#good effectivity algorithms

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Bury Your Gays

Horror

a scriptwriter in hollywood who’s getting attention & an Oscar nom after working in the industry for years, but is being pressured by algorithm-obsessed producers to kill off the queer characters in the season finale of the show he writes

and when he starts getting stalked by the monsters he wrote (based on traumas of his past) he has to figure out how to survive, along with his best friend and boyfriend

[sciderman]

How do you feel about the increase in really weird NSFW ads on here (advertising panels that look like sexual encounters, and AI art apps that pride themselves on porn) but will take down NSFW posts from their users, even if it isn't technically sexual.

i hate all social media and it's consistent prioritising the advertisers over the users and the internet simply was a better place before capitalism sunk its hooks into it

[dad-friend]

ok listen. i know hbomberguy said he doesnt wanna become the type of youtube who spends their time doing drama videos or ruining ppl careers but like. if somebody doesnt start doing crazy detailed research on ryan hall, yall then i will

[didnt-hear-cold-as-you-live]

.

[forged-in-kaoss]

Muse :: Sunrise, FL 2019

Algorithm :: Interlude + Hysteria :: Houston Jam + Micro Cuts D&B riff :: Take a Bow :: Assassin [Metal Medley]

[blujayonthewing]

googling 'natural spider repellents' in a private window so my browser doesn't think I 1) love pseudoscience or, more crucially, 2) hate spiders

[eggshellsareneat]

Alright, I think I like tumblr now.

A pun post crossed my dash, and I reblogged it with an equally bad pun in return. A couple of my followers find it funny, it's a good day for everyone.

That was on July 7th.

Virality on Reddit was entirely algorithmic. You could garner a couple crossposts, but the success of a post was entirely dependent on whether or not it hit r/all--the main page of Reddit. If your post does that, it's immediately exposed to 10x the number of people and immediately gets upvoted.

On my pun post, I get a couple reblogs. And those reblogs get a couple reblogs--nobody really adds any content to the post, it just gets a couple reblogs here and there.

There's a specific chain of reblogs that I'd like to focus on. The most popular post on this chain has about 25 reblogs on it. Half the posts have three reblogs or fewer. Five posts in this chain have just one reblog total.

But the reblog chain keeps going. And going. It breaches containment many times over. And finally, after a chain THIRTY SIX posts long, at 9:30 AM, July 22nd this morning, it hits a popular account.

99% percent of the people who have seen the post--virtually unchanged from how it left my dash--have seen it because it was curated by 36 different people. That's insane to me.

None of those 36 people know that they're part of this chain. They saw a post, reblogged it, and moved on. If any one of these people had not reblogged, the post would have a fraction of the impact it has.

And yet, after two weeks, the post has effectively hit the main page of tumblr. It was picked up, only because people liked it enough to show it to their followers. There were no algorithms necessary.

You really, truly, cannot get this on any other website.

[paganinpurple]

AO3 Etiquette -UPDATED

Based on both decent and not so decent replies, I have made some changes to my original post below.

It would seem a whole new kind of AO3 reader/writer is emerging and it is becoming clear not everyone quite understands how the website community works. Here is some basic guidance on how most people expect you to go about using AO3 to keep this a fun community archive that funtions correctly:

As well as likes, kudos is for when the story was interesting enough to make you finish reading. If it sucked or was badly written, you probably left. If you finished it, you liked it - so kudos.

If you really liked it, you should try to comment. It can be long and detailed or a literal keysmash. Writers don't care, we just love comments.

No critisism unless the author has specifically asked or agreed to hear it (so use your notes to say if you want some constructive feedback). Even constructive critisism is a no-no unless an author note tells you it's okay. No, posting it online is not an open invitation for that. Many people write as a fun hobby or a way to cope with, among other things, insecurity and just want to share. Don't ruin that for them. I've seen so many authors just stop writing coz they can't handle the negative emotions the critism brings, and it's only meant to be a fun thing shared for free (pointing out tagging errors is not included in this).

Do not comment to ask the author to write/update something else. It's tacky and off-putting and will probably have the opposite effect than the one you want.

There is no algorithm, it's an archive. Use the search and filter function to add/remove the pairings/characters/tropes etc. you want to read about and it will find you the fics that fit the bill.

For this to work, writers must tag and rate stories. This avoids readers finding the wrong things and missing the stuff they want. I don't care how cringy that trope is in your eyes - it gets tagged.

The tag exception is if you don't want to tag a million things or spoil your story, you can rate it as "chose not to use warnings," and maybe tag the bare minimum.

Don't censor tags. How can someone exclude a tag if the word isn't typed out correctly? There are no content bans for terms so don't censor them.

If the tags are mostly content/trigger warnings, especially if they are things considered very fucked up or graphic, you might want to use "dead dove - do not eat" to ensure people know that you're not messing around with tags and what they get is exactly what you've warned them about.

Character A/Character B means a ROMANTIC or SEXUAL relationship of some kind. Character A&Character B is PLATONIC, like friendship or family.

Nothing is banned. This is an rule because banning one thing is a slipperly slope to banning another and another, until nothing is allowed anymore. Do not expect anyone to censor for you. Because of the tags system, you are responsible for your own reading experience.

People can create new chapters and sequels/fic series any time after they "complete" a story. So it's considered perfectly normal to subscribe, even to a finished story. You can even subscribe to the author instead just to cover your bases.

Do not repost stories or change the publishing date without an extremely good reason (like a complete top to bottom rewrite or an exchange youve written for going public). It's an archive, not social media. No one cares what's the most recent, only what fits their tag needs.

Instead of deleting a story you wrote if you hate it - consider making it anonymous or orphaning it so others can still enjoy it, without it being connected to your name anymore. If you still want to delete it, fair enough.

It's come to my attention that metaworks ARE allowed on AO3, which is something I wasn't aware of. So if you do post an essay or theory, please tag it as such so others can choose to search for it or exclude it. Art is also allowed.

The only reason this archive works is because NON ONE PROFITS. Do not link to your ko-fi or patreon or mention monetary gain in any way or you violate the terms and risk having your account removed. If anyone does link, it leaves the archive open to people claiming it's for profit and having the whole thing removed.

I KNOW there's plenty more I missed but I'm trying to cover most of the basics that people seem to be struggling with.

I invite anyone to add to this, but please explain, don't berate.

[panictimesfour]

i find it funny how my social media platforms vary in content/people. like on tumblr i'm getting random stuff on my dash and barbenheimer content on my for you (and way too many people thirsting for cillian murphy...). instagram decided i'm a diehard league of legends player. my friends on discord are gamers who don't like to talk to me or step outside their rooms, and my friends on snap are nonexistent.

it's just funny. i don't really know why.

[ceriseo]

okay 1) this could not be more lighthearted 2) if u haven’t noticed a trend of people disregarding the complexities integral to the story and acting like those complexities are detrimental to the story (ugh why did they make alicent and rhaenyra friends at first; why did they make daemon choke rhaenyra) then u are a luckier person than me. and yeah okay this is not a problem centralized to tiktok but by the virtues of the platform (short-form content & polarizing takes getting more traction) that is the content that flourishes there. additionally teams discourse (which is the primary content ab hotd on tiktok) is frankly the most boring and reductive reading of the show at its best; at its worst it promotes the most bad faith misinterpretations of characters bcs anything else diverts attention away from promoting the one true cause. all these factors lead to a tiktok fandom that by and large is not willing to interact with any larger themes or statements that the show is trying to make when they make these changes bc they only see them as taking away from the total team black/team green sympathy meter. 3) i dont really think its fair for you to 'not expect a serious response' when your own response was the snarky copy paste tiktok comment of the week. sorry

everyone thinks the showrunners have a team green bias bc they made alicent sympathetic(emphasis on pathetic)(also emphasis on simp).. but i KNOW they have a team black bias because they changed rhaenyra's ugly ass banners. no reason for that other than they knew it was too embarrassing. they knew the illiterate hotd tiktok girlies would nawt be able to defend it. they knew that it would give team green ammo the likes of which has never been seen before in the discourse. 'team black murders children' 'yeah well so does team green!!' 'ok well at least our banner FUCKS. at least it SERVES CUNT. imagine having quartered banners. imagine having quartered banners with the arryn sigil. imagine supporting rhaenyra's claim, going to war for her, and having to raise that fugly ass carpet... we may have lost but at least we served!!!'

[icthyarch]

https://spawning.substack.com/p/we-tested-glaze-art-cloaking

RE Univ. of Chicago’s Glaze program and it’s current weaknesses

[uraharasfavoriteexperiment]

~ | " mine. "

[ pairing ] roommate!kamo choso x male reader [ genres ] fluffy romance, heavily suggestive, smutty smut [ cw ] phsyical contact, making out, hickeys; dominant top!choso & submissive bottom!reader, rough couch sex, no prep or protection, heavy dirty talk, breeding kink, size kink, belly bulging kink, choking, praising, pet names (doll, bunny, baby, slut >:D), biting, choso has a teensy bit of a small blood fetish [ words ] 3304 (its crazy how much smut changes the wc bro) [ another good read !] " mine. " *sfw version* please reblog fanfictions when you read one you like! likes do not help writers' algorithms!

choso heaved a heavy, tired sigh, letting his weight fall backward into his pillows- big, fluffy, and covered in black satin pillowcases. he let out a content, grateful, and utterly exhausted moan, followed by a big yawn. he stretched his arms up toward the ceiling, then let them fall limp on either side of his body, putting him in a comfortable sort of spread-eagle position.

choso simply lay there for a while, fifteen minutes passing where he didn't think at all. he simply lay there, existing. then a thought crossed his exhaustion-clouded mind.

he'll be home soon.

i can tell him.

choso grinned excitedly, rolling over onto his side and staring over at the bedroom door. after a (really) long moment he blushed a color similar to the youtube logo, a grin spreading onto his face. he rolled over onto his back, smiling happily, then he took four seconds for his lungs to inhale a deep breath. he held it in for four seconds, then let it out, taking about six seconds to completely exhale all the carbon dioxide. he closed his eyes, finally letting himself fall asleep- he slipped gently into a light, soft slumber.

but that one thought… "i can tell him…"

that thought lingered in the front of choso's mind, a feeling similar to the effects of a happy pill befalling his body- but without the inconvenient side effects.

----------

you lingered on the doorstep of your shared apartment for a moment, yawning loudly before quickly unlocking the door to the apartment, stepping swiftly inside and closing the door behind you. you slipped quietly into the bedroom- quietly as you could, of course, because you knew for a fact that your roommate was asleep on the bed. you wouldn't have even had to look to know- he was snoring the same way you used to.

you dropped your bag onto the desk next to the book shelf, entering the en-suite bathroom.

you bent over the sink, groaning quietly into your shirt before pulling it over your head and tossing it into the hamper outside the bathroom door. you then went straight back to the sink, turning on the hot water. you filled up your cupped hands with hot water, tossing it upward and splashing it on your face. you turned and walked a couple feet and bent over the shower, shakng your head like a cat who fell into the tub. you turned again ad went to leave the bathroom, but as you reached the doorway into the bedroom your hand froze over the bathroom light switch, your face turned bright red, and your eyes widened, your heart starting to race.

choso was naked in bed, and he hadn't even pulled the covers up over himself.

well.. he had his black boxer shorts on… but nothing else.

he was otherwise completely naked, sprawled out comfortably on the bed you and he shared, in a cute sort of spread-eagle position.

choso's body was illuminated in pale white moonlight, his thickly muscled body shining in the light of the full supermoon.

you tried your very best not to look, you really did- but your efforts were futile.

"like whatcha see, bunny?"

your heart stopped for a second.

"you look absolutely delectable with that blush on your face, m/n. it makes me wanna take you for myself."

"i-um-" you started to say something to try to defend yourself, but the part of you that knew he wouldn't bully you over it shut you up real quick.

choso grinned, sitting up on his elbows and looking right at you, making direct eye contact with you.

your face turned an even more violent shade of red, now exceeding the vibrance of a japanese shrine.

choso giggled, sitting up completely in bed he stared fondly at you for a moment, then got up rather quickly and without very much warning. he made a casual, slowish beeline for you, grabbing you by the waist and pulling you flush against his chest. his hands slid up your sides, shoulders and neck, then he cupped your face in his big, warm hands, forcing you to look at him. he waited a moment, letting you catch your breath- then he stole it from you lasciviously, bending down and stealing your lips in a hot, passionate, heart-skipping kiss.

"i love you, m/n." he said simply into your lips, picking you up by your waist and pressing you against the wall, making you wrap your legs around his waist reflexively. your arms went upward entirely non-reflexively and of their own accord, wrapping around his neck and pulling him closer to you, deepening the kiss deliciously.

choso growled possessively into your mouth, purposely making you moan. he used this opportunity to slip his tongue into your mouth, squeezing your thighs with both hands before one hand went up and tangled into your hair. he yanked softly on the hair on the back of your head, right near the baby hairs, making you moan loudly into his mouth.

choso did let you breathe- eventually. before that, he spent a few seconds kissing you roughly and heatedly one more time before dropping you carefully back onto your feet and holding you avariciously against the wall with both hands on your waist. he touched his forehead to the top of your forehead right next to your hairline- he was that much taller than you- and looked into your eyes, trying to control his own breathing and heartbeat as he waited for you to say it back.

he knew you felt the same way, after all. he was a hundred and fifty-four years old, he had learned over a century ago how to read people's emotions toward him.

your chest heaved as you tried to control your breath, which had become sort of ragged and heavy as you looked up into choso's eyes, trying to find the strength to speak.

you grinned, putting your hands on his head and letting your fingers tangle into his thick, pretty black hair. you pulled him down and pressed your lips against his again, whimpering needily into the kiss in response to another low, possessive, heated growl that ripped from the bottom of choso's chest.

you let your heart slow down to its normal speed, then took another moment for your own emotions before you responded, smiling and pulling choso almost impossibly closer.

"i love you too, choso.." you pretty much whispered, blushing furiously as you tried really hard not to panic in response to the words that had just come out of your mouth.

choso grinned, hugging you tightly and picking you up again. he carried you effortlessly backward to the bed, dropping you carefully onto the black satin bedsheets.

"ugh, you're so god damned hot, cho…"

"cho?" choso repeated teasingly, "is that the first time you've called me that, m/n? or is your mouth moving faster than your heart and head?"

you blushed, pouting and looking away furiously. "no…" you spat, trying to keep up the facade, "i'm jus'- i thought it was cute. so i decided to call you cho."

choso's grin widened and he giggled, kissing you roughly before growling quietly against your lips, "say that again, i liked it." his voice was low, deep and husky, telling you that he had been in a pretty deep sleep before you had come home. the sound of his voice sent a shiver of heat and anticipation down your spine, blood rushing downward in your body.

"you're so hot, cho…" you whined into his lips, moaning whoreishly into his mouth when he used the opportunity to slip his tongue into your mouth again, his hand wrapping around your throat and squeezing ever so lightly.

"you're mine now, m/n." he hissed into your lips, wrapping his arms around your waist and hugging you tightly.

you grinned, hugging him just as tightly. "and you're mine."

"i can settle with that, kitten…" he purred into your ear, grinning when he felt your face heat up.

you grinned, blushing. "kitten? is that the first time you've called me that, choso? or is your mouth moving faster than your heart and head?"

choso chuckled, grinning widely as you mirrored his earlier cheeky comment. he slapped your cheek lightly, licking your neck.

"no, i've called you that before… i just so happen to own a diary, and no, kitten, you're not allowed to read it."

you snorted, kicking choso's cheek. "pff, i'm good. i'd rather find out the things you dream about doing to me in real time."choso's grin widened to the point where it kind of hurt, but he didn't care. he finally had you all to himself…

and he was never going to let go of you.

"mine."

you grin, growling as you pull him down into another kiss- but this one is hotter, more rough. choso growls too, his hands sliding down your waist and squeezing your ass and thighs, making you moan into his mouth. he seized the opportunity once again, shoving his tongue into your mouth as he started to grind his hips against yours.

you pulled back involuntarily, letting your head fall back into the pillows as you groaned, starting to grind your own hips up into his. he growled warningly, holding your hips down with one hand, the other tangling into your hair and yanking it just roughly enough to make you moan loudly. the sound faded into another of its kind as choso latched onto your throat with his mouth, biting down just barely hard enough to lure a bit of blood from your veins. he groaned into your neck, dragging his tongue across the wound and relishing in the sweet, yet metallic taste.

"f-ch-choso..." you whined in a high-pitched voice, your back arching up involuntarily, your body pressing up against his.

"yeah, bunny?"

"i-i need you, p-please..." you whimpered, wrapping your arms around his waist and hugging him a little tighter than you intended. choso grinned, grabbing your face with both hands and forcing you to look at him.

"that's exactly what i wanted to hear, doll." he purred in a low voice. his grin widened and he dragged his tongue across your throat again, latching onto the side of your neck right underneath the right end of your jawline. he sucked on your neck hungrily, letting himself drown in the pretty whines and moans that fell from your mouth. his chest swelled with pride as he heard his name come out a few times; clearly no one else had ever been able to reduce you to such a mess as he had without even taking his or your pants off...

choso wondered what you'd look like when he finally did.

"choso, c'mooon..." you whined needfully, burying your face in his neck and pulling him closer. choso's hand slid down your chest and abs, letting his nails scrape softly against your skin and grinning when you moaned quietly in response to the feeling.

"take your pants off, bunny," he whispers quietly, sitting up and grinning again when you whined in response to the loss of contact. you sit up, kicking your jeans off quickly before pulling choso into another kiss. choso growls into your mouth, his body shaking a little in response to your hands sliding down his waist and squeezing his thighs.

"your hands feel so good, baby..." he whispered into your mouth, kissing you back in the rough, heated, passionate pace that you had set. he sneakily slips a hand into the waistband of your boxer shorts, letting his fingers play around affectionately (more possessively than anything else) with the skin of your hips.

"want me to fuck you, m/n?" choso whispered into your ear, "yeah? want me to fill you up with my cock? fuck you till you can't breathe enough to moan my name?"

a sound came out of your mouth somewhere between a moan and a groan, your voice dripping with need that was more than evident to your bright, empathic roommate.

"god yes, choso, please, fuck me, i need it so bad-" you whined, hugging choso even tighter. he grinned, growling predatorily as his hands raked down your body for what had to be the billionth time that night. his fingers hooked into the waistband of your boxers again and he pulled them down to your thighs, leaning down and purring into your ear.

"take them off, doll."

you grinned, pushing him off and kicking off your boxers, exposing yourself completely to him.

"finally..." choso groans, using his body to shove you down onto the bed, and now was the moment you noticed that choso had removed his own boxers, probably a while ago. he grabs you by the chin, his grip gentle but firm as he turns your head back upward to look at him.

"like whatcha see, bunny?" he repeats, grinning. before you can respond, he leans down and quickly grabs you up in another kiss. you nod furiously, and choso grabs you by your waist and lets his weight fall on top of you, then rolls over so that you're on top of him.

"ride me, then," he growls, "if you last long enough i'll give you exactly that... i'll fuck you till you can't breathe."

as he speaks, his hand slides up your body and he slips two fingers into your mouth. you take them gladly, sucking on them happily for about thirty seconds before choso pulls them out. both of you grin as you see the string of saliva that connected your lips with his fingers. he rolled you over again and sat up between your legs. he grabbed your hips and pulled you toward his hips, wrapping your thighs around his waist.

choso grinned, leaning down and dragging his tongue up your stomach, pressing a soft kiss to your lips. his body heated up in response to the whoreish moan that came out of your mouth when he slowly, carefully slid his two fingers into you. he bent down and kissed you again- this time, it was more soft and comforting than the other times your lips had connected with his that night.

"does that feel good, bunny?" he purred into your ear, twisting his wrist a little with his finger still inside you. he waited till you nodded vigorously, then pressed another finger inside you. you moaned quietly as he moved his fingers skillfully inside you, making your thighs trying to close up. but because they were still wrapped around choso, all you ended up doing was squeezing his waist and making him growl again.

as a result of your mind steadily becoming more fogged with pleasure, you giggled. choso's eyebrow went up, and he grinned again. you giggled again, making grabby hands at him. now it was his turn to giggle; he leaned into your embrace, letting you pull him down into another kiss.

"i really need you to stop teasing me," you said with a cute, aggressive pout that nearly broke choso's heart. he chuckled, carefully pulling his fingers out of you and quickly replacing the emptiness with the tip of his cock. he touched his forehead to yours, using one hand to pull you gently up by the back of your neck into a kiss as he slowly, carefully pushed his length into your tight hole.

"f-fuck..." you and choso moaned in unison. your eyes rolled back into your head for a moment as you tried your best to process the feeling of being so full- filled to the brim with the man you'd been so madly, hopelessly in love with for so long.

choso growled like a hungry animal as he bottomed out inside you. unable to hide from the urge to mess you up, he pressed his hand into your stomach as he started to move. you barely managed to contain yourself as this tiny, simple action sent you careening up into cloud nine, moaning loudly several times in a row- choso's name was sprinkled into the mix.

"f-nnngh, fuck, choso, fuck that feels so good..." you moaned.

"yeah, i know, bunny," he growled, applying more pressure as he started to move faster, putting a bit more force into his thrusts. he kept on like this for a couple of minutes, adding more speed and strength in small increments until, without any warning for poor little you, he hit your prostate. now, this would have felt damn good, yes, but choso was laying on top of you at a very precise angle, and when he hit your prostate, he hit it at an angle that drove every nerve in your body up the wall, dragging a sound out of your throat that could have been accused of being a scream, and the accuser would be correct.

choso only grinned evilly when he heard that sound come out of your mouth. his hand snaked up your body, relieving the pressure and making you whine in protest- but the sound quickly turned into a strangled moan as choso wrapped his hand around your throat and squeezed.

you whined, squirming impatiently underneath choso's weight as your body started to burn with the immeasurable craving for more... more. you needed more. and you barely managed to voice this through the hazy white fog of pleasure clouding your brain cells.

"ch-choso- more-nngh, more, please..." you whimpered, hugging choso tightly with both your arms and legs, using your body to urge him to give in to your request. and to your luck, choso grinned, wrapping his arms around you and squeezing tightly as he started to move more quickly, abusing your prostate just the way you'd asked him to. the coil in your gut... it was starting to melt, it was so hot.

it burned, it made every nerve ending in your body flare up. it made your whole body feel alive, and this was not a feeling you had felt before-

and you weren't a virgin.

choso hit your prostate particularly hard at one point and your eyes rolled up into your skull, a feral groan tearing its way out of the back of your throat. your whole body shook as your long-awaited release hit you head-on, choso's name falling from your love-swollen lips like a mantra. choso didn't hold out much longer than you; the feeling of your body pulling him in like a black hole didn't help very much. he squeezed you with all the remaining strength in his arms, burying his face in your neck and biting down possessively as he filled you to the brim.

choso collapsed completely into your body, letting the warmth of your arms surround and comfort him as he came down from the high. his hand slid up your body, touching the side of your neck and caressing the [s/c] perfectly love-bruised skin with his thumb. you smiled weakly, doing your best to focus on the feeling, using it to ground yourself back in reality and come down from your own high.

"that was…" choso started, trailing off.

"i don't even know how to label it…" you whispered.

"i don't think there's even a word for it." choso realized after spending a couple seconds trying to get his brain to think. "i do know one thing, though… i love you, m/n. i want you all to myself, forever. is that alright with you, bunny?"

you grinned, burrowing your nose into his neck and nodding furiously.

"yeah, that's better than alright."

"then y'know what that makes you, my pretty little slut?" choso said, moving his head up a little and looking into your eyes.

"what?" you challenged, your grin widening. choso leaned down and pressed his lips to yours in a kiss that was impossibly strong and heated after what you and he had just done.

"mine."

© uraharasfavoriteexperiment.

[angelofacidx]

Pet

Dark Ghoap x Fem! Reader

CW: Kidnapping, drug mention, violence, death mention.

Johnny had an incredibly easy time keeping himself busy during retirement. There was always something to be done around the house, a new local sport team to join, or an outing he’d convince Simon to humor him on with a bat of his lashes. However, years of military service were not kind to his body. Cleaning the gutters would leave a strain in his shoulder. Bopping around at a shitty punk gig he’d dragged Simon to would wind his muscles tight for days. The nail in the coffin was at his last rugby game, an over compensated move completely throwing his back out.

That was enough for Simon, being the judge and the jury for Johnny’s sentence of doctor ordered bed rest. In the first days Johnny had still tried to keep up around the house, following Simon around and chittering on that he was fine before getting promptly carried back to bed like a sack of potatoes over broad shoulders. He’d fully given up after that point, his little spirit crushed as he laid in bed absently doom scrolling on his phone for hours. That was, before one of your videos came across his screen. Written in the stars by the algorithm.

The video was innocent enough, a ‘Get ready with me’ style set to some cute music which unknowingly doomed you. Thumbs flew across the screen as Johnny tapped on your profile, greedily drinking in your entire post history over the course of a couple hours. His favorites he’d bookmarked and watched over and over again, already memorizing whatever little song you’d picked to go over your video. His heart hammered in his chest and he swallowed a lump in his throat, hovering over the direct message option.

Hello :) Big fan! Do ye think ye could wear that black dress from 20/11 in yer next video? Loved it.

Johnny waits anxiously for your reply and decides to send another message apologizing for coming on strong, only to realize he’d been blocked by his newest little project. With a pout and a sigh he resigns himself to making another account, rinsing and repeating his actions of following you, going through your videos, and bookmarking his favorites. His head is too far in the clouds to even register that Simon had been standing over his shoulder for a minute, watching him.

“Whatcha got there, pup?” Simon’s voice sounds from above, causing Johnny to almost jump out of his skin.

“Jesus! Ye scared me,” Johnny said, placing a hand over his heart for dramatic effect.

When he saw that Simon was still awaiting an answer, he shook his head to rid the jitters.

“A real pretty lass. Somethin’ about her. She’d fit right in.” Johnny said with a dreamy sigh, looking to Simon and trying to gauge his reaction.

Simon’s hand is held out expectantly before Johnny places his phone in his calloused palm. His eyes fixate on the screen as he goes through the videos. He’s right, you’re pretty. His pup’s eyes look as if he’s a child pleading for a new toy at the store and he’s nothing if not a sucker for it. With a resigned sigh, Simon pockets the phone and ruffles Johnny’s hair.

“Bed time,” Simon says with a soft canter to his voice.

Johnny obliges, mumbling good nights and kisses before he’s out cold and Simon makes the trek downstairs to haul himself up on the couch, the room illuminated with Johnny’s phone screen.

You have piss poor internet safety. Simon gathers information quickly, half military training and half having brain cells to rub together. You make it too easy, like you are begging to be whisked away.

A video in your likes about being non contact with parents.

They wouldn’t ask where you were.

A ‘‘jokey” audio about your pet being your only friend

No one would come looking for you.

A video was taken in your work uniform with a name tag and a clock in the background during the shift.

Location and time you’d be on the premises.

Once he was satisfied with his findings Simon trudged back up the stairs, slotting in bed next to Johnny and lazily throwing an arm around him. His pup deserved a playmate while he was down for the count. Someone soft and docile like you to play with. Even if this was a big task, Simon would get what his precious boy wanted.

…

You’re a lot more bite than bark, and Simon had not been anticipating that. Muscling you into his truck and binding your limbs was easy even with the thrashing, but the deep bite mark blossoming purple and red hurt and he was not patient with disobedient mutts. Your screaming was silenced by a metal cage being strapped to the back of your head, the clasps tugging at your hair and a leather bit in the middle that made drool pool in your mouth and any noises come out hushed and gurgled.

“Really don’t wanna drug ya, love. The side effects are nasty and I’ve already got a pet on bed rest.” The masked man driving the car says, his voice deep and gravely like he’s smoked since he exited the womb.

You resign from fighting pretty early on, not missing the 9mm tucked into his waistband; a silent threat and promise. Instead, you focus on your surroundings out of the window which is mostly trees and fields as he drives out of the city limits and to, well, wherever he’s taking you. You catalog this information and commit it to memory and hold onto the delusion that when you escape you’ll be able to tell the police exactly where he took you and which way you went.

The road he’s driving on takes a sharp left and turns into more gravel and dirt than sleek tar pavement. Down the beaten path you pull up to a house, very unassuming and nice on the outside but you can only imagine the state of the inside. Every horror movie and true crime video you’ve ever seen plays in your mind. The filth, the squalor, chains and sex toys and rotting corpses in refrigerators.

The masked man gets out of the truck first, shutting the door with a surprising amount of care and then opening your side. He grabs the middle of the rope, where your hands are bound, and shuffles you out of the vehicle. When your feet meet the ground you’re tempted to run, but his gun remains front and center in your mind. Dumb idea. He crouches down on one knee then, like a parent getting on their child’s level to reason with them as he speaks to you; his grip still strong on the rope.

“Now, I need you to be good f’me and listen. If you make any fucking noise until I tell you to I’ll break your little jaw right off your pretty face and you’ll be eatin’ baby food the rest of your life. Got it?” He says in a soft tone but with no room for thinking he’s joking.

You nod your hand in understanding, too high on adrenaline and fear to cry even though your throat feels closed off and your eyes and nose sting with that familiarity. He rises to his feet then, unlocking you through the door and pulling you through the threshold. You prepare yourself for the worst but you’re met with the most mundane setting you could imagine. The walls are beige and gray, an accent wall in dark blue. A nice leather sectional couch, flat screen TV a few feet away from it. The place looks…underwhelming.

“M’ home. Just puttin’ the shopping away, hold tight up there in bed.” The man calls up the stairs to god knows who before turning his attention back to you.

He leads you by the wrists into a spare room right off of the living room which at first glance looks just as underwhelming as the rest of the house. A desk with a large dog bed under it, a few paintings on the wall, a book shelf, and a board for darts. When you’re being drug further into the room though, you notice it; a sturdy chain mounted to the wall and attached to a collar with a thick padlock. The leather is engraved with a name: Johnny.

The collar is placed around your neck and locked, gapping awkwardly in the back and ill fitting. The man tries to tug it over your head a few times but is satisfied when it won’t go past your jaw. The numb tingling in your hands draws your attention down to them as you try to wiggle your fingers and get some blood flow back. Survival is not guaranteed but you’re relieved that you’re not on the set of Texas Chainsaw Massacre at least.

You’re guided slowly onto your knees with two strong hands onto your shoulders, until you meet the plush carpet. You look up at him finally, a proper look. His eyes are dark and devoid of emotion, like some sort of a living breathing shell. He’s tall and filled out everywhere, even without the gun you now believe his promise of breaking your jaw more. You’ll have to use wit and gain trust to get out of here; you’ll have to fawn.

“M’ gonna go get my boy and you’re gonna act like you’re over the moon to be here.” He says, taking a step back from where you’re kneeling.

“I don’t like to take in strays and I sure as fuck don’t put up with rowdy mutts. Give me a reason to show you, and you’ll learn real quick darling.” He says, before opening the door and shutting it behind him.

You’re left to your own devices then, chest heaving and eyes darting around the room. With him gone you can finally let your defenses down a little so the tears start to cascade down your cheeks silently. The gag, well, muzzle makes it hard for you to catch your breath as you heave and sputter as quietly as you can. You wonder who Johnny is, the poor soul before you in this position. By the way the collar fit, were much larger than you and still fell at the hands of this man. The thought made bile rise to your throat.

Far away voices and footsteps get closer and closer to the door then as you’re frozen in place kneeling. Your chest rises and falls quickly with each breath before it hitches all together as the doorknob is turned. The door opens, and another man has joined your captor. He’s smaller, a dark mohawk and striking blue eyes. He is absolutely elated to see you, apparently. He’s a blur of moment, on his knees by you in a blink and gathering your tired body into a spine crushing hug.

He turns his head behind him to the mask man with an ear to ear grin, beaming and nauseatingly giggling to himself.

“You didn’t!” He says excitedly, like someone reviving a way too expensive present in a secret Santa exchange.

“Just for you puppy. You’ve been down since your injury an’ I figured I could get you a playmate.” The man says, a hint of a smile in his voice.

He seems to care a great deal about this man with a death grip on you, happy just to see him happy.

The man affectionately referred to as “puppy” buries his nose in your hair, sniffing deeply and letting out a deep shuddering breath. You feel his cock twitch against the outside of your thigh where he’s got himself pressed against you. You’re beginning to think this was the Johnny you were feeling sorry for a second ago.

His hands move up towards your muzzle to undo it but the other man stops him, warning that you’re not properly trained yet and might bite. He whines, but gives a nod in understanding, giving you another rib bruising squeeze.

“Don’t worry lass. We’ll take care of ya’.” Johnny says, planting a kiss on top of your head.

The larger man steps out of the room then, shutting it behind him and leaving you to get accompanied with your new playmate and acclimated to your new home. Hope slowly starts to leave as Johnny whispers promises of giving you pups and never letting you out of his sight.

[mariacallous]

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.

[autisticgingerblonde]

If Fallout 4 companions had TikTok accounts

Cait would have an account dedicated to fighting and thirst traps (aimed at women mostly). Teaches women self-defense techniques. She earns a spot in the algorithm of muscle mommies. She also raises awareness for addicts and former addicts, educating on the effects of drugs and the reasons people seek them out in the first place. Honestly, it's a very good account to follow.

Codsworth is just confused about TikTok. He's like "oh so what are the children saying these days? Aura? I'll have to add a new word to my vocabulary banks! Cheerio, mum!"

Curie makes educational videos for all ages and all subjects. She has a series of learning Japanese, a series of vaccines and the science behind them, a series about the effects of different types of parenting, you name it. She also takes suggestions from her audience on what new things to research.

Danse has unintentional thirst traps. He talks about power armor and the Brotherhood of Steel but also posts workouts. These are what get the most attention out of everything he posts. The BookTok girlies find him and all hell breaks loose in the comment sections. He responds to this with, "Thank you, civilians. I am not sure what you mean, but I am glad you are supporting the Brotherhood of Steel by being on my page. Thank you for your enthusiasm for our righteous cause. Ad victorium." People armchair diagnose him as autistic.

Deacon does "GRWM as i tell you about the time i ______" videos where each day he looks completely different and you can never tell if he's telling the truth or not. He also does head shaving videos that double as story times or opinion pieces. You can't tell if those are true or not either.

Dogmeat has a viral account followed by millions. Get's a lot of "I can't imagine liking this guy" comments with the op replying to their own comment with "anymore than I already do. Huge fan!"

Hancock does subtle cheeky thirst traps and dance challenges. This entire post was inspired by the FACT that Hancock would participate in the brat summer trend and would do the Apple dance with Fahrenheit filming it. He also tells stories, mostly of him being high. He gets a lot of requests to cosplay Deadpool.

MacCready has a lot of things he does. Some videos are sniper trick shots, some are Grognak the Barbarian yapping (he does short lore deep dives when he can), and some are about being a young single dad. He doesn't show Duncan's face because he's extremely protective. Casually drops the most insane lore about his childhood which leads to comments like "are we just ignoring that he said he grew up in a cave?"

Nick Valentine would be a very popular fashion and "a day in the life of a detective". He'd do vintage fashion looks, like loose slacks and suspenders with a trench coat to top it off. Sometimes does a deep dive into detective history. Gets a lot of thirsty comments to which he replies "that's one way to get the coolant pumping."

Old Longfellow has the appeal of the New England, stormy weather, sweater-wearing fisherman aesthetic, and he tells stories of his youth while showing people around the area he grew up. Learns mobile phone cinematography to make it look cooler. Every video has either a lesson or a skill for survival.

Piper's account is solely focused on news and truth, posting every source she uses. She uses the trend of an insane video, like someone falling badly on the ground or getting splashed with water, and stitches it to look like a seamless transition of her rolling from the fall or being splashed to start talking about her news stories. It gets traction so she continues.

Porter Gage has a side gig of running TikTok accounts for different people. Gets the money, doesn't get the backlash when they get canceled for racism or worker exploitation.

Preston has an account dedicated to charity work and social activism. He makes sure to highlight organizations he feels are doing the world a service and regularly has fundraisers. He's well-known for always sharing content from people in dire situations and raising money for them. Has a master document of Go Fund Me pages and vets every one of them.

Strong has a lot of those unintentional boomer tiktoks that are 1 second long and he's just looking at the screen in confusion.

X6 cyber bullies the rest of them because he thinks having a TikTok is cringe and stupid (he is currently writing hate comments with his TikTok account)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: Leaving Twitter had no effect on NPR's traffic

I'm coming to Minneapolis! This Sunday (Oct 15): Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Monday (Oct 16): Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

Enshittification is the process by which a platform lures in and then captures end users (stage one), who serve as bait for business customers, who are also captured (stage two), whereupon the platform rug-pulls both groups and allocates all the value they generate and exchange to itself (stage three):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

Enshittification isn't merely a form of rent-seeking – it is a uniquely digital phenomenon, because it relies on the inherent flexibility of digital systems. There are lots of intermediaries that want to extract surpluses from customers and suppliers – everyone from grocers to oil companies – but these can't be reconfigured in an eyeblink the that that purely digital services can.

A sleazy boss can hide their wage-theft with a bunch of confusing deductions to your paycheck. But when your boss is an app, it can engage in algorithmic wage discrimination, where your pay declines minutely every time you accept a job, but if you start to decline jobs, the app can raise the offer:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

I call this process "twiddling": tech platforms are equipped with a million knobs on their back-ends, and platform operators can endlessly twiddle those knobs, altering the business logic from moment to moment, turning the system into an endlessly shifting quagmire where neither users nor business customers can ever be sure whether they're getting a fair deal:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Social media platforms are compulsive twiddlers. They use endless variation to lure in – and then lock in – publishers, with the goal of converting these standalone businesses into commodity suppliers who are dependent on the platform, who can then be charged rent to reach the users who asked to hear from them.

Facebook designed this playbook. First, it lured in end-users by promising them a good deal: "Unlike Myspace, which spies on you from asshole to appetite, Facebook is a privacy-respecting site that will never, ever spy on you. Simply sign up, tell us everyone who matters to you, and we'll populate a feed with everything they post for public consumption":

https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1128876

The users came, and locked themselves in: when people gather in social spaces, they inadvertently take one another hostage. You joined Facebook because you liked the people who were there, then others joined because they liked you. Facebook can now make life worse for all of you without losing your business. You might hate Facebook, but you like each other, and the collective action problem of deciding when and whether to go, and where you should go next, is so difficult to overcome, that you all stay in a place that's getting progressively worse.

Once its users were locked in, Facebook turned to advertisers and said, "Remember when we told these rubes we'd never spy on them? It was a lie. We spy on them with every hour that God sends, and we'll sell you access to that data in the form of dirt-cheap targeted ads."

Then Facebook went to the publishers and said, "Remember when we told these suckers that we'd only show them the things they asked to see? Total lie. Post short excerpts from your content and links back to your websites and we'll nonconsensually cram them into the eyeballs of people who never asked to see them. It's a free, high-value traffic funnel for your own site, bringing monetizable users right to your door."

Now, Facebook had to find a way to lock in those publishers. To do this, it had to twiddle. By tiny increments, Facebook deprioritized publishers' content, forcing them to make their excerpts grew progressively longer. As with gig workers, the digital flexibility of Facebook gave it lots of leeway here. Some publishers sensed the excerpts they were being asked to post were a substitute for visiting their sites – and not an enticement – and drew down their posting to Facebook.

When that happened, Facebook could twiddle in the publisher's favor, giving them broader distribution for shorter excerpts, then, once the publisher returned to the platform, Facebook drew down their traffic unless they started posting longer pieces. Twiddling lets platforms play users and business-customers like a fish on a line, giving them slack when they fight, then reeling them in when they tire.

Once Facebook converted a publisher to a commodity supplier to the platform, it reeled the publishers in. First, it deprioritized publishers' posts when they had links back to the publisher's site (under the pretext of policing "clickbait" and "malicious links"). Then, it stopped showing publishers' content to their own subscribers, extorting them to pay to "boost" their posts in order to reach people who had explicitly asked to hear from them.

For users, this meant that their feeds were increasingly populated with payola-boosted content from advertisers and pay-to-play publishers who paid Facebook's Danegeld to reach them. A user will only spend so much time on Facebook, and every post that Facebook feeds that user from someone they want to hear from is a missed opportunity to show them a post from someone who'll pay to reach them.

Here, too, twiddling lets Facebook fine-tune its approach. If a user starts to wean themself off Facebook, the algorithm (TM) can put more content the user has asked to see in the feed. When the user's participation returns to higher levels, Facebook can draw down the share of desirable content again, replacing it with monetizable content. This is done minutely, behind the scenes, automatically, and quickly. In any shell game, the quickness of the hand deceives the eye.

This is the final stage of enshittification: withdrawing surpluses from end-users and business customers, leaving behind the minimum homeopathic quantum of value for each needed to keep them locked to the platform, generating value that can be extracted and diverted to platform shareholders.

But this is a brittle equilibrium to maintain. The difference between "God, I hate this place but I just can't leave it" and "Holy shit, this sucks, I'm outta here" is razor-thin. All it takes is one privacy scandal, one livestreamed mass-shooting, one whistleblower dump, and people bolt for the exits. This kicks off a death-spiral: as users and business customers leave, the platform's shareholders demand that they squeeze the remaining population harder to make up for the loss.

One reason this gambit worked so well is that it was a long con. Platform operators and their investors have been willing to throw away billions convincing end-users and business customers to lock themselves in until it was time for the pig-butchering to begin. They financed expensive forays into additional features and complementary products meant to increase user lock-in, raising the switching costs for users who were tempted to leave.

For example, Facebook's product manager for its "photos" product wrote to Mark Zuckerberg to lay out a strategy of enticing users into uploading valuable family photos to the platform in order to "make switching costs very high for users," who would have to throw away their precious memories as the price for leaving Facebook:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

The platforms' patience paid off. Their slow ratchets operated so subtly that we barely noticed the squeeze, and when we did, they relaxed the pressure until we were lulled back into complacency. Long cons require a lot of prefrontal cortex, the executive function to exercise patience and restraint.

Which brings me to Elon Musk, a man who seems to have been born without a prefrontal cortex, who has repeatedly and publicly demonstrated that he lacks any restraint, patience or planning. Elon Musk's prefrontal cortical deficit resulted in his being forced to buy Twitter, and his every action since has betrayed an even graver inability to stop tripping over his own dick.

Where Zuckerberg played enshittification as a long game, Musk is bent on speedrunning it. He doesn't slice his users up with a subtle scalpel, he hacks away at them with a hatchet.

Musk inaugurated his reign by nonconsensually flipping every user to an algorithmic feed which was crammed with ads and posts from "verified" users whose blue ticks verified solely that they had $8 ($11 for iOS users). Where Facebook deployed substantial effort to enticing users who tired of eyeball-cramming feed decay by temporarily improving their feeds, Musk's Twitter actually overrode users' choice to switch back to a chronological feed by repeatedly flipping them back to more monetizable, algorithmic feeds.

Then came the squeeze on publishers. Musk's Twitter rolled out a bewildering array of "verification" ticks, each priced higher than the last, and publishers who refused to pay found their subscribers taken hostage, with Twitter downranking or shadowbanning their content unless they paid.

(Musk also squeezed advertisers, keeping the same high prices but reducing the quality of the offer by killing programs that kept advertisers' content from being published along Holocaust denial and open calls for genocide.)

Today, Musk continues to squeeze advertisers, publishers and users, and his hamfisted enticements to make up for these depredations are spectacularly bad, and even illegal, like offering advertisers a new kind of ad that isn't associated with any Twitter account, can't be blocked, and is not labeled as an ad:

https://www.wired.com/story/xs-sneaky-new-ads-might-be-illegal/

Of course, Musk has a compulsive bullshitter's contempt for the press, so he has far fewer enticements for them to stay. Quite the reverse: first, Musk removed headlines from link previews, rendering posts by publishers that went to their own sites into stock-art enigmas that generated no traffic:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/05/x-twitter-strips-headlines-new-links-why-elon-musk

Then he jumped straight to the end-stage of enshittification by announcing that he would shadowban any newsmedia posts with links to sites other than Twitter, "because there is less time spent if people click away." Publishers were advised to "post content in long form on this platform":

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/111183068362793821

Where a canny enshittifier would have gestured at a gaslighting explanation ("we're shadowbanning posts with links because they might be malicious"), Musk busts out the motto of the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it any further."

All this has the effect of highlighting just how little residual value there is on the platform for publishers, and tempts them to bolt for the exits. Six months ago, NPR lost all patience with Musk's shenanigans, and quit the service. Half a year later, they've revealed how low the switching cost for a major news outlet that leaves Twitter really are: NPR's traffic, post-Twitter, has declined by less than a single percentage point:

https://niemanreports.org/articles/npr-twitter-musk/

NPR's Twitter accounts had 8.7 million followers, but even six months ago, Musk's enshittification speedrun had drawn down NPR's ability to reach those users to a negligible level. The 8.7 million number was an illusion, a shell game Musk played on publishers like NPR in a bid to get them to buy a five-figure iridium checkmark or even a six-figure titanium one.

On Twitter, the true number of followers you have is effectively zero – not because Twitter users haven't explicitly instructed the service to show them your posts, but because every post in their feeds that they want to see is a post that no one can be charged to show them.

I've experienced this myself. Three and a half years ago, I left Boing Boing and started pluralistic.net, my cross-platform, open access, surveillance-free, daily newsletter and blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/drei-drei-drei/#now-we-are-three

Boing Boing had the good fortune to have attracted a sizable audience before the advent of siloed platforms, and a large portion of that audience came to the site directly, rather than following us on social media. I knew that, starting a new platform from scratch, I wouldn't have that luxury. My audience would come from social media, and it would be up to me to convert readers into people who followed me on platforms I controlled – where neither they nor I could be held to ransom.

I embraced a strategy called POSSE: Post Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere. With POSSE, the permalink and native habitat for your material is a site you control (in my case, a WordPress blog with all the telemetry, logging and surveillance disabled). Then you repost that content to other platforms – mostly social media – with links back to your own site:

https://indieweb.org/POSSE

There are a lot of automated tools to help you with this, but the platforms have gone to great lengths to break or neuter them. Musk's attack on Twitter's legendarily flexible and powerful API killed every automation tool that might help with this. I was lucky enough to have a reader – Loren Kohnfelder – who coded me some python scripts that automate much of the process, but POSSE remains a very labor-intensive and error-prone methodology:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/13/two-decades/#hfbd

And of all the feeds I produce – email, RSS, Discourse, Medium, Tumblr, Mastodon – none is as labor-intensive as Twitter's. It is an unforgiving medium to begin with, and Musk's drawdown of engineering support has made it wildly unreliable. Many's the time I've set up 20+ posts in a thread, only to have the browser tab reload itself and wipe out all my work.

But I stuck with Twitter, because I have a half-million followers, and to the extent that I reach them there, I can hope that they will follow the permalinks to Pluralistic proper and switch over to RSS, or email, or a daily visit to the blog.

But with each day, the case for using Twitter grows weaker. I get ten times as many replies and reposts on Mastodon, though my Mastodon follower count is a tenth the size of my (increasingly hypothetical) Twitter audience.

All this raises the question of what can or should be done about Twitter. One possible regulatory response would be to impose an "End-To-End" rule on the service, requiring that Twitter deliver posts from willing senders to willing receivers without interfering in them. End-To-end is the bedrock of the internet (one of its incarnations is Net Neutrality) and it's a proven counterenshittificatory force:

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

Despite what you may have heard, "freedom of reach" is freedom of speech: when a platform interposes itself between willing speakers and their willing audiences, it arrogates to itself the power to control what we're allowed to say and who is allowed to hear us:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

We have a wide variety of tools to make a rule like this stick. For one thing, Musk's Twitter has violated innumerable laws and consent decrees in the US, Canada and the EU, which creates a space for regulators to impose "conduct remedies" on the company.

But there's also existing regulatory authorities, like the FTC's Section Five powers, which enable the agency to act against companies that engage in "unfair and deceptive" acts. When Twitter asks you who you want to hear from, then refuses to deliver their posts to you unless they pay a bribe, that's both "unfair and deceptive":

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

But that's only a stopgap. The problem with Twitter isn't that this important service is run by the wrong mercurial, mediocre billionaire: it's that hundreds of millions of people are at the mercy of any foolish corporate leader. While there's a short-term case for improving the platforms, our long-term strategy should be evacuating them:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/18/urban-wildlife-interface/#combustible-walled-gardens

To make that a reality, we could also impose a "Right To Exit" on the platforms. This would be an interoperability rule that would require Twitter to adopt Mastodon's approach to server-hopping: click a link to export the list of everyone who follows you on one server, click another link to upload that file to another server, and all your followers and followees are relocated to your new digs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/semipermeable-membranes/#free-as-in-puppies

A Twitter with the Right To Exit would exert a powerful discipline even on the stunted self-regulatory centers of Elon Musk's brain. If he banned a reporter for publishing truthful coverage that cast him in a bad light, that reporter would have the legal right to move to another platform, and continue to reach the people who follow them on Twitter. Publishers aghast at having the headlines removed from their Twitter posts could go somewhere less slipshod and still reach the people who want to hear from them on Twitter.

And both Right To Exit and End-To-End satisfy the two prime tests for sound internet regulation: first, they are easy to administer. If you want to know whether Musk is permitting harassment on his platform, you have to agree on a definition of harassment, determine whether a given act meets that definition, and then investigate whether Twitter took reasonable steps to prevent it.

By contrast, administering End-To-End merely requires that you post something and see if your followers receive it. Administering Right To Exit is as simple as saying, "OK, Twitter, I know you say you gave Cory his follower and followee file, but he says he never got it. Just send him another copy, and this time, CC the regulator so we can verify that it arrived."

Beyond administration, there's the cost of compliance. Requiring Twitter to police its users' conduct also requires it to hire an army of moderators – something that Elon Musk might be able to afford, but community-supported, small federated servers couldn't. A tech regulation can easily become a barrier to entry, blocking better competitors who might replace the company whose conduct spurred the regulation in the first place.

End-to-End does not present this kind of barrier. The default state for a social media platform is to deliver posts from accounts to their followers. Interfering with End-To-End costs more than delivering the messages users want to have. Likewise, a Right To Exit is a solved problem, built into the open Mastodon protocol, itself built atop the open ActivityPub standard.

It's not just Twitter. Every platform is consuming itself in an orgy of enshittification. This is the Great Enshittening, a moment of universal, end-stage platform decay. As the platforms burn, calls to address the fires grow louder and harder for policymakers to resist. But not all solutions to platform decay are created equal. Some solutions will perversely enshrine the dominance of platforms, help make them both too big to fail and too big to jail.

Musk has flagrantly violated so many rules, laws and consent decrees that he has accidentally turned Twitter into the perfect starting point for a program of platform reform and platform evacuation.

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/2023/10/14/freedom-of-reach/#ex

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

Image: JD Lasica (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elon_Musk_%283018710552%29.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en