#it’s literally theft at this point

[osarina]

not to bring political frustrations to an anime blog but it is soooo agonizing seeing the cartoonishly evil greed of the government and the elites of this country. they just keep making decision after decision to make life harder on civilians by raising prices, raising taxes, etc. it almost feels like they’re trying to see how far they can go before they start getting pushback from the people, but the issue is our country will never be united enough to effectively resist against it.

[sefif]

grian, you saw how long it took for skizz to notice the snail shenanigans in hermitcraft. you had to have seen this coming.

[yukipri]

Good morning.

A very kind follower let me know that my clones art has been stolen and reposted, again. This time on Tiktok.

So here's a new version of my art. It's called: "Apparently putting 'Do Not Repost' on the art 4 times + in my bios of every social + FAQ isn't enough, so how's this?!"

I'm feeling very defeated and exhausted.

I just finished filing a DMCA yesterday. This new art theft version already has more views than every like/note on all versions of my art on all of my socials COMBINED + multiplied. This art was only posted a few days ago. I'm beginning to deeply regret drawing it.

Art thieves getting views and likes does NOTHING for the community. Imagine of those likes/comments/followers had come to me, on any of my socials. Think of how excited I'd be to connect to new folks, how hyped I'd be to draw more.

(how maybe, just maybe, someone official might one day notice and it might lead to more😭)

I don't think I've hit 10K likes on ANY art I've ever posted on Twitter in 8 years, and certainly nowhere near that on Tumblr in a while. That's ok, I understand that's due to my own lack of skills, which is why i work hard daily to improve!

But ART THEFT DOESN'T HELP. This person did NOTHING but stress me out, make me regret sharing my work, and take away valuable time and mental energy from me producing more work. And I promise you, they will not be able to make my art for you.

Don't worry, I'm not just complaining about it. I've filed a DMCA (tho gosh TikTok's form is WEIRD, really hoping it worked🥲)

But please. If you see an art theft account, please don't give them views & likes. Someone else worked hard on that. They could really use your support.

Anyway, here's the link to my art on Tumblr. On my account. Since, y'know, I drew it.

[sharada-n]

As a disabled person, I'm so disgusted by what happened on the @whumptober blog recently and how they're trying to sweep it under the rug.

Discussions about AI aside, deleting replies from disabled people speaking out against the rampant ableism you're spreading and that is happening in your comments/reblogs, is so fucking gross and I can't believe they did that. Like, I used to love the whump community but now it just feels incredibly unsafe.

The whump community has always been accused of being ableist and I hate that now I can't even argue against it because some of the biggest names in this community apparently are really fucking chill with silencing disabled people for speaking out against that behavior.

These mods and anybody who is supporting that behavior can go fuck themselves <3

[dr-ngin]

Replayed CTRNF to show my husband the game a few weeks ago. When I got to the part of Pinstripe's challenge where he takes the key out I swore he was going to pull out a knife instead and shank N.GIN (my main) and I started laughing so hard I almost threw up so I thought it'd be funny to draw (ft. pinstripe with a tail)

[sharmoota-job]

Sometimes I think about how Michael and Trevor have matching beauty marks on the opposite sides of their faces

[ohwarnette]

[wereh0gz]

Irt last rb the only character I can think of off the top of my head rn that has the same name as me is a seedling from ever oasis and she's just like me fr

Like she gets overwhelmed in crowds and her whole quest line is abt her overcoming her anxiety when talking to other ppl. And she likes bread. She even kinda talks like I do. It's a bit weird honestly but I love it

[bilbobagginsomebabez]

is anybody else upset that instead of authors' unions and the development of labor power, every ounce of discourse and effort towards writers making a living wage is geared towards digital intellectual property rights and digital theft protection. like i don't know about anybody else but I am actually not excited for major publishing companies to be algorithmically searching for and DMCA striking books that are "similar enough" to their copyright. I don't trust AI to be able to tell when something is adulterated metadata vs when something is just very similar. I fucking hate DRM already. I hate buying a book and either being restricted in use of my property or taking it through multiple complicated steps to remove it for an epub file compatible with calibre, where I can file and tag it appropriately.

and i don't think we're going to find any kind of salvation for writers and writing this way. I think we're going to launch another digital arms race (like with removing DRM) while continuously empowering the already wealthy to consolidate power and crush meaningful change through slap suits and the like.

and this is because digital theft is the only problem that the publishing industry is willing to address. because strengthening intellectual property protections doesn't protect art or artists, it allows the big players to better control the playing field and force it to benefit themselves.

Okay, this may prove useful.

[chucklechampion]

ah heem heem......

[daxite]

i'm so fucking tired about how the internet has to dissolve every discussion into some fucking black-and-white "us vs. them" shit

[transamus]

when y'all post shit about not pirating from smaller creators you're fundamentally missing the point of why piracy shouldn't be illegal in the first place. you are literally not stealing shit.

the corollary of "only pirate from big corporations" is "do not ever play indie games", because if i as a poor person have the option between spending $10 on an indie game OR pirating a $90 AAA game, i'm always going to do the latter. it is nice, yes, to be able to shoot indie devs some money.

it is not "always morally correct to pirate from big game studios and morally reprehensible to pirate from indie game studios" because, again, and i cannot stress this enough: it is not theft to begin with.

your entire concept is reactionary feel-good shit. people deserve access to art, and at the end of the day if someone pirates an indie game, the game is more likely to sell to people who will Not pirate it / who can comfortably afford to pay for it.

[phlyaros]

if any of the hlvr mutuals want to know whats happening to me psychologically uh my special interest series that i thought was already looooong gone said hey we're making the last one and those last six years were fake and hes alive actually. so that's where I'm at

[were--ralph]

why exactly do you dislike generative art so much? i know its been misused by some folks, but like, why blame a tool because it gets used by shitty people? Why not just... blame the people who are shitty? I mean this in genuinely good faith, you seem like a pretty nice guy normally, but i guess it just makes me confused how... severe? your reactions are sometimes to it. There's a lot of nuance to conversation about it, and by folks a lot smarter than I (I suggest checking out the Are We Art Yet or "AWAY" group! They've got a lot on their page about the ethical use of Image generation software by individuals, and it really helped explain some things I was confused about). I know on my end, it made me think about why I personally was so reactive about Who was allowed to make art and How/Why. Again, all this in good faith, and I'm not asking you to like, Explain yourself or anything- If you just read this and decide to delete it instead of answering, all good! I just hope maybe you'll look into *why* some people advocate for generative software as strongly as they do, and listen to what they have to say about things -🦜

if Ai genuinely generated its own content I wouldn't have as much of a problem with it, however what Ai currently does is scrape other people's art, collect it, and then build something based off of others stolen works without crediting them. It's like. stealing other peoples art, mashing it together, then saying "this is mine i can not only profit of it but i can use it to cut costs in other industries.

this is more evident by people not "making" art but instead using prompts. Its like going to McDonalds and saying "Burger. Big, Juicy, etc, etc" then instead of a worker making the burger it uses an algorithm to build a burger based off of several restaurant's recepies.

example

the left is AI art, the right is one of the artists (Lindong) who it pulled the art style from. it's literally mass producing someone's artstyle by taking their art then using an algorithm to rebuild it in any context. this is even more apparent when you see ai art also tries to recreate artists watermarks and generally blends them together making it unintelligible.

Aside from that theres a lot of other ethical problems with it including generating pretty awful content, including but not limited to cp. It also uses a lot of processing power and apparently water? I haven't caught up on the newer developements i've been depressed about it tbh

Then aside from those, studios are leaning towards Ai generation to replace having to pay people. I've seen professional voice actors complain on twitter that they haven't gotten as much work since ai voice generation started, artists are being cut down and replaced by ai art then having the remaining artists fix any errors in the ai art.

Even beyond those things are the potential for misinformation. Here's an experiment: Which of these two are ai generated?

ready?

These two are both entirely ai generated. I have no idea if they're real people, but in a few months you could ai generate a Biden sex scandal, you could generate politics in whatever situation you want, you can generate popular streamers nude, whatever. and worse yet is ai generated video is already being developed and it doesn't look bad.

I posted on this already but as of right now it only needs one clear frame of a body and it can generate motion. yeah there are issues but it's been like two years since ai development started being taken seriously and we've gotten to this point already. within another two years it'll be close to perfected. There was even tests done with tiktokers and it works. it just fucking works.

There is genuinely not one upside to ai art. at all. it's theft, it's harming peoples lives, its harming the environment, its cutting jobs back and hurting the economy, it's invading peoples privacy, its making pedophilia accessible, and more. it's a plague and there's no vaccine for it. And all because people don't want to take a year to learn anatomy.

[rainydayathogwarts]

hi! you know your best friends with no boundaries fic, I'm literally obsessed and was wondering if you'd consider writing something similar but with Spencer Reid because I'm also obsessed with him🙏🙏 please and thank you (totally understand if not💚)

And they were roommates - Spencer Reid

summary: Contrary to popular belief, Spencer Reid was not touch starved. In fact, there was nothing more he liked than to cuddle with his roommate. wc: 2.4k+ cw: SMUT, roommates/best friends/ lovers dynamics, panty theft (super brief)

Spencer Reid was not a touchy person. His germaphobic nature allowed him to endure very little physical contact with people, whether they were strangers or his family at the behavioural analysis unit in the FBI. However, it was not to say that Spencer Reid was touch starved, for he had one person he could always count on to give him some physical comfort.

You’d been friends with Spencer since university: you were completing your bachelor’s degree whilst the young genius was finishing up his third phd. In an exhausting night at the library, you’d encountered Spencer, and had complained to him about the library’s organisation system. You’d apologised, “These long nights are really wearing my patience.” But Spencer Reid had surprised you. He ranted on to you about statistics, explaining how a library’s organisation can quickly affect the levels of student productivity. You’d smiled, introducing yourself to him with an extended had. Hesitantly, Spencer shook it, only secretly sanitising his hands when you turned away from him. From that day onwards, Spencer Reid became your best friend.

At first, you had respected Spencer’s boundaries, understanding that he was not a touchy man despite your opposing preference. Then, one night, in a flood of emotions, completely wrecked by his mother’s decreasing health, Spencer had broken down in front of you, and you comforted him the only way you knew how. Your hug had taken Spencer by surprise, but the boy didn’t jerk away from you. Instead, he accepted your touch, leaning into your body's comfortable warmth as you ran a hand through his hair, whispering quiet words of comfort. He spent the night curled up in your arms, head dug in the crook of your neck. That was the first time he stayed in your dorm, and many similar nights followed.

Now, you and Spencer shared an apartment whilst he worked for the bau and you worked a part time job at the University of Virginia, where you were completing your masters degree. Your apartment held two cozy bedrooms, but at this point it was just for show, because you spent most nights cuddled up together on the sofa, your body laying nearly flat over his. The jingle of Spencer’s keys on the other side of your front door gave his entrance away, and you leaped up from your spot on the couch to greet him at the door. Spencer jumped when his eyes landed on you, and he had to readjust his hold on the plastic grocery bag he carried to make sure he didn’t drop it. He hugged you with one arm, letting you take the bag from him as he took his shoes and coat off, leaving them both at the entrance.

“Check in the bag.” He called out as he followed you into the living room. Peeking in the bag, you gasped, seeing the box of microwavable popcorn inside. “Movie night?” You questioned, looking out for Spencer’s reaction. He was smiling widely, nodding proudly with his chest puffed up, cheeks rosy. “I thought we could watch that film you’d mentioned the other day? With Anne Hathaway?” He was taken aback by the tight hug you’d pulled him in, whispering “Oh, you’re the best.” Spencer nervously laughed, resting both hands on your waist.

“Why don’t you get changed and I can take care of the rest?” Spencer nodded, pressing a single kiss on your forehead. You swallowed thickly, turning away from him so he wouldn’t see the giddy look on your face, face hotly flushing. With the popcorn in a bowl and the movie ready on the television, you cozied up on the couch with a blanket, putting your laptop away. Spencer was back in the living room in no time, hopping on the couch right next to you and throwing his arm around your shoulder, tugging you into his chest. Draping your legs over his lap, Spencer put a cold hand on your thigh, and you dug your face into his chest, breathing in his familiar scent.

Spencer ran his hand up and down your leg, creating a row of chills across your skin wherever he left his touch. A shiver went down your spine, and Spencer quickly glanced down at you, mumbling “Are you cold?” Your eyes widened, unsure of how to tell him that no, you were not cold. In fact, your body was warming up relatively quickly from his touch. You shook your head silently. Spencer nodded at you, bringing you closer to him, his hand around your shoulders travelling down to your waist.

Silently deliberating, Spencer stared ahead at the screen, his heart thumping loudly in his chest. Spencer wasn’t dumb. In fact, he was the single smartest person he knew, and it didn’t take a genius to decode the messages you were sending him. Spencer ducked down, digging his head in the crook of your neck, and you immediately brought a hand up to string in his soft curls. The rim of his glasses poked your neck uncomfortably, but you didn’t want to disturb him, a feat that was quickly rewarded with a soft kiss in the crook of your neck. Your eyes shot open in surprise, breath hitching in your throat, but you didn’t want to startle Spencer or make him think you weren’t enjoying this. Because, god, you were.

Your eyes fluttered shut when he kissed you again, lips parting as a satisfied breath escaped your lungs. “Is this okay?” Spencer asked against your skin, his teeth grazing over your pulse point. You gasped, nodding quickly, your thighs unconsciously squeezing shut to soothe the throb between your legs. Spencer, with his hand still on your thigh, felt the movement, but he decided to tease for a moment longer, shutting his eyes as he softly ran his tongue over the spot on your neck, closing his mouth slightly to begin sucking on the area. You tried suppressing the moan that bubbled in your chest, but it was a clearly miserable attempt because Spencer’s grin was prominent against your skin, and he finally unhid his face from you.

Spencer pushed you back slightly so you laid flat on the couch, moving from under you so he could hover over you, his glasses swinging inches away from his face, barely hanging on by their grip on his ears. Spencer’s lips were bare centimetres away from yours, but he was clearly waiting for the go ahead from you. “Spence?” The boy hummed, leaning in to press a kiss right next to your lips. “This isn’t going to change anything right?” His breath shook, shaking his head as one of his hands softly ran underneath your shirt, causing you to buck your body upwards into his touch.

“No, no it won’t change anything.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

Spencer took your eager hum as a plead for a kiss, so he leaned down, finally pressing his lips to yours. It was like a primal need in him was unleashed, a guttural groan coming out of his throat. Both your hands were instantly cupping his face and pulling him closer to you, parting your mouth further as Spencer sucked on your tongue. You whimpered, one hand travelling down to snake under his jumper. Spencer shuddered, a broken moan escaping his lips. He desperately lowered his hips down onto yours, driving them forward to grind against yours. Spencer broke the kiss, instantly amplifying the moans escaping your lips. “This won’t change anything,” You started, and Spencer reinforced that with a nod of his head. “So fuck me properly, Spence.”

Spencer gasped at your words, his hips unexpectedly bucking into yours, where you felt every ridge of his covered cock. “You-really?” You pushed Spencer away by the chest, observing his face, the colourful light coming from the lit screen reflecting the redness on his face. Your roommate sat back on his knees, watching as you sat up, crawling towards him and forcing him on his back, falling on fluffy pillows.

You climbed over Spencer, sitting on his lap and tugging his pyjama pants down. Spencer watched you wordlessly, adjusting his glasses to sit straight on his face. He finally found the courage to hook his fingers into the band of your shorts and panties, encouraging them down your legs. You watched his reaction, amused at the open-mouthed, wide-eyed, dilated pupil look he was carrying on his face. “Spence?” His head snapped towards you, face flushing impossibly darker at the idea of being caught admiring your body. It was almost enough to distract him from the way your fingers wrapped around his cock over his boxers. His lips bucked into yours, gasping loudly as his fingers tightly gripped your hips.

Leaning forward to press your weight against Spencer’s chest, you kicked your shorts and panties off your legs before sitting back down on his lap. “Can I take these off?” You asked, playing with the elastic band of his trousers. Spencer nodded, a pleading look in his eyes. You giggled, leaning down to press a chaste kiss on his lips, and the second you pulled away, Spencer’s torso was lifting off the couch, eagerly chasing your lips. “Please.” He begged, hips bucking into your hand. You didn’t know if he was asking for another kiss or for you to finally take off his trousers, so you did both, reconnecting your lips as you lowered his boxers.

Spencer sighed in relief, using his tight hold on your hips to drag you forward on his body, closer to his cock. You dug your face in Spencer’s neck, kissing him teasingly, but Spencer impatiently whined, throwing his head back. “Please, please.” Finally, you sunk down onto Spencer’s cock, eliciting a loud moan from him. Your breath hitched and you gasped loudly, saying with a broken voice “I have - have to warn you. I don’t usually get on top.”

Spencer nodded eagerly, immediately thrusting his hips up and rolling you over. You cried out, throwing your head back as Spencer desperately started snapping his hips into you, a certain fervour in his movements. Spencer whined with each thrust of his hips, a breath of air escaping his lips and hitting your face every time his body slammed into yours. A guttural moan dispersed in the air, and immediately, you were pulling Spencer’s face down to yours to desperately press your lips together. Spencer parted his lips to bite your bottom lip, tugging a moan out of your chest. You wrapped your arms over Spencer’s shoulders, forcing him closer to you, and he whined as his arms shook, dropping his weight onto you.

“Sorry,” He whimpered against your lips, “Fuck, I’m sorry.” You wordlessly dismissed his apology, tangling your hand in Spencer’s hair to pull him back into a wet kiss. You heard the creak of his glasses as your faces collided in an eager kiss. Spencer rolled his hips into yours, balancing his weight onto one arm so his second arm could come down to your thigh and pull your leg apart from the other. The new found space allowed Spencer to slide deeper into your cunt, causing you both to moan loudly, your pussy clenching around the wet ridges of his cock. “Oh god.” You cried, words coming out muffled as Spencer glided his tongue against yours

“Please Spence.” You begged as Spencer separated his kiss from yours to look deeply into your eyes, a hand coming up to push the hair away from your face, stubbornly sticking to the glistening sweat. “’Re you close?” You hummed, digging your nails into Spencer’s shoulders as you dug your head into the couch cushions. Spencer smiled from above you, watching as your face contorted into pleasure, failing to squeeze your thighs together for more friction. Spencer groaned, head falling into the crook of your neck and pressing kisses on your skin as a hand trailed down to rub circles on your clit.

Spencer bit down on your neck just as you let out a high-pitched moan, whimpering when his teeth sunk into your skin. Your eyes shut tightly as a shock of pleasure darted up to your abdomen, but Spencer caressed your cheek, begging “Look at me when you cum, please.” Your eyes shot open at his words as pleasure overtook you. You don’t know what triggered your orgasm, Spencer’s pleading tone or the use of the endearing term ‘baby’, but it had you coming anyway, your loud cries filling the air.

Spencer grunted as you came, his pelvis stilling, cock buried inside you. Spencer felt his dick throb as you clenched around him, trying not to cum as you loudly cried his name out. Spencer was only pulling out when you slumped back against the couch, a satisfied sigh leaving your lips. Spencer wrapped a hand around his cock, but you put a hand over his, prompting him to let go of himself. You gently squeezed the base of Spencer’s cock, beginning to stroke him, but there was no need: he was already coming, white, thick ropes of cum shooting out of his cock and onto your tank top.

Spencer sat back on his knees, catching his breath softly as he watched you watch him, a coy smile on your face. You giggled nervously, and Spencer grinned, crawling over you before lowering himself onto you, still hovering over you as he began kissing you. “So, same time tomorrow?” Spencer joked, moving off you and finding your shorts on the floor, carefully helping you slip your feet into the holes of your shorts. “Mhm, doesn’t have to be tomorrow.” You teased, standing up and walking out of the living room. You turned to look at Spencer one last time before rounding the corner to enter the hallway, leaving Spencer alone in the living room to blankly stare at the screen, watching cluelessly as the two characters began arguing, trying to distract himself from the way his cock hardened once more.

Spencer scanned the room, jumping up when he spotted your abandoned panties on the floor. He quickly pocketed them before rushing to follow you towards your bedroom. “What did you say about not tomorrow?” He breathlessly asked as he opened your bedroom door. You spun around to look at him, putting a look of fake shock on your face as he gasped, staring at your now naked body, eyes glued to your tits.

Spencer shut the door, approaching you, and it didn’t open again for a very long time.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Premature Internet Activists

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me TOMORROW (Feb 14) in BOSTON for FREE at BOSKONE , and SATURDAY (Feb 15) for a virtual event with YANIS VAROUFAKIS. More tour dates here.

"Premature antifacist" was a sarcastic term used by leftists caught up in the Red Scare to describe themselves, as they came under ideological suspicion for having traveled to Spain to fight against Franco's fascists before the US entered WWII and declared war against the business-friendly, anticommunist fascist Axis powers of Italy, Spain, and, of course, Germany:

https://www.google.com/books/edition/In_Denial/fBSbKS1FlegC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=%22premature+anti-fascist%22&pg=PA277&printsec=frontcover

The joke was that opposing fascism made you an enemy of America – unless you did so after the rest of America had woken up to the existential threat of a global fascist takeover. What's more, if you were a "premature antifascist," you got no credit for fighting fascism early on. Quite the contrary: fighting fascism before the rest of the US caught up with you didn't make you prescient – it made you a pariah.

I've been thinking a lot about premature antifascism these days, as literal fascists use the internet to coordinate a global authoritarian takeover that represents an existential threat to a habitable planet and human thriving. In light of that, it's hard to argue that the internet is politically irrelevant, and that fights over the regulation, governance, and structure of the internet are somehow unserious.

And yet, it wasn't very long ago that tech policy was widely derided as a frivolous pursuit, and that tech organizing was dismissed as "slacktivism":

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell

Elevating concerns about the internet's destiny to the level of human rights struggle was delusional, a glorified argument about the rules for forums where sad nerds argued about Star Trek. If you worried that Napster-era copyright battles would make it easy to remove online content by claiming that it infringed copyright, you were just carrying water for music pirates. If you thought that legalizing and universalizing encryption technology would safeguard human rights, you were a fool who had no idea that real human rights battles involved confronting Bull Connor in the streets, not suing the NSA in a federal courtroom.

And now here we are. Congress has failed to update consumer privacy law since 1988 (when they banned video store clerks from blabbing about your VHS rentals). Mass surveillance enables everything from ransomware, pig butchering and identity theft to state surveillance of "domestic enemies," from trans people to immigrants. What's more, the commercial and state surveillance apparatus are, in fact, as single institution: states protect corporations from privacy law so that corporations can create and maintain population-scale nonconsensual dossiers on all the intimate facts of our lives, which governments raid at will, treating them as an off-the-books surveillance dragnet:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

Our speech forums have been captured by billionaires who censor anti-oligarchic political speech, and who spy on dissident users in order to aid in political repression. Bogus copyright claims are used to remove or suppress disfavorable news reports of elite rapists, thieves, war criminals and murderers:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/27/nuke-first/#ask-questions-never

You'd be hard pressed to find someone who'd describe the fights over tech governance in 2025 as frivolous or disconnected from "real politics"

This is where the premature antifascist stuff comes in. An emerging revisionist history of internet activism would have you believe that the first generation of tech liberation activists weren't fighting for a free, open internet – we were just shilling for tech companies. The P2P wars weren't about speech, privacy and decentralization – they were just a way to help the tech sector fight the entertainment industry. DRM fights weren't about preserving your right to repair, to privacy, and to accessibility – they were just about making it easy to upload movies to Kazaa. Fighting for universal access to encryption wasn't about defending everyday people from corporate and state surveillance – it was just a way to help terrorists and child abusers stay out of sight of cops.

Of course, now these fights are all about real things. Now we need to worry about centralization, interoperability, lock-in, surveillance, speech, and repair. But the people – like me – who've been fighting over this stuff for a quarter-century? We've gone from "unserious fools who mistook tech battles for human rights fights" to "useful idiots for tech companies" in an eyeblink.

"Premature Internet Activists," in other words.

This isn't merely ironic or frustrating – it's dangerous. Approaching tech activism without a historical foundation can lead people badly astray. For example, many modern tech critics think that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (which makes internet users liable for illegal speech acts, while immunizing entities that host that speech) is a "giveaway to Big Tech" and want to see it abolished.

Boy is this dangerous. CDA 230 is necessary for anyone who wants to offer a place for people to meet and discuss anything. Without CDA 230, no one could safely host a Mastodon server, or set up the long-elusive federated Bluesky servers. Hell, you couldn't even host a group-chat or message board:

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/

Getting rid of CDA 230 won't get rid of Facebook or make it clean up its act. It will just make it impossible for anyone to offer an alternative to Facebook, permanently enshrining Zuck's dominance over our digital future. That's why Mark Zuckerberg wants to kill Section 230:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/zuckerberg-calls-changes-techs-section-230-protections-rcna486

Defending policies that make it easier to host speech isn't the same thing as defending tech companies' profits, though these do sometimes overlap. When tech platforms have their users' back – even for self-serving reasons – they create legal precedents and strong norms that protect everyone. Like when Apple stood up to the FBI on refusing to break its encryption:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_dispute

If Apple had caved on that one, it would be far harder for, say, Signal to stand up to demands that it weaken its privacy guarantees. I'm no fan of Apple, and I would never mistake Tim Cook – who owes his CEOhood to his role in moving Apple production to Chinese sweatshops that are so brutal they had to install suicide nets – for a human rights defender. But I cheered on Apple in its fight against the FBI, and I will cheer them again, if they stand up to the UK government's demand to break their encryption:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20g288yldko

This doesn't make me a shill for Apple. I don't care if Apple makes or loses another dime. I care about Apple's users and their privacy. That's why I criticize Apple when they compromise their users' privacy for profit:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

The same goes for fights over scraping. I hate AI companies as much as anyone, but boy is it a mistake to support calls to ban scraping in the name of fighting AI:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/

It's scraping that lets us track paid political disinformation on Facebook (Facebook isn't going to tell us about it):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/05/comprehensive-sex-ed/#quis-custodiet-ipsos-zuck

And it's scraping that let us rescue all the CDC and NIH data that Musk's broccoli-hair brownshirts deleted on behalf of DOGE:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/how-to-access-important-health-info-thats-been-scrubbed-from-the-cdc-site/

It's such a huge mistake to assume that anything corporations want is bad for the internet. There are many times when commercial interests dovetail with online human rights. That's not a defense of capitalism, it's a critique of capitalism that acknowledges that profits do sometimes coincide with the public interest, an argument that Marx and Engels devote Chapter One of The Communist Manifesto to:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/books/review/a-spectre-haunting-china-mieville.html

In the early 1990s, Al Gore led the "National Information Infrastructure" hearings, better known as the "Information Superhighway" hearings. Gore's objective was to transfer control over the internet from the military to civilian institutions. It's true that these institutions were largely (but not exclusively) commercial entities seeking to make a buck on the internet. It's also true that much of that transfer could have been to public institutions rather than private hands.

But I've lately – and repeatedly – heard this moment described (by my fellow leftists) as the "privatization" of the internet. This is strictly true, but it's even more true to say that it was the demilitarization of the internet. In other words, corporations didn't take over functions performed by, say, the FCC – they took over from the Pentagon. Leftists have no business pining for the days when the internet was controlled by the Department of Defense.

Caring about the technological dimension of human rights 30 years ago – or hell, 40 years ago – doesn't make you a corporate stooge who wanted to launch a thousand investment bubbles. It makes you someone who understood, from the start, that digital rights are human rights, that cyberspace would inevitably evert into meatspace, and that the rules, norms and infrastructure we built for the net would someday be as consequential as any other political decision.

I'm proud to be a Premature Internet Activist. I just celebrated my 23rd year with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and yesterday, we sued Elon Musk and DOGE:

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-sues-opm-doge-and-musk-endangering-privacy-millions

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/2025/02/13/digital-rights/#are-human-rights

Image: Felix Winkelnkemper (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Acoustic_Coupler.jpg

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