So if you want to take that route, then I encourage to you at least try it!

Most of these website builders I reviewed were largely done at a glance, so I'm certainly missing out on how deep they can go.

Oh, and of course as always, Free Palestine 🇵🇸

[thelucyverse]

Keep fandoms alive, comment on more fanfics!

The do‘s and don’ts of fic reviews

Because a friend told me she never knows what to write and then never comments, but wants to learn how to do better, I thought I’d compile a list, and maybe it will help someone else as well!

As always, this is unofficial and just from my personal experience writing and reading fic, and talking with other fic authors.

My posts on beta reading | ao3 bookmarks

What to comment

Honestly, authors love friendly comments, no matter how small. Here are some ideas for short comments you can write to pretty much any fic you enjoyed:

I loved it!

Great fic!

Thanks for writing this!

Thanks for sharing your fic with the fandom :)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ 10/10 perfection

So happy I found this!

Reading this made my day

I had fun reading this

You’re a great writer!

Love your writing style

<3<3<3

Amazing!

Kudos!

If you want to write something a bit longer, you can for example

Tell the author where you have been reading the fic or what you were doing while reading it

Tell the author what you should have been doing instead of reading fanfic (and that it was worth it to read the fic)

Copy a passage (or several) from the fic you particularly enjoyed

Did the author write a note at the end or beginning of the fic? Maybe even ask a question? Sometimes you can reply to author’s notes in your comment

How did the fic make you feel? Happy, made you cry, made you laugh, made you jealous of a character, or made you want to punch an antagonistic character’s nose in? Write it in the comment!

Is it your first fic in a fandom or with a ship? Your favorite fic in a fandom, or with a specific character? Did you read it in one go? Did you savour it slowly reading over days or weeks? Have you enjoyed every update of a multi-chapter? Do you wish you could read it again for the first time? Write anything you want to let the author know about your reading experience!

Is there a character you particularly enjoyed in that fic/chapter? Tell the author you think they wrote xy character really well!

You can always start or finish your comment with one of the suggestions from the short comments to make sure the author knows you liked it :)

If you really don’t know what to write, or are reading fic in a language not your own (though authors usually don’t mind you commenting in your native language) and aren’t comfortable commenting in either language, you can also leave emojis as comments, for example variations of:

for any fics:❤️💕💜💗💞💓💖💟🤩😍🥰

for humor fics: 😂😆🤣🤪💯

for shippy fics/getting together: 🎉💖🥳💋����💏👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩👩‍❤️‍💋‍👨💑👩‍❤️‍👩👨‍❤️‍👨🫶

for angst or hurt no comort: 🥹😭🤯😱🫣😢💔❣️❤️‍🩹🖤 maybe still include a ❤️heart in there so the author can be sure you still liked it!

for smut/pwp: ❤️‍🔥💯🫣😋🤩🥵😈🤯🫦

There are even some stickers you can comment by copying the html! A few tumblr posts with stickers to copy can be found here & here!

Don’ts

There isn’t much you can do wrong when writing comments on fic, but there are a few things you should keep in mind:

don’t criticize (unless negative critics/what they can do better has been specifically asked for by the author, and then stick to the kind of criticism asked for, and best try to include something positive too to soften the blow)

don’t demand more/ask for updates - you can tell the author you’d read it if they wrote more, but don’t put pressure on them, you don’t know what’s happening in their lives right now and for what reason new entries might have slowed down, and they don’t owe you regular or any updates!

don’t tell them what to write (unless the author is taking prompts, and in most cases the comment section is not the right place for prompts, check what the author specified)

Remember: Fan fiction are free, from fans for fans, so etiquette is a bit different than in the Amazon reviews of books you paid good money for! Fic authors don’t have to cater to you, just enjoy that there are fics shared with the fandom :) If you don’t like something, or don’t like a part of something, either close the tab or quietly ignore the issue and just enjoy the parts you do like.

And in general, to end this on a positive note:

Yes, you can comment on older fanfics!

Yes, comment on several fics in a row if you’re reading through fics by one author!

Yes, comment on as many chapters of the same fic as you like!

Yes, you can make art for the fic and tell the author about it!

Yes, absolutely tell the author if you’re still thinking about a fic hours/days/years… after reading it!

Yes, send authors asks on tumblr/other sites talking about how you love their fics, if they link these sites in the author’s notes! (But also comment on Ao3)

Yes, you can comment/review even if you don’t have an account (at least on Ao3 and ffnet)!

Yes, please let the author know if you’re reading a fic for a second time, even if you just write ‘re-read kudos!’

The best comments are also written directly on the site the fanfiction got posted on (so usually ao3/ffnet and not tumblr/discord), both because it makes the note count higher, and because then the comment won’t quickly get buried under unrelated messages or posts and the author can come back and enjoy your comment for longer.

If you want to leave long comments about different parts of a fic or chapter, you can also make use of the floating Ao3 comment box! It allows you to type your comment while you're still reading, without having to leave the page!

Some more kinds of comments on another post

[smellslikebot]

"how do I keep my art from being scraped for AI from now on?"

if you post images online, there's no 100% guaranteed way to prevent this, and you can probably assume that there's no need to remove/edit existing content. you might contest this as a matter of data privacy and workers' rights, but you might also be looking for smaller, more immediate actions to take.

...so I made this list! I can't vouch for the effectiveness of all of these, but I wanted to compile as many options as possible so you can decide what's best for you.

Discouraging data scraping and "opting out"

robots.txt - This is a file placed in a website's home directory to "ask" web crawlers not to access certain parts of a site. If you have your own website, you can edit this yourself, or you can check which crawlers a site disallows by adding /robots.txt at the end of the URL. This article has instructions for blocking some bots that scrape data for AI.

HTML metadata - DeviantArt (i know) has proposed the "noai" and "noimageai" meta tags for opting images out of machine learning datasets, while Mojeek proposed "noml". To use all three, you'd put the following in your webpages' headers:

<meta name="robots" content="noai, noimageai, noml">

Have I Been Trained? - A tool by Spawning to search for images in the LAION-5B and LAION-400M datasets and opt your images and web domain out of future model training. Spawning claims that Stability AI and Hugging Face have agreed to respect these opt-outs. Try searching for usernames!

Kudurru - A tool by Spawning (currently a Wordpress plugin) in closed beta that purportedly blocks/redirects AI scrapers from your website. I don't know much about how this one works.

ai.txt - Similar to robots.txt. A new type of permissions file for AI training proposed by Spawning.

ArtShield Watermarker - Web-based tool to add Stable Diffusion's "invisible watermark" to images, which may cause an image to be recognized as AI-generated and excluded from data scraping and/or model training. Source available on GitHub. Doesn't seem to have updated/posted on social media since last year.

Image processing... things

these are popular now, but there seems to be some confusion regarding the goal of these tools; these aren't meant to "kill" AI art, and they won't affect existing models. they won't magically guarantee full protection, so you probably shouldn't loudly announce that you're using them to try to bait AI users into responding

Glaze - UChicago's tool to add "adversarial noise" to art to disrupt style mimicry. Devs recommend glazing pictures last. Runs on Windows and Mac (Nvidia GPU required)

WebGlaze - Free browser-based Glaze service for those who can't run Glaze locally. Request an invite by following their instructions.

Mist - Another adversarial noise tool, by Psyker Group. Runs on Windows and Linux (Nvidia GPU required) or on web with a Google Colab Notebook.

Nightshade - UChicago's tool to distort AI's recognition of features and "poison" datasets, with the goal of making it inconvenient to use images scraped without consent. The guide recommends that you do not disclose whether your art is nightshaded. Nightshade chooses a tag that's relevant to your image. You should use this word in the image's caption/alt text when you post the image online. This means the alt text will accurately describe what's in the image-- there is no reason to ever write false/mismatched alt text!!! Runs on Windows and Mac (Nvidia GPU required)

Sanative AI - Web-based "anti-AI watermark"-- maybe comparable to Glaze and Mist. I can't find much about this one except that they won a "Responsible AI Challenge" hosted by Mozilla last year.

Just Add A Regular Watermark - It doesn't take a lot of processing power to add a watermark, so why not? Try adding complexities like warping, changes in color/opacity, and blurring to make it more annoying for an AI (or human) to remove. You could even try testing your watermark against an AI watermark remover. (the privacy policy claims that they don't keep or otherwise use your images, but use your own judgment)

given that energy consumption was the focus of some AI art criticism, I'm not sure if the benefits of these GPU-intensive tools outweigh the cost, and I'd like to know more about that. in any case, I thought that people writing alt text/image descriptions more often would've been a neat side effect of Nightshade being used, so I hope to see more of that in the future, at least!

[boringkate]

Any advice on getting in to game dev? Like from a very basic basic level. I love seeing the games you make and it’s making we wanna try do my own

Do it! It's a top tier hobby!

I've been using love2d lately and I feel like it'd be a decent place to start!

I wrote a super super basic love2d script for you! Download love2d, then download this lua file, then put the lua file in a folder, then drag the folder onto love.exe!

Congratulations! You're running a love2d program! No compiling or anything required! Move the little cat emoticon around with the arrow keys!

There are definitely love2d tutorials online, but you can also just modify that script (I use Notepad++, but you could even just open it in the notepad that comes with windows) to make it do different stuff and do a google search each time there's something new that you want to know how to do. I find that's usually more appealing than following a step by step guide (that could just be me being weird tho lmao idk).

As for other options:

Unity is probably the most popular option rn, but it's proprietary (godot exists though as basically a free and open source equivelant) and pretty bloated for making a little 2d game (I really feel like making something simple and 2d is the best way to get started).

GameMaker and RPG Maker (also proprietary) could be cool too if you're really intimidated by needing to code (how do kids these days even learn html anymore now that Neopets is out of fashion?) and would feel more at home navigating menus and things like that (you can still end up writing code in either of them eventually though).

[seepweed]

Your site has convinced me to go make a neocities (tumblr glitching paranoia has gotten to me and by god I will be going back to the early 2000s if this place goes down) and oh my god coding is hard. I am in agony. Yes it's going to look very much like your site I am squinting so hard at your html trying to figure out how to do it. This is the worst looking thing I have ever made but there are three buttons that go nowhere now so I'm succeeding mildly at least

OMG PERCY!!! WELCOME TO THE NEOCITIES CRAZE!!! i'm literally so honoured to have inspired you to make a site. funnily enough, i *also* joined neocities after the tumblr-unfunctional-paranoia got to me, albeit in 2022. welcome to coding hell 😎

god, coding is hard. i hope you’re having fun, though. it's such a great hobby, once you're in The Zone. it’s a little like modeling a little clay image... digitally... anyways! i’m here to say: YOU’VE GOT THIS!!! feel free to reuse any code i’ve put down on octagon and PLEASE please please tell me your link!!! i want to look at it (regardless of “how much” is on there).

i’m sure you’re getting the hang on things fast, but since you activated my yapper mode, you now have to sit through unsolicited advice <3

if you’re looking for coding help, https://www.w3schools.com/ is a goldmine, as is https://htmlcheatsheet.com/. also, with CRTL+U you learn something new! ALWAYS investigate nice code to understand how they did that. and https://32bit.cafe/interactingontheweb/ has a lot of good tips for being social off of social media.

general rule of thumb is always: coding is digital arts + crafts. break your website. it’s more pronuctive than always coding in a breeze. never apologise for dropping off the earth and not updating in 6 weeks, 8 months or 15 years. some websites have been unmanned since 2001 and are still running, so don’t worry about it.

furthermore, i need to state that i'm a really bad example of a neocities coder LMAO. i code in the editor, i have 0 offline copies of my files and my form is chaotic at best. my website runs on pure html+css, i don't use javascript (yet) or iframes. most people code their sites in notepad, then run them in a compiler like https://playcode.io/html and THEN they post them to neocities. i am lazy. i do this directly IN neocities. don't be like me. save your page.

also. I’ve been doing this for 3 years. like, on the day for three years actually. here’s how my very first webpage looked in 2022:

anyways. HAVE FUN. MAKE FRIENDS. DON’T FORGET TO BE YOURSELF. SPARKLE ON!!! NEVER HOTLINK! you’ve got this, if you have any questions, feel free to ask. i’m not sure i will be able to answer, but we can try haha. and PLEASE TELL ME YOUR WEBSITE!!! i would love to look at it and in classic neocities fashion, i’d obviously LINK YOU.

and here’s some sites that are awesome :3

The Maximalists. mobile inaccessible, IMAGE HEAVY!

https://ninacti0n.art/ EYESTRAIN

https://olliveen.neocities.org/ EYESTRAIN

https://phrogee.neocities.org/ EYESTRAIN

The Webcartoonists. also image-heavy. also probably not mobile accessible.

The Minimalists.

[riverofdragons]

I have this tinfoil hat theory that the death of customization made people technologically illiterate.

Back when customization was big, it wasn't exactly user friendly. Sure, there were default themes for a lot of places, but if you wanted to truly customize something, you had to learn HTML and image editing.

Not to mention that when PCs were new-ish, the fact that it wasn't just a black screen with green text, but a blank slate that you could put any program with any function on was also novel. Even that degree of customizability was unheard of beforehand. We knew it came with a promise of infinite possibilities, and so if you wanted your PC to do something, you knew that you had to learn how to get it to do it. That was just how it is.

If we wanted a program from the internet, we either got it as an exe file or a zip/rar file. We learnt that there's a free program that can unzip compressed files. Today, ads are the norm, but back then, we learnt that if we see ads, they're most likely a virus and we need to block them with an anti-virus software or a browser extension. Everyone and their mother knew how to torrent and crack programs. They knew it could be done somehow and so they learnt how to do it.

Now, all you can customize are your posts and pfps and banners, and if you're lucky, you can choose between dark or light mode, but that's it. We've been needing to put up with shittier and shittier website updates that slowly but surely took out every morsel of customizability and I think by 2016-ish we just gave in. Of course, OS' followed suit along with everything else, seeing the success of the first things that were sleek and minimalist (I suspect that it was Windows 8 and the Windows Phone as much of a trainwreck as they were at the time or maybe Apple).

And now everything is homogenized. Nowadays I keep meeting so many people who have no idea about 95% of their PCs' functions. They don't know that they can install an adblocker or how to unzip zip files or even that they don't have to put up with Microsoft's bullshit and they can just get rid of the tiles and Xbox-related functions if they don't need it. They've been conditioned to think that customization is at best minimal on any given platform and so they won't even try it.

I often hear that all they do on their PCs is check social media (the same things they can do on their phones as well).

It's genuinely making me sad.

[sketchysphinx]

I also learned how to export things, I think the best place to publish your games is itch.io for the first time.

I thought it was just a site for flash games, but turns out it's absolutely crazy and supports everything, you can both publish game files for further downloads or make it html and it will be able to run in almost any browser. The site is completely free and only takes a small fee from selling games (you can also post games for free and don't pay anything).

I posted a test game there a few days ago and successfully downloaded and run it on my phone, unfortunately the joystick I made doesn't work, so I'll stick up with screen buttons (they're like regular ones, but a bit different)😭

To export a mobile game from godot (in my case android) you need to freaking break your spine doing insane tricks with external software and cmd window. I did everything by official docs and after some struggles generated a key and now can do wizardry with it. It was hell

[blackfeatherquill]

A Decade of Tumblr

I forgot what an outlet Tumblr was for me.

When I was in highschool, my boyfriend at the time had a Tumblr so I made one too. Then him and I broke up and I ended up with someone new who also had a Tumblr.

I would scroll for hours on my laptop, or spend hours writing about my relationships and highschool and some of the things I was struggling with. I learned how to HTML, my mouse was Bart Simpson and when you clicked, fireworks shot out of his finger tip. I would discover new artists and writers, elevate my own writing by learning from these talented people. I could be weird, dark and freaky in this strange corner of the internet with little to no opposition or repulsion. It was a secret place from my parents where I could be my self but also let my pain flow. Let pain break free from the dams I had built in my heart.

My blog picked up quite a few followers along the way. People were most interested in my new relationship, and would bounce between our two blogs asking questions, asking for pictures and updates. We loved making gifs of us kissing, or of us looking at each other with unending love dazzling in our eyes, hickeys adorning our necks. As any highschool relationship, it really was packed with melodrama, sex, emotion and toxicity between us. I can see why people were so enthralled. We were practically a reality TV show.

The last thing I posted to that blog was a letter to my now ex after the breakup. I wrote about how they would forever be my first true love and despite all the heartbreak and the end of our relationship, I would always love them. The letter was more for me than for them, I needed to say goodbye in a way that they couldn't respond. I needed a selfish, one sided piece of closure just for me. I let it soak to make sure they saw it, and then I just deleted the entire blog.

It was like I deleted us.

The pictures, silly messages, lengthy bad poetry, our secrets, grungy, angsty still-captures that felt so relatable. Gone.

And it was so much more than that. I threw away friends, followers and connection. Art, writing, porn and photography that seemed to have altered my cellular make up. My blog was little pieces of me stitched together on a digital platform. A true look into my inner workings, like "Aha! That's what makes this clock tick!"

Tumblr was the safe place from my parents and my brothers, a home that never felt like I quite fit in. Where I felt like an obnoxious piece of furniture, too bulky to throw away, and irritating to the occupants of the house.

On Tumblr, I wasn't the weird girl at school. I wasn't the obnoxious piece of furniture. I wasn't the youngest girl in AA meeting.

I wasn't a victim. I wasn't a survivor.

I was a writer. I was an art lover. I was beautiful. I was a conversationalist. I was all the good things about me, and all the good things about me came with the unending oceans of emotion that was just too much for the real world.

And Tumblr world was okay with that.

And I deleted the world.

Now many years have gone by. Close to a decade I would say. Life is stable. My highschool sweetheart still lives in a little pocket in my heart of small, not so meaningful, yet sweet memories tinged with end of day, golden sunlight.

But with stability, I've lost pieces of myself. I've found myself in a routine that most adults find themselves in, a slave to the capitalistic machine. I desperately spend my days collecting money so I can support myself and my animals. Keep us fed. My days off are spent cleaning, the one indulgence for me is a small vegetable garden in my tiny allotment of land. I only take pictures when family is together. I look at art when my best friend and I are visiting, but she lives in Illinois now. And I only write when I'm in pain.

Pain. The Pain so great the dams of my heart were beginning to crack. Writing in my notes app became a secret thing I had done, I think the people in this chapter of my life would be surprised to know I love to write. A moment in front of a Georgia O'Keefe at the Art Institute of Chicago where I brushed my tears away quickly so no one would see. The writer in me, the art lover in me, has been silenced by a decade of fitting in. Go to work, buy a house, cook dinner, clean the house, go to work, die two days after retirement.

I needed someone to know what this man had said to me to make this dam threaten to burst. I looked to my left, I looked to my right and I saw spikes of judgment and misunderstanding lining walls that were closing in on all directions, slowly inching towards me. I had inadvertently surrounded myself with people who loved the fake me, because I've been faking it for so long.

So I googled "Anonymous journal, not Live Journal, Reddit." The first suggestion was Tumblr.

How could I forget about Tumblr? Memories flooded me that inched a smile onto my face. The Bart Simpson curser, the Senses Fail song that blared when my page was opened. My avatar, my hair swept over my eye and a low cut black striped sweater. Grainy gifs of me biting their lower lip. Paragraphs upon paragraphs of my deepest feelings. Art work that had taken my breath away. Silly asks and messages.

I had to go back.

And here I found myself back again in a world that is so familiar. A world I'll keep secret, but where I'm a god again. Where my writing can go, where I can collect art, writing, photography and soft pornography into one space. Where I can be dark and freaky, take off the plastic smile of customer service and Good Housekeeping. A place to take a breath, and just be sad for a little while. Let the dam break, surge then calm into a soft, still lake.

[harrydracompreg]

2024 MPREG Fest—Submission Guidelines

Submission time is getting closer, and we've been thrilled to learn a few of you are wanting to submit like yesterday!

The due date for submissions this year is 21 April 2024 which is just under five weeks away.

We will check in with you all again about 10 days out from your due date to see how you're coming along. Our email and DM are always open if you need to chat with us.

POSTING YOUR WORK TO THE AO3 COLLECTION

Please avoid posting draft works to the collection. This can often lead to confusion when it's time to release them. Please preview your works on your personal AO3 prior to adding the Mod account as co-creator. Once the work has been submitted to the fest, no more changes are to be made without contacting the Mods to discuss.

Once you're happy that your work is displayed correctly, go ahead and add the Mod account and post the work to the collection. The collection link is here: 2024 Collection.

♥ All fics will be posted to AO3, regardless of length

♥ All artwork will be posted to AO3, unless the artist specifies otherwise.

♥ All podfic works will be posted to AO3, unless the recording artist specifies otherwise.

We do recommend that all participating creators get an AO3 Account. If you do not have, or cannot create an AO3 account, we will work something out. Talk to the Mods.

SO WHAT DO I DO?

Post to the Collection On or before 21 April 2024, go to the 2024 Collection and click Post to Collection.

AO3 has further directions on making a post to a collection (ignore the challenge references). Tick the Add co-authors? box, and add the Mod ID hdmpregmod as the co-author. This ensures we can proofread all entries, keep the end-notes uniform and actually post the works as part of the fest. Once the fest concludes, the co-creator status will be removed, but the works will remain within the Collection.

Use Archive Warnings If your work contains graphic depictions of violence, major character death, rape/non-con, and/or under-age content, you must include these warnings in the header content, and utilise the appropriate archive warnings on AO3.

Add Content Tags You may add relevant AO3 tags to describe the content of your work. Readers may follow tags to assist them to find new works. Please refrain from excessive use of free-form tags that do not describe the work or its content (e.g. "omg I cannot deal"). Once the fest is finished, you may add these. Unless it is a secret or critical plot point, it is recommended to tag the pregnant character(s). This has been a polarising point in previous years, and it's best that readers are informed where possible. The Mods will review the content tags, and may make minor adjustments if deemed necessary. Larger changes will be made in consultation with the creator.

Add Creator's Notes This is a great place to include your prompt details and a shout-out to your beta readers and/or cheer-leaders. Please be sure to use initials if naming them would reveal who you are; and remember to update it after the fest reveals.

The Mods will use the foot-notes to add some fest information.

Hit Submit! AO3 is sorted. No more changes are to be made to the work on AO3. The Mods will do their thing, once we know the work has arrived, so...

Create your Header Jump on into our Work Submission Form in AirTable for a glorious HTML-free header submission experience.

You will need the 5-digit submission code that we gave you on your prompt allocation email, and the email address that we sent it to. You'll find it right here:

We are offering a submission form for automated headers again this year. When it's time to submit your creation, you'll need this code [your code here 12345]. Make sure you don't lose it!

The form will ask you a few questions about the work, and most stuff you can copy and paste from AO3.

If you feel like kicking it old-school you can also email your HTML header details using the form(s) below to the Mods.

Wait, Anticipate, Enjoy Your submitted work(s) will be listed as Unrevealed Mystery Works in the Collection. Nobody but you and the Mods will be able to see the entry before its posting date in the fest. At posting time, the Mods will update the date of the work so that it receives maximum exposure. Please do not change it again. All creators will appear as Anonymous until the fest is revealed. While hype is definitely welcomed and encouraged; it is poor form to de-anon works before a fest is revealed. Do not cross-post, reply to AO3-comments, or otherwise claim ownership of an anonymous work until after 16 June 2024. It's only a few weeks, just be patient.

CLOSING NOTES

For more information or context please refer to the 2024 H/D MPREG Fest Rules and Information Post.

If you have questions or concerns that aren't addressed here please get in touch with the Mods. We're available on tumblr, discord, or via email.

Ready for another awesome season, sassy_cissa and timothysboxers H/D MPREG MODS

HEADER INFORMATION

Submissions, Header Information and artworks can be sent to hdmpreg@gmail.com at any time on or before the submission date, 21 April 2024. Please include the word 'Submission', your AO3 username, and prompt number in the email's subject line. (e.g. Submission, timothysboxers, Prompt 102) Complete the header for reveals—the Mods will anonymise it.

The fic header is here:

Title: Author: (if applicable – all name info will be removed to protect your anonymity) Also please provide your AO3 and/or tumblr name (indicate which is which) Prompt: Please copy/paste the prompt here or you may summarize the prompt if it was long Word Count: (Remember that the minimum is 2,000 words!) Rating: (G to NC-17) Contains (Highlight to view): Warn for possible triggers and squicks. No need to warn for mpreg, sex or slash! Story spoilers may be included inside this code if you prefer. Disclaimer: Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended. Who is pregnant?: Optional - but recommended Story spoilers may be included inside this code if you prefer. (If you prefer to not include this information, please let the mods know who is pregnant when you email your header) Notes: (You may put your beta’s name/initials here along with any other notes.) Summary: (from AO3)

***

The art header is here:

Title: Artist: (will be removed to protect your anonymity) Also please provide your AO3 and/or tumblr name (indicate which is which) Prompt: Please copy/paste the prompt here or feel free to summarize it if it was long Art Medium: Rating: (G to NC-17) Contains (Highlight to view): Warn for possible triggers and squicks. No need to warn for mpreg, sex or slash! Any spoilers may be included inside this code if you prefer. Disclaimer: Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended. Who is pregnant?: Optional but recommended Story spoilers may be included inside this code if you prefer. (If you prefer to not include this information, please let the mods know who is pregnant when you email your header) Notes: (You may put your beta’s name/initials here along with any other notes.) Summary: (from AO3)

***

The podfic header is here:

Podfic: Author: Reader: Length: Rating: Summary: (from AO3) Contains (Highlight to view): Warn for possible triggers and squicks. No need to warn for mpreg, sex or slash! Any spoilers may be included inside this code if you prefer. Disclaimer: Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended. Who is pregnant?: Optional but recommended Story spoilers may be included inside this code if you prefer. (If you prefer to not include this information, please let the mods know who is pregnant when you email your header) Notes: (You may put your beta’s name/initials here along with any other notes.) Link to Story: (AO3) Download Link to Podfic:

***

[petricakegames]

Play This: DOL-OS

Play This is a place for me to tell you about games or game demos that I love and want everyone to play! Right. Now.

Year 3XXX, you discover an old computer, an antique, in some ruins. Surprisingly, it still powers up when you press its buttons. Wonder what you found within its files?

Play the game for yourself!

Y'all, this is a special game. Originally published in French, DOL-OS won Best Game of Concours de Fiction Interactive Frachophone. Luckily for me, @manonamora-if recently released a remastered and translated version of her game in English.

The narrative and story of the game are excellent, but I've gotta talk first about the UI and the loading screen because....dang. Just, mind-bogglingly good. I'm not particularly knowledgable/experienced/good when it comes to the combo move of css, html and javascript that is Twine and clicking Run Game for the first time--you know in Fallout 3 when the vault door rolls away and you're like wooooooah? It was like that. It's so impressive and neat and I've reloaded the game many times now just to watch it start. This game belongs in an art gallery for IF.

Once I picked my jaw up off the floor and started playing, another delight was in store for me. The game sparked the same kind of excitement and interest as Her Story. You are presented with a computer desktop and free to do with it what you will. It invites the player to explore (to snoop! I love snooping) and once you find what's there you can make of it what you will. There's no explicit instruction or implication in what kinds of opinions or thoughts you should form. Explore and think freely. And wonder, are you the player part of this narrative?

And solve puzzles! I love puzzles. I got so excited about the first one that I think I missed a lot of other world-building. Oops!

The more you play the more you learn about the history of this computer, of the world it came from and the influence it's had. Complex moral questions are raised again with no clear directive from the game. You'll have to decide for yourself how you feel about this machine...and what you do about those feelings.

There are so many great moments in this game. [SLIGHT SPOILERS] Though my favorite: while playing the game I enjoyed the ever-present sound effect of the gentle whir of a cooling fan--a nostalgic noise from my youth. Well into the game, a principal character starts suffering deleterious effects from something he refers to as "the Humming Machine" and I'm like !!! Wait, is that a gentle fan blade sound or am I hearing the Humming Machine, too?! It was so creeeeeeepy! Loved it! [/SPOILERS]

Also, there are minigames. Come on, people! Minigames!

DOL-OS is a great game and I highly recommend playing it. I'm excited to play again and discover what I missed the first time through. Give yourself a Sunday treat and play the game!

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

What might I need to take into account when I have multiple very large swaths of land being reclaimed? I'm talking large-scale projects, it would be comparable to having the waters between Great Britain and Ireland being reclaimed.

Licorice: If you want to learn about how to reclaim land from the sea, nobody knows more than the Dutch. Sources concur that around 17% of the Netherlands has been reclaimed from the sea, and according to wikipedia, which has an article dedicated to Dutch land reclamation, a quarter of the country would be under water if not for their continued maintenance of dykes, canals, and the the rest of the system. The Dutch have been reclaiming land from the sea since the Middle Ages, so they make a fascinating case history of what can be done as technology evolves - and also, of course, how need drives technological innovation, since necessity is the mother of invention. 

Here’s a short article from the Royal Society of Chartered Surveyors on some recent reclamation projects. You can find out more by researching the ones that are closest to the kind of project you envisage for your world.

https://ww3.rics.org/uk/en/modus/natural-environment/land/out-of-the-deep--7-massive-land-reclamation-projects--.html#:~:text=Land%20reclamation%20has%20been%20happening,from%20the%20sea%20or%20lakes.

One thing you’ll need to consider is what the land is going to be used for. Preparing reclaimed land for agriculture takes longer, I think, than reclaiming land for high-density human occupation. If it’s reclaimed from the sea there will be a degree of saltiness that needs to be removed before standard food crops can be grown.

The Aztec city of Tenochtitlan might also be an interesting study for you. If I recall correctly, Tenochtitlan was a massive floating city made of artificial islands, rather than reclaimed land per se, and the water was fresh rather than salt, so a different situation from that of Holland. 

Tex: So the Irish Sea, which sits between England and Ireland, has a width of 200 km, surface area of approximately 46,000 square km, a depth between 80 and 275 meters, and a water volume of 2,800 cubic km (Wikipedia). There’s other bodies of water technically between the two islands, but this one is eponymous and holding to the classical definition of a sea, so I figure it’s the best example to have on hand. Where is that much water going? Where are you getting that much dirt? Is this going to adequately match up to the soil and rock compositional layers of the islands bordering it? Will this be, relevantly, earthquake-proof (i.e. will the dirt stay where you put it)? What organisms are being deprived of their environment by these changes? How will this change water movement overall, and will it negatively impact the islands’ shape and their inhabitants’ well-being by unexpected rearranging of waterways? What about the economy? This is a major change in trade routes, and a lot of money presumably being sunk (ha) into changing topography. What prompted this? Is this the best solution for the given problem? Was there a problem in the first place that even needed solving, much less to this degree of influence? What do the local populations think of this? How will this affect the climate and ecology of surrounding areas (say, France)?

Wootzel: We were a bit confused about what you meant when you first sent in this question, so if the above answers aren’t what you’re looking for, please feel free to re-ask and clarify!

[viratsteelspecial-blog]

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Applications: It’s commonly supplied in a pre-hardened condition and has a typical working hardness range of 360 to 430 BHN (Brinell hardness number). DIN 1.2714 steel is used for various applications, including forging dies, die molds, shoe blocks, die holders, piston rods, bolster, cranks, cassettes, plastic molds, shearing blades, tools, and more.

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[reidak-artcreature]

I made an UnVale account. It's not what I expected

UnVale is relatively new, and they sure are having a huge campaing to promote themselves recently, at least on youtube. A lot of the artist I follow there have been promoting them.

It's basically like Toyhouse or other sites to upload your characters, and it's advertised as such. But better and easier! (I'll get back to this later). It is completely free to use, and the only charges they say they will make will be on transactions made on the platform.

Creating an account is pretty easy, they just ask for usename, email and password. But oh boy, did that password give me trouble. Kept saying it needed a "special character". It took me a while to find out what was going on, because I did have special characters in there. Turns out that it doesn't consider dashes as special characters. Don't know why, it's just weird.

How is UnVale different from other character websites? UnVale is the best OC site if you're looking for a simple, easy-to-use platform. We think other sites already do a great job at in-depth customization of character profiles, so that's not what we're going after. We want you to be able to focus on creating OCs, not figuring out HTML and CSS.

Oh, it's sure is simple to use. It's really straightforward to learn, no need to figure out anything, everything is on a button in front of you. Which I agree, it's nice not to have to do a dark ritual to find where or how stuff is or works. But it also means there is absolutely no customization. There are designated places where you can add images to make it look more like you, and you can change the background color for the characters' pages. And that is all. You can't change the general color theme, nor do fancy stuff on your characters pages like adding links.

Everything is completely public. There are absolutely no privacy settings. Everyone, wether they are logged in or not, can see every user profile, every character, every world and every image.

This is everything there is on the account settings:

Absolutely nothing about privacy settings. None. Nothing. Nada. Characters, images nor worlds can be hidden, only fully deleted. Likes or favorites and comments also can't be hidden or dissabled.

How will UnVale help to protect my OCs? We take reports of art theft very seriously, and any accounts caught stealing OC art will be closed. If you suspect someone is using stolen art on their profile, please submit a Support Ticket. Outside of this, our team is brainstorming ways to keep OCs protected and is open to community feedback or suggestions.

This doesn't reassure me at all. What do you mean the only measure against theft is closing accounts? That doesn't block their access from your art and characters.

The shop, transfers, and overall marketing yourself are really highlighted. That combined with that everything has to be public makes me belive that it's not a character library for yourself and friends, but a marketplace to display your characters adopts and commissions and get bussiness and connections. Nothing wrong with that, by the way. It just wasn't what I was expecting from what I had seen and heard. There are probably a lot of people who will find it really helpful and useful. But it's not for me.

I won't be using it for now. Maybe is the future I change my mind, or they change or add features for privacy, but I don't see any reason to use it right now. It has tons of stuff I don't want, and almost none that I like or want.

[furbyfubar]

You know how everyone agrees that the Internet has turned to shit?

Well, at least almost everyone who was around when the web was young agrees on it. This isn't a post to just bitch about the enshittification of everything online. No, this is a post to tell you what you can do to fight it!

But first let me just quickly sum up what the problem is:

The issue is mainly that the Internet and the World Wide Web went from being this cool thing where you could find almost everything to being the place people to use the same dozen or so apps, and to use those apps increasingly shitty desktop versions if they're on their computer. And any other sites you find with Google are more and more likely to be AI-generated bullshit listicles with well-made SEO that only exist to show ads.

Don't get me wrong, there are content creators on those dozen apps/sites who are still putting out amazing things! But since they don't control the platforms they're posting to they don't really fully own their own content. This is especially true since those platforms will of course make it as difficult as they legally can to move the content off of their services. Services that can and will change their terms of service to be increasingly shittier for their users the more of a hold on the market they get.

Then when the apps get shitty enough to not gain new users and thus eventually die, all those amazing things their users have created there either dies a slow death of obscurity, or the servers shut down and the content is gone for good.

So what can you do to fight this? You can be the change you want to see! So what should you do? Two things:

1. Set up a linktree and/or mailing list

The easiest way is to set up a Linktree account to link all your social media together (without taking up too much space in your bio). That way someone who wants to stop using a specific app/site at least know where else they can find you. But this doesn't help you all that much should your main social media suddenly shut down or bad your account. The best protection then is to use some free service to set up a newsletter/mailing list that you can plug to your followers. Then the people who want to sign up for it won't have to rely on noticing that you've stopped posting to find out your account has been banned. You don't have to use this mailing list to start sending out a periodical newsletter. It's OK to say "This is a backup mailing list that will send updates should I no longer be able to post where you usually follow me."

Bonus advice to protect yourself from losing touch with content creators you like following: Make a new bookmark folder called "Linktrees" and make a habit of bookmarking the Linktree (or equivalent) pages of people you follow. If you realize that someone has stopped posting you now have a place where you can check to see if they are still posting in other places (or under other usernames).

2. Set up your own website

This is typically not entirely free, and I'm not saying it's low effort. But if enough people do it, it will make a change to how the Internet works!

How? I promise you it's still easier than you probably think! Especially if you remember that the issue you're trying to solve here is that the web is lacking personal sites where people like you post things they burn for. That means that your site doesn't have to look good. Content is still king!

Learn some basic HTML and make a web page where you can post whatever content you want. That web page can then link to the other web pages you make. Do that and, congratulations, you've now made a website!

OK, so you've made a website that can only be loaded from your own hard drive, so maybe don't celebrate just yet. The next step is to sign up for a some web hosting service that lets you post anything that's legal for them to host. There are still free web hosts that survive by adding ads to your site, but if you can afford it I would advice you to find a cheap service that doesn't do this. If you only intend to host HTML and images so you don't need database support this still isn't all that expensive given that you're not likely to hit even the lowest bandwidth limit.

Next register a domain name. Make sure you have auto-payment set up for its renewal, and set a yearly alarm in your phone to make sure you don't lose the domain name due to forgetting about checking you e-mail at the wrong time. (Domain squatting trolls who register the domains that expire to either show phishing scams OR sell back the domain name to the original owner at an obscene markup are still sadly a thing.)

What should you use you website for?

Whatever the hell you want! If you're already a content creator I'm not even saying that you should stop posting to the apps you have followers on, but this gives you a way to post the same content to a platform that you control should something happen to your app of choice. Keep posting your photos, fanfiction or whatever content you make to the services you usually do, but now also upload them you your own website!

If you're making video you can still host if from YouTube (or Vimeo or whatever) so that you don't run into bandwidth issues. YouTube isn't likely to shut down out of nowhere, but they might start showing so many unblockable ads that you no longer want to have that be the main place your videos are hosted. But if you embed those videos on your own site and (vitally) make sure that you keep the raw video files backed up, you now have a way to change where your videos are hosted!