vmenfangirl

[vmenfangirl]

someone I follow on the bird app just announced they’re starting a very exclusive private fic server because they and a bunch of other people want to talk about how much they love the fics they’re reading, and as an author can I just say that a really great place to talk about a fic you love is in the comments for that fic

I understand that people are trying to create safe spaces, but as the number of comments that I get on my fics dwindles with each passing year, knowing these spaces exist where my fics are being discussed, places that I am excluded from, makes me want to write fic LESS

I mean I guess who cares, right, because if I stop writing, there’s 10,000 other people that will continue…but if you participate in a fic “book club” server and you say nice things there about a fic you loved, maybe copy and paste that into a comment on AO3?

the only thing fanfic writers are asking for in return for hours of hard work is attention. please don’t rob us of the one thing that we hope for when we hit “post”

[vmenfangirl]

"Vanitas"

Oleo sobre lienzo.

70x50 cm

[vmenfangirl]

[vmenfangirl]

Out of Touch

[vmenfangirl]

[vmenfangirl]

List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who liked or reblogged something from you! Get to know your mutuals and followers ❤️

Oh... i have a lot of things that make me really happy xD so is kinda a hard question but ok, i'll try my best...

1. Enjoy watching my fav series and movies, like GOTHAM, BTAS, Dinosaurs, The Boys, The Shawshank Redemption, BoP, The legend of 1900, Back to the Future, I love you Phillip Morris, etc... also classic animated movies from Disney and Dreamworks... plus, i really enjoy to share opinions, HCs, theories etc. about that, with my friends

2. Reading... from novels to comics; i'm always searching for new material to read or if not, i also like to reread my fav stories, with the same excitement as the first time i read them.... plus, i think reading is the perfect way to learn about everything you want so i'm always learning and that's great

3. Writting... along with drawing, are activities i really love to do cuz those make me really happy, especially if are about my fav characters or ships/OTPs, cuz these last make me more than happy, in fact, two of them (Nygmobblepot and Zsasionis/Zsasmask) i easily can say they literally saved me from a very dark and deep depression periods in my life and i'll never forget that, i'll love those OTPs forever

4. Must say, to eat... i have a kinda complicated relationship with food, since i always have this toxic thought about that every lil piece of carb and fat i put in my mouth for a second will make me overweight ten kilos in the next hour i ate them... so has been kinda hard to try and change that bad perception about food in general, that's why i feel happy when i have a good day (i don't feel that toxic thought as intense as usual) and actually can enjoy some good meal, doesn't matter what it is

5. Kinda cliche but i love listen to music, i can hear just one (1) fav song the whole day, but i'm happy to listen all the playlists too... music is also such a great inspiration for my fics so i could hear or find new music just cuz that is useful for ideas or simply cuz that remind me at any of my fav chars/ships/OTPs, so those songs become special among other fav songs

That's it xD 💖

[vmenfangirl]

[vmenfangirl]

ECLIPSE CELEBRATION

Digital Illustration by Christina Bencina

[vmenfangirl]

drake?

[vmenfangirl]

Automattic will sign a contract with OpenAI for Midjourney to learn off of Tumblr and Wordpress

Hello! Automattic, Tumblr's parent company, will sign a contract with OpenAI and Midjourney so Midjourney can learn off of Tumblr's and WordPress' art and other user data. :) (The full text of this article is copy/pasted in the cut below). You can opt out! but I truly cannot imagine a more idiotic or out of touch decision on the part of Tumblr's CEO.

First thing's first: When/if this goes live, opt out of this immediately. Do this even if you're not an artist. The more people opt out, the less valuable this contract is to Midjourney. in an ideal world, literally all of the active users would opt out, but if we can even get to 50% that's pretty delicious.

Second: Contact Tumblr Support. It's vital that you do this politely. Tumblr staff is not responsible for this decision and the point of doing this is to show the userbase's unwillingness to be involved in this, not harangue Tumblr staff. (Seriously, stop haranguing Tumblr staff). Here's a script:

Hi, I'm writing in to express my disappointment in Automattic's pending contract with OpenAI to sell user data. Midjourney is already embroiled in copyright lawsuits, and it is not possible to train it without compromising copyright, including violating the IP of artists on this site. I strongly protest this contract and will opt out if it goes live. Depending on the privacy terms around what user data is sold to OpenAI and why, it is possible I will leave the platform entirely. Thank you for your time.

Third: Download Glaze and start poisoning them prompts, my friends

Fourth: Stare into the middle distance for a second with me because holy fucking shit? How stupid can one decision be?

Tumblr and Wordpress are preparing to sell user data to Midjourney and OpenAI, according to a source with internal knowledge about the deals and internal documentation referring to the deals. 

The exact types of data from each platform going to each company are not spelled out in documentation we’ve reviewed, but internal communications reviewed by 404 Media make clear that deals between Automattic, the platforms’ parent company, and OpenAI and Midjourney are imminent.

The internal documentation details a messy and controversial process within Tumblr itself. One internal post made by Cyle Gage, a product manager at Tumblr, states that a query made to prepare data for OpenAI and Midjourney compiled a huge number of user posts that it wasn’t supposed to. It is not clear from Gage’s post whether this data has already been sent to OpenAI and Midjourney, or whether Gage was detailing a process for scrubbing the data before it was to be sent. 

Gage wrote:

“the way the data was queried for the initial data dump to Midjourney/OpenAI means we compiled a list of all tumblr’s public post content between 2014 and 2023, but also unfortunately it included, and should not have included:

private posts on public blogs

posts on deleted or suspended blogs

unanswered asks (normally these are not public until they’re answered)

private answers (these only show up to the receiver and are not public)

posts that are marked ‘explicit’ / NSFW / ‘mature’ by our more modern standards (this may not be a big deal, I don’t know)

content from premium partner blogs (special brand blogs like Apple’s former music blog, for example, who spent money with us on an ad campaign) that may have creative that doesn’t belong to us, and we don’t have the rights to share with this-parties; this one is kinda unknown to me, what deals are in place historically and what they should prevent us from doing.”

Gage’s post makes clear that engineers are working on compiling a list of post IDs that should not have been included, and that password-protected posts, DMs, and media flagged as CSAM and other community guidelines violations were not included.

Automattic plans to launch a new setting on Wednesday that will allow users to opt-out of data sharing with third parties, including AI companies, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, and internal documents. A new FAQ section we reviewed is titled “What happens when you opt out?” states that “If you opt out from the start, we will block crawlers from accessing your content by adding your site on a disallowed list. If you change your mind later, we also plan to update any partners about people who newly opt-out and ask that their content be removed from past sources and future training.” 

404 Media has asked Automattic how it accidentally compiled data that it shouldn’t share, and whether any of that content was shared with OpenAI, but did not immediately hear back from the company. 404 Media asked Automattic about an imminent deal with Midjourney last week but did not hear back then, either.

Another internal document shows that, on February 23, an employee asked in a staff-only thread, “Do we have assurances that if a user opts out of their data being shared with third parties that our existing data partners will be notified of such a change and remove their data?”

Andrew Spittle, Automattic’s head of AI replied: “We will notify existing partners on a regular basis about anyone who's opted out since the last time we provided a list. I want this to be an ongoing process where we regularly advocate for past content to be excluded based on current preferences. We will ask that content be deleted and removed from any future training runs. I believe partners will honor this based on our conversations with them to this point. I don't think they gain much overall by retaining it.” Automattic did not respond to a question from 404 Media about whether it could guarantee that people who opt out will have their data deleted retroactively.

News about a deal between Tumblr and Midjourney has been rumored and speculated about on Tumblr for the last week. Someone claiming to be a former Tumblr employee announced in a Tumblr blog post that the platform was working on a deal with Midjourney, and the rumor made it onto Blind, an app for verified employees of companies to anonymously discuss their jobs. 404 Media has seen the Blind posts, in which what seems like an Automattic employee says, “I'm not sure why some of you are getting worked up or worried about this. It's totally legal, and sharing it publicly is perfectly fine since it's right there in the terms & conditions. So, go ahead and spread the word as much as you can with your friends and tech journalists, it's totally fine.”

Separately, 404 Media viewed a public, now-deleted post by Gage, the product manager, where he said that he was deleting all of his images off of Tumblr, and would be putting them on his personal website. A still-live post says, “i've deleted my photography from tumblr and will be moving it slowly but surely over to cylegage.com, which i'm building into a photography portfolio that i can control end-to-end.” At one point last week, his personal website had a specific note stating that he did not consent to AI scraping of his images. Gage’s original post has been deleted, and his website is now a blank page that just reads “Cyle.” Gage did not respond to a request for comment from 404 Media. 

Several online platforms have made similar deals with AI companies recently, including Reddit, which entered into an AI content licensing deal with Google and said in its SEC filing last week that it’s “in the early stages of monetizing [its] user base” by training AI on users’ posts. Last year, Shutterstock signed a six year deal with OpenAI to provide training data.

OpenAI and Midjourney did not respond to requests for comment. 

[vmenfangirl]

Hi, Tumblr. It’s Tumblr. We’re working on some things that we want to share with you. 

AI companies are acquiring content across the internet for a variety of purposes in all sorts of ways. There are currently very few regulations giving individuals control over how their content is used by AI platforms. Proposed regulations around the world, like the European Union’s AI Act, would give individuals more control over whether and how their content is utilized by this emerging technology. We support this right regardless of geographic location, so we’re releasing a toggle to opt out of sharing content from your public blogs with third parties, including AI platforms that use this content for model training. We’re also working with partners to ensure you have as much control as possible regarding what content is used.

Here are the important details:

We already discourage AI crawlers from gathering content from Tumblr and will continue to do so, save for those with which we partner. 

We want to represent all of you on Tumblr and ensure that protections are in place for how your content is used. We are committed to making sure our partners respect those decisions.

To opt out of sharing your public blogs’ content with third parties, visit each of your public blogs’ blog settings via the web interface and toggle on the “Prevent third-party sharing” option. 

For instructions on how to opt out using the latest version of the app, please visit this Help Center doc. 

Please note: If you’ve already chosen to discourage search crawling of your blog in your settings, we’ve automatically enabled the “Prevent third-party sharing” option.

If you have concerns, please read through the Help Center doc linked above and contact us via Support if you still have questions.

[vmenfangirl]

Twin Peaks: Pilot (1990) dir. David Lynch

[vmenfangirl]

One of the hard parts about being a writer with a vivid imagination is that there are So Many Ideas, and they fall into so many categories, such as

Fics I want to write

Fics I want to read

There is just One Scene and I could write it but it would be waaaay more cool if I had all the build up to the scene but unfortunately. I can only figure out the Scene

I keep changing my mind. Where am I going with this

This has been done a million times before. But. Hear me out

I will 100% Never Write This. This is just my Emotional Support Idea no one can ever know about bc it makes sense only to me

Would be better as a comic...

This will be my magnum opus if I can just get my 50 pages of ideas into a coherent narrative

All I have are vibes

And, of course

WIP I started and haven't updated in 2 years and oh god its beEN TWO YEARS???

[vmenfangirl]

Jack decides to put a stop to the towns gossiping, much to Vlad's embarrassment

[vmenfangirl]

[vmenfangirl]

“Your art isn’t valued by the number of notes you get” okay but. If you spent 6 hours baking a cake for a party, but no one at the party eats your cake, it’s still disappointing.

[vmenfangirl]

In the wake of people advocating stealing fics for AI, I need people to remind me why I shouldn't just remove all my works from online. Because I was writing stories before the internet and I will continue without it. Sharing is a bonus not a compulsion.