#promotion site web

[fishareglorious]

promoting the funny anxiety cat jessica as I double check the transcripts for the event about funny abandonment issues deer jessica

[gailynovelry]

Quick guide to Neocities webrings;

If one of a webring's stipulations is "no bigotry (homophobia, racism, etc)," then you'll probably find a thriving queer community there. Explore and enjoy!

If their bigotry stipulation is instead something along the lines of "we don't discriminate based on opinions!" then it will likely comprise of at least one flat-earther, two TERFs, and several deactivated sites. Do not join.

If someone invites you to a webring, check out their site and the other sites on the ring first. It's courteous, and it also keeps you from falling into a noxious ring.

[r0semultiverse]

“Tape recorders & Manila folders” LMAOO now that was a reference (or she’s related to someone who worked at the Magnus institute)

Skin turned into butterflies?? Insect phobia? Also curious about the zombies one vaguely mentioned earlier in passing too.

“Every case about being buried alive or meat or whatever” WHO ARE YOU RELATED TO FROM 20+ YEARS AGO CELIA CMON NOW!

oxfordpeoplestrust.org is also not a real web site that I could find anyway

HILLTOP?!?!

Hilltop center branch sure is a name, wonder what happened during the 6 months! 👀

Wtf happened to Derek Chambers??

That’s one suspicious walk-in applicant... wonder who that is. Knows the hilltop center better than anyone.

A pot with a shouting human face??? Weird.

A friend who wants to volunteer? Also damn, C Clayton is either incompetent or dead! 👀

​Why are these 2 so cheerful?? That is very strange. I don’t think he’s on sabbatical. Lmao

Just bringing in all the creepy cryptid people now, aren’t ya? Though I’d also do that shit if I was understaffed so eh. 🤷‍♀️

“All for a good cause,” it sounds like they’re a hive mind collective of some sort to me.

Oh, they are bringing these items in to sell?? Ahh okay. Also, I feel like C Clayton is definitely dead & these creatures took his keys.

They’re like lemmings or something, holy shit. Also is this a pawn shop I just realized?? Oh a charity shop! Someone just merked a bunch of these guys, holy fuck!! 👀 These are some secret cryptid hunters, gods damn!

Celia: “The voice threw me.” “Do you know who voices Chester?” “Just thought I recognized it for a moment.”

CELIA HOW DO YOU KNOW HIS VOICE?!?! HELLO?? WHO EXACTLY ARE YOU??

AN EMAIL FROM JON?!?! WHAT?!?!!!!

CLAUS?? WHO? GWEN HAS EYES EVERYWHERE HUH?? REALLY LIVING UP TO THE BOUCHARD NAME!

[terrorbirb]

I'm bored at work so I'm seeing if I should report my old company for violating labor standards.

[punnybee]

people who use ai are impatient.

which in our everything-has-to-be-faster society, makes a lot of sense. but they’re sacrificing quality for time.

it’s sorta been a huge snowball effect over the course of several years now. more fast food places, faster service. tv show seasons getting shorter, episodes getting shorter. now you don’t wait for the next episode every week, just binge it all on a streaming site. vine’s 6 second videos. the tiktokification of sites through youtube shorts, tumblr live, instagram reels. hell, even the fact that full length music videos are rare nowadays.

it’s frustrating because we’ve been going in the “get faster at everything” direction for a while now, and we’re really starting to see the full effects of “people raised in a fast-paced society will have a lot less patience.” we no longer have an attention span for anything. we need to be on our phones while watching a movie. we need to watch a video to eat. the mundane is drown out by content, content, content. i have to push myself to do things i genuinely enjoy like art and writing because it takes longer than endlessly scrolling.

i didn’t really have a point to this. it’s just something i’ve noticed.

[mrbingley]

I’ve been working on my own neocities website for funsies for the past several days and was gonna wait to advertise it once it’s finished but I thought I’d ask if you’d be interested in me dropping a link to it now in case you enjoy sneaking a peek and watching the site slowly build up?

[pastacrylic]

I don't know if it's the depression speaking but these days I find it incredibly hard to enjoy anything about the Internet.

Literally every website has become a thousand times more inconvenient, bloated with promoted or recommended shit, stupid UI/UX changes pushed by out of touch billionaires.

The tipping point this week was Google changing the regular "Web - Images - Videos - Etc." tabs with fucking stupid ever-changing search suggestions, making the site a thousand times less accessible and so much more annoying to use

I'm tired. I want forums back. I want ugly html pages that give useful information back. I want to connect with other Internet users in a meaningful way again. Fuck modern corporate UI design. Fuck social media. I want out.

[screentones-webcomicresources]

Webcomic platforms can help get your comic published when you want something quick and easy to start out! They generally share a few qualities:

They format everything in a basic way so you don't have to do much set up your own space to look nice on web/mobile

They have no fee to publish your comics there, because you are using their web hosting

They may get your comic in front of other readers with mobile apps or online catalogs

If you meet their criteria, you may also be able to find hosting with digital comic stores, publishers, and collectives, and this may get you a bit more in the way of money, promotional opportunities, or editor assistance.

Even if you choose to host your website on its own webhost with a comic CMS, you might also consider finding a platform that aligns with your comic goals and "mirroring" your pages there.

In this post, we look at all the webcomic platforms out there we could find in our research!

This post may be updated as time goes on as new platforms enter the hosting arena, or other important updates come to light.

Questions:

💻 Everyone uses social media, could I just use that as a platform for my comic? - One-shot or strip comics without a continuous story that can be read in any order can do okay on social media, and people have adapted Tumblr to display a series of pages. But for continuous long-form stories, social media platforms are better for keeping your readers updated and general promotion.

📚 Wait, what if I want to build my own website and drive people there? - We have another masterlist of website hosts for that!

🕵️‍♀️What kinds of restrictions can I expect? - Many comic platforms have restrictions on NSFW content, links to other sites, or could be invite/application-only. We've tried to note those on the cards, as well as a list of comic platforms that have predatory business practices at the very end that we recommend avoiding. Always do your research!

Webcomic Platforms

Webtoon Canvas

Tapas

Webtoon Originals

SpiderForest Webcomic Collective

Hiveworks

ComicFury

The Duck

Saturday AM

GlobalComix

NamiComi

DillyHub

Shrine Comics

[mylifewithdaisy]

My Life With Daisy offers a comprehensive platform for enhancing your online presence through top-notch social media marketing strategies. Whether you're a seasoned marketer or a budding blogger, our website is your one-stop destination for valuable insights and resources related to social media advertising and promotions. Explore the power of social media marketing with expert guidance on creating compelling social media campaigns that resonate with your target audience.

Email Us: ddvowrites@gmail.com Call Us: +1 718-973-1684

[feminist-space]

"Artists have finally had enough with Meta’s predatory AI policies, but Meta’s loss is Cara’s gain. An artist-run, anti-AI social platform, Cara has grown from 40,000 to 650,000 users within the last week, catapulting it to the top of the App Store charts.

Instagram is a necessity for many artists, who use the platform to promote their work and solicit paying clients. But Meta is using public posts to train its generative AI systems, and only European users can opt out, since they’re protected by GDPR laws. Generative AI has become so front-and-center on Meta’s apps that artists reached their breaking point.

“When you put [AI] so much in their face, and then give them the option to opt out, but then increase the friction to opt out… I think that increases their anger level — like, okay now I’ve really had enough,” Jingna Zhang, a renowned photographer and founder of Cara, told TechCrunch.

Cara, which has both a web and mobile app, is like a combination of Instagram and X, but built specifically for artists. On your profile, you can host a portfolio of work, but you can also post updates to your feed like any other microblogging site.

Zhang is perfectly positioned to helm an artist-centric social network, where they can post without the risk of becoming part of a training dataset for AI. Zhang has fought on behalf of artists, recently winning an appeal in a Luxembourg court over a painter who copied one of her photographs, which she shot for Harper’s Bazaar Vietnam.

“Using a different medium was irrelevant. My work being ‘available online’ was irrelevant. Consent was necessary,” Zhang wrote on X.

Zhang and three other artists are also suing Google for allegedly using their copyrighted work to train Imagen, an AI image generator. She’s also a plaintiff in a similar lawsuit against Stability AI, Midjourney, DeviantArt and Runway AI.

“Words can’t describe how dehumanizing it is to see my name used 20,000+ times in MidJourney,” she wrote in an Instagram post. “My life’s work and who I am—reduced to meaningless fodder for a commercial image slot machine.”

Artists are so resistant to AI because the training data behind many of these image generators includes their work without their consent. These models amass such a large swath of artwork by scraping the internet for images, without regard for whether or not those images are copyrighted. It’s a slap in the face for artists – not only are their jobs endangered by AI, but that same AI is often powered by their work.

“When it comes to art, unfortunately, we just come from a fundamentally different perspective and point of view, because on the tech side, you have this strong history of open source, and people are just thinking like, well, you put it out there, so it’s for people to use,” Zhang said. “For artists, it’s a part of our selves and our identity. I would not want my best friend to make a manipulation of my work without asking me. There’s a nuance to how we see things, but I don’t think people understand that the art we do is not a product.”

This commitment to protecting artists from copyright infringement extends to Cara, which partners with the University of Chicago’s Glaze project. By using Glaze, artists who manually apply Glaze to their work on Cara have an added layer of protection against being scraped for AI.

Other projects have also stepped up to defend artists. Spawning AI, an artist-led company, has created an API that allows artists to remove their work from popular datasets. But that opt-out only works if the companies that use those datasets honor artists’ requests. So far, HuggingFace and Stability have agreed to respect Spawning’s Do Not Train registry, but artists’ work cannot be retroactively removed from models that have already been trained.

“I think there is this clash between backgrounds and expectations on what we put on the internet,” Zhang said. “For artists, we want to share our work with the world. We put it online, and we don’t charge people to view this piece of work, but it doesn’t mean that we give up our copyright, or any ownership of our work.”"

Read the rest of the article here:

https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/06/a-social-app-for-creatives-cara-grew-from-40k-to-650k-users-in-a-week-because-artists-are-fed-up-with-metas-ai-policies/

[traegorn]

So there's a thing that a lot of tumblr users don't know about -- older ones because it didn't used to be like this, and newer ones because... they're new?

Anyways -- one of the biggest pains of Tumblr is that finding old posts can be hard. The search is terrible, and is overall useless. The easiest solution to this has always been that you can go through your "archive" -- for example here's mine: https://traegorn.tumblr.com/archive

Notice how that URL starts with my username. Longtime users will be like "Of course it does. That's your Tumblr URL." But here's the thing -- a lot of new accounts don't have that. Like, if you type it in (minus the /archive part) it kinda works still -- but it redirects you from username.tumblr.com to tumblr.com/username. And from there, the archive function does not work.

You see, to make your "Tumblr Blog" an actual, well, blog you have to turn it on manually now.

To do that, on the web, go to your blog settings and find this one:

Turning on "custom theme" will enable your blog to function and give you all the features.

Now there are reasons some folks might not want to do this. First off, that does mean sites like Google will be able to spider your blog and things can end up on public searches. If you don't want your Tumblr activity public do not turn it on. That's a choice I leave up to you. But, like, also... I've seen Tumblr accounts ostensibly set up to promote people's works but not have this turned on making the audience they're trying to reach less likely to find them.

But this is a thing that used to always be on. I found out one of my old sideblogs had it turned off that I never wanted it to be set that way. The choice is yours, do what you want.

I'm not your mom.

[lichfucker]

I really hate the idea that likes are useless or don't tell you anything. they tell you somebody liked your post! you did good and somebody liked it so they gave it a like! the constant cries of "only reblogs actually Do something" feels very… hmm, how do I phrase this?

it's rooted in a sort of warning that tumblr functions differently than other sites in that the number of likes on a post doesn't necessarily contribute to an algorithm that pushes forward certain content (algorithms which, tbh, create a weird sort of feedback loop in which content that is already popular becomes even more popular by getting boosted on the merits of already being popular, but I digress), and so reblogging is the only way to actually spread a post. likes don't make a post "breach containment."

but if likes are equivalent to "positive emotional response" and reblogs are equivalent to "exposure," then discouraging likes in favor of reblogs is discouraging enjoyment of your post in favor of promotion of your post. okay... why? to what end? if the only "correct" mode of engagement is an expanding fractal web of reblogs, and the point of a reblog is only to beget further reblogs... what's the goal?

you've deemed the like as an expression of pleasure useless, so it's kind of difficult to argue that "reblogging a post means they enjoyed it more than if they'd just simply liked it." the quantity of pleasure expressed doesn't matter if you've already devalued the concept of "expressing pleasure and doing nothing else." you can't earnestly say "expressing pleasure is important to me but only if it's accompanied by exposure." so your goal isn't for more people to delight in your content; it's for more people to see your content, and for each of them then to make even more people see your content in turn. and so on. infinitely. just sharing. just exposure.

is that how we got to this point wherein people are genuinely writing essays about how liking a post is actually a backhanded passive-aggressive insult? you think I click the little red heart because I hate you? the logic is so contorted. it relies on the assumption that everyone around you is operating in bad faith, that everyone's intentions are bad until proven good.

what a bitter, paranoid way to live.

[pied-piper-pluto]

as a big proponent of Making Your Own Webbed Site For Your Webbed Comic myself, it bothers me how, every time naver webtoon gets caught mistreating specifically its contracted artists, that news gets used as a jumping off point to promote self hosting/reading self hosted comics... it feels like a self-interested distraction from the actual issue of "this company is screwing over people it has contracts with"

[crossdreamers]

Twitch removes the transphobic LGB Alliance from its list of approved charities

Good news! The gaming live-streaming service Twitch has removed the anti-transgender organization LBG Alliance from its list of accepted charities.

In response to a request on their web site, Twitch admins responded:

Thank you for sharing your concerns with us. Following a thorough review, we have removed the LGB Alliance from our list of approved charities. Twitch does not allow charities that violate our hateful conduct policies on Twitch, or whose organization or leadership engage in or promote behaviors that violate our Off-Service policy. You can find our response on Autism Speaks here.

We include a wide range of organizations in Twitch’s charity tool through our partnership with the PayPal Giving Fund so that streamers can choose which charities they align with and wish to support. Inclusion on this list is not an endorsement from Twitch. However, we regularly review the list and remove organizations that violate our policies. Please continue to share your feedback to help us improve charity on Twitch.

[dduane]

Ma’am Im in the final third of writing my first draft for my novel (just passed 70k words!) do you have any advice about book marketing or self publishing? Ive been looking at something called Royal Road also in regards to those two things but no on I know has even heard of it…

First of all: congrats on your 70K!

"Do I have advice about marketing or self-publishing?" Wow, probably way too much, at this point. But for the moment let's limit ourselves to specifics. :)

I hadn't heard of Royal Road either, so I went and did some poking around. Below is an article that deals with some basic questions about them.

(Adding a cut here, because this gets long...)

Having read this article, I went and had a look at Royal Road's ToS, and their fee structures.

The fees were the first thing that gave me pause. Specifically, this; while RR has free options for readers, they don't appear to have any free options for writers. (If I'm wrong about this, I invite anyone with a pertinent link to point me at it.)

Now, the rule in writing as regards money is this: "The money flows toward the writer." This rule was codified years back by writer Jim McDonald and called Yog's Law (and over here at John Scalzi's blog there's a discussion of the Law and what it involves in these self-publishing days). It means that any kind of professional writing or writing-for-pay that involves the writer paying someone else to get their work where people can read it must routinely be carefully examined. You, after all, as the writer, are the source of the product and of the value in the product. If you're paying anybody to help get your writing seen, you need to look carefully at who controls whatever you're paying for along the road to being published.

So: if you use RR, you're paying them to show your work to people. (It seems a bit like AO3, except RR charges you for publishing with them.) Their ToS emphasizes that you own your work, but if you use them to publish, "...you grant Royal Road a non-exclusive, worldwide, sub-licensable, revocable license to use, display, promote, edit, reformat, reproduce, publish, distribute, store, and sub-license Your Content on the Services. This allows us to provide the Services, and to promote Your Content or Royal Road in general, in any formats and through any channels, including any third-party website or advertising medium."

Okay. So how, though, do you get paid for publishing on this site?

RR simply says that you're allowed to link your work to your Patreon or your PayPal account, and can accept donations that way.

Well, that's nice. But it doesn't strike me as much in the way of a payday. (Especially after what Patreon takes off its subscribers' earnings these days.)

What people are seeing this work?

Just Royal Road members, as far as I can tell.

And how many of those are there?

...I'm finding it surprisingly difficult to quickly determine that with any certainty. There are numerous sites that talk about millions of pageviews (assuming that's what "M" means these days): but views are not users.

And what is feedback worth, from that readership? ...Also hard to say.

This equation has way too many imponderables in it for my liking.

There are a number of articles scattered around that discuss numerous webpublishing options and which seem preferable. (This one seems to rank RR highest.)

...If I'm starting to sound unenthusiastic about this whole prospect, I think that perception would be correct. From where I'm sitting, RR looks to me kinda like paying for feedback... and from what might be a fairly small, and at the very least, limited, pool of contributors. I'm not at all sure how this experience would be likely to do anything much but help you feel better about yourself as a writer. Which, well, sure, that's nice. But is it value for your money?

More: how does what you get from RR actually help you transit into the wholly different experience of getting your work edited, getting a cover for your first novel(s), and learning about marketing out in the broader marketplace? That's unclear to me.

(I have to add one thing here as a general caveat. I'm in the Really Annoying Congestion stage of a head cold at the moment, and as a result my view of everything today is significantly jaundiced. But I also have to say that I doubt this particular assessment is going to change much after my nose stops running.)

So. If I was in your position, I'd be tempted to give the RR concept a miss and start inquiring into how best to use actual online publication resources that feed into a system where to get your work at all, people give you money.... because Writers Gotta Eat. (And yes, there's a whole self-publishing strategy that runs on the Nickel Bag paradigm: make sample work free online—sometimes through a retailer like the 'Zon—and then have all the samples "point at" work that people have to pay for. But that's another discussion.)

Anyway: hope this has been of some general help!