#only difference is that tumblr users aren't trying to make money

[ichbinmeltdown]

I've met a lot of people who are over 30 and I'm approaching 30 myself. Tbh I've come to realize a lot of the 30+ fans are a lot nicer and more understanding.

I have a lot of issues with not being mature enough for my age, likely on account of having autism and BPD- and I've made a commitment to myself that even when I'm like 60 I'm still going to do fandom stuff. People judging me for having that in mind are really just making me feel even more like I'm defective- and worst of all, they're insinuating that there's something wrong with my friends for having these hobbies. They've been a huge inspiration to me and more or less restored my faith in fandom as a whole.

How the hell could you possibly see any of this as a bad thing, that they've been honing their art/writing craft for so long, and that I'm very inspired by them and I want to hone my hobby too for the rest of my life?!

Fandom Problem #7211:

As someone who's almost 30, I legitimately do not understand why people on this site treat you like you're totally geriatric and incapable of having hobbies or interests. It's always "lol this person is THIRTY, they must have no life!!". I find age is weaponized most of all with censorship advocates who go, "imagine being 30 and still shipping characters on TUMBLR 💀".

[autolenaphilia]

Why enshittification happens and how to stop it.

The enshittification of the internet and increasingly the software we use to access it is driven by profit. It happens because corporations are machines for making profits from end users, the users and customers are only seen as sources of profits. Their interests are only considered if it can help the bottom line. It's capitalism.

For social media it's users are mainly seen by the companies that run the sites as a way for getting advertisers to pay money that can profit the shareholders. And social media is in a bit of death spiral right now, since they have seldom or never been profitable and investor money is drying up as they realize this.

So the social media companies. are getting more and more desperate for money. That's why they are getting more aggressive with getting you to watch ads or pay for the privilege of not watching ads. It won't work and tumblr and all the other sites will die eventually.

But it's not just social media companies, it's everything tech-related. It gets worse the more monopolistic a tech giant is. Google is abusing its chrome-based near monopoly over the web, nerfing adblockers, trying to drm the web, you name it. And Microsoft is famously a terrible company, spying on Windows users and selling their data. Again, there is so much money being poured into advertising, at least 493 billion globally, the tech giants want a slice of that massive pie. It's all about making profits for shareholders, people be damned.

And the only insurance against this death spiral is not being run by a corporation. If the software is being developed by a non-profit entity, and it's open source, there is no incentive for the developers to fuck over the users for the sake of profits for shareholders, because there aren't any profits, and no shareholders.

Free and Open source software is an important part of why such software development can stay non-corporate. It allows for volunteers to contribute to the code and makes it harder for users to be secretly be fucked over by hidden code.

Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird are good examples of this. There is a Mozilla corporation, but it exists only for legal reasons and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the non-profit Mozilla foundation. There are no shareholders. That means the Mozilla corporation is not really a corporation in the sense that Google is, and as an organization has entirely different incentives. If someone tells you that Mozilla is just another corporation, (which people have said in the notes of posts about firefox on this very site) they are spreading misinformation.

That's why Firefox has resisted the enshittification of the internet so well, it's not profit driven. And people who develop useful plugins that deshitify the web like Ublock origin and Xkit are as a rule not profit-driven corporations.

And you can go on with other examples of non-profit software like Libreoffice and VLC media player, both of which you should use.

And you can go further, use Linux as your computer's operating system.. It's the only way to resist the enshitification that the corporate duopoly of Microsoft and Apple has brought to their operating system. The plethora of community-run non-profit Linux distributions like Debian, Mint and Arch are the way to counteract that, and they will stay resistant to the same forces (creating profit for shareholders) that drove Microsoft to create Windows 11.

Of course not all Linux distributions are non-profits. There are corporate created distros like Red Hat's various distros, Canonical's Ubuntu and Suse's Opensuse, and they prove the point I'm making. There has some degree of enshittification going on with those, red hat going closed source and Canonical with the snap store for example. Mint is by now a succesful community-driven response to deshitify Ubuntu by removing snaps for example, and even they have a back-up plan to use Debian as a base in case Canonical makes Ubuntu unuseable.

As for social media, which I started with, I'm going to stay on tumblr for now, but it will definitely die. The closest thing to a community run non-profit replacement I can see is Mastodon, which I'm on as @autolenaphilia@chaosfem.tw.

You don't have to keep using corporate software, and have it inevitably decline because the corporations that develop it cares more about its profits than you as an end user.

The process of enshittification proves that corporations being profit-driven don't mean they will create a better product, and in fact may cause them to do the opposite. And the existence of great free and open source software, created entirely without the motivation of corporate profits, proves that people don't need to profit in order to help their fellow human beings. It kinda makes you question capitalism.

[theshadowsingersraven]

I feel like E|riels genuinely don't realize how much their reputation precedes them and that enough people in the rest of the fandom (not just relegated to the Ship Wars) have had so many negative interactions on multiple different platforms with them, as well as them flat out refusing accountability and saying people are making fake accounts despite ones (especially on Twitter) existing for years and proudly proclaiming themselves as E|riels matters more than the Elain Week account saying "Everyone (except people who want to include Tamlin and/or Beron in their portrayal) is welcome!"

Because I remember people getting harassed on their own Tiktok videos about Gwynriel/Elucien regularly from the same 8 or so E|riel accounts. I remember self-proclaimed E|riels harassing the cosplayer who was hired to play Gwyn at Gauntlets and Gowns' event, body shaming her to the point where she had to make a video about it. I remember E|riels on Twitter insulting real people and calling them empty-headed, insane asylum escapees, and saying that users should try and claim mental instability in order to get their money back via health insurance claims for buying commissions of the "wrong ship". I remember E|riels on Reddit claiming that NSFW Elucien art should be considered depictions of SA, since Elain is "saying a clear "no" in canon to Lucien" and completely undermining the entire basis of fandom creativity and shipping. I remember those same E|riels excusing the harassment Gwynriel-related accounts with large followings get because they "don't defend E|riels" or something along those lines, shortly followed by more E|riels saying that the harassment and threats people have been getting on multiple platforms are "carefully coordinated to make E|riels look bad" and fake. I remember E|riels refusing to adhere to tag courtesy and understanding when they are not the target audience for something.

That is just my memory as someone who has been in this fandom for about two years now. Let alone the people who have been here from when the series first came out, or even any time before ACOSF.

E|riels are not operating with the clean slate they seem to believe they are. Cosplayers have had bad experiences with E|riels (even ones who make E|riel content!), for example. As well as fanfic authors, fanartists, average Tiktok users who make videos, Twitter users, Tumblr users, Reddit users, etc. Hell, I've even had my Tumblr account for upwards of 10 years, and it's never been wrongly deactivated by Tumblr before. Not until I started posting anti-E|riel content did my Tumblr ever get reported and then reinstated because Tumblr staff admitted they wrongfully terminated my blog.

So...how are they surprised or offended that people didn't feel comfortable participating in their Elain Week when so many of them are on thin ice as it is? How are they upset when people don't conveniently wipe their memory and trust their week that's already banning certain submissions (as if that alone isn't enough for people to not want to submit their art there? I don't even ship Tamlain but still recognize selectively banning ships is wrong) enough to participate? Saying people are welcome isn't enough when you're based in a community that regularly thrives on shaming and mistreating others, claiming they're the only "true" Elain stans. It's further not enough when people felt like their concerns were validated by the overwhelming amount of E|riel bias in the week's submissions.

If they don't like the fact that they're on thin ice, maybe they should actually do something to remedy that instead of fumbling every single chance they have to improve their god-awful fandom impression. Elaingate was their chance to prove they aren't as bad as the worst of them, and instead of standing for fandom integrity, creativity, and the right for all Elain appreciation and art to celebrated, even if it isn't how they would personally celebrate or appreciate her they doubled down and insisted on excluding others. And now they're playing the victims because they weren't the priority of Elain Day after they already had their preferred Elain Week? They weren't excluded, they just weren't the main concern because they weren't excluded from the Elain Week held this month. The concern was uplifting the people who were shamed or told they didn't care about DV or DV survivors because they felt that censorship for an entire community event based on a mod's needs is wrong and does not cater to the community enough, or because they're triggered by characters that aren't Tamlin or Beron and yet Elain Week didn't deem them worthy of the same "protection" that they "offer" to survivors triggered by Tamlin

They are why a second Elain Week exists. And the more and more they prove it necessary, the more and more I'm glad it exists for the people who want that safe space they were denied. To anyone hurt by elaingate, know that you are seen and there's a safe space in this hostile fandom for you and your art.

[horrorshow]

Can you talk about why you think blocking and moving on is a bad thing? I thought it was a way to curate your space and avoid drama

idk maybe i'm too idealistic but fandom is a much more friendlier, welcoming, supportive, creative, engaging, active, diverse and interesting space when it's treated like a community where people are encouraged to participate and talk about their interests and where there's space for niche or more unpopular opinions without these people having to worry about being blocked and feel unwelcome by the majority of the fandom they are in. i can't stand how blocking everyone you disagree with has become the first thing to do.

you say its 'to curate your experience'. but blocking people does not only curate YOUR experience. you're also forcefully curating other users' experiences. and not for the better.

people say 'i will block you for literally anything' and then those same people wonder why engagement is down, why no one sends asks, why no one reblogs, why rarely anyone talks in the tags anymore and why this place feels so dead and boring and quiet. i wonder why!!!!

people treat real people as annoying ads they can dispose of at their whim. but that's not how a fandom or a site like tumblr works. (besides, if you really care about people curating their own experience you wouldn't block people. you can filter and blacklist and never see them again while still granting them the same freedom instead of actively making their experience worse.)

you say its to avoid drama. but seeing a post you dont agree with is not 'drama'. and blocking is not solving anything except for you personally. fandom was more fun when we remembered that every user is a real person you share a space with, and probably some mutuals as well, so you find a way to live with each other. starting with a restraining order seems a bit excessive and is not contributing to anything. it's not that hard to be respectful and tolerate others and acknowledge people have different opinions and interests and still co-exist in peace. its not that hard to be nice to people and try to find common ground with them and interact with the stuff you DO like. you do this in every aspect of your real life, so why not online?

i hear you say: 'but that requires WORK and i don't NEED to do any of that bc i can just block them'.

yeah, you can try to create your own bubble and only hang out with like minded people but you wont EVER fully achieve that (no matter how much you block, social media WILL keep feeding you posts you disagree with bc it makes them money). social media WILL pressure you into an 'us vs. them' mentality where you constantly feel like everything online is a threat or an argument you have to win and where being mean and unnuanced gives you the most notes and where you don't even see, let alone be able to treat, other users as people anymore bc you don't interact with them anymore other than to block or fight them. that's not how i want it to be online. it's not fun to me. and maybe i'm a pessimist but i think it will eventually be the death of online fandom and sites like tumblr. look at the state of twitter right now. DOES blocking give you a better experience in the long run? i doubt that it does. overall, i think it makes people even less tolerable and more vulnerable to hate and fear mongering, and social media an even more hostile place.

it's everything i hate about social media and everything i want to fight against and WILL fight against. i won't pretend my meager contribution will change anything, but i LIKE to just scroll past posts i don't vibe with and not see every argument online as a personal offense. it keeps me curious. most posts aren't that bad when you know the person behind it. i mean, you do you, i'm not gonna say what you should or shouldn't do bc that's up to you, but i recommend it: free yourself of the block button and bring back supportive user communities based on a shared love for the same thing and focus on what you have in common with people, just like you would do in real life. save the block button for the rotten apples who DO keep trying to pick fights and exclude others.

(which is, now that i think about it, probably the main difference: most people see the block button as a neutral way to prevent worse. but. that's only the case on an individual level. and treating everything online as an individual choice to which there are no further consequences, especially if they happen on a larger scale, is already a loss.)

[hyperactivetransdrone]

Blog Intro

So after looking through several peoples profiles I noticed that introductory posts were pretty common (at least for nsfw sooo here we gooooo)

I'm adding this later on 8/18/24: If (majority) your content is s**sy and your DMing me to try to dominate me, Don't. While I don't mind people who do that/are into that being called that feels like a sexualization of my identity and ergo 1: I hate 2: is disgusting to me, I don't mind if you Identify as one or if you DO just wanna CASUALLY chat but please know that I won't and will never want that or say that word (with the exception of blocking tags involving it or here as a boundary) but if i need to it will be censored. I don't mind if you Identify as one and wanna follow me or anything or just wanna casually chat (or talk sexual just not... making me one to try to explain) feel free to I will NEVER kink shame regardless of how I feel so this won't apply to most people just a very very teeny tiny minority. I won't block you tho unless you cross a boundary or keep pushing, because I feel anyone who wants to read my content should be allowed.

I would also like to say, if you're going to delete your account please don't dm me, it breaks my heart every time

Hello I do not wish to give out my actual name online so you may call me Mz. Hyde (I stole it from the song by the same name by Halestorm) or just... my user-name-tag-thing (always forget what its called)

I am all for Sentient AI but HATE current AI (it doesnt even deserve to be called that)

Outside of this post any posts in blue is rping as a slime-girl-queen-goddess-character. Feel free to send asks or responses directed at her. Her title is Queen of Slimes, The Slime Goddess, or The Slime of the Lake

As of posting this I am still brand new to Tumblr but am learning somewhat quickly sooo things may look A Little odd right now to the average Tumblr user but as soon as I finish learning the basics it should look fine.

Anyway:

19 so 18+ only please, (pre-hrt) Transfem, Bisexual, Autisic+ADHD, overall anxious/shy-ish, probably a switch, Lefty, Type 1 Diabetic (I require insulin to survive), Virgin [:(]

Majority of this blog will be kinky thoughts usually about being dommed or hypno because... I wanna try it. SOME is fantasy tho so keep that in mind (usually my reblogs)

If you are a dom looking for money, unless you are popular and have a good community on here or if you are a s**sy tamer (or whatever it would be called) please don't DM me, unless you just wanna casually chat and don't wanna dom me or if you do please respect:

I really don't like being called an s**sy and will give you one warning before I block you.

I literally have no way to pay you so please don't expect that.

Please read this first, or if I ask you to because otherwise that gives me a red flag in my head and I will probably block you. (Unless it's just casual talking but that's different than what I'm talking about here)

My proof that I take this seriously:

Kinks because that seems to be an important factor on making these types of posts/blogs: Transformation, Hypnosis, Dronification, Denial/Edging, Latex, Brainwashing, Bimbofication, Twinning, Dollification, Forniphilia, Exhibition

Things I enjoy but aren't kinks: Forced Fem, Praise, Good Girl (I'll add more when I think of them)

Limits or things that I will block you about: Human Waste, Blood, Physical Harm, IRL Identity Death (Fantasy is hot AF tho), Sissy (WILL BLOCK YOU), Findom (Unless we're in a romantic relationship), (and a few more I can't remember off the top of my head)

The reason for physical harm being a limit is mostly due to personal problems I've had with S.H. and because of that I hate reading S.H. or other stories or fantasies with physical harm or knifes. Fantasy Violence is ok though. (E.G. Pirates or like a battle between two warrior framed in a Fictional light.) Oh and also no needles. BIG fear of needles, for multiple reasons. Will go in depth if asked.

Finally a few final things about me/general questions:

This is my first Tumblr account that is SPECIFICALLY for NSFW things although I will occasionally post more SFW things but I do love music, video games, card/board games, RPGs/TTRPGs, creative writing, art.

What's your Favorite Color?: I don't have one but my fav combo is Hot Pink and Deep Purple, pretty much if you've ever seen those BIC octagonal see-through pens, those shades of pink and purple specifically

What kinda music do you like?: Power Metal, Rock, some Pop

What video games do you play?: Some Pokemon, Batman: Arkham, Smash Ultimate, Fallout, I can't really get online games yet so unfortunately I cannot play with anyone :'(

Is there anything specific you like about your kinks?: Honestly, in a vacuum I like dronification for productivity because I SUCK at doing anything productive.

The people who have sent questions about Gaza Support (i am broke but here are links to them i am just going to put their profiles for the sake of simplicity and nc some links i cant copy paste):

@ehabayyad23

@freepaleatine95

@mahmoudayyad

@esraayyad14

@ezzaldeens-blog

@foggyruinspost

@ahmed4palestine

@sspsworld

@fidaa-family2

@wafaaresh6

@mahmoudswierh2

@generousvioonanuttieyl

@nishverian

@ahmedalnabeeh11

@shinytastemakerphantom

@nohabed

@ahmaad860

@scentedtyrantmusic

@mahrahpalestine

@d-imtthal

@ayoosh-gaza

@kareem-family2

@save-fatma-gaza3093

@yazan-joud2

Tags to find non-reposts easier (Umm i ran out of colors so these will be bold):

#Random Thoughts, #Edging kink (for post horny thoughts), #Hornyposting (for horny thoughts), #Hydes eepy thoughts (for thoughts i have when sleep deprived), #Hydes Ideas (cool ideas i have), #Hydes Hypno Scripts (for Hypnotic Scripts I make), #Hydes QnA (QnA), #Hydes Depressed Thoughts (Thoughts I have when depressed), #Hydes Kinky Thoughts (thoughts I have that are just generally kinky but it's not hornyposting nor... I forgot what I was going to put here), #Hydes Hypno Scripts (My hypnosis scripts), #Slimeposting (Slime Queen RP posts), #Hydes loving words (to my significant other)

If I get any FAQ I'll either add them here or to a FAQ post.

I now have a sideblog for latex things that look perfect. That is an opinion and just a kink the person they are under the latex is, in my opinion, someone different so anything there that I call 'perfect' is just in terms of kinkiness NOT a reflection of the actual person. The blog is: @trans2latexperfection

If you read this far thank you for reading!!! :3

Blocked Users (i dont normally block people so these people are scammers or assholes, also will not be using @ s either here):

mistress-elizabethh - for calling me a s**sy twice, even after claiming to read pinned

[things-about-cars-in-posts]

Miata Mod Master Mᴉsɥlᴉsʇ

[I had to spell Wishlist upside down to keep the alliteration going]

So, here's my first original post in quite a while. Apparently, the last one was a whole hundred followers ago - immense thanks to all 400 of you!!! And also, Tumblr informed me I got 1000 likes and kindly generated a picture for me to thank y'all for them with!

Given that's 2.5 likes per follower, I assume they mean 1000 likes just on my original posts, which would track considering most of my posts are additions, and liking all of those either counts towards that tally as just one like to my original post, or if you liked it through a reblog potentially nothing at all, because maybe likes to reblogs aren't counted even if they're reblogs of my own posts. But don't think I'm a numbers-chaser, this is just me wondering. Really, the only reason I even look at the activity chart of my blog is because I started trying to make that line as straight as possible for giggles (and then some of my posts blew up and ruined it, ecksdee). The thought of someone having enjoyed what I wrote has me smitten every time I see it, and I can barely even comprehend the idea that it happened a literal thousand times. I still can barely wrap my head around four hundred people all having decided they actively want to hear more from me. (Usually it's the opposite, har har.) I love all of you for it. The freaks, the puritans, the children (wait I just said that OOH GOTTEM), the adults, the uncomfortably weird, the hyper-organized users that use different blogs for each one of their passions, the hyper-random users that reblog my posts right after diaper fetish art. (And if you thought that was some whiplash, imagine the guy who followed a diaper fetish art blog getting shown me.)

But this is just me buying time, isn't it. Alright alright, let's talk about the wishlist, beginning with its premise.

This is not advice. This is not a list that makes sense at all, really - most of these items are way far down the list of things I'd do with the money they cost and/or the effort they'd take. This is a dream, where those aren't a factor. Just like some people's dream car is a ten million dollar hypercar that was built directly into the bodies of five Middle Eastern oil moguls, my dream car is a Miata with exactly these bits. (And a Seven, but I really need to stop confusing y'all with them being tied for the favorite car top spot.)

This list is based on a note I started in middle school for the fun of it (which is hopefully understood as the driving motive behind this all) and gradually updated through high school and sort of left behind after that, having kind of run out of bits to add to it. It's split into six sections:

Exterior

Interior (i.e. cabin, trunk and engine bay)

Drivetrain (i.e. anything that plays a role in making the wheels spin)

Chassis and suspension (i.e. chassis and everything that connects the wheels to it)

Electronics (i.e. electronics/microcontroller-related features)

Miscellaneous

This will be a chance for me to check the prices of all the things I listed and, at the end of it, tally up their total cost and feel feelings about its enormity. But of course, we'll need to start with a thing that was not in the note, as it was a given to me: the base car. So that will be the subject of my next addition to this post.

Because I can't make this a single post. Absolutely no chance. Even just any workaround to the image limit being about a fifth of the length of this list would be a nightmare for me to execute and for y'all to navigate. And frankly, the length of the task would make me, if not outright give up, at the very least skimp on the kind of explanations and discussions that I must assume are why you're all here. So I will need to make additions to this post (in the form of a reblog, of course) each going over one section at most. But truth be, even doing one reblog per section presents those problems, so some sections would need splitting in a number of parts. Or I could go to the other extreme and made one post per item (or when appropriate group of items), which would allow me to expand upon every which one as little or as much as appropriate while still keeping a tidy presentation. But to do this I would need to hide all the information bar the name under a Read More, because if I put as little as one picture before it by the time I'm at the end of the list every time this post appears in your dash you'll have to scroll past some hundred pictures to get to the bottom of it; also, of course, this would mean this post showing up in your dash upwards of a hundred times - though of course you could just ignore it a bunch of times and when you feel like it go through all the parts you've not read yet at once.

Right now I'm leaning towards the one post per item approach, which would allow me to work towards the completion of this abomination in small daily steps rather than in age-long parts which would also help addressing your other submissions. But it's very hard for me to figure out what y'all would prefer, as it's kind of hard for me to figure out who would actually want to read through the entirety of this. So, y'all are welcome to leave your feedback in the replies or through this non-binding format poll.

Links in blue are posts of mine about the topic in question - if you liked this post, you might like those!

[shadowmaat]

Open Letter

Dear @photomatt,

I am depressed. I'm discouraged. I am exhausted and burned out and so dang tired all the time. And you really aren't helping.

Look, I know tumblr is deeply in the hole and needs to make money. I know the upcoming Crabageddon isn't going to help as much as people hope it will. But watching tumblr cannibalize itself as it tries so hard to produce a blank, homogenized experience with a blank, homogenized interface just makes me want to cry.

Tumblr has been a refuge for me since 2011. It has changed a lot over the years (like, a LOT), but one thing it has always been- and one thing that has kept me coming back- is how unique it is. Sure, some things are clunky and if you kick the tires too hard they might fall off; or shower you with tubby custard; or start blasting Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley, but it was still a fun hellsite (affectionate) and I was glad to call it home.

These changes you're making? The ones you claim are necessary for the future of the site? You're killing everything that makes tumblr a fun and unique experience. You may be making it "easier" for everyone else to use (¹citation needed), but at the cost of the comfort of the long-time userbase. We are here because we like tumblr. Not tiktok, not twitter, but tumblr.

I know tumblrites have traditionally screamed about every little change since the site was founded, but there's a difference between making cosmetic tweaks and trying to change the fundamental nature of the site.

This isn't about a misplaced concern regarding the reverse-chrono feed, it's about having to manually go in and turn off "tumblr live" every seven days or risk seeing random tits at the top of my screen with every refresh. It's about making the dash look like twitter. It's about disregarding folks who've expressed issues with the lack of accessibility features. And trying to force sign-ups in order to view posts. It's about taking away a safe space and turning a hellsite (affectionate) into a hellsite (despairing).

You knew tumblr was a money pit when you bought it. The site has a reputation for being a money pit that sucks in investors and spits them out again poorer than they were. Now you're using that debt as an excuse to make sweeping changes without caring about feedback from the folks who actually use the site.

So many people have articulated the problems better than I could. People who know about social media and web infrastructure and all the other elements that go into managing a site like this- and the people that come along with it. They've pointed out the flaws, the misinformation, the corporate doublespeak. Some have even suggested alternatives that would maintain the integrity of what tumblr is while still offering a chance to make up the debt. But I get the sense that no one in the upper echelons is listening. That no one cares.

A few weeks ago I was sure we'd be able to outlast you and survive, but now I'm wondering if you're going to pull an Elon and make this place so uninhabitable (at least to long-term users) that we'll feel forced out. And that breaks my heart. I've been here for so long. I don't want to leave. But if you keep pressing forward with your efforts to make tumblr into metatwit-tok, I'll leave. And I'm sure I won't be the only one.

But I guess if all you care about is money then it doesn't matter; we'll be easily replaced by kids and influencers who want everything to be the same everywhere they go.

May your choices reap the dividends you deserve.

shadowmaat

[shouyuus]

new ask on the new blog!! i love the aesthetics!

glad to hear that things are going well on your part!! and yeah, i remember back in the days fandom on tumblr was more interactive, but it was also when we were all stuck at home because of external circumstances :’) i wish your bf all the best for finding a job… TT . TT i technically can enter tech, but i study design. i know user interface & user experience is an overlap of design and tech, but it’s highly competitive and i don’t really have the confidence… i don’t have a good portfolio to fall back on, haha. i think… looking at current happenings i am not optimistic about the economy either, but i will stay positive that eventually i’ll find something…

happy 30th birthday btw!!! what are 3 advice / tips you gained abt life or writing? (no pressure) — @anonymilk

you are so right soy sauce is the backbone of any great culinary dish… so are fics… i didn’t know soy sauce is shouyou in japanese! that makes your fic rec blog makes sense. ahhh, that’s so cute that your blog is technically soy sauce with inspiration from hinata and ur own name. i really like urls like that. so much story and meaning behind it XD how was it like setting up a brand new blog? any thing u might have done differently? — @anonymilk oh yes… what does it mean when a series is limited… — @anonymilk

gonna combine ur asks !!! hehe so! yes - the tech market is hard rn but i have faith and he's the best boi so he'll find something eventually; i think you'll def find something too! unfortunately i think in this economy, it rly just is about grinding and sending out a bunch of apps, and then eventually, something will come around.

thank u for the bday wishes!!!! hmmm 3 pieces of advice? i think:

don't be afraid of being silly! growing up is overrated and yes, there's a time and a place for that, but don't let go of the things that bring you joy, no matter how "weird" they are, or how "niche" or whatever. if it makes u happy, then it makes you happy!

sometimes ur emotions aren't a choice, but whenever they are, you're allowed to make the choice to not feel a thing -- this was a bit harder for me to learn, bc its hard to think of being like "in control" of ur emotions without trying to be like deny, deny, nope, nope, nope. but at least for me "choosing" not to feel a certain type of way is acknowledging like "cool okay so, my body/brain is having this type of kneejerk reaction, and that's fine, but also im not gonna let it consume me" and after that, it gets a bit easier to handle

specifically about writing? don't be so hard on urself! :) this is a true passion project right -- we don't make money, we do it bc we want to and it makes us happy, and it maybe makes a few other ppl happy too, and that's a pretty cool thing! ur allowed to take breaks, to step away, to do you and live ur life and come back to this hobby later! it'll always be here waiting for you

T B H setting up the new blog was kinda stressful but FUn stressful. like it took an obscene amount of time to figure out the kind of aesthetic i wanted to have, and then to like... re-acquaint myself with html and photoshop and all that LOL but im rly happy with how it's turning out so far !!!

and yES so a limited series is just like... a mini-series. so in tv that's like 3-4 episodes instead of a 10-12 episode "season" of tv. and i borrowed that term bc instead of having like 10 chapters, this "series" is only rly like... 4 chapters and a bit more so !!! that's all!

[giants-club]

In which Arilin says pointed things about open source, open data, and social media

N.B.: As I was writing this, an entirely different kerfluffle started about Meta, Facebook's parent company, working on their own ActivityPub-compatible microblogging service. While that may be a field of land mines topic worth writing about, it's a topic for a different day.

Cohost's recent financial update revealing they are running on fumes can't help but bring to my mind what I wrote back in December:

[Cohost is] still a centralized platform, and that represents a single point of failure. If Cohost takes off, it's going to require a lot more money to run than they have right now, and it's hard to know if "Cohost Plus" will be enough to offset those costs.

I have a few friends who are Cohost partisans. While its "cram posts into 40% of the browser window width" aesthetic is claws on a chalkboard to me, it's easy to see why people like the service. They have the nice things from Twitter and Tumblr, but without the ads and the NSFW policies and the right-wing trolls and the Elons. They don't have the annoying things from Mastodon---the nerdy fiddliness around "instances" endemic to any such service, and the prickly, change-resistant and mansplainy culture endemic to Mastodon in particular. They even have a manifesto! (Who doesn't like a good manifesto?) Unfortunately, what they don't have is a business model---and unlike the vast majority of Mastodon instances, they need one.

To the degree I've become a social media partisan, it's for Mastodon, despite its cultural and technical difficulties. I'm not going to beat the federation drum again, though---not directly. Instead, I'd like to discuss "silos": services whose purpose is to share user-generated content, from tweets to photos to furry porn, but that largely lock that data in.

Let's pick two extremes that aren't social media: the blogging engine WordPress, and the furry story/image archive site Fur Affinity.

WordPress itself is open source. You can put up your own WordPress site or use any number of existing commercial hosts if you like.

WordPress has export and import tools: when you change WordPress hosts, you can bring everything with you.

WordPress has open APIs: you can use a variety of other tools to make and manage your posts, not just WordPress's website.

Fur Affinity is not open source. If FA goes away, there won't be another FA, unless they transfer the assets to someone else.

You can't move from another archive site to FA or move from FA to another archive site without doing everything manually. You can't even export lists of your social graph to try to rebuild it on another site.

FA has no API, so there's no easy way for anyone else to build third-party tools to work with it.*

Cohost is, unfortunately, on the FA side of the equation. It has no official, complete API, no data export function, no nothing. If it implodes, it's taking your data down with it.

Mastodon, for all of its faults, is open-source software built on an open protocol. Anyone with sufficient know-how and resources can spin up a Mastodon (or Mastodon-compatible) server, and if you as a user need to move to a different instance for any reason, you can. And I know there are a lot of my readers who don't dig Mastodon ready to point out all the asterisks there, the sharp edges, the failures in practice. But if you as a user need to move to a different Cohost instance for any reason, there is only one asterisk there and the asterisk is "sorry, you're fucked".

I've often said that I'm more interested in open data than open source, and that's largely true: since I write nearly everything in plain text with Markdown, my writing won't be trapped in a proprietary format if the people who make my closed-source editors go under or otherwise stop supporting them. But, I'm not convinced that a server for a user-generated content site doesn't ultimately need both data and source to be open. A generation ago, folks abandoning LiveJournal who wanted to keep using an LJ-like system could migrate to Dreamwidth nearly effortlessly. Dreamwidth was a fork of LJ's open-source server, and LJ had a well-documented API for posting, reading, importing, and exporting.

To be clear, I hope Cohost pulls out of their current jam. They seem to have genuinely good motivations. But even the best of intentions can't guarantee…well, anything. Small community-driven sites have moderation faceplants all the damn time. And sites that get big enough that they can no longer be run as a hobby will need revenue. If they don't have a plan to get that revenue, they're going to be in trouble; if they do have a plan, they face the danger of enshittification. Declaring your for-profit company to be proudly anti-capitalist is not, in the final analysis, a solution to this dilemma.

And yet. I can't help but read that aspirational "against all things Silicon Valley" manifesto, look at the closed source, closed data, super-siloed service they actually built in practice, and wonder just how those two things can be reconciled. At the end of the day, there's little more authentically Silicon Valley than lock-in.

------

*I know you're thinking "what about PostyBirb"; as far as I know, PostyBirb is basically brute-forcing it by "web scraping". This works, but it's highly fragile; a relatively small change on FA's front end, even a purely aesthetic one, might break things until PostyBirb can figure out how to brute-force the new design.

[semiramis-audron]

[Image ID: a screenshot from a different tumblr user: The thing these 'I could draw/make that' types never ever understand is that they didn't make that, and they wouldn't think to either. Most people only view art in terms of literal technical skill, and not as a medium to produce an emotional or intellectual response" end description]

Okay, but this "oh they only think about it as technical skill rather than invoking something in the viewer" might be wrong?

Because it might be a mix of both, I would say the opposite is true actually?

This might be an assumption based on my mum who disliles modern art, but I'm almost entirely sure that people who do this, do it because they are not artists themselves and don't know the story behind the painting and just have the visuals to go by. So they don't actually know about the technical skills.

"old fashioned" art usually depicts things people can still parse. Vistas or objects or people. That's what you mostly get to look at if you get any kind of basic art education in school (without specialising)

I know we looked at art history and interpreted old paintings and composition but that was all on non-abstract paintings. We barely touched those.

Abstract art requires the viewer to come up with what it might be. I can only get an emotional or intellectual response from something if I have a vague grasp of what I'm looking at. And human brains are wired to find patterns and connections so they will try to somehow interprète an abstract painting in a way they would an old one. "It has to depict something clearly. I just can't figure what... "

From a small age on, when I was asking about abstract art it was always "well the artists thought of something and wanted to express himself in how he did that. It's supposed to evoke an emotion / intellectual response."

It was always about "You are supposed to interprète what you see" and not "the technique and work that went into the painting might be part of the interpretation" because the artist had to think about which colors to chose, which medium, how to apply them and in which way.

It's just "the artist picked a color he felt like and went wild with it, because he had emotions. You are supposed to get these emotions from looking at it"

And I bet a lot of people who don't like modern/abstract art only go by their emotional/intellectual response which is "nothing" because. They can't figure what it is they are looking at visually like with old art so they only see what they can see. Color and maybe shapes and they don't know how much work and délibération went into this, so they assume not much.

If someone took me to a gallery and I had no idea about the art. And I would see a big canvas of just flat blue paint. Maybe my interpretation would be according to what I had been told about modern art: "I guess it's a darker blue so it might be a piece about depression and it's the whole canvas so I guess the artist wanted to express how it covers his whole life. It's just fucking blue on a canvas tho, so I could probably do that. Why is that worth so much money?"

And the first interpretation part is just because I actually tried to come up with a response to a painting I have only the visuals of and actually made an effort to engage with it, without having any context.

And yes people do think "I don't know what it's supposed to be and I don't know what the artist is trying to say, but this LOOKS like my toddler splashed paint on the wall, why does the artist make money with this and I have to do a day job??" they aren't trained to have an intellectual response so THAT IS their emotional RESPONSE "frustration" about presumed artistical skill. which is why you get petty "I could do this" stuff

Because they don't know the stuff that went into this.

YOU know this is an entirely new pigment which requires knowledge of color theory, chemistry, physical properties of paint ingredients and the brush strokes are so precise/fine/ thin that they are practically invisible, which requires years of training and technique to master...

I didn't know that.

This person very likely didnt know that and just went to "a gallery" because it was hip or someone invited them but didn't actually care enough about art to explain to them what this artist is known for.

Or why modern art isn't just "pic color and a feeling and go do whatever"

"I could do that types" just express what intellectual and emotional repsonse the painting cause in them when looking at it BECAUSE they don't know the artistic skill is part of the process.

abstract and modern art haters are sooo snobby like klein literally Created an entirely new pigment and then painted a canvas in a way where the brush strokes wouldn't be visible. the insinuation that people with no skill could reproduce that is so annoying because unless you are skilled at color mixing and painting you definitely couldn’t lmao

[awisetoad]

bruh one thing that's abundantly clear: the average Tumblr user/reddit/internet armchair critic has absolutely no idea how media gets made. not one single clue. ESPECIALLY regarding who is responsible for decisions they didn't like, but really just all of it

like, art made by one person? straightforward, understandable process. one single person to blame. easy.

something made by a team of maybe three people? okay maybe, still easy to blame when things go wrong. who wore what hat, or they collectively made a stupid decision.

something at the scale of a commercial production? absolutely incomprehensible. might as well be wizardry. (ofc when in doubt blame either the writers, director, or ceo bc those are the only people who …make decisions? could be at fault? do anything????? out of a crew of a zillion people? have you ever sat thru credits before? jfc)

there's so much shit that goes on:

between regular workplace drama,

normal human mistakes,

people getting fired and hired and replaced and quietly ghosted or let go,

people taking over roles they have no business taking over because there straight-up is no one else,

people who are good at managing people but utterly lack the creative vision getting stuck in charge of making the final decision,

people with incredible creative vision that are absolute nightmares to work with making the work environment an utter hellscape

teams of people whose job it is to say no because money

contracts

scheduling issues

trying to get 15 people in a meeting to agree on anything,

badly wording a company memo and starting a fuckin' fire,

HR,

technical issues,

OSHA

budget cuts

creative problem solving,

deadlines

shifting goalposts,

corporate reprioritization,

corporate restructuring,

delays,

the fucking weather,

the ad said you get no more takes,

scheduling again,

regular workplace communication issues,

you aren't done but ran out of time and are forced to ship anyway,

the schedule/budget doesn't have room for a reshoot so you are forced to use sub-par Take A because Take B is unusable

the schedule/budget has room for a reshoot but no to reshoot that because there are way more important problems to fix

contractors who were not correctly looped in,

contractors or entire other internal departments or key stakeholders who have a fundamentally different picture of the vision despite using the exact same language as everyone else,

shit changing wildly between pre- and post- production,

you have spent 38472947832493 hours and still cannot fix the bug

your boss was fired and he was the only one who attended all the high-level meetings and their replacement is Behind™

or there is no replacement and now the creative team reports to purchasing because they still need a manager to approve their pto and timecards

you fucked up and have to rollback and now no longer have time/resources/money/braincells to complete the bottom 87 tasks of the to do list

scheduling again again

when we're deep in post and there's not a single person from pre left working on it because they've moved on or were fired or replaced so there's no one left to ask and you just have to wing it,

the fact that we're usually not making art for art's sake but delivering on a profit-driven investment,

you realize in editing someone done fucked up several months and a couple hundred thousand dollars ago and it is Too Late Now™,

the existence of marketing,

the existence of merchandising,

aging target demographic

a suddenly-brand-new social or political landscape that means something is very not cool anymore and you have to delete 43847239 hours of work which is literally like lighting a billion dollars on fire

the team is forced to downsize and now it is not physically possible to complete the same scope is before because it is not yet possible to generate more hours in the day or physically be in eight places at once

the people in charge cannot agree on the creative direction

the people working on this thing have vastly different life experiences than each other and from you

the diversity and sensitivity focus groups gave it a green light even though it is controversial

your downstream team misinterprets your upstream decisions and maybe don't realize it until post

there was a whole third act that made shit in act one made sense, but it got cut because it was bad and/or overscoped and not because of some machiavellian scheme to fail to "complete" the work

reshoots

someone said something they shouldn't have in public and it caused problems for production (leaks, spoilers, expectations, whatever)

the lead actor now has a domestic abuse charge and oops the 3 years you spent in pre carefully planning where the next several billion dollars investment will be allocated goes up in smoke and you have maybe 6 months to fix it and contracts have already been signed glhf

…the system is fucking massive and it's a literal miracle anything gets made

so like. it's absolutely fine to have an opinion. no one says you have to like all media. hate something if you want. I could care less. on the flip side, be at peace and enjoy media even if its is just kind of mid. have fun or don't, I don't care. even learn to critique something if you want and examine something's faults (which is fundamentally different than sharing an opinion, let alone grasping different schools of critique, I swear I get doyalist vs watsonian and death of the author and all that but that is not a dissertation I will be sharing today, no sir)

but, fam. really. calm down with the roasting of creative professionals with your righteous indignation over your blorbo. you clearly have not one single fucking clue. you are less flavorful than clue-flavored la Croix.

I promise the truth behind "why" you didn't like X is found in the sphaghetti-land production hellscape illustrated above and not because you somehow understand the blorbo better than the zillion people who brought it to life

christ almighty, it's fuckin' arrogant.

and then after illustrating utter cluelessness in the rudest way possible, folks have the AUDACITY to shriek about how it's a shame the director/studio/writers/office dog skippy doesn't care about its fans and/or the end product when the damn thing only happened bc of the blood, sweat, and tears of a hundred underpaid staff members who are torn between quitting for their mental health and putting in unpaid overtime because they care far more than they should

like

what the fuck

[deviantartdramahub]

You have the nerve to say this -> Status by Morothias on DeviantArt. Aren't you the one who claimed to be Jellybeanism who happens to be a completely diffrent person! I thought it was a bit weird when I saen that username on Yahoo Answers, talking nothing like you do on DeviantArt. I thought nothing of it at the time, but now, I see why you changed your name. Here is how I know. First of all, let's take a trip down memory line. Copying and pasting somebody else's comment or note or complaint is easy, uh, not that I do that myself of course. Why would I when all I have to do is read whatever the person I'm talking too, or whoever is talking about me for whatever reason. And then think of a reply and job done, however, BirdThatWhispers on the other hand; Nah...his ideal solution would be to come up with a fabricated lie using old complaints made by other people about him. Comments or notes or anything that gives him the advantage to use against his current victim(s) so he can manipulate people into thinking he's being honest. BirdThatWhispers will try passing the blame on to somebody else so he can go after women or children for sexual fetish roleplays, and this is all on a website designed for artists and art enthusiasts. What a "nice guy" huh, and I mean that in a STRONG and VERY sarcastic tone of voice, BirdThatWhispers is a twisted and sick individual altogether. His limits don't stop there either, he would do that kind of crap with 12-year-old girls or boys who don't know any different. And what is the big fetish he enjoys the most? Spanking them at bedtime with a wooden hairbrush on their bare behinds.... what a freak BirdThatWhispers truly is...and I'm not kidding, I have a screenshot of him doing a roleplay with a 14-year-old girl. Does that sound anything like what that creepy prick told you, Eve? I bet you anything it wasn't. But the point I'm making here is, YOU'RE the same! You said so yourself, you can't handle the pressure, and while you "burst" into a rage against whomever, me in most cases, you can't bring yourself to shut up and read what the person is saying to you! Like you, he bullied somebody who had a condision. Like you, Bird didn't care and continued to attack. And also like Bird, you took a username that somebody else had, and pretended to be them so you could get money... money that is meant for people who suffered in that quake... I mean, do you have no shame? Do you enjoy making fun of people have condisions too like BirdThatWhispers, aka AnimeCitizen, aka whatever the fuck he goes by now....huh? Do you? You think was making fun of that prick Armstrongy85 because I thought he was a "cool person", fuck no! I thought and still do think he's a nasty pace of work liek you, a bully who thinks he can just log on and talk shit to people because they won't listen to him! And let's not forget, I've had some nuppty, you, in other words, give me empty threats because you actually believes a I'm just going to roll over accept defeat. Well, as much as I love bursting your bubble, Evie, I'm doing it again now. Nah, I'm not gonna stop or give up, I don't need a DA account to show the World what a horrable peace of shit you truly are! This isn't over, Evie... It's NOT OVER BY A LONG SHOT!

I have yet to see anything from either side of this conflict which could ever be considered proof. One side has a list of supposed alts, and has dedicated their profile to talking about what they consider to be an utmost pressing issue, but I'm sure they know the first thing that would be asked of them by a court (which includes this Tumblr group, which aspires to be a court) is how they came to think all the users they speak of are the same individual. To this day, this question has not been answered? Will today be any different? Only they have the power to make it that way. On the other hand, the accuser in turn has been accused of being a sexual deviant. But based on what?

I'm not sure who is a nice guy here, but each side throwing around claims isn't nice, and tragically the one provable thing here is digital artists being needy enough with money that they fall into what many would call this clash with humanitarianism that has been alluded to here and elsewhere. Yet it would be convenient for all of them to come here to explain themselves since all the claims about each other hold equal water.

[respectable-username]

🔐 Why You (Probably) Don't Need A VPN

A rant by a software engineer sick of VPN ads from her favourite YouTubers

TL;DR:

Here are some legitimate reasons the average internet user might want to use a VPN:

To connect to their company's internal network

To bypass the Great Firewall of China (or other types of website blocks at country or organisation level)

To watch Netflix etc as if you were in another country

Here are absolutely rubbish reasons to use a VPN:

Privacy

And today, I'll tell you why.

Hang on, won't a VPN stop hackers from stealing my passwords?

I mean, it does encrypt the web traffic coming from your device.

You know what else encrypts web traffic coming from your device? Your browser.

Yes, in the year 2021, pretty much all websites on the internet are accessed over HTTPS. The "S" stands for "secure", as in "your request will be securely encrypted". If your browser is using HTTPS, nobody can capture the data you're sending over the internet. More detail in the "I like too much detail" section at the bottom of this post.

It's very easy to check if you are using HTTPS by looking at your URL bar. In most browsers, it will have a lock on it if secure:

(From top left to bottom right: Chrome on iOS, Safari on iOS, Chrome on Windows, Edge on Windows, Firefox on Windows, and Safari on Mac. Screenshots reflect the UI at the time this post was written. Oh gosh this has taken over 4 hours to write.)

But isn't moar encryption better? What if somebody breaks HTTPS?

For starters, nobody's breaking your HTTPS, and there isn't any benefit from double encrypting. This is because of the maths behind encryption/decryption!

Encryption works kinda like a lock and key, except the lock is maths and the key is a special number only known to the person allowed to unlock the information.

The important thing is, without the key, all the locked data looks like complete and utter garbage. Completely unusable. Barely distinguishable from random noise. There's absolutely no way to tell what the original data was.

The other important thing is that the key is nearly unguessable. As in, with current technology, will generally take more than the lifetime of the universe to guess by chance. And when technology gets faster, we just make the numbers bigger again until they're once again secure.

For any major website you use, they will use a strong encryption algorithm (ie lock) with big numbers so your keys will be strong enough to withstand an attack. This means your data is safe as long as that lock icon is in your URL bar.

A VPN will not make the existing garble any more garbled. The extra $10/month or whatever you're paying for does not buy you any extra protection.

If you want to know more about how encryption and HTTPS in particular work, see the "I like too much detail" section at the end of this post.

Something something viruses

How's a VPN going to stop viruses? It controls the path your internet traffic takes, not the content that gets sent down that path. I guess it could block some known virus-giving hosts? But if it's known to the VPN provider, it's probably also known to the built-in antivirus on your computer who can block it for you.

(Oh yeah, 3rd party antivirus is another thing that's not worth paying for these days. Microsoft's built-in Windows Defender is as good as the third party options, and something something Macs don't get viruses easily because of how they're architected.)

Honestly though, keep your software up to date, don't click on anything suspicious, don't open files from sources you don't trust, and you'll be right most of the time.

And keep your software up to date. Then update your software. Hey, did I mention keeping your stuff updated? Update! Now! It only takes a few minutes. Please update to the latest version of your software I'm begging you. It's the number 1 way to protect yourself from viruses and other malware. Most major software attacks could have been prevented if people just updated their damn software!

But my ISP is spying on me!

Ok, it is true that there are TWO bits of data that HTTPS can't and won't hide. Those are:

The source of a request (your IP)

What website that request is going to (the website's IP)

These are the bits of information that routers use to know where to send your data, so of course they can't be hidden as the data is moving across the internet. And people can see that information very easily if they want to.

Note: this will show which website you're going to, but not which page you're looking at, and not the content of that page. So it will show that you were on Tumblr, but will not show anyone that you're still reading SuperWhoLock content in 2021.

It's this source/destination information that VPNs hide, which is why they can be used to bypass website blocks and region locks.

By using a VPN, those sniffing traffic on your side of the VPN will just show you connecting to the VPN, not the actual website you want. That means you can read AO3 at work/school without your boss/teachers knowing (unless they look over your shoulder of course).

As for those sniffing on the websites end, including the website itself, they will see the VPN as the source of the connection, not you. So if you're in the US and using a VPN node in the UK, Netflix will see you as being in the UK and show you their British library rather than the American one.

If this is what you're using a VPN for and you think the price is fair, then by all means keep doing it! This is 100% what VPNs are good for.

HOWEVER, and this is a big "however", if it's your ISP you're trying to hide your internet traffic from, then you will want to think twice before using a VPN.

Let me put it this way. Without a VPN, your ISP knows every website you connect to and when. With a VPN, do you know who has that exact same information? The VPN provider. Sure, many claim to not keep logs, but do you really trust the people asking for you to send them all your data for a fee to not just turn around and sell your data on for a profit, or worse?

In effect, you're trading one snooper for another. One snooper is heavily regulated, in many jurisdictions must obey net neutrality, and is already getting a big fee from you regardless of where you browse. The other isn't. Again, it's all a matter of who you trust more.

For me personally, I trust my ISP more than a random VPN provider, if for no other reason than my ISP is an old enough company with enough inertia and incompetence that I don't think they could organise to sell my data even if they wanted to. And with the amount of money I'm paying them per month, they've only got everything to lose if they broke consumer trust by on-selling that data. So yeah, I trust my ISP more with my privacy than the random VPN company.

But my VPN comes with a password manager!

Password managers are great. I 100% recommend you use a password manager. If there's one thing you could do right now to improve your security (other than updating your software, speaking of, have you updated yet?), it's getting and using a password manager.

Password managers also come for free.

I'm currently using LastPass free, but am planning to switch after they did a bad capitalism and only let their free accounts access either laptop or mobile but not both now. I personally am planning to move to Bitwarden on friends' recommendation since it's not only free but open source and available across devices. I also have friends who use passbolt and enjoy it, which is also free and open source, but it's also a bit DIY to set up. Great if you like tinkering though! And there are probably many other options out there if you do a bit of googling.

So, yeah, please use a password manager, but don't pay for it unless you actually have use for the extra features.

No I really need to hide my internet activity from everybody for reasons

In this case, you're probably looking for TOR. TOR is basically untraceable. It's also a terrible user experience for the most part because of this, so I'd only recommend it if you need it, such as if you're trying to escape the Great Firewall. But please don't use it for Bad Crimes. I am not to be held liable for any crime committed using information learned from this post.

Further reading viewing

If you want to know more about why you don't need a VPN, see Tom Scott's amazing video on the subject. It's honestly a great intro for beginners.

I like too much detail

Ahhh, so you're the type of person who doesn't get turned off by long explanations I see. Well, here's a little more info on the stuff I oversimplified in the main post about encryption. Uhh, words get bigger and more jargony in this section.

So first oversimplification: the assumption that all web traffic is either HTTP or HTTPS. This isn't exactly true. There are many other application layer internet standards out there, such as ssh, ftp, websockets, and all the proprietary standards certain companies use for stuff such as streaming and video conferencing. Some of these are secure, using TLS or some other security algorithm under the hood, and some of them aren't.

But most of the web requests you care about are HTTP/HTTPS calls. As for the rest, if they come from a company of a decent size that hasn't been hacked off the face of the planet already, they're probably also secure. In other words, you don't need to worry about it.

Next, we've already said that encryption works as a lock and a key, where the lock is a maths formula and the key is a number. But how do we get that key to lock and unlock the data?

Well, to answer that, we first need to talk about the two different types of encryption: symmetric and asymmetric. Symmetric encryption such as AES uses the same key to both encrypt and decrypt data, whereas asymmetric encryption such as RSA uses a different key to encode and decode.

For the sake of my writing, we're going to call the person encrypting Alice, the person decrypting Bob, and the eavesdropper trying to break our communications Eve from now on. These are standard names in crypto FYI. Also, crypto is short for cryptography not cryptocurrencies. Get your Bitcoin and Etherium outta here!

Sorry if things start getting incoherent. I'm tired. It's after 1am now.

So first, how do we get the key from symmetric crypto? This is probably the easier place to start. Well, you need a number, any number of sufficient size, that both Alice and Bob know. There are many ways you could share this number. They could decide it when they meet in person. They could send it to each other using carrier pigeons. Or they could radio it via morse code. But those aren't convenient, and somebody could intercept the number and use it to read all their messages.

So what we use instead is a super clever algorithm called Diffie-Hellman, which uses maths and, in particular, the fact it's really hard to factor large numbers (probably NP Hard to be specific, but there's no actual proof of that). The Wikipedia page for this is surprisingly easy to read, so I'll just direct you there to read all about it because I've been writing for too long. This algorithm allows Alice and Bob to agree on a secret number, despite Eve being able to read everything they send each other.

Now Alice and Bob have this secret number key, they can talk in private. Alice puts her message and the key into the encryption algorithm and out pops what looks like a load of garbage. She can then send this garbage to Bob without worrying about Eve being able to read it. Bob can then put the garbage and the key into the decryption algorithm to undo the scrambling and get the original message out telling him where the good donuts are. Voila, they're done!

But how does Alice know that she's sending her message to Bob and not Eve? Eve could pretend to be Bob so that Alice does the Diffie-Hellman dance with her instead and sends her the secret location of the good donuts instead.

This is where asymmetric crypto comes in! This is the one with private and public keys, and the one that uses prime numbers.

I'm not 100% across the maths on this one TBH, but it has something to do with group theory. Anyway, just like Diffie-Hellman, it relies on the fact that prime factorisation is hard, and so it does some magic with semi-primes, ie numbers with only 2 prime factors other than 1. Google it if you want to know more. I kinda zoned out of this bit in my security courses. Maths hard

But the effect of that maths is easier to explain: things that are encoded with one of the keys can only be decoded with the other key. This means that one of those keys can be well-known to the public and the other is known only to the person it belongs to.

If Alice wants to send a message to Bob and just Bob, no Eve allowed, she can first look up Bob's public key and encrypt a beginning message with that. Once Bob receives the message, he can decrypt it with his private key and read the contents. Eve can't read the contents though because, even though she has Bob's public key, she doesn't know his private key.

This public key information is what the lock in your browser is all about BTW. It's saying that the website is legit based on the public key they provide.

So why do we need symmetric crypto when we have asymmetric crypto? Seems a lot less hassle to exchange keys with asymmetric crypto.

Well, it's because asymmetric crypto is slooooow. So, in TLS, the security algorithm that puts the "S" in "HTTPS", asymmetric RSA is used to establish the initial connection and figure out what symmetric key to use, and then the rest of the session uses AES symmetric encryption using the agreed secret key.

And there you have it! Crypto in slightly-less-short-but-still-high-enough-level-that-I-hope-you-understand.

Just realised how long this section is. Well, I did call it "too much detail" for a reason.

Now, next question is what exactly is and isn't encrypted using HTTPS.

Well, as I said earlier, it's basically just the source IP:port and the destination IP:port. In fact, this information is actually communicated on the logical layer below the application layer HTTPS is on, known as the transport layer. Again, as I said before, you can't really encrypt this unless you don't want your data to reach the place you want at all.

Also, DNS is unencrypted. A DNS request is a request that turns a domain name, such as tumblr.com, into an IP address, by asking a special server called a Domain Name Server where to find the website you're looking for. A DNS request is made before an HTTP(S) request. Anyone who can read your internet traffic can therefore tell you wanted to go to Tumblr.

But importantly, this only shows the domain name, not the full URL. The rest of the URL, the part after the third slash (the first two slashes being part of http://), is stuff that's interpreted by the server itself and so isn't needed during transport. Therefore, it encrypted and completely unreadable, just like all the content on your page.

I was going to show a Wireshark scan of a web request using HTTP and HTTPS to show you the difference, but this has taken long enough to write as it is, so sorry!

I could probably write more, but it's 1:30am and I'm sleepy. I hope you found some of this interesting and think twice before purchasing a VPN subscription. Again, there are legit good uses for a VPN, but they're not the ones primarily being advertised in VPN ads. It's the fact that VPN ads rely so heavily on false advertising that really grinds my gears and made me want to do this rant. It's especially bad when it comes from somebody I'd think of as technologically competent (naming no names here, but if you've worked in tech and still promote VPNs as a way to keep data safe... no). Feel free to ask questions if you want and hopefully I'll get around to answering any that I feel I know enough to answer.

Nighty night Tumblr. Please update your software. And use a (free) password manager. And enable two factor authentication on all your accounts. But mostly just update your software.

[kinged]

Jesus Christ what is it with people on this website acting like Tumblr is on its last legs and NEEDS money from users so "what happened to Twitter won't happen to us!!!" You're all morons. If Elon comes up to Tumblr and wants to buy for a couple billion Tumblr will sell us out immediately. The guy who runs Tumblr is also rich, and for them this is not an unprofitable site, and they're trying to make it more profitable, and with you all spending money on this place you're falling into that trap!

I don't think ppl understand how everything you hate about other sites (targeted ads, algorithms, etc) aren't here only because they haven't happened YET. It is not because Tumblr cares about us, they're biding their time. Tumblr is a site that is run by people who do not give a shit about any of their user base, as shown by constantly deleting and reporting people of color, ignoring terfs and Nazis, allowing porn and suicide bait to be blazed even tho it's "moderated" and allowing ads of white supremacy and more to be put on vulnerable people's dash boards

This place is not any different from any other website. Stop pretending it is

[eroticcannibal]

Yeah. Tumblr is a company, not a charity. It runs ads and its adblock doesn't block all its ads. Now people are worried about tumblrs future? Because it's not like it's owned by a company that makes money other ways or anything. And if staff wanted to make money off this site they'd have more employees and a better scope of what people wanted. People who give money to tumblr don't realise they're not keeping tumblr on life support -- they're lining the pockets of people who couldn't care less whether tumblr lives or dies and aren't maintaining the site properly at all. It's tumblr's fault it has no money, between godawful ads despite the amount of them you see, a shitty sponsor system that refuses to make money despite way too much content on tumblr being an ad in post form, and of the course the trashfire of user hostility and destruction of the labour of creators and sex workers. People paying for tumblr will not keep it alive any more that it can itself. It is a giant panda: completely inept yet refusing to die, pretending to be a saveable and worthwhile species (sorry pandas). If a significant proportion of active users give them money, they'd still be in the red because this site is run like shit. Save your money, they're just trying to be profitable for the first time since the site's inception. (And if its owners do pull the plug i don't want to hear any crap from ppl like 'oh if only more users had given it money' it would not have made the slightest difference and also they do not deserve it).

Agreed

[jmtorres]

i keep seeing posts celebrating the devaluation of tumblr, and I'm like, do you actually want tumblr to stop existing? if no one can figure out a way to make money on it, it will go away, like not become a ghost town because no one posts here but become an endless 404, because it bleeds too much money for anyone to decide to fund it out of the goodness of their hearts. It's run as long as it has on investor input but it's never managed any return on investment and eventually someone's going to pull the plug. and it baffles me to see people celebrating this because? they seem to like posting? they seem to like using tumblr?

today I saw a post about "the people who've been on tumblr since the beginning aren't panicking, they know it's not going anywhere" and I realized that no, many users literally do not understand that tumblr's going to collapse if no one can figure out how to monetize it. and I just. do you know about linkrot? Do you remember when geocities went away? Do you know how impossible it is to find messages from the mailing lists that predated livejournal and blogging? I mean it's fucking impossible to find a specific post on tumblr as a working site so maybe you don't see that as all that different, but that's not what it sounds like to me, it sounds like many people can't conceptualize all their posts and reblogs and likes just up in smoke.

I've been trying to figure out how to write this post for days. I've given up so many times because I'm just so baffled. I guess I'm only doing it now because if anyone thought my silence was a fandom old not panicking about tumblr, that's not the case. I mean, it's not panic. I do think the site is going to collapse probably within the next year or two. I'm just resigned.