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all-the-fish · 10 months ago

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Oh, you know, just the usual internet browsing experience in the year of 2024

Some links and explanations since I figured it might be useful to some people, and writing down stuff is nice.

First of all, get Firefox. Yes, it has apps for Android/iOS too. It allows more extensions and customization (except the iOS version), it tracks less, the company has a less shitty attitude about things. Currently all the other alternatives are variations of Chromium, which means no matter how degoogled they supposedly are, Google has almost a monopoly on web browsing and that's not great. Basically they can introduce extremely user unfriendly updates and there's nothing forcing them to not do it, and nowhere for people to escape to. Current examples of their suggested updates are disabling/severly limiting adblocks in June 2024, and this great suggestion to force sites to verify "web environment integrity" ("oh you don't run a version of chromium we approve, such as the one that runs working adblocks? no web for you.").

uBlockOrigin - barely needs any explanation but yes, it works. You can whitelist whatever you want to support through displaying ads. You can also easily "adblock" site elements that annoy you. "Please log in" notice that won't go away? Important news tm sidebar that gives you sensory overload? Bye.

Dark Reader - a site you use has no dark mode? Now it has. Fairly customizable, also has some basic options for visually impaired people.

SponsorBlock for YouTube - highlights/skips (you choose) sponsored bits in the videos based on user submissions, and a few other things people often skip ("pls like and subscribe!"). A bit more controversial than normal adblock since the creators get some decent money from this, but also a lot of the big sponsors are kinda scummy and offer inferior product for superior price (or try to sell you a star jpg land ownership in Scotland to become a lord), so hearing an ad for that for the 20th time is kinda annoying. But also some creators make their sponsored segments hilarious.

Privacy Badger (and Ghostery I suppose) - I'm not actually sure how needed these are with uBlock and Firefox set to block any tracking it can, but that's basically what it does. Find someone more educated on this topic than me for more info.

Https Everywhere - I... can't actually find the extension anymore, also Firefox has this as an option in its settings now, so this is probably obsolete, whoops.

Facebook Container - also comes with Firefox by default I think. Keeps FB from snooping around outside of FB. It does that a lot, even if you don't have an account.

WebP / Avif image converter - have you ever saved an image and then discovered you can't view it, because it's WebP/Avif? You can now save it as a jpg.

YouTube Search Fixer - have you noticed that youtube search has been even worse than usual lately, with inserting all those unrelated videos into your search results? This fixes that. Also has an option to force shorts to play in the normal video window.

Consent-O-Matic - automatically rejects cookies/gdpr consent forms. While automated, you might still get a second or two of flashing popups being yeeted.

XKit Rewritten - current most up to date "variation "fork" of XKit I think? Has settings in extension settings instead of an extra tumblr button. As long as you get over the new dash layout current tumblr is kinda fine tbh, so this isn't as important as in the past, but still nice. I mostly use it to hide some visual bloat and mark posts on the dash I've already seen.

YouTube NonStop - do you want to punch youtube every time it pauses a video to check if you're still there? This saves your fists.

uBlacklist - blacklists sites from your search results. Obviously has a lot of different uses, but I use it to hide ai generated stuff from image search results. Here's a site list for that.

Redirect AMP to HTML - redirects links from their amp version to the normal version. Amp link is a version of a site made faster and more accessible for phones by Bing/Google. Good in theory, but lets search engines prefer some pages to others (that don't have an amp version), and afaik takes traffic from the original page too. Here's some more reading about why it's an issue, I don't think I can make a good tl;dr on this.

Also since I used this in the tags, here's some reading about enshittification and why the current mainstream internet/services kinda suck.

#modern internet is great #enshittification #internet browsing #idk how to tag this #but i hope it will help someone #personal #question mark

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months ago

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UK publishers suing Google for $17.4b over rigged ad markets

THIS WEEKEND (June 7–9), I'm in AMHERST, NEW YORK to keynote the 25th Annual Media Ecology Association Convention and accept the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.

Look, no one wants to kick Big Tech to the curb more than I do, but, also: it's good that Google indexes the news so people can find it, and it's good that Facebook provides forums where people can talk about the news.

It's not news if you can't find it. It's not news if you can't talk about it. We don't call information you can't find or discuss "news" – we call it "secrets."

And yet, the most popular – and widely deployed – anti-Big Tech tactic promulgated by the news industry and supported by many of my fellow trustbusters is premised on making Big Tech pay to index the news and/or provide a forum to discuss news articles. These "news bargaining codes" (or, less charitably, "link taxes") have been mooted or introduced in the EU, France, Spain, Australia, and Canada. There are proposals to introduce these in the US (through the JCPA) and in California (the CJPA).

These US bills are probably dead on arrival, for reasons that can be easily understood by the Canadian experience with them. After Canada introduced Bill C-18 – its own news bargaining code – Meta did exactly what it had done in many other places where this had been tried: blocked all news from Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and other Meta properties.

This has been a disaster for the news industry and a disaster for Canadians' ability to discuss the news. Oh, it makes Meta look like assholes, too, but Meta is the poster child for "too big to care" and is palpably indifferent to the PR costs of this boycott.

Frustrated lawmakers are now trying to figure out what to do next. The most common proposal is to order Meta to carry the news. Canadians should be worried about this, because the next government will almost certainly be helmed by the far-right conspiratorialist culture warrior Pierre Poilievre, who will doubtless use this power to order Facebook to platform "news sites" to give prominence to Canada's rotten bushel of crypto-fascist (and openly fascist) "news" sites.

Americans should worry about this too. A Donald Trump 2028 presidency combined with a must-carry rule for news would see Trump's cabinet appointees deciding what is (and is not) news, and ordering large social media platforms to cram the Daily Caller (or, you know, the Daily Stormer) into our eyeballs.

But there's another, more fundamental reason that must-carry is incompatible with the American system: the First Amendment. The government simply can't issue a blanket legal order to platforms requiring them to carry certain speech. They can strongly encourage it. A court can order limited compelled speech (say, a retraction following a finding of libel). Under emergency conditions, the government might be able to compel the transmission of urgent messages. But there's just no way the First Amendment can be squared with a blanket, ongoing order issued by the government to communications platforms requiring them to reproduce, and make available, everything published by some collection of their favorite news outlets.

This might also be illegal in Canada, but it's harder to be definitive. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enshrined in 1982, and Canada's Supreme Court is still figuring out what it means. Section Two of the Charter enshrines a free expression right, but it's worded in less absolute terms than the First Amendment, and that's deliberate. During the debate over the wording of the Charter, Canadian scholars and policymakers specifically invoked problems with First Amendment absolutism and tried to chart a middle course between strong protections for free expression and problems with the First Amendment's brook-no-exceptions language.

So maybe Canada's Supreme Court would find a must-carry order to Meta to be a violation of the Charter, but it's hard to say for sure. The Charter is both young and ambiguous, so it's harder to be definitive about what it would say about this hypothetical. But when it comes to the US and the First Amendment, that's categorically untrue. The US Constitution is centuries older than the Canadian Charter, and the First Amendment is extremely definitive, and there are reams of precedent interpreting it. The JPCA and CJPA are totally incompatible with the US Constitution. Passing them isn't as silly as passing a law declaring that Pi equals three or that water isn't wet, but it's in the neighborhood.

But all that isn't to say that the news industry shouldn't be attacking Big Tech. Far from it. Big Tech compulsively steals from the news!

But what Big Tech steals from the news isn't content.

It's money.

Big Tech steals money from the news. Take social media: when a news outlet invests in building a subscriber base on a social media platform, they're giving that platform a stick to beat them with. The more subscribers you have on social media, the more you'll be willing to pay to reach those subscribers, and the more incentive there is for the platform to suppress the reach of your articles unless you pay to "boost" your content.

This is plainly fraudulent. When I sign up to follow a news outlet on a social media site, I'm telling the platform to show me the things the news outlet publishes. When the platform uses that subscription as the basis for a blackmail plot, holding my desire to read the news to ransom, they are breaking their implied promise to me to show me the things I asked to see:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-need-end-end-web

This is stealing money from the news. It's the definition of an "unfair method of competition." Article 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act gives the FTC the power to step in and ban this practice, and they should:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

Big Tech also steals money from the news via the App Tax: the 30% rake that the mobile OS duopoly (Apple/Google) requires for every in-app purchase (Apple/Google also have policies that punish app vendors who take you to the web to make payments without paying the App Tax). 30% out of every subscriber dollar sent via an app is highway robbery! By contrast, the hyperconcentrated, price-gouging payment processing cartel charges 2-5% – about a tenth of the Big Tech tax. This is Big Tech stealing money from the news:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-must-open-app-stores

Finally, Big Tech steals money by monopolizing the ad market. The Google-Meta ad duopoly takes 51% out of every ad-dollar spent. The historic share going to advertising "intermediaries" is 10-15%. In other words, Google/Meta cornered the market on ads and then tripled the bite they were taking out of publishers' advertising revenue. They even have an illegal, collusive arrangement to rig this market, codenamed "Jedi Blue":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

There's two ways to unrig the ad market, and we should do both of them.

First, we should trustbust both Google and Meta and force them to sell off parts of their advertising businesses. Currently, both Google and Meta operate a "full stack" of ad services. They have an arm that represents advertisers buying space for ads. Another arm represents publishers selling space to advertisers. A third arm operates the marketplace where these sales take place. All three arms collect fees. On top of that: Google/Meta are both publishers and advertisers, competing with their own customers!

This is as if you were in court for a divorce and you discovered that the same lawyer representing your soon-to-be ex was also representing you…while serving as the judge…and trying to match with you both on Tinder. It shouldn't surprise you if at the end of that divorce, the court ruled that the family home should go to the lawyer.

So yeah, we should break up ad-tech:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

Also: we should ban surveillance advertising. Surveillance advertising gives ad-tech companies a permanent advantage over publishers. Ad-tech will always know more about readers' behavior than publishers do, because Big Tech engages in continuous, highly invasive surveillance of every internet user in the world. Surveillance ads perform a little better than "content-based ads" (ads sold based on the content of a web-page, not the behavior of the person looking at the page), but publishers will always know more about their content than ad-tech does. That means that even if content-based ads command a slightly lower price than surveillance ads, a much larger share of that payment will go to publishers:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

Banning surveillance advertising isn't just good business, it's good politics. The potential coalition for banning surveillance ads is everyone who is harmed by commercial surveillance. That's a coalition that's orders of magnitude larger than the pool of people who merely care about fairness in the ad/news industries. It's everyone who's worried about their grandparents being brainwashed on Facebook, or their teens becoming anorexic because of Instagram. It includes people angry about deepfake porn, and people angry about Black Lives Matter protesters' identities being handed to the cops by Google (see also: Jan 6 insurrectionists).

It also includes everyone who discovers that they're paying higher prices because a vendor is using surveillance data to determine how much they'll pay – like when McDonald's raises the price of your "meal deal" on your payday, based on the assumption that you will spend more when your bank account is at its highest monthly level:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again

Attacking Big Tech for stealing money is much smarter than pretending that the problem is Big Tech stealing content. We want Big Tech to make the news easy to find and discuss. We just want them to stop pocketing 30 cents out of every subscriber dollar and 51 cents out of ever ad dollar, and ransoming subscribers' social media subscriptions to extort publishers.

And there's amazing news on this front: a consortium of UK web-publishers called Ad Tech Collective Action has just triumphed in a high-stakes proceeding, and can now go ahead with a suit against Google, seeking damages of GBP13.6b ($17.4b) for the rigged ad-tech market:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/17-bln-uk-adtech-lawsuit-against-google-can-go-ahead-tribunal-rules-2024-06-05/

The ruling, from the Competition Appeal Tribunal, paves the way for a frontal assault on the thing Big Tech actually steals from publishers: money, not content.

This is exactly what publishing should be doing. Targeting the method by which tech steals from the news is a benefit to all kinds of news organizations, including the independent, journalist-owned publishers that are doing the best news work today. These independents do not have the same interests as corporate news, which is dominated by hedge funds and private equity raiders, who have spent decades buying up and hollowing out news outlets, and blaming the resulting decline in readership and profits on Craiglist.

You can read more about Big Finance's raid on the news in Margot Susca's Hedged: How Private Investment Funds Helped Destroy American Newspapers and Undermine Democracy:

https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p087561

You can also watch/listen to Adam Conover's excellent interview with Susca:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N21YfWy0-bA

Frankly, the looters and billionaires who bought and gutted our great papers are no more interested in the health of the news industry or democracy than Big Tech is. We should care about the news and the workers who produce the news, not the profits of the hedge-funds that own the news. An assault on Big Tech's monetary theft levels the playing field, making it easier for news workers and indies to compete directly with financialized news outlets and billionaire playthings, by letting indies keep more of every ad-dollar and more of every subscriber-dollar – and to reach their subscribers without paying ransom to social media.

Ending monetary theft – rather than licensing news search and discussion – is something that workers are far more interested in than their bosses. Any time you see workers and their bosses on the same side as a fight against Big Tech, you should look more closely. Bosses are not on their workers' side. If bosses get more money out of Big Tech, they will not share those gains with workers unless someone forces them to.

That's where antitrust comes in. Antitrust is designed to strike at power, and enforcers have broad authority to blunt the power of corporate juggernauts. Remember Article 5 of the FTC Act, the one that lets the FTC block "unfair methods of competition?" FTC Chair Lina Khan has proposed using it to regulate training AI, specifically to craft rules that address the labor and privacy issues with AI:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mh8Z5pcJpg

This is an approach that can put creative workers where they belong, in a coalition with other workers, rather than with their bosses. The copyright approach to curbing AI training is beloved of the same media companies that are eagerly screwing their workers. If we manage to make copyright – a transferrable right that a worker can be forced to turn over their employer – into the system that regulates AI training, it won't stop training. It'll just trigger every entertainment company changing their boilerplate contract so that creative workers have to sign over their AI rights or be shown the door:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand

Then those same entertainment and news companies will train AI models and try to fire most of their workers and slash the pay of the remainder using those models' output. Using copyright to regulate AI training makes changes to who gets to benefit from workers' misery, shifting some of our stolen wages from AI companies to entertainment companies. But it won't stop them from ruining our lives.

By contrast, focusing on actual labor rights – say, through an FTCA 5 rulemaking – has the potential to protect those rights from all parties, and puts us on the same side as call-center workers, train drivers, radiologists and anyone else whose wages are being targeted by AI companies and their customers.

Policy fights are a recurring monkey's paw nightmare in which we try to do something to fight corruption and bullying, only to be outmaneuvered by corrupt bullies. Making good policy is no guarantee of a good outcome, but it sure helps – and good policy starts with targeting the thing you want to fix. If we're worried that news is being financially starved by Big Tech, then we should go after the money, not the links.

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/2024/06/06/stealing-money-not-content/#content-free

#pluralistic #competition #advertising #surveillance advertising #saving the news from big tech #link taxes #trustbusting #competition and markets authority #uk #ukpoli #Ad Tech Collective Action #digital markets unit #Competition Appeal Tribunal

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mariacallous · 6 months ago

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A lawsuit filed Wednesday against Meta argues that US law requires the company to let people use unofficial add-ons to gain more control over their social feeds.

It’s the latest in a series of disputes in which the company has tussled with researchers and developers over tools that give users extra privacy options or that collect research data. It could clear the way for researchers to release add-ons that aid research into how the algorithms on social platforms affect their users, and it could give people more control over the algorithms that shape their lives.

The suit was filed by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University on behalf of researcher Ethan Zuckerman, an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts—Amherst. It attempts to take a federal law that has generally shielded social networks and use it as a tool forcing transparency.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is best known for allowing social media companies to evade legal liability for content on their platforms. Zuckerman’s suit argues that one of its subsections gives users the right to control how they access the internet, and the tools they use to do so.

“Section 230 (c) (2) (b) is quite explicit about libraries, parents, and others having the ability to control obscene or other unwanted content on the internet,” says Zuckerman. “I actually think that anticipates having control over a social network like Facebook, having this ability to sort of say, ‘We want to be able to opt out of the algorithm.’”

Zuckerman’s suit is aimed at preventing Facebook from blocking a new browser extension for Facebook that he is working on called Unfollow Everything 2.0. It would allow users to easily “unfollow” friends, groups, and pages on the service, meaning that updates from them no longer appear in the user’s newsfeed.

Zuckerman says that this would provide users the power to tune or effectively disable Facebook’s engagement-driven feed. Users can technically do this without the tool, but only by unfollowing each friend, group, and page individually.

There’s good reason to think Meta might make changes to Facebook to block Zuckerman’s tool after it is released. He says he won’t launch it without a ruling on his suit. In 2020, the company argued that the browser Friendly, which had let users search and reorder their Facebook news feeds as well as block ads and trackers, violated its terms of service and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. In 2021, Meta permanently banned Louis Barclay, a British developer who had created a tool called Unfollow Everything, which Zuckerman’s add-on is named after.

“I still remember the feeling of unfollowing everything for the first time. It was near-miraculous. I had lost nothing, since I could still see my favorite friends and groups by going to them directly,” Barclay wrote for Slate at the time. “But I had gained a staggering amount of control. I was no longer tempted to scroll down an infinite feed of content. The time I spent on Facebook decreased dramatically.”

The same year, Meta kicked off from its platform some New York University researchers who had created a tool that monitored the political ads people saw on Facebook. Zuckerman is adding a feature to Unfollow Everything 2.0 that allows people to donate data from their use of the tool to his research project. He hopes to use the data to investigate whether users of his add-on who cleanse their feeds end up, like Barclay, using Facebook less.

Sophia Cope, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, says that the core parts of Section 230 related to platforms’ liability for content posted by users have been clarified through potentially thousands of cases. But few have specifically dealt with the part of the law Zuckerman’s suit seeks to leverage.

“There isn’t that much case law on that section of the law, so it will be interesting to see how a judge breaks it down,” says Cope. Zuckerman is a member of the EFF’s board of advisers.

John Morris, a principal at the Internet Society, a nonprofit that promotes open development of the internet, says that, to his knowledge, Zuckerman’s strategy “hasn’t been used before, in terms of using Section 230 to grant affirmative rights to users,” noting that a judge would likely take that claim seriously.

Meta has previously suggested that allowing add-ons that modify how people use its services raises security and privacy concerns. But Daphne Keller, director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center, says that Zuckerman’s tool may be able to fairly push back on such an accusation.“The main problem with tools that give users more control over content moderation on existing platforms often has to do with privacy,” she says. “But if all this does is unfollow specified accounts, I would not expect that problem to arise here."

Even if a tool like Unfollow Everything 2.0 didn’t compromise users’ privacy, Meta might still be able to argue that it violates the company’s terms of service, as it did in Barclay’s case.

“Given Meta’s history, I could see why he would want a preemptive judgment,” says Cope. “He’d be immunized against any civil claim brought against him by Meta.”

And though Zuckerman says he would not be surprised if it takes years for his case to wind its way through the courts, he believes it’s important. “This feels like a particularly compelling case to do at a moment where people are really concerned about the power of algorithms,” he says.

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the-sleepy-archivist · 8 months ago

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Blocking Ads on Mobile Devices

Blocking ads on our phones is way harder than it should be so I figured I'd make some recommendations. These are not the only options out there, just the ones that I know and use.

Please note that browser-level and system-level adblocking are complementary; you'll have the best experience if you use both of them together as they each block different things in different places. If you want a basic idea of how effective your combined adblocking setup is, you can visit this website in your mobile browser.

Lastly, there is some additional advice/info under the readmore if you're curious (EDIT: updated June 2024 to add info about sideloading altered versions of social media apps that don't contain ads on Android and iOS).

Android

Browser-Level

uBlock Origin (for Firefox)

System-Level (works in all apps, not just browsers)

AdGuard

Blokada 5 (completely free version) OR Blokada 6 (has some newer features but they require a subscription)

iPhone/iPad

Browser-Level

AdGuard (Safari extension; free for basic browser-level blocking, requires a subscription for custom filters)

System-Level (works in all apps, not just browsers)

AdGuard (requires subscription for system-level blocking)

AdGuard DNS only (this is free and does not require the AdGuard app, BUT I would only recommend it for advanced users, as you can't easily turn it off like you can with the app. Credit to this Reddit thread for the DNS profile)

Some additional info: browser-level blocking is a browser addon or extension, like you might be used to from a desktop computer. This inspects the HTML code returned by websites and searches for patterns that identify the presence of an ad or other annoyance (popup videos, cookie agreements, etc.). System-level blocking is almost always DNS-based. Basically whenever an app asks your phone's OS to make a connection to a website that is known for serving ads, the system-level blocker replies "sorry, I don't know her 🤷‍♂️💅" and the ad doesn't get downloaded. This works in most places, not just a browser, but be warned that it might make your battery drain a little faster depending on the app/setup.

Each of those types of blocking has strengths and weaknesses. System-level DNS blocking blocks ads in all apps, but companies that own advertising networks AND the websites those ads are served on can combine their services into the same domain to render DNS blocking useless; you can’t block ads served by Facebook/Meta domains without also blocking all of Facebook and Instagram as well because they made sure their ads are served from the same domain as all the user posts you actually want to see. Similarly, browser-level blocking can recognize ads by appearance and content, regardless of what domain they’re served from, so it can block them on Instagram and Facebook. However, it needs to be able to inspect the content being loaded in order to look for ads, and there’s no way to do that in non-browser apps. That’s why using both together will get you the best results.

These limitations do mean that you can’t block ads in the Facebook or Instagram apps, unfortunately, only in the website versions of them visited in your browser. It also means ads served by meta’s/facebook’s ad network in other apps can’t be blocked either (unless you're one of the rare beasts who doesn't use facebook or instagram or threads, in which case feel free to blacklist all Meta/FB domains and watch your ads disappear 😍; I'm jealous and in awe of you lol).

One note: some apps may behave unpredictably when they can't download ads. For example, the Tumblr app has big black spaces where the ads are, and sometimes those spaces collapse as you scroll past them and it messes up scrolling for a few seconds (UPDATE: looks like the scrolling issue may have actually been a Tumblr bug that they have now fixed, at least on iOS). Still way less annoying than getting ads for Draco Malfoy seduction roleplay AI chatbots imo though. And honestly *most* apps handle this fairly gracefully, like a mobile game I play just throws error messages like "ad is not ready" and then continues like normal.

One final note: on Android, you may actually be able to find hacked versions of Meta’s apps that have the ad frameworks removed. In some cases they are a little janky (unsurprisingly, apps don’t always take kindly to having some of their innards ripped out by a third-party), and they are often out of date. BUT in return you get an Instagram app with no ads whatsoever, and some of them even add additional features like buttons for saving IG videos and photos to your phone. However, use these apps at your own risk, as there is functionally no way to validate the code that the third-parties have added or removed from the app. Example altered IG app (I have not vetted this altered app, it's just a popular option): link.

It is technically possible to install altered apps on iOS as well, but Apple makes it much, much harder to do (unless you are jailbroken, which is a whole different ballgame). I'm not going to cover sideloading or jailbreaking here because even I as a very techy person eventually grew tired of messing with it or having to pay for it. If you're interested you can read more about the different ways to do sideloading on iOS here.

#adblockers #ad blocking #digital privacy #internet privacy #firefox #firefox extensions #mine #adguard #blokada #android #ios #iphone

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supernovafics · 1 month ago

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series masterlist | last part — next part

pairing: modern!college!steve harrington x fem!reader, bestfriend!eddie munson x fem!reader

word count: 2.9k words

warnings: explicit language, nothing else really?

summary: your life goes back to normal— how things were before you knew steve— and it’s fine (or at least that’s what you keep telling yourself)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN | ❝𝒇𝒓𝒂𝒈𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒆❞

Spring Semester 2017

“This is how villain origin stories are born,” Robin said with a loud sigh as she closed her laptop for the time being. “Apartment hunting. Why does this suck so much?”

“Because everything’s severely out of our price range,” You responded, looking up from your own laptop. “Also, there are barely any three-bedroom options.”

“And the ones that are available and in our budget are very shitty,” Vickie added and you nodded in agreement.

The three of you were sitting on the carpeted floor in your dorm room. Living together for the next school year had been jokingly and playfully talked about in the very early stages of your friendship with Robin, but then as the months passed, it settled into an idea that actually became serious; mainly because of how much sense it made. And then Robin introduced you to Vickie and another friendship, and roommate, was born.

Eddie was also set as a fourth roommate for a bit, but then he told you that he and Chrissy decided to live together for junior year, so it became settled that it would only be you, Robin, and Vickie. Which sounded great, and you were already excited about it since you hated living alone, but the apartment-hunting part quickly proved to be a lot more of a nuisance than any of you had expected.

“Fuck it, let’s just do a four-bedroom, then,” Robin said, shrugging. “There are a bunch more options for those, anyway. Like, the one I showed you guys yesterday. That place was perfect.”

“Did I miss the moment when our fourth roommate magically appeared?” Vickie asked, a playful smile on her face.

“We can easily find someone else in one of those, like, Facebook group things.”

“That’s honestly not a bad idea,” You responded, already going to pull up Facebook on your laptop.

Robin smiled. “Thank you. I always have great ideas.”

Vickie gave her a look. “Do I need to mention the ‘donating blood to get concert ticket money’ idea you had a week ago?”

“No, that’s okay. We don’t need to discuss that low point.”

You were the one who showed them Talia’s posting on one of the “searching for roommates” groups. She seemed nice and interesting and both Robin and Vickie thought so too. The three of you put together a quick message— briefly introducing yourselves and that you were looking for a fourth roommate— and sent it.

“Okay, fourth roommate, check,” Robin said once you pressed send. “Now, we have to get the place that I showed you guys yesterday.”

You laughed a little. “Let’s wait until she actually says something, Rob.”

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。

Spring Semester 2018

Initially, it felt equivalent to a family meeting. Well, more so what you imagined a family meeting would be like because the four of you never actually had to have one before.

But then, it actually felt like you were giving some sort of speech or presentation because of the setup. Robin, Vickie, and Talia were on the couch and you were standing in front of the TV and explaining everything to them.

You kept in most of the details— you and Steve agreeing to fake date, your feelings for Eddie being the reason behind it all, and how it was only meant to go until Spring Break.

Aside from the fact that they all seemed shocked to learn that you had feelings for Eddie, their collective thought was that the entire relationship between you and Steve had seemed so real.

“We were just really good at faking,” Was your response to Vickie specifically saying how cute you two had looked together; especially during the one reality TV night where Steve came over and picked the show.

You remembered that night pretty well, but you didn’t remember any specific moments where you had felt as if you and he had to “play up” the relationship or lay the PDA on thick since Eddie wasn’t around that night, so you weren’t sure how that moment was considered a definingly cute one for the two of you.

“Were you good at faking or was it not really fake?” Robin asked, giving you a certain look.

“Definitely fake,” You didn’t hesitate to answer because you deliberately didn’t want to think about her question too deeply. “We’re not even really friends, and he just went on a date last night. Hence the Eddie punch.”

Eddie was still sleeping in your bed. When you got back from Steve’s place, you weren’t in the mood to wake him up or tell him to shift over and make room for you, so you spent the night on the couch.

“Damn, it kinda sucks that we’re never gonna see him again. He was the only one that liked when I made the pumpkin cheesecake cookies,” Talia said.

Vickie laughed a bit. “The only reason we don’t like it is because that's clearly a Fall cookie, Tal, and it's Spring right now.” She then looked as if she thought of something. “Hey, but at least you won’t have to get stuck on a team with Eddie for game night anymore. We’re back to individual stuff or you being the referee.”

Talia smiled. “Thank you for reminding me.”

“Wait, that just made me remember something,” Robin started. “Guys, I need you to please hear me out on this one,” She paused for what seemed like dramatic effect. “I think it's time to bring back Monopoly.”

There was a collective groan that immediately filled the air upon hearing her suggestion. Monopoly was a near friendship-ending game for you all, and it was only meant to be played on the rarest of occasions; which actually meant never.

You sat down on the small loveseat then, glad that the subject had been shifted and that your speech, mixed with a Q&A, was over. “Robin, why do you wanna ruin all of our friendships?”

She quickly shook her head. “Come on, it’s been months. We’re all much more mature and reasonable adults, and I doubt we’ll have any arguments like last time.”

Before any of you could respond with any sort of rebuttal, your bedroom door opened and out walked a tired looking Eddie.

“Somehow, I heard the mention of Monopoly and I’m here to immediately veto that suggestion.”

Robin rolled her eyes at him. “Go back to sleep, Munson.”

The game night conversation continued, and from there, things were normal. And you didn’t mind the normalcy that your life settled back into over the next few days and then weeks— even though, at one point, the thought of it bothered you and you had missed a lot of the things that came along with fake dating Steve. Now you knew there was no point in missing any of it; in fact, it felt kind of dumb to.

Your classes got more and more intense during the entire month of April, so there wasn’t that much time to think about Steve or wonder what he was up to. However, the moments you did think of him surprisingly hit hard.

When you all ended up playing Monopoly at game night, after Robin’s many begs and pleads, you thought about Steve and how different things would’ve been if he was there. You imagined him as a pretty competitive Monopoly player, and felt almost certain that he would’ve either had the biggest rivalry with Robin or formed some sort of alliance with her; she was the one that actually ended up winning after an intense and exhausting seven hours of playing that night. You wished that he could’ve been there.

And then there were the reminders of him that were left around— his t-shirt that you’d never gotten around to giving back to him, his sunglasses that you didn’t realize you’d stolen until you were finally finishing unpacking your stuff from the Mexico trip, and the bear that he got you for Valentine’s Day that you refused to ever get rid of, but you eventually stuffed Hartford away in your closet instead of leaving him on your desk to make things feel easier.

Anytime one of those moments happened where you randomly thought about him, you immediately reminded yourself of the rule and simply buried yourself further in whatever school assignment you needed to focus on, or made abrupt plans with Eddie, Robin, Vickie, or Talia.

It was late in the month when Talia wanted to set you up with a guy from one of her classes, who she claimed would be “perfect for you.” Initially, you were hesitant— more so leaning toward no than yes— but he had the Talia stamp of approval, so you let it happen. She gave him your number and there were a handful of text messages shared between you two that led to a museum date a week later.

It wasn’t terrible. But, your heart wasn’t in it at all, and neither was your head most of the time. And by the end of it, more specifically as you were in the elevator headed back up to your apartment, you realized that you probably wouldn’t see him again.

When you walked into the apartment, you spotted Talia in the kitchen and the entire apartment smelled amazing; which, of course, didn’t surprise you at all.

“Hey, what are you making?” You asked as you pulled off your jacket and hung it on one of the empty hooks next to the door.

“I got bored, so I decided to do a quick roasted chicken. It’s in the oven now,” She said, shrugging as if that was entirely normal. It would never not amuse you how her boredom would always spur on elaborate meals. “So, how was the date?”

“It was fine. Good, actually,” You answered after the briefest moment of hesitation. “He was pretty cool and we had a lot in common and stuff. But, I don’t know… It just didn’t feel right, I guess. My head was in a different place a lot of the time. Thinking about other stuff.”

“About Steve?”

Hearing her say that, surprised you. “What? No. I haven’t talked to him in like a month.”

She gave you a quick shrug. “That doesn’t mean that you can’t think about him.”

“I guess that’s true, but I haven’t really thought about him,” You said. It was a small lie that you were okay with telling because you didn’t want to admit or even ponder what it meant that you did think about and were so easily reminded of him sometimes.

“I’m kind of surprised that you two aren’t friends or something,” She told you as she went to grab something from the fridge. “I don’t think I could do a whole fake dating thing with someone and not, at least, be friends with them after it.”

You leaned back against the counter. “We came up with a bunch of rules when we started it, and that was one of them.”

“To not be friends after?”

“Not exactly that, but pretty much, yeah. The rule was to go our separate ways once the fake dating was done,” You shrugged. “Becoming friends was the last thing on both of our minds when we came up with that since we were basically strangers at the beginning of this. And when we were ending things, we both knew that it would be impossible to be friends after because of all of the lies that started this.”

She looked at you then. “But we all know the truth now, though. So you two could be friends and none of us would question it.”

Talia’s words made complete sense and they were something that you should’ve realized and thought about a lot earlier than this moment. You were quiet for what felt like forever because you didn’t know what to say in response. Your immediate reaction was to still say no, you couldn’t be friends with him, but if she followed up and asked why, you knew that you wouldn’t have an answer.

When the oven started beeping, it felt like a very “saved by the bell” kind of moment. Talia pulled out the chicken from the oven and let the conversation shift from there. “You got back from your date just in time, by the way. You wanna try this?”

“Of course, I’ll never turn down anything you make.”

You went to your room first to change out of your date outfit and put on some pajamas instead and then you joined Talia back in the kitchen. The chicken was quite literally perfect, which didn’t surprise you, and you retreated to your room for the night after you finished eating, while Talia put on a documentary that she had to watch for one of her psychology classes.

As much as you tried to focus on anything else as you lay in your bed, you inadvertently spent the rest of the night thinking about Steve— it was too hard not to.

You thought about every moment that you had been reminded of him over the past month— how it hadn’t felt like much at first, but when you thought about it all at once, it was a lot. You also thought about what Talia said and why you and he weren’t friends even though it was pretty obvious that you should be— what else could explain why you both had prolonged and dragged out the conversation in his car the night you two “broke up”? Neither of you had wanted to let the inevitable happen.

All of this was about more than just following the rule to you. Of course, it was about more than just that.

Deep down you knew exactly why you couldn’t listen to what Talia said— why you couldn’t text him, go to his place, or do anything else to lean into that short-lived friendship you two had that you actually had a feeling was still there— but right then you refused to admit it.

Instead, you grabbed your phone and put on a random podcast just so you could use the noise to drown out your thoughts and force yourself to fall asleep.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。

It wasn’t until a few days before finals that you thought about Steve again. It was kind of hard not to because you ran right into him�� or more so tripped over him.

The campus library during the week before finals week was probably one of the worst places to be, but you were in a last-second search for a book that you needed to do an essay on and you refused to buy it online because, for some reason, it was way too expensive.

Your eyes were trained solely on the spines of books as you searched for the one in particular when you tripped over something in the middle of the aisle. It wasn’t a full-on fall, just a very awkward stumble, but it somehow felt just as embarrassing.

You let out an abrupt yelp in the middle of your stumble and heard a voice before you even got to see what caused you to trip. “Oh, fuck, I’m sorry.”

You recognized Steve’s voice immediately and it sent a surprised jolt through you as you turned to look at him. He was leaned back against the long bookshelf with his legs stretched out and there was a textbook opened in his lap. He must’ve just been sleeping because you saw him rub his eyes and let out a quick yawn.

He looked up at you as he crossed his legs under him instead of having them stretched out in the aisle. He seemed as if he was surprised to see you too, but from the look on his face, you could tell that he saw it as a good surprise; you weren’t sure if you could say the same just yet. “Shit, now I feel worse knowing that I just did that to you.”

That got the smallest smile out of you. “Yes, you should feel a thousand times worse for almost ending my life.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sleeping here?” You asked. Both of you were keeping your voices low because you were on one of the quieter floors of the library.

He shook his head. “I’m not sleeping. I was taking a break from studying for a test and just resting my eyes for a second.”

“So sleeping?”

“A very brief nap,” He corrected.

“Ah, okay, got it,” You nodded, words coming out completely sarcastic. “Sorry for interrupting your very brief nap then.”

“Sorry for almost killing you.”

“Thank you.”

You knew that you should’ve let the brief conversation end there. You should’ve looked away from him then and continued searching for the book you needed to find. But, you didn’t.

Instead, after the briefest moment of lingering silence between you two, you sat down across from Steve. The book and the essay that you needed to work on became the farthest things from your mind for the time being.

You didn’t have the strongest grasp on what you were doing right then and why you were doing any of it, but you decided not to question it. Instead, you simply did what felt good in the moment.

You leaned back against the bookshelf opposite Steve and crossed your legs as well. “Hi.”

He gave you a questioning look at first— maybe he was also expecting the conversation to end in that previous spot; like it would’ve with any other two people who weren’t really friends that had just randomly bumped into each other.

But then, he was smiling, a genuine Steve Harrington smile that felt really nice to see. “Hey.”

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。

a/n: ….. i'm sorry for the cliffhanger !!!!

next part!

taglist (lmk if you want to be added or taken off<333); @eddiernunson , @loulouloueh , @the-aster , @blckburd , @totally-bogus-timelady , @yujyujj , @irhdifartzamfyaa , @mochminnie , @munsonssweets , @blckbrrybasket , @xprloki , @definitionwanderlust , @dwcode , @sun-fiower-seed , @keerysfolklore , @damon-loves-pie , @lodeddiperrodrick , @bisexual-and-intellectual , @munsonburn3r , @negomi123 , @khena , @facexthexsunshine , @seatbacksandtraytables , @suckerfordylansstuff

(if your user is crossed out it means i can’t tag you</3)

#steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x fem!reader #steve harrington x you #eddie munson x reader #bestfriend!eddie munson #steve harrington fic #steve harrington imagine #steve harrington fluff #steve harrington series #steve harrington angst #steve harrington fanfiction #stranger things imagine #stranger things fluff

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togglesbloggle · 1 year ago

Note

Why do you think tumblr will die in only a few years?

Answer with jargon: a strong correlation between recent economic shifts and chaotic choices by major tech companies is most easily explained if the 'traditional' social media platforms of 2005-2020 are mostly a zero-interest rate phenomenon.

Longer answer, with less jargon: Even though Musk's takeover is making all the headlines recently, the last year has in fact seen major shakeups at many social media platforms, so Twitter is actually part of a trend. Almost inevitably, these are cases of social media companies trying to find a way to squeeze more money out of their userbase (Reddit), cut costs dramatically (Twitter), or both. This marks a sudden departure from a much more relaxed attitude towards revenue in the Pictures Of Cats industry, where the focus was historically more on expanding the userbase to a global scale and then counting on world domination to sort of <????> and then the company would become profitable eventually.

We joke, correctly, that Tumblr has never been profitable. But the entire structure of ad-supported content curation between human users is deeply suspect as a business model; IIRC Twitter was never profitable either, and Facebook has been juicing its numbers in very shenanigany ways. Discord was actually making money on net last I checked, at least a bit, so they're not all completely in the hole. But even if you take the accounting figures at face value, none of these companies has anything like the amount of money that their cultural prominence would suggest. Instead, they're heavily fueled by investment dollars, money given by super-rich people and institutions in the expectation that fueling the growth of the company now will pay off with interest later.

So what changed?

I'm not an expert here, but I'll do my best to muddle through. The American Federal Reserve has one mandate that dominates all others (sometimes called the 'dual mandate'), and one primary tool that it uses to enforce that mandate. The goal is to maintain low (but nonzero) rates of inflation and unemployment, which in their models are deeply interlinked phenomena. The tool is 'rate hikes', or more specifically, tweaking the mandatory rate of interest that banks charge one another when making loans.

As a particular consequence of this, hiking the rate also means that bonds start paying out much better. When the rate hike goes through, that affects people who let the government borrow their personal cash- that is, people who buy bonds- as well as institutions like banks that lend to one another. A rate hike means that you, personally, can make a little extra money by letting the government borrow it for a while. The federal government of the US is a rock-solid low-risk choice for this kind of moneymaking scheme, so the federal interest rate sort of defines the 'number to beat'; to attract investors, a company has to give those investors money at a better percentage than whatever the feds are offering. Particularly since a company is a lot more likely to go out of business than the state!

To wrap this back around to the Pictures Of Cats industry: the higher the rate hike, the better your company needs to be doing (or the less risky it needs to be as an option) to attract big investment dollars. Very high rates make it very hard to convince people to invest in business activity rather than the government itself, and very low rates put moonshots and big dreams on the table, investment-wise, in a way that wouldn't otherwise be possible. Social media companies were one of these big dreams.

In the great financial crisis of 2008, the Fed took the dramatic step of reducing their rate to zero, trying to juice the economy back to life. And ever since then, they've kept it there. This has produced an unprecedented amount of funding for very crazy stuff; it's part of what has allowed so many weird new tech companies (Uber, streaming services, etc.) to get so much money, so quickly, and use that to grow to massive size without a clear model of how they're ever going to make money. This state of affairs kept going for quite a while, with no clear stopping point; that zero-interest environment has been one of the shadowy forces in the background that shaped fundamental contours and limits in how our Very Online World has grown and developed. Until COVID.

Or rather, the bounce back from COVID: we suddenly saw a massive spike in inflation and an incredibly strong labor market, as employees quit in record numbers, negotiated higher salaries, and found better work, and at the same time supply chain issues and other economy stuff caused prices to climb dramatically. Recall the Fed's 'dual mandate', to control the employment rate and inflation. This was, basically, kicking them right in the jooblies. They responded in kind, finally finally raising their rates for the first time in 15 years. For some of the people reading this, it'll be the first significant shift in their entire adult lives.

The goal, as I understand it, is to fight inflation by reducing the amount of outside investment into private companies, forcing them to hire fewer people and pay smaller salaries, ultimately drawing money out of the working economy and driving prices back down by lowering demand for everything. You get paid less, so you eat out less, and buy at cheaper restaurants when you do, so restaurants have to compete harder by lowering their prices; seems pretty dodgy to me as a theory, but it's the theory. And the first part will almost certainly work- companies are going to see less investment.

For social media companies that are still paying most of their salaries with investor dollars instead of revenues, this is especially catastrophic. Without outside investment, they're just a massive pile of expenses waiting to happen, huge yearly costs in developer salaries and server fees. This is why, all of a sudden, every social media company is suddenly making bonkers decisions. They're noticing that nobody wants to give them any more money! So they're trying to figure out how to live a lot more cheaply, to actually somehow for reals turn their giant userbases in to some kind of actual revenue stream, or both.

Tumblr is kind of the ur-example of this kind of thing, supporting a very large userbase with no coherent plan whatsoever to start paying its staff with our dollars instead of investors' dollars. When interest rates were low and Scrooge McDuck had nowhere else to hide his pile of gold coins, a crazy kid with a dream was the best alternative available to him. But now, unless something changes, he's going to notice he can just buy bonds instead, and that crazy kid can go take a hike.

That's why I think Tumblr is living on borrowed time, though I don't know how much. Like all cartoons, the economy doesn't really fall off a cliff until somebody looks down and notices they've been standing on thin air this whole time. But they always fall eventually; that's the gag.

#I am not an economics #so if somebody wants to grade my accuracy here #that would be welcome #this is the situation as I understand it but my models are hazy

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fabaulti · 1 year ago

Text

I think most of us should take the whole ai scraping situation as a sign that we should maybe stop giving google/facebook/big corps all our data and look into alternatives that actually value your privacy.

i know this is easier said than done because everybody under the sun seems to use these services, but I promise you it’s not impossible. In fact, I made a list of a few alternatives to popular apps and services, alternatives that are privacy first, open source and don’t sell your data.

right off the bat I suggest you stop using gmail. it’s trash and not secure at all. google can read your emails. in fact, google has acces to all the data on your account and while what they do with it is already shady, I don’t even want to know what the whole ai situation is going to bring. a good alternative to a few google services is skiff. they provide a secure, e3ee mail service along with a workspace that can easily import google documents, a calendar and 10 gb free storage. i’ve been using it for a while and it’s great.

a good alternative to google drive is either koofr or filen. I use filen because everything you upload on there is end to end encrypted with zero knowledge. they offer 10 gb of free storage and really affordable lifetime plans.

google docs? i don’t know her. instead, try cryptpad. I don’t have the spoons to list all the great features of this service, you just have to believe me. nothing you write there will be used to train ai and you can share it just as easily. if skiff is too limited for you and you also need stuff like sheets or forms, cryptpad is here for you. the only downside i could think of is that they don’t have a mobile app, but the site works great in a browser too.

since there is no real alternative to youtube I recommend watching your little slime videos through a streaming frontend like freetube or new pipe. besides the fact that they remove ads, they also stop google from tracking what you watch. there is a bit of functionality loss with these services, but if you just want to watch videos privately they’re great.

if you’re looking for an alternative to google photos that is secure and end to end encrypted you might want to look into stingle, although in my experience filen’s photos tab works pretty well too.

oh, also, for the love of god, stop using whatsapp, facebook messenger or instagram for messaging. just stop. signal and telegram are literally here and they’re free. spread the word, educate your friends, ask them if they really want anyone to snoop around their private conversations.

regarding browser, you know the drill. throw google chrome/edge in the trash (they really basically spyware disguised as browsers) and download either librewolf or brave. mozilla can be a great secure option too, with a bit of tinkering.

if you wanna get a vpn (and I recommend you do) be wary that some of them are scammy. do your research, read their terms and conditions, familiarise yourself with their model. if you don’t wanna do that and are willing to trust my word, go with mullvad. they don’t keep any logs. it’s 5 euros a month with no different pricing plans or other bullshit.

lastly, whatever alternative you decide on, what matters most is that you don’t keep all your data in one place. don’t trust a service to take care of your emails, documents, photos and messages. store all these things in different, trustworthy (preferably open source) places. there is absolutely no reason google has to know everything about you.

do your own research as well, don’t just trust the first vpn service your favourite youtube gets sponsored by. don’t trust random tech blogs to tell you what the best cloud storage service is — they get good money for advertising one or the other. compare shit on your own or ask a tech savvy friend to help you. you’ve got this.

#internet privacy #privacy #vpn #google docs #ai scraping #psa #ai #archive of our own #ao3 writer #mine #textpost

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httpscomexe · 1 month ago

Text

No, You Don't

Day 3 of Kink-Tober - Bondage

Summary: You knew he was crazy for you, but not that crazy.

(Find What I’m currently writing by checking my pinned post)

Parings: Peter Parker x Reader

Warnings: (Lmk if I missed any) Stalking, implied murder, blood, revolution, pv (Not very long), intruder, drugging, language, cheating, and finally, bondage kink. (I absolutely hate this, but lmk how you guys feel).

Main tags: @cellyx33 @shybluebirdninja

Word Count: 3295 (Find my Kink-Tober list here)

P.S. If you would like to be added to the Kink-Tober tag list, just let me know.

He had everything figured out. It was the perfect plan to ask you to Prom. Everything was going to plan, at least on his side. He had already bought some flowers, and he made a poster all by himself (with a little help from Ned), so now all he needed to do was find you, ask you. Tell you his lines, the ones he rehearsed in front of the mirror about a thousand times. He knew exactly where you were right now. As soon as he turned the corner, he knew you would be standing at your locker. But he pauses. His eyes glued on you and…

Flash…?

What were you doing… his hands on your waist, and his lips connected to yours. Peters turns back around, using the wall as his shield.

He thinks about it. He wasn’t sure whether or not it was even true. It made no sense to him, he never expected you to kiss Flash of all people. But he knew he would have to do something about it. Something to ensure you were only his…

“Hey!” You hear his footsteps behind you before he stops in front of you, a huge smile on his face as his body keeps you from walking any further. “Hey, where are you going?”

“Home, Peter. I’ve had a long day.”

“Yea, I heard what happened, I’m sorry.” He steps aside, and starts walking next to you. He’s been rather clingy this week.

“It’s not that big of a deal, why are you apologising?”

“Well I know how bad you wanted to be in the play.”

“Not bad enough to care.”

“Then what’s bothering you?” You.

“I’m just tired, exams really snuck up on us this year.” You throw him a lame excuse, hoping he would just leave you be.

Obviously you didn’t hate him, but you weren’t exactly close to him either. You had no fucking idea who he was until he randomly decided to start popping up behind you in the halls, asking you random questions, or telling you random things about yourself, then the second Flash showed up, he shuts up, and leaves. It was weird, and you didn’t think much of it. You had even told Flash about it, which he wanted to kick Peter's ass, but you easily made him drop the situation, deciding it would be best to ignore it.

“Yea…” His voice goes quiet, and you know Flash is nearby.

“Hey baby…” Flash wraps his arm around your waist and presses a kiss to your forehead. “Hey loser.” He nods towards Peter, who offers him a half-witted smile and nod.

“Sup Flash.” He shuffles awkwardly on his feet. “I’ll uh… I’ll catch you later Y/N, nice seeing you.” Peter turns, walking in the opposite direction from the exit.

“He’s so weird.”

“Hey don’t mean!” You smack his arm jokingly, his arm moving to go around your shoulders and press another kiss to your head.

“What? I’m not wrong. You know he’s fucking weird. He follows you everywhere you go.”

“I know… I think he’s just lonely.” You shrug, walking out the door as he holds it open for you.

“I’m still taking you home right?”

“Yes Flashy.”

“And date night tomorrow?”

“Of course.”

Well shit… You groan, rolling onto your back, letting the outfit you had planned for tonight fall onto the ground for you to pick up later.

It didn’t bother you much that he cancelled the date the first time. Then there was a second time, then a third, and this was the fourth time. You were starting to get annoyed. It was a different excuse every time. There was first studying for an exam, he didn’t even show up to school the next day for the exam, then there was his dad in the hospital for breaking his arm, the next day you saw pictures on his facebook of him playing golf, last time is was his car broke down, and he didn’t want you driving because your car was in the shop, and now this.

Of course, you didn’t believe him. His mother always got back from work at 7PM, and the date was planned for 8. Also, you knew there was Saturday school today because your bestfriends little brother went there every Saturday. You are honestly debating just ending the relationship.

But he’s so sweet. You think to yourself, turning onto your side and hugging a pillow as you keep yourself from crying over some stupid boy. You’d been with him for three years now, and he wasn’t such a jerk in the beginning.

When you first started dating, he would show up randomly at your house while you were in your pyjamas and minion slippers eating pizza for breakfast, a beautiful set of flowers in his hands, a new one every week to replace the old ones. Now he doesn’t even buy you water. You knew something was up when he stopped throwing his arm over your shoulders in public. He’s only been doing it since Peter has been hanging around you.

Peter.

God he was annoying. Where did he even come from? You were just chilling in the halls looking through your locker like it was a fridge and some random snack would eventually appear, then he was there, with that stupid smile on his face that made him look like the most innocent puppy, the most adorable stupid smile, and all he said was ‘hi.’ before awkwardly walking away, you could swear he was sweating bullets.

You knew he liked you. He couldn’t possibly make it more obvious. With his daily goodmorning texts that you’ve only responded to about 3 times in the past two months, and nightly goodnight texts, and the three times a week good afternoon text when he wakes up late. You haven’t even put his name as a contact in your phone, you know that would only piss off Flash when he does his weekly “Do you have any boys in your contacts?” check every Monday.

Wow.

You lie there, staring at the wall.

How stupid were you? You were in one of the most toxic and un-trustworthy relationships possible and you’re only just now noticing it?

You put your all into Flash, making sure he was okay every second of the day, always the one planning days out. You were even expected to pay for the dinner tonight. Stupid considering he was the rich one in a big house.

You pick up your phone to check his location, he was home, and his little brother was at school. His parents were working.

You sigh. His little brother is at school. A bing comes from your phone, your friends name popping up as a notification: Hey, still going out with Flash tonight?

You toss your phone to the foot of the bed and sit up, not caring when it bounces off the mattress and falls to the floor and under the bed. That piece of shit. He was cheating on you. It was obvious, and you’ve deflected that thought a thousand times, you’ve never wanted to believe it, so hearing it was enough for the waterworks to break, thanking God you were home alone so you could cry as loud as you want, which you do.

Leaning back against your headboard, your hands move to your eyes as tears begin to fall down your cheeks, an occasional sob coming from your throat as you stand up. You were so fucking done. You take some jewellery from your desk, necklaces and bracelets he had bought you when you first started dating, and you throw it into a bag, then you storm over to your wardrobe and you find two hoodies that you had borrowed from you, tossing those next to the little plastic bag, your tears still falling from your eyes and clouding your vision as you curse profanities and complain about what’s happened. Then you freeze.

Your parents weren’t supposed to be home, but the sound of the floor creaking just outside of your room has your heart stopped. You were never a fan of being home alone, making every little sound scare the shit out of you.

But this wasn’t just a little sound. It was the creak of the floor, just a few inches from your door on the right most piece of wood that had made the sound, and that only happens when it’s been walked on. So yea, you were scared, and confused. Someone was outside your door.

“Layla?” You shout out, thinking maybe your sister got home from school early, but there’s no response. “Mom…?” Your voice begins shaking, and you reach back inside of your wardrobe, gripping the neck of a metal bat before approaching your door. “Is that you Hank?” You call another name, your dog's name, then your heart skips as you head quick heavy steps running down the hallway, and back down the stairs. “Alexa, lock the front door!” You shout, not sure why. You want them to leave, but you just lock the door and you dart down the stairs, following the sound of your dogs growling. You turn the corner and there Hank was, his hair standing on his back and his ears pinned to the back of his head. He was a big dog, a German Shepherd with a damned strong bite force. Something your moms ex found out the hard way. But Hank wouldn’t attack without a command, so he stood there, blocking the exit as he stared up and the man dressed in all black, a hoodie over his head. “Who are you?” You shout, gripping the bat harder as you prepare to help your dog fuck this dude up.

“I uh… I don’t want any trouble. I tried knocking but you didn’t answer, and the door was unlocked.” It was true, your mom never locked the door behind her when she left to work.

“So you think it’s okay to just walk in?” Your voice is stern, and you approach him, his eyes landing on your bat “Hank, go lie down, good boy.” You tell your dog, and he hides his teeth before leaving the door, giving the man a little side eye before walking away.

“I don’t want any trouble, I was just worried…” His voice cracks mid sentence, and you swear you recognised the voice. “P-Peter…?” He’s silent as he drops his hands and stares at you. He looks back at where your dog was standing before removing his hoodie. “What the fuck are you doing in my house?” You shout as he walks towards you.

“You weren’t answering me texts, and they weren’t going through. I was worried.”

“So you come into my home uninvited?” He doesn’t say anything again, and his eyes drift down to the metal bat in your hand, which you keep a nice grip on.

“I’m sorry…”

“Get out.” You tell him, pointing towards the door he came in through.

“I just wanted to talk.”

“Well I don’t, get out.”

“I have a gift for you.” Of course he did.

“Look, I get you’re trying to be friendly, but I have a boyfriend, Peter.”

“No, you don’t.” His voice lowers, almost sinisterly as he approaches you, a little too close for comfort as you take a single step back. “Can we go to your room? Your dog is…” He turns around, his eyes landing on the dog who’s cautiously watching him. “A little paranoid.”

You think about it for a moment before sighing. What harm could he possibly do? You wonder, then turn towards the stairs as you lead him up to your room, the rightmost piece of wood creaking under your weight, and he closes the door behind him for you.

“What’s in it?”

“It’s a surprise, but do you have a restroom I could use first?” He asks, and you look him up and down, not sure you trusted him enough to even use his restroom, and you notice his gloves.

“Yea, it's over there.” You nod your head towards a closed door in your room, and he goes into it quickly after he places the box with a little pink bow on your desk.

What could he have possibly gotten you? You trail your fingers over the little pink bow on the white box, and curiosity gets the best of you, your index finger and thumb pulling open the bow, and then you open the box. The item inside is covered by black feathers, so you push them aside, and the second your eyes catch what's in the box, you’re horrified. An immediate sick feeling bubbling up through your stomach as you cover your mouth and involuntarily gag. That was a fucking finger. You tell yourself, sickened, but it wasn’t the worst part. The promise ring on the finger was Flashes. It was a little cold band, adorned with a little pink heart, and cute diamonds curling around the band itself. You had the same one on your ring finger.

You had to get the fuck out of there. You tell yourself, but your hand pauses just before you touch the door handle, which was covered in some sort of white shit. Spider webs? You tilt your head in question. Your phone. Where was your phone? You quickly make your way to your bed, tossing the sheets around in search of your phone, then the bathroom door opens. Peter stepped out, his hoodie off in place of a grey shirt you’ve seen him wear often, but it never had the dark stains on the front that it did now, and his presence immediately makes you back away from your bed, and to the other side of the room to create distance.

“I said it was a surprise.” He sighs, tossing his hoodie to the floor before reaching up and removing his shirt, leaving his chest naked. He was fucking built.

“You need to leave, Peter.” Your voice shakes, but it’s confident.

“Come on now, he was cheating on you. He deserved it.” His voice lowers as he stalks towards you, only stopping when your back hits a wall. You hear your phone buzz, and behind him you see the screen light up with a text from under your bed. You had dropped it earlier.

“Peter-”

“Shh…” He shushes you, pushing his lower body against you, still dressed in your pyjamas. “You deserve so much better than him.”

“Peter, leave. Now.” You whisper, your intent was to shout, but you can’t seem to with his proximity. It made you nervous.

“I just wanna touch you…” He tells you, one of his hands reaching to gently touch your waist.

“This is your last warning.” He chuckles, he thinks you’re joking. Fine. You tell yourself. I warned you. Your knee comes up, striking him in his stomach and he groans and curls over in pain as you rush over to your bed, your fingers an inch away before some sort of white string, the same on the handle of your door, shoots out and grabs your phone, looking back, it was now in his hand, the little white web connected to it.

“I tried to do this the easy way.” He squeezes your phone, and it crushes in his hands. “But I’m done waiting.” He growls, moving back towards you as you try to crawl away, but he grabs your ankles and yanks you back before reaching down and pulling you up by your hair. “You don’t want to behave? Fine.” He tosses you onto the bed, moving you and manhandling you with his strength as he moves you to take off your shorts and top, leaving you in your red lace set. “See how pretty you are? Fuck.” He groans a little before bending down, leaning to lick a place between your thighs.

“Peter!” You shout, attempting to back away, but his grip moves to tighten on your waist.

“Just stay still…” His voice shakes with urgency, “I need to have you, I can’t wait any fucking longer…” He groans, pulling you close and forcing you to wrap your legs around his waist before pushing his lips to yours, your hands instinctively pushing him away, but his hand just moves up, wrapping around your throat to keep you close, and you continue batting at him, but he seems locked onto you. “Stop fucking fighting me…” His voice shakes more, he’s desperate, you realise as he starts to hump you, your centre still covered by your thin lace panties, you hated to admit it, but it was turning you on. “Take these off…” He demands, but begins to do it himself, leaning back to hook his fingers through the lace of your panties before tugging them down your thighs, your hands swatting at him the entire time. “That's enough…” He growls, lifting you by your thighs as he throws you further back onto the bed, then he grabs your wrists and pins them against the bed frame.

“Fuck- Peter-!” Suddenly, your mouth is covered by more of the webbing as it shoots from a device on his wrist, then your wrists are also covered by the thick webbing, making it impossible to move your arms at all.

“Just stay still… We both need this.” You groan, the sound stifled by the webbing on your face. “You’ll love me when you feel how much better I am than him…” He reaches down and undoes his jeans, the sound of his zipper seeming to cloud your head before he slides the jeans down with his boxers, his cock springing free from it’s confinement, and he gives it a few strokes before inching closer to you, the sound behind the webbing on your face becoming more desperate. “God girl, staying so still…” He presses a kiss to your head as he lines his cock up with your pussy, seemingly admiring it as he strokes his dick. “Such a pretty pussy…” He whispers against your ear, then he slowly begins to slide his cock inside of you, not wasting any time in pumping in and out of you as he fills you perfectly. “Feels so good…” He groans, but it turns into a moan as you feel him already leaking inside of you. That was fast. You look him in the eyes as he pulls out faster than he’d gotten inside of you, his eyes meeting yours. “Fuck I’m sorry… You just feel so fucking good…” He groans, leaning down to press kisses to your throat and down your collar bone, and you’re frozen in fear, and in second hand embarrassment.

He reaches up, and tears the string off of your mouth, a whine coming from your lips as it painfully pulls on your skin, and you part your lips, short breaths leaving your throat as you sit with him between your legs, not sure what to do.

“I’m sorry baby I-”

“Get the fuck off of me…”

“Don’t talk to me like that…” He warns, pulling his pants back up with his boxers before reaching into his back pocket.

“I said get the fuck off of me Peter-” Your voice catches in your breath as he holds two little capsules in his hands, tearing one of the plastic things open with his teeth before attaching the needle to the bottle in his other hand.

Oh shit, oh shit.

“Won’t be such a smart mouth after this, will you?” He takes the lid off the needle with his teeth, then sticks it into the side of your neck, making you yelp, and of everything that’s happened today, that had to be the worst part.

You fucking hated needles.

#marvel #marvel smut #fanfic #peter parker #yandere #spider man #x reader #marvel fanfiction #smut #spidey #peter x reader #peter parker x reader #spiderman x reader #peter parker x you #tasm peter parker #peter parker fanfiction #kinktober #2024 #kinktober 2024

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screechingsandwichtriumph · 5 months ago

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Platonic yandere avengers x reader x romantic yandere peter parker

Idek how to begin this so beware unlucky readers

Summary: you are an idol ,you are an avenger. How can they not be slightly a little bit protective of you

Warnings: yandere themes , stalking, obsession, fighting, blood , I think this is it

Also this will include(I'm sorry I didn't exactly do the like main six or whatever) Tony , Steve , Bucky , Clint , Natasha , Wanda , Peter

This is longer than I expected and I kinda don't like it but here it is in its full glory<3

When you joined the team , they blamed their protectiveness over you to your personality

I mean you are so cute and look so innocent , how can they not want to protect you ?

Tony had totally not hacked into every single account that you own / have owned in your life and he absolutely hasn't researcher your dad's Facebook to find childhood pictures of you. And he surely didn't print those out and handed then around in the team. Also expect to be spoilt rotten. Complained once about a stain on your favorite jacket? Have three more of the exact same just in case

Steve claimed to need specifically your help to understand how to operate anything mechanical ad expect to have a lot of movie marathons. He will read you before you sleep even though you are not a child anymore because ' he just liked when he is reading out loud'

Bucky would be the type of person to dig in deep in your life. He wouldn't stalk you specifically. That is tasked to someone else. No . He would stalk Al your friends and all your exes and highschool teachers.ad if he had to he would accidentally make some of them he consider bad influences disappear

Clint along with Natasha are your stalkers

Clint will always be hidden close by in case you need help with something (like , idk someone dead?) and my man could literally enter your home , casually look around a bit , stare at your decorations , and be out without you even realizing he was never there

Natasha on the other hand isn't so subtle. You could easily spot her on the other end of the street wearing sunglasses and staring at you intensely. Once you were in a bookstore admiring some books and stationary that you did not buy and the next day they were at your door with a little note that said ' saw them and they reminded me of you - Natasha ' as if you hadn't seen her looking at you. It isn't even that she is stupid . She just doesn't care

Wanda practically lived at your head at this point knowing things about you , you were barely aware of. Like , what do you mean you can't remember that one time you went snowboarding and fell? What do you mean how she knows that story and that you never told her? Of course you did silly!

Peter now was clearly in live with you and the first to meet you and get obsessed over you. When after some time he went to Tony and told him about his feelings , Tony supported his feelings to the max since this could be beneficial for all of them. Peter would never leave , they trusted him and he could keep you close.

Now you seem like a soft baby that needs protection from everyone ands that's mainly due to the way you present yourself and act. You have the most bubbly soft personality and everyone loves that

Being an idol , and an avenger was a dream come true for you , so when you had a big show and gave to them tickets to come see you they of course came( Tony almost bought all tha tickets so it could be only you but Steve stopped him)

Heating a music so fitting to your aesthetic it was like they fell in love (platonically and romantically for Peter) all over again. You are just so sweet and cute

Then a day came where an attack happened in new York and all of you jumped to action. They had no time to stop you from going to battle or even think about doing it really. The only think they could do was act.

Now , your powers were so incredibly powerful that they never thought you would have to fight face to face with someone. But they were terrible wrong

Once the fight was over they all spotted you on the corner of a building with bloody fists and a small trail of blood staining your pretty pink costume. A fan of yours was there asking you to take a picture . You kindly smiled at the camera revealing a set of bloody teeth.

Your fan seemed super excited at that and almost yelled out in joy. You bid her goodbye and went towards the group of your shocked friends

They all just stared at you in an unusually bloody shape , that somehow seemed fitting (?)

Later on they were shown a video of you with a bunch of people , that you were brutally fighting with . They were all left to shreds when you left your head held high.( Peter was even more into you after that)

Asks are always open<3

#x reader #fanfic #🕷️#peter parkerx you #yandere marvel #yandere spiderman #yandere peter parker #yandere tony stark #yander captain America #yandere bucky barnes #yandere wanda maximoff #yandere netasha Romanoff #yandere clint barton #idon reader #tony stark x reader #natasha romanoff #natasha romanoff x reader #wanda maximoff x reader #bucky barnes x reader

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marsoid · 1 year ago

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@wip i have a tumblr feature suggestion!!

Right now, Twitter (or whatever it’s called now) is the only social app that allows PRIVATE ACCOUNTS (instagram doesn’t count because you can’t have text posts. You expect me to post an image every time I want to vent? Facebook also doesn’t count because I hate it.)

I know we have the ability currently to make our side blogs private, but here’s the issue with that for me:

1. They can’t be FOLLOWED, you can apparently only add “members” to the blog.

2. I thought I had more points but really it keeps coming back to the fact that they can’t be followed. I don’t want to put in a password every time I want to check in on a friend. The convenience of making your own private blog and following your friends’ private blogs cannot be overstated. It’s the ONE THING that’s keeping me attached to twitter.

What’s so great about having a private blog?

Safety. Toggle your blog to “Private” in Visibility settings if you need a breather from outside attention. Only your followers will be able to see any new posts you make. Old posts will still be visible outside your blog however, similar to when a blog is deactivated I assume.

Friends-only space. Sharing thoughts and art with only a few close friends is more comfortable for a lot of people.

Actual privacy. Even if you have 0 followers, even if you don’t use tags, the tumblr search will still pull up any word used in the post itself, meaning if someone searches the right thing, your posts could still show up to anyone. Setting your blog to private would remove this concern.

Journaling. Private twitters are nice, but a private tumblr? Getting to write out a BIG LENGTHY RANT for only close friends? Hell yea

Keep explicit content away from those who don’t want to see it. Setting a blog to private is a great way to keep certain art and writings out of easily reachable spaces.

Another bridged gap between twitter and tumblr. Ok listen. I’m not necessarily advocating for every twitter user to join tumblr. But I know that’s something the tumblr staff is interested in, so I’m adding it here for that reason. I for one would ditch twitter in a heartbeat if I could have a private blog, and would probably have an easier time convincing some straggling friends to join for a feature like this. Just sayin

I also made some quick and sloppy mockups

Anyway i guess that’s the gist of it

If anyone has anything to add pls feel free. I really want a private blog LMAO

#tumblr suggestions #tumblr #private blogs

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kyra45 · 1 year ago

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Keys guide to scam spotting (v2)

Hi! I’m Key (Or Jess depending on which blog you know me from) and I’ll be telling you some better information and detail on how to spot a scam account be it a pet scam or a donation scam. All information is based on my own experiences and I’ll try to keep this post accessible so the only big text is the title. This information should help in understanding how these scams work and how to spot them without having to do too much work. As always, if you appreciate what I do and want to show it, sharing these info posts helps other users see it and learn about blogs that might send them asks.

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What is a donation scam? - A donation scam is when someone is being deceptive to get money by claiming they need mutual aid or support. For example, they are using the story from someone else’s fundraising post in order to get donations and won’t tell anyone their lying. This is called a donation scam. While the story may be legitimate, it is a story stolen off someone else and means the real person isn’t getting the support they asked for because someone else is using it. These stories are often stolen off Facebook/GoFundMe or even Instagram and could come from a private account or group so searching wouldn’t come up with a source. The images may also be stolen from somewhere else too.

How do you spot a donation scam? - Donation scams are usually easily spotted if you take a closer look at the information being given. Stolen stories will often have certain parts removed and replaced with the information the scammer added themselves. Sometimes the post may be composed of two different parts and won’t sound right if you pay close attention. For example, part of the story sounds fine but then the second part of the story seems out of place and doesn’t match up with the beginning. Another thing to check is how old the account is and if you have timestamps on you can see if an older post is backdated. You can also check to see if the account has tagged certain blogs in their post though this isn’t always a sign of a scam.

What is post backdating? - Post backdating is changing the dates of a reblogged post to look older then it really is. While this can be used with good intentions, scammers often use this to trick people into thinking their account is years old or even a few months old. The one way to find this is by turning on timestamps in dashboard settings and checking ‘other notes’ in reblogs. This is the only way to see the true date something was shared. Accounts who backdate posts will often claim someone told them to do it or they’ll say they didn’t know it was bad. However, you can not accidentally backdate a post.

Did the account contact you first? - A common occurrence is that you will get scam asks if you share a popular or trending post. Usually these accounts send asks to anyone they find without care of who it is and might lie as well if you ask them how they found you. In general, a brand new account shouldn’t easily find you unless they were watching the notes of popular posts. Occasionally these new accounts will even send asks to certain accounts they shouldn’t know about unless they have seen the account before. If your DMs are closed, the ask may ask you to message them because it’s urgent but all they will do is ask for money or ask you to loan them some money.

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What is a pet donation scam? - A pet donation scam is where someone has went and looked around for vet fundraisers online and then took it for themselves by saving the images and story while erasing any links that would lead to the real pet getting support. They will then repost it to tumblr and say it’s actually their pet needing urgent care with the post title being very large and in red text for a sense of urgency. Sometimes they’ll say they can’t use GoFundMe because it has a fee or something else. This is a scam because they are not the owner of the pet and have stolen everything meaning no funds sent will be towards the actual pets care.

How do you spot a pet donation scam? - A common way of a pet donation scam is by how old the pinned post is and how many posts are reblogged on the account. Usually there is only a few posts shared and always shared around the same time and then no more. These posts all come from a trending topic, a fandom, or are popular posts. Another thing is checking the bio in Google search and seeing if it’s been took from someone else as the scammer never makes their own bio. Reverse image search their pfp to see who it really belongs to in case they stole it. Another important thing is to check their link and see if it matches up with the vet bill. Since most pictures are stolen off a private group, reverse image search won’t find them. The name they may have is likely not their real name and is stolen.

Did the account send you an ask? - Regardless of what the ask says, it usually requests you to answer it privately or message them so they can tell you thanks. These asks may have several emojis in them as well but their always just copy/pasted and sent to multiple users all at once on a daily basis. The private answer is so the ask won’t show up if someone is looking it up. If their post is public, there shouldn’t be a reason to need a private response to an ask you have sent to many people unless you are trying to hide it. Messaging these accounts is useless because they’ll lie to you when you ask them questions back or just ignore you.

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What is a fake check scam? - A fake check scam is when a generally blank account with no pfp will message you after you used certain tags and ask you if you still need help. Even if you have links to send support, these accounts will ignore that in order to ask for your personal information such as phone number or banking details. They will then offer to send you a check. This is a fake check and cashing it won’t be scamming the scammer. You will lose money instead and the scammer will already move on to someone else. Never give them your private information.

Are there any other scam types? - When you tag posts, you’ll often get messages from accounts claiming they can help you get more attention on your campaign but you have to pay them money or go off-site to contact them. These are fake support accounts and they always use stock images while pretending to be officially affiliated and act like their Digital Marketing title means their not trying to scam you. They get defensive when called out and may start insulting you when they figure out you are already aware they aren’t legitimate.

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What is a funeral donation scam? - A funeral donation scam is when an account posts saying someone has passed away but the images they used are actually took from someone else and may be photoshopped. Bills may be edited to suit their story and names may be changed to someone else’s. This isn’t a real common scam! But it’s happened a lot lately but the basics are the account will steal someone’s pictures and pass them off as theirs and when caught will say they were forced to or know it’s wrong but did it anyway.

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In closing, this is information regarding common scam types you’ll find on tumblr. It’s always suggested to pay close attention to asks you get it they fit the criteria of being sent from a scammer. Answer the asks publicly and call out the blog. The scammer may block you as a result, but it’ll help your ask be seen it someone has looked it up. I suggest never spamming asks to share your pinned aid post because unfortunately scammers do this and you shouldn’t ignore people saying to please stop spamming. Always check to see if someone is comfortable getting these kinds of asks too because it won’t look too good if you have sent them an ask when they say please don’t.

As always, not everyone asking for support is a scammer! Legitimate people are out there. It’s just unfortunate scammers have made it harder for them to get help. You can always do your own research and compare it to what others have given and come to your own conclusion.

#scam #donation scam #pet donation scam #how to spot a scam blog #psa #important information #long post #longpost #pet scam

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