Https://www.tumblr.com/myfandomrealitea/759616205777682432/since-ive-already-swung-a-bat-at-the-hornets?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/myfandomrealitea/759616205777682432/since-ive-already-swung-a-bat-at-the-hornets?source=share

may i predict "ARE YOU CONDONING RACIAL SEGREGATION" bad faith takes ?

I'll take that bet for $700, Kevin.

why is privacy so eroded. I get treated like a nutcase if I say no, I don't want strange companies taking pictures of my home and putting them online for maps or whatever. I don't want to be in the background of your tiktok, and I think it's weirder for you to assume I'm okay with it than it is for me to politely ask you to refilm it so my face isn't in the frame. I don't enjoy handing my employer a list of every online account I have and feeling under surveillance when I'm just shit posting or sharing pictures of my cats or garden harvest. I don't want to hear your private calls on speaker on the bus, esp when the person on the line doesn't know you're broadcasting their words to strangers. I don't want an algorithm guessing what will piss me off the most so I spend more time online, engaging with shit I don't want to see or hear out of outrage. I don't want any of this. it's total ass.

Wattpad's TOS are actually criminally hypocritical and ridiculous the more you read them. The website is literally just:

"Give us all your content for free to do with as we please and let us expose you to 493737573 website cookies and advertisements but also if you change the color of our logo we'll sue and if someone gets inaccurate medical advice from your fanfiction and sues we're also going to sue you for exposing us to risk."

Wattpad can mine your content but you can't mine Wattpad.

Wattpad can sue you for absolutely anything they perceive as "damaging" or "breach of terms" but the moment you make an account you release them of any and all claims, damages and responsibility.

If Anne Rice 2.0 does happen, Wattpad has so kindly declared that they reserve the right to be the sole defense, so they can throw you under the bus and then charge you for any and all fees incurred including legal and "related" costs. Oh, and you have to co-operate because, guess what? You agreed to!

In the instance you do wind up in a legal battle for your own content you're shit out of luck because Wattpad will have no part in it other than making sure its absolved of any responsibility and costs, and you're restricted to attending Court only in the Province of Ontario.

Like. How anyone still uses Wattpad is beyond me. Completely. It so obviously nothing more than a for-profit content theft facilitator. I feel like we've just moved so far beyond the need for Wattpad. Its so outdated even if you don't look at the TOS.

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

⁂

Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

Since I've already swung a bat at the hornet's nest with that safe space post I'm about to drop-kick it on its way down:

Actually not every single space has to include you and that's okay and actually how the world works and instead of trying to barge your way into spaces not meant for you, expand on the amount of spaces that are for you.

What’s your opinion on c.ai roleplay, ai art and generative ai in general?

My opinion is that AI should make peoples' lives easier, rather than stealing peoples' creations and spewing out butchered replicas so it can "replace them."

All current creative accessible AI is modelled on the stolen content of hundreds of thousands of people. Character AI? Stolen fanfiction. ChatGPT? Stolen essays, novels, fanfiction, images. Generative AI? Same thing.

And once its in, its impossible to remove entirely. And the techbros making tens of thousands off your stolen content don't want to remove it anyway. When Glaze first came out they threw fits and tried to get Glaze legally destroyed so they could keep stealing and profiting off of content theft.

And its so fucking easy for people to mine content off of websites and steal your content without you ever even knowing! And if or when you do find out, its too late. Your content is part of that code forever. Its been absorbed, butchered, regurgitated.

AI in creative spaces does have a place, but it needs to be so, so carefully controlled and used. The widespread ability to just mangle together other people's creations and claim ownership of whatever it churns out is... Horrifying at best.

I vomit every time I see "made with ChatGPT!" on AO3.