#How to lock apps on iphone

[dreamfyr-e]

jace smut tonight, princess?

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Are the means of computation even seizable?

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in PITTSBURGH in TOMORROW (May 15) at WHITE WHALE BOOKS, and in PDX on Jun 20 at BARNES AND NOBLE with BUNNIE HUANG. More tour dates (London, Manchester) here.

Something's very different in tech. Once upon a time, every bad choice by tech companies – taking away features, locking out mods or plugins, nerfing the API – was countered, nearly instantaneously, by someone writing a program that overrode that choice.

Bad clients would be muscled aside by third-party clients. Locked bootloaders would be hacked and replaced. Code that confirmed you were using OEM parts, consumables or adapters would be found and nuked from orbit. Weak APIs would be replaced with muscular, unofficial APIs built out of unstoppable scrapers running on headless machines in some data-center. Every time some tech company erected a 10-foot enshittifying fence, someone would show up with an 11-foot disenshittifying ladder.

Those 11-foot ladders represented the power of interoperability, the inescapable bounty of the Turing-complete, universal von Neumann machine, which, by definition, is capable of running every valid program. Specifically, they represented the power of adversarial interoperability – when someone modifies a technology against its manufacturer's wishes. Adversarial interoperability is the origin story of today's tech giants, from Microsoft to Apple to Google:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

But adversarial interop has been in steady decline for the past quarter-century. These big companies moved fast and broke things, but no one is returning the favor. If you ask the companies what changed, they'll just smirk and say that they're better at security than the incumbents they disrupted. The reason no one's hacked up a third-party iOS App Store is that Apple's security team is just so fucking 1337 that no one can break their shit.

I think this is nonsense. I think that what's really going on is that we've made it possible for companies to design their technologies in such a way that any attempt at adversarial interop is illegal.

"Anticircumvention" laws like Section 1201 of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act make bypassing any kind of digital lock (AKA "Digital Rights Management" or "DRM") very illegal. Under DMCA, just talking about how to remove a digital lock can land you in prison for 5 years. I tell the story of this law's passage in "Understood: Who Broke the Internet," my new podcast series for the CBC:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/08/who-broke-the-internet/#bruce-lehman

For a quarter century, tech companies have aggressively lobbied and litigated to expand the scope of anticircumvention laws. At the same time, companies have come up with a million ways to wrap their products in digital locks that are a crime to break.

Digital locks let Chamberlain, a garage-door opener monopolist block all third-party garage-door apps. Then, Chamberlain stuck ads in its app, so you have to watch an ad to open your garage-door:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

Digital locks let John Deere block third-party repair of its tractors:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

And they let Apple block third-party repair of iPhones:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/22/apples-cement-overshoes/

These companies built 11-foot ladders to get over their competitors' 10-foot walls, and then they kicked the ladder away. Once they were secure atop their walls, they committed enshittifying sins their fallen adversaries could only dream of.

I've been campaigning to abolish anticircumvention laws for the past quarter-century, and I've noticed a curious pattern. Whenever these companies stand to lose their legal protections, they freak out and spend vast fortunes to keep those protections intact. That's weird, because it strongly implies that their locks don't work. A lock that works works, whether or not it's illegal to break that lock. The reason Signal encryption works is that it's working encryption. The legal status of breaking Signal's encryption has nothing to do with whether it works. If Signal's encryption was full of technical flaws but it was illegal to point those flaws out, you'd be crazy to trust Signal.

Signal does get involved in legal fights, of course, but the fights it gets into are ones that require Signal to introduce defects in its encryption – not fights over whether it is legal to disclose flaws in Signal or exploit them:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/05/theyre-still-trying-to-ban-cryptography/

But tech companies that rely on digital locks manifestly act like their locks don't work and they know it. When the tech and content giants bullied the W3C into building DRM into 2 billion users' browsers, they categorically rejected any proposal to limit their ability to destroy the lives of people who broke that DRM, even if it was only to add accessibility or privacy to video:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership

The thing is, if the lock works, you don't need the legal right to destroy the lives of people who find its flaws, because it works.

Do digital locks work? Can they work? I think the answer to both questions is a resounding no. The design theory of a digital lock is that I can provide you with an encrypted file that your computer has the keys to. Your computer will access those keys to decrypt or sign a file, but only under the circumstances that I have specified. Like, you can install an app when it comes from my app store, but not when it comes from a third party. Or you can play back a video in one kind of browser window, but not in another one. For this to work, your computer has to hide a cryptographic key from you, inside a device you own and control. As I pointed out more than a decade ago, this is a fool's errand:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

After all, you or I might not have the knowledge and resources to uncover the keys' hiding place, but someone does. Maybe that someone is a person looking to go into business selling your customers the disenshittifying plugin that unfucks the thing you deliberately broke. Maybe it's a hacker-tinkerer, pursuing an intellectual challenge. Maybe it's a bored grad student with a free weekend, an electron-tunneling microscope, and a seminar full of undergrads looking for a project.

The point is that hiding secrets in devices that belong to your adversaries is very bad security practice. No matter how good a bank safe is, the bank keeps it in its vault – not in the bank-robber's basement workshop.

For a hiding-secrets-in-your-adversaries'-device plan to work, the manufacturer has to make zero mistakes. The adversary – a competitor, a tinkerer, a grad student – only has to find one mistake and exploit it. This is a bedrock of security theory: attackers have an inescapable advantage.

So I think that DRM doesn't work. I think DRM is a legal construct, not a technical one. I think DRM is a kind of magic Saran Wrap that manufacturers can wrap around their products, and, in so doing, make it a literal jailable offense to use those products in otherwise legal ways that their shareholders don't like. As Jay Freeman put it, using DRM creates a new law called "Felony Contempt of Business Model." It's a law that has never been passed by any legislature, but is nevertheless enforceable.

In the 25 years I've been fighting anticircumvention laws, I've spoken to many government officials from all over the world about the opportunity that repealing their anticircumvention laws represents. After all, Apple makes $100b/year by gouging app makers for 30 cents on ever dollar. Allow your domestic tech sector to sell the tools to jailbreak iPhones and install third party app stores, and you can convert Apple's $100b/year to a $100m/year business for one of your own companies, and the other $999,900,000,000 will be returned to the world's iPhone owners as a consumer surplus.

But every time I pitched this, I got the same answer: "The US Trade Representative forced us to pass this law, and threatened us with tariffs if we didn't pass it." Happy Liberation Day, people – every country in the world is now liberated from the only reason to keep this stupid-ass law on their books:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/15/beauty-eh/#its-the-only-war-the-yankees-lost-except-for-vietnam-and-also-the-alamo-and-the-bay-of-ham

In light of the Trump tariffs, I've been making the global rounds again, making the case for an anticircumvention repeal:

https://www.ft.com/content/b882f3a7-f8c9-4247-9662-3494eb37c30b

One of the questions I've been getting repeatedly from policy wonks, activists and officials is, "Is it even possible to jailbreak modern devices?" They want to know if companies like Apple, Tesla, Google, Microsoft, and John Deere have created unbreakable digital locks. Obviously, this is an important question, because if these locks are impregnable, then getting rid of the law won't deliver the promised benefits.

It's true that there aren't as many jailbreaks as we used to see. When a big project like Nextcloud – which is staffed up with extremely accomplished and skilled engineers – gets screwed over by Google's app store, they issue a press-release, not a patch:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/05/nextcloud-accuses-google-of-big-tech-gatekeeping-over-android-app-permissions/

Perhaps that's because the tech staff at Nextcloud are no match for Google, not even with the attacker's advantage on their side.

But I don't think so. Here's why: we do still get jailbreaks and mods, but these almost exclusively come from anonymous tinkerers and hobbyists:

https://consumerrights.wiki/Mazda_DMCA_takedown_of_Open_Source_Home_Assistant_App

Or from pissed off teenagers:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/29/23378541/the-og-app-instagram-clone-pulled-from-app-store

These hacks are incredibly ambitious! How ambitious? How about a class break for every version of iOS as well as an unpatchable hardware attack on 8 years' worth of Apple bootloaders?

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/25/mafia-logic/#sosumi

Now, maybe it's the case at all the world's best hackers are posting free code under pseudonyms. Maybe all the code wizards working for venture backed tech companies that stand to make millions through clever reverse engineering are just not as mad skilled as teenagers who want an ad-free Insta and that's why they've never replicated the feat.

Or maybe it's because teenagers and anonymous hackers are just about the only people willing to risk a $500,000 fine and 5-year prison sentence. In other words, maybe the thing that protects DRM is law, not code. After all, when Polish security researchers revealed the existence of secret digital locks that the train manufacturer Newag used to rip off train operators for millions of euros, Newag dragged them into court:

https://fsfe.org/news/2025/news-20250407-01.en.html

Tech companies are the most self-mythologizing industry on the planet, beating out even the pharma sector in boasting about their prowess and good corporate citizenship. They swear that they've made a functional digital lock…but they sure act like the only thing those locks do is let them sue people who reveal their workings.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/14/pregnable/#checkm8

[gojokive]

❝ seeing your nudes ❞ ‣ jjk headcanon

❝synopsis❞ ‣ okay but accidents happen and well, they didn't mean to look at something that wasn't meant for them. it sort of just happened. - or - when they accidentally see their friend(s) gf/wife nudes.

・❥・PAIRING(S) › jjk men x female!reader ・❥・GENRE(S) › fluff/(little)smut ・❥・WORD(S) › 2k+ ・❥・WARNING(S) › yuji & megumi are aged up (always), jjk men seeing other men gf/wife nudes, various nip piercings, various v*g piercings, facials, description of the girls nudes. ・❥・POST DATE › 03/31/2024

❝featuring❞ ‣ nanami kento, fushiguro megumi, gojo satoru, choso kamo, ryomen sukuna, & geto suguru ♡

‣ nanami kento ♡ ↳ accidentally sees satoru's wife.

Nanami didn't ask for this.

Although, it's the universe's fault for making you absolutely gorgeous. Any person with eyes can see that and well, he gets why Satoru would want to set you as his homescreen background but... he doesn't get why it's a picture like this. He didn't want to see you like this without your explicit permission. What was Satoru thinking? Does he not have any shame?

Nanami attempted to distract himself from the image he had seen. Anything that will make his boner deflate as quick as possible. He doesn't think Satoru minds (because he loves to show you off) but this has to be crossing the line, right? 

“You alright, Nanamin?”

Satoru meets his eyes and, of course, Kento can't figure out the words to say when he sees Satoru’s grin.  

“You look pale.”

“I-I’m fine, Satoru.” Kento tries to make his voice sound even but he knows he's failing. Miserably. 

Satoru only hums as he glances down when his phone lights up. It's then that he realizes what it was that's gotten his attention. 

“She's pretty, isn't she?” Satoru grins when you text him again. “She set it to that.”

Kento swallows hard, clearing his throat as he tries to adjust himself. The sight of your arms tied above your heads with what looks like one of Satoru’s button-up shirts. It’s open wide, giving Kento full view of your body as he didn't realize you had a tattoo below your breast and shit, it was so fucking hot. Bedroom eyes, tears streaming down your face and how does someone look so sexy while crying?

He has your left leg over his shoulder, the right bent to your chest and it looks like he took it right after you climaxed.

You look so out of it, so serine, and fuck Kento would give anything to see that expression in person. And fuck did you also have a piercing above your clit area? 

He tried to ignore it. Ignore Satoru and his little comments about you.

It isn't until he glances over to see Satoru looking at a picture of your pussy on his phone that Kento loses the fight. He wonders how you'd taste, the beautiful jewel sitting gorgeously above the hood of your clit that he finds himself imagining his tongue just playing with it.

And those thoughts alone have Kento spiraling.

“S-She's very pretty.” He knows he shouldn't commute the images to memory but fucking hell, you’re so beautiful.

“I know she is.” Ever so cocky but he can't blame him because if you were his wife, he would be too.

‣ fushiguro megumi ♡ ↳ accidentally sees toji's girlfriend. (Yuji & Megumi are aged up)

It wasn’t Megumi’s fault, he swears! He was looking for a photo of you to show Yuuji and of course, his father doesn’t know much about iPhones. He doesn’t know he can hide your explicit photos behind a facial lock and with him being curious, that led him to click on a photo that wasn’t for his eyes to see. 

“You okay, Megs?” Yuuji inquires, worry etched in his eyes as his friend's cheeks turn beet red. ”Are you not feeling well?’

“I-I’m fine!” Megumi splutters, coughing to clear his throat. Shit. Yuuji can’t see this. He shouldn’t be seeing this.

“What is it?”

“Nothing! It’s nothing.” Megumi groans before closing the photos app completely and tossing his father’s phone to the side of the couch like it scorched his hand. “L-Let’s go do something else!”

“Oh, I thought you were going to show me a picture of your stepmom?” It’s an innocent question, one that wouldn’t have Megumi blushing like he was back in high school if it wasn’t for that picture.

“Y-You’ll see her later.”

“Oh! Great! I can’t wait to meet her!” Yuuji's innocence makes Megumi wish he could take back the last couple minutes or scrub the image of your face with (no doubt) his dad’s cum all over it to preserve his prenotion of you.

“Where’s my phone?” Toji’s voice booms from behind the boys as both point toward the edge of the couch where the device landed. “Why is it over there?”

“Oh! Megumi was showing me a picture of his mom!”

Toji’s face scrunches into confusion before glancing at his son who was trying to hide the embarrassment he was sure was written on his face from his dad.

“Did yo-”

“Yes? Sorry.” It comes out rushed but it has Toji cursing at the thought of his son seeing you in all the provocative positions he’d put you in.

“Next time ask me.”

Megumi nods (because what else is there to say?). He gets up to hastily make his way to his room as his situation continues to grow and Yuji calls after him.

‣ ryomen sukuna ♡ ↳ accidentally sees yuji's girlfriend (not really. it was on purpose lol).

Sukuna opening an eye on Yuuji’s cheek to see what the brat was gawking at. He can feel the warmth rushing through their shared body.

Curiosity overtakes him as he watches the brat swipe through photo after photo of you. His eyes lock on one that you took, finger against your lip as he can see your breast sitting so pretty. It's a half-body picture and fuck, Sukuna wants to see that sweet cunt of yours but he can view of the real thing later.

"Isn't she a sight for sore eyes."

"Wha-"

“You’re a pervert.” Sukuna snickers, “In public. Really?”

“Shut up!”

Yuji can’t help the blush that spreads over his cheeks, the heat becoming unbearable the more Sukuna ridicules him. It's not his fault you have him this down bad.

“I’ll admit. She’s got a pretty p-” Yuji rushes to cover the mouth on his face as he hears Sukuna cackle behind it. Why now? Why did he have to get horny on the way home???

He quickly shoves his phone into his pocket, tapping his foot impatiently and listening to Sukuna talk about you in ways he hates in his head.

‘She’s got a pretty pussy, I’d love to bury my face in it.’

‘You’re lucky I haven’t taken over while you’re balls deep in her.’

‘She’ll be begging for me once she gets a taste of what a man can do.’

Yuji is seething, red blurring his vision but there’s nothing he can do right now. So he half-ass listens to the intruder in his head, letting his anger bubble beneath the surface.

He knows Sukuna’s not joking. It's not the first time he's expressed interest in you. He wonders what makes you different that Sukuna would want to risk it for you.

He’s not even phased that Yuji is cursing Sukuna in his head, it won’t deter him from his prize.

You.

He can't wait to take part when Yuji least expects it.

‣ kamo choso ♡ ↳ accidentally sees yuji's girlfriend.

“Yuuji!” Choso calls to his brother as Yuji practically jumps up from the couch to see what’s wrong. He’s confused, however, when nothing is physically wrong. His brother’s face is slightly redder than it usually is.

“Choso? What’s wrong?”

He practically shoves the phone into his brother's hand before rushing past him to get to his room. Is he having a mental crisis? Yes because he hadn’t expected to see you like that. And also because he doesn’t know what Yuji will do.

“Choso?” He hears Yuji knock quietly. “Are you okay?”

“N-No. I’m sorry. I promise I wasn’t trying to snoop!”

“What happened.”

“Your girlfriend… She-” Choso stops talking the moment the realization dawns on Yuuji.

“It’s okay!” Yuji smiles, going to message to see what you’d sent him. His breath hitches as he sees the mirror shot you sent him. Your back toward the mirror as the pretty red thong sits snugly between your cheeks as the bra has a big mesh bow on the front of it. Your breast looks fucking amazing and it makes Yuji turn redder than Choso. 

He never knows how to handle it when you send him things like this.

“Fuck. Um, you don’t-’

“It’s okay, Yuji.” Choso tries to smile but it comes off as a grimace. Yuji nods, before turning and tailing it back toward his room to call you, leaving Choso sitting on his bed to contemplate what to do. He feels horrible that he can’t get that image of you out of his head. 

He feels worse that he’s horny because of it.

‣ gojo satoru ♡ ↳ accidentally sees kento's wife.

Okay, but it wasn't Satoru’s fault! Really! How was he supposed to know that if he kept swiping right, he would see something he shouldn't have? Something meant for Kento's eyes only.

And fucking Kento. Why did he have your nudes just out for anyone to come across?! If it was Satoru, he would be gatekeeping the hell out of them. Away from everyone's view!

But damn, was it a fucking sight.

Satoru couldn't unsee it even if he wanted to (and trust he doesn't, he just wishes it was his cock in side of you). Your head thrown back in absolute ecstasy, making his cock stir just thinking about how you would feel sitting on his cock.

Your breasts (so round and soft looking, he knows they would fit perfectly in his large hands) made Satoru want to caress every inch of your skin. He didn't know you had a belly button piercing but why was it the sexiest thing he's seen.

How did Kento get so lucky?!

He tries not to let the picture affect him even if he can feel his cheeks run hot the more he stares at it.

Satoru had always thought you had a banging body, beautiful as hell too. He was unsure of how Nanami was able to snag you. Was it through a dating app? Maybe it was a chance meeting somewhere?

So he commutes the picture to memory. 

"What's wrong?”

“Ah, nothing!” Satoru quickly swipes back to the picture of you standing in front of a beautiful sunset before handing Nanami his phone back. “Cute vacation photos!”

He's sure his smile looks more like a grimace as Nanami looks highly confused. It isn't until he accidentally swipes right after Satoru is gone that he realizes his mistake.

Shit.

‣ geto suguru ♡ ↳ accidentally sees satoru's girlfriend.

Suguru knew his best friend's girlfriend was a doll. You were Satoru's dream girl after all (he only knew because he said it all the damn time).

Although Suguru never paid the two of you any mind, he did think you were cute but you were taken and well, Suguru isn't a homewrecker.

At least, he wouldn't consider himself one until his thought process changed the day he was able to sit down and have a very mature conversation with you. One he knew he wouldn't be able to have with Satoru or even Shoko. Your take on the subject matter was informative and it made him wonder how his childish best friend was able to pull someone like you.

He knew his crush blossomed from that day and every other day you had conversations with him but...

What he didn't know was how deep that crush ran. It seemed as if it was getting harder and harder to not see you as just a friend.

And well, the day he saw your nudes on display on Satoru's desktop screen was the icing on the cake for him. He should have left it sitting idle. He shouldn't have touched anything. His mistake? Moving the mouse. It made everything disappear while leaving you on display for anyone to see.

His mistake.

The picture in question was of you, nude as you're smiling at the camera with your knees pressed to your chest and giving him a very pretty view of your pussy. He can see how wet your pussy is, little hints of cream around your pussy entrance too. He can also see a pieces of metal running through your nipoles. Fuck, nipple piercing too?

That's so hot!

It makes his mouth waters and fuck does he wanna know how good you taste so much that he finds himself licking his lips.

He eyes the collar dawning your neck. 'Satoru' embedded in gold. It compliments your skin that's shines with a sheen of sweat, making Suguru feel things he shouldn't feel for his best friends girlfriend.

He's sure Satoru is the one behind the camera because who else would it be? It all sends his mind into a whirlwind of scenarios that his brain should not have conjured out between the three of you. 

He tries to clear his throat when the second picture pops up and Suguru is sure he is going to burst right there. You bent over with your ass in the air. Cheeks spread and he's able to see both holes (your pussy glistening and making him lick his lips). He knows it’s Satoru’s dick settled (no doubt he was about to push it back in) and he can't help the slight color that spread along his cheeks.

He doesn't realize he's still staring at the screen, unwavering until he realizes Satoru is calling his name. It brings him back to his reality.

“Suguru!”

“Yeah? Y-Yes!” Suguru clears his throat but poor Suguru, Satoru already knows he saw them. “ ‘m Sorry, what did you say?”

“I asked if you liked what you saw.” Satoru’s brow raises in question and well shit, Suguru was caught.

© GOJOLATTE 2024 ➳ ALL RIGHTS RESERVED  PLEASE DO NOT Copy, Translate, Re-Upload, or Steal ANY of my work. Thank You, Beautiful People!

[cinder-stella]

𝙏𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙗𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙜𝙤𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙝𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝 𝙏𝙤𝙟𝙞’𝙨 𝙥𝙝𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙬𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙗𝙚 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚…<MDNI>

(i just know he has telegram and some really weird google searches)

You’d just had a fight. One of those stupid, sharp ones that leaves a bitter taste on your tongue but stubbornness kept you from apologizing first. On impulse and spite, you grab Toji’s phone right out of his hand while sitting next to him on the couch.

Satisfied with your stealth, you scamper off to the bedroom and lock the door.

His iPhone XR is scuffed beyond recognition. He won it in a bet and says it still works…it dies at 35%. His screen protector is one of those shitty ones with a giant air bubble and a crack across the middle. Lucky for you, there’s no passcode.

First, you look at his notifications. Nothing too suspicious aside from hundreds of telegram messages from a group that makes you raise an eyebrow. ‘Midnight Assassin’s Inc.’ What the hell even is that? You don’t want to know. You scroll anyway, heart hammering and…yup. Definitely a crime ring disguised as a chat.

Next, you head to his notes app. A grocery list stares back at you. Eggs, protein powder, lube…..oh ok.., rope???? You hope it isn’t for you. (you hope it is) You keep scrolling. There’s a single, untouched note that just says your name. Absolutely no context. One journal-style paragraph about how you looked the first time you laughed at one of his jokes. It’s kinda poetic. A half-written plan titled “If she ever leaves me.” It includes a fake name, off-the-grid location and a boat. Then, a note titled “Shit I wanna do to her when—”. Each entry is more detailed than the last and way more explicit than your brain can handle. “Want her to ride my face then do a split on my di—” ok, moving on.

You bite your lip, trying not to laugh. Your fingers tremble as you open his search history. “Do women like getting choked or am I going to jail?” You blink, caught off guard by the bluntness. “Sex positions for bad backs.” You can’t help but laugh quietly, cheeks warming. He’s ridiculous. “How to flirt without looking like you want to bite her”, “How to stop smiling at your phone like a simp”.

You’re giddy by the time you click on his photos. First, blurry gym pics with the flash on—accidental thirst traps. A photo of your feet…taken without your permission. A short video of you walking away from him—he’s zooming in and out on your ass and breathing heavy. You slap a hand over your mouth. But you can’t help but smile through it all. You feel so loved. Maybe not in a romantic way but it’s Toji’s way.

Yeah sure, you both are a little toxic but you love him and there’s no place you’d rather be. You let out a sigh and unlock the door. Your head hangs low as you make your way towards the living room. The walk of shame, if you will.

Toji’s voice cuts through your silence. “Find what you’re looking for?”

Your head stays down as you plop down next to him. “You’re stupid.”

He shrugs like it’s the most normal thing in the world. “You did this to yourself. I don’t care what you see.”

A smile creeps back onto your face. Before you even think it through, you launch yourself at him, lips crashing against his in a messy, hungry kiss.

It’s so damn cute that he doesn’t care. That he’s this unbothered and open. You wanted to remind him who he belongs to with a kiss that says I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.

He caught you easily, hands sliding down your back like he’s been waiting for this exact moment all day.

Arguments forgotten. Phone secrets forgotten. Just you, him and a quiet fire only you two knew how to light.

☠︎︎𓆩𓆩♡𓆪𓆪 ☠︎︎

[alaniesims]

iPhone Templates Rerelease (Canva)📱🎉

Hi lovelies! 🩷

To celebrate hitting 400 followers on Twitter (thank you all so much for your support! 🥰), I’m rereleasing my first iPhone Templates: here and here, with some new updates!

What’s Included in This Rerelease: - Updated templates for Lock Screens and Home Screens - iMessage scenarios (We all love being left on delivered, right?) - FaceTime calls (Group & Single) - Phone calls and call logs

Please remember:

Always credit me when using these templates 🩷

Don’t claim them as your own work 💀

Don’t redistribute or re-upload them anywhere else 💀

Because I want to keep my Canva templates accessible to everyone—especially those without Canva Pro, I recreate all the icons for apps and other iPhone features myself. This means lots of searching and tweaking to make everything work and look as close to real as possible, so please respect the time and effort I put into this work. 

IMPORTANT: Credit me as the creator whenever you use these templates! It’s really important to me, and I’ve seen too many people forget or not credit at all. Please respect my work and give credit when using these.

If you have suggestions for future templates you'd like to see, I’m always open to hearing them! I love getting feedback from all of you, and I’m always looking to create new things for sims stories! ✨

Download here 🩵

Once again, thank you for all your love and support! I can’t wait to see how you use these templates in your stories! 🩷

Previews

[ll7esxs]

꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶ ๋ ࣭ ⭑꒷꒦꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶ ๋ ࣭ ⭑꒷꒦꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶ ๋ ࣭ ⭑꒷꒦꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶ ๋ ࣭ ⭑꒷꒦꒷꒦︶

꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶ ๋ ࣭ ⭑꒷꒦꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶ ๋ ࣭ ⭑꒷꒦꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶ ๋ ࣭ ⭑꒷꒦꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶ ๋ ࣭ ⭑꒷꒦꒷꒦︶

Use the phone + Text you!

Characters: Logan walker, hesh walker, keegan russ, kick, merrick.

X GN! reader!

notes: idk it's safe.

Logan walker:

Not big on texting—he's more of a "call if it's important" guy.

He doesn't even remember how he got the phone.

Old but reliable Samsung Galaxy S21 (won’t upgrade unless it literally dies).

Phone case? Just raw-dogging that phone like a menace. The screen is cracked as hell, but Fix it everytime.

The lock screen of his phone: A stock wallpaper of mountains because he never bothered to change it.

He put it On vibrate 24/7. If it makes a sound, he's confused.

But ofc he feels it when you call or smth.

Battery is always at 5-10% even though he don't use it so much but the battery gone low by itself😔.

He forgets to charge it and just borrows Hesh’s charger.

One-hand texter—his replies are short because he hates typing.

Probably doesn’t have social media? He would have whatsapp, messages and instagram! you told him to make but he just leave it and never enter the app💀

But has Google Maps and a weather app for no reason.

If he texts you, it's short but meaningful:

"You good?" His way of saying he cares

"Will Be home soon." Which could mean in 3 hours or 3 weeks

Will shock you, because you were kinda hesitated to send him a meme, so when you did send him a meme, he'll react with either "😂" or "?" depending on if he gets it.

This shocked you asf cuz you didn't know he understand memes.

This gave you butterflies.

Doesn’t use emojis, barely types full sentences.

You: "Did you eat?"

Logan: "Yeah. You?"

You: "What did you eat?"

Logan: "Food."

You: "Curse you i just asked."

Logan: "Y/n I have been eating for my entire life why i wouldn't now?"

Takes accidental blurry pics of stuff he finds interesting (like a cool sunset or a random stray dog).

You get unintentional thirst traps of him sweaty after training.

If you compliment him Logan: "Didn’t mean to send that."

You: "Sure you didn’t. 👀"

You sent him cupcake remixes songs.

If you call, he picks up but doesn’t talk much—just listens to your voice."Mhm. Yeah. Miss you too." (He smiles but doesn’t say much)

He shrugs when you asked him if he will come back "Yeah, of course! Where i would go anywhere else?"

Hesh walker:

IPhone 12 Pro Max (YEAH FIGHT ME FIGHT ME👺) – Upgraded because he needed better battery life for all his texting.

Clear case with a germa shepherd on the back. Super protective case because he’s broken too many phones.

Homescreen: A Ghosts team Logo

Lockscreen: A picture of Riley sleeping ("He looks majestic.")

Ringtone: Something dumb like "Danger Zone" or an old classic rock song.

Sends way too many gifs and voice messages If he is lazy.

Has a million notifications but replies to you instantly.

Somehow has 100 unread messages from people he doesn't acknowledge them but they know him since he is kind of famousin the field but replies to yours instantly.

Camera roll? 90% nature pic and riley, 10% squad pics, and a secret album of cute pics of you (you don't even know abt it he is like so cool abt it too).

The most normal texter in the squad. Fast responses, actually uses punctuation.

Sends dumb jokes, random pictures, and voice notes of him teasing you.

"Dad just gave the longest speech ever, send help."

[Pic of Riley napping] "He stole my seat. Again."

Uses his phone for music, probably has a playlist of classic rock and hype songs.

Definitely texts you mid-work if he’s stuck waiting for something "Low-key bored. What are you doing?"

Yes he uses social media, especially whatsapp, insta and massenger!

Has a lot of messages from other people He doesn't even know.

You’re his favorite person to text.

"You won’t believe what I fuckin' just did—Dude I tripped over Riley’s toy and tried to act like it didn’t happen in front of logan."

"Mission sucked. But thinking about you made it better."

Sends selfies, pics of Riley, and random squad candids.

[Sends a pic of himself in gear] "Your man looks good today, huh?"

You acted like cupcake's remixes😍🙏🏻.

[Sends a pic of Logan asleep on the couch] "Took this at my own risk."

If you don’t reply fast or didn't send him morning or evening messages he would go with: "Helloooo??? Where’s my daily appreciation text??"

Calls you before and after missions."Yo, just checking in. You good? Need anything?"

When he’s tired, his voice gets softer: "Wish I was home with you right now."

His phone charge getting like 85-70% but then logan ruined his charger since he use it so much but hesh never complain abt it.

Keegan p russ:

Google Pixel 8 Pro Minimalist, good for low-light pics (probably why he picked it).

Black matte case, no design. Practical, sleek, untraceable vibes.

Homescreen: Dark-themed clockLockscreen: A night sky "It’s calming."

Ringtone: Default Pixel tone, but it’s always on silent.

Turns off read receipts and disables typing indicators.

Only 5 apps installed: Messaging, maps, camera, notes, and WhatApp.

Camera roll? Basically empty except for surveillance photos and one random blurry pic of you.

Doesn’t use his phone unless necessary when you call so much. Half the time, it’s either dead or on silent.

Dryest texter ever."Ok."

"See you."

But once he shocked you with a message showing he cares through text, i mean he is like logan save his emotions in real life!.

He really cares about you, you get slightly longer texts:

"Stay inside tonight. Got a bad feeling."

"Be safe." Sent at 3AM, no explanation.

If you call him, he might answer, but expect a "What’s up?" and then silence while he waits for you to talk.

Responds hours later but it’s never on purpose. Just forgets.

You: "You alive??"

Keegan: "Yeah." 6 hours later

You: "That’s all I get?"

Keegan: "Been busy."

Never takes pictures but if he does, they’re surprisingly nice candid shots of you when you’re not looking.

"Thought you’d like this." (It’s a picture of the night sky because he knows you love it)

If you send him a selfie, he just replies (after hours) "Pretty."

THEN ASAP SAVES THE PIC.

Phone Calls: Rare but deep."You don’t have to talk, just stay on the line with me."

He say this if he got a brooding feelings inside.

If he’s on a dangerous mission, he’ll call you before it and just say: "Don’t worry about me. Just wanted to hear your voice." yeah he was desperate.

Thomas merrick:

Huawei Y9 bye.

Black leather case—very executive and no-nonsense.

Homescreen: A Ghosts insignia

Lockscreen: A motivational quote like "Discipline is freedom." (please yall tell me you see the vision)

Ringtone: Loudest default ringtone that woke up the whole base (so he never misses a call cuz he use it for job!).

Prefers calls over texts. If you text him something long, he’ll just call, Doesn't do small talk over text but prefers actual phone calls when he has time.

Very formal texter—uses punctuation and full sentences.

Camera roll? Mostly mission photos, but has one saved picture of you (doesn’t talk about it).

Barely touches his phone. Work comes first.

If he texts, it’s super direct and practical.

"Landed. Safe."

"You need anything?"

If you text him something dumb, he’ll just leave you on read.

Might check his phone once in a while but never during briefings.

You’ll never catch him scrolling through social media. Ever.

Straight to the point, but sometimes softens up for you cuz once you notice he never eat like usual so you remind him.

You: "Don’t forget to eat."

Merrick: "I won’t."

You: "I know you’re lying."

Merrick: "Fine. I’ll eat. Happy?" he didn't lol.

Doesn’t take pictures unless you ask. If you ask for a selfie, he would be confused and stuff cuz here never did take a selfie telling you he will come back anyway.

But when he come to your house, he takes pictures of you, not himself.

Like i said her prefer phone calls especially when he is free.

His voice is calm and steady, but you can tell he relaxes when he hears you.

"You alright?" His way of saying he cares

If you’re upset and wanna yapp, he stays on the phone until you calm down. No rushed words—just listens.

Barely on his phone unless he’s checking mission reports. If you text, expect a reply in 2-5 business hours.

Kick:

What if i told yall he's got the money to buy iphone 15 pro max😔?you wouldn't believe me.

GUYS GUYS GUYS!, I know yall would come to me saying "GIRL WHO BUY IPHONE 15 HE'S BROKE IN THIS HALF APOCALYPSE WORLD"

Guys think abt it's 2027 there could be IPHONE 17!! SO kick broke ass bought IPHONE15!!

The only reason he chose it because he think ios is the safest program

fully jailbroken (probably has custom security software on it).

Some shockproof tactical case "Gotta be prepared." (for what😭)

Homescreen: A digital clock widget with a custom UI.

Lockscreen: A sci-fi looking interface with data widgets yes he was excited abt his phone that he organized it.

Ringtone: Custom-made—probably a futuristic beeping sound made the gang looking around smoothly thinking they got into space or smth.

Has two phones—one for work (Some random old galaxy) and one personal for you and other contact (the iphone)

"Yall don't deserve to be talked by this masterpiece".

He has all the social medias, talking with people he knows! but not that active.

The tech-savvy one. Probably has all the best apps and knows how to use them.

Can type ridiculously fast. His texts are fast and efficient but lowkey sarcastic.

Camera roll? Mostly encrypted files, but has a high-quality photo of you looking cool.

50% memes, 30% gym pics, 20% pictures of you.

Texts fast but types like a hacker—always looks like he’s in a rush.

"KICK STOP COMING ONLINE THEN OFFLINE THEN DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN!!" that's because he answer you but then disapper then answer you again like he leave the app so many times.

"ETA 5 min. U good?"

"Saw this and thought of u [sends a random gadget or meme]"

You know memes like a lot, but him, he send you stuff that u will never unserstand it.

The guy who helps fix everyone else's phones when they break them.

Lowkey a gamer. Might send you a "Wanna play something later?" text when he actually has time off and bored.

types in perfect grammar but all lowercase because he’s too lazy.

You: "What are you up to?"

Kick: "fixing some encrypted comms. you?"

You: "Being good ig."

Kick: "confirmed. always lookin' good"

Takes the best photos of you. Angles? Lighting? Perfect.

You: "Why do your shots look so good??"

Kick: "Not my shots cuz you're fint shyt"

Sends gym selfies like "Should I flex more? Nah, already flexing too much."

Again...cupcake remix.

"Don't have to say this, But be careful out there, okay?❤️"

Super chill over the phone. Probably calls you when he’s working on tech stuff just to have company.

"Talk to me while I work. Keeps me focused."

"There is no way..."

"way."

[holyblonded]

There is not a day when estrella doesn't give anxiety to Alexia.😭right ??

— honestly, alexia lives in a constant state of anxiety because of estrella. if it’s not one thing, it’s another. she can’t catch a break.

— estrella has a knack for disappearing at the worst times. one minute she’s right next to alexia, the next she’s halfway across the stadium, probably chasing after a stray ball or something equally chaotic.

— alexia’s heart has dropped to her stomach more times than she can count because of estrella’s antics. she’s genuinely convinced she’s going to age faster because of it.

— the worst part? estrella doesn’t even realize she’s giving alexia a heart attack. she just lives her life, carefree and chaotic, and alexia’s on the sidelines clutching her chest.

— like that time estrella went to buy plushies and the team legit thought she’d been kidnapped. alexia was seconds away from calling the police before estrella waltzed back like nothing happened.

— “i just saw them in the window,” estrella said, holding up her new plushies with a big grin. alexia was too relieved to even scold her… that came later.

— estrella genuinely thinks alexia is overreacting most of the time. “i was just talking to lucy,” she’ll say, and alexia’s like, “you were gone for forty minutes without telling anyone!”

— during games, alexia’s anxiety goes through the roof because estrella’s always throwing herself into reckless challenges. the amount of times she’s seen estrella go down hard… it’s a miracle she hasn’t run out on the field.

— lucy jokes that alexia should get a therapist just for the estrella-related stress. honestly, she’s not wrong.

— even when they’re just at home, estrella somehow manages to find trouble. last week, she got herself locked in the laundry room “just to see if she could get out.” …she couldn’t.

— every time estrella goes on national duty, alexia’s glued to the tv, yelling at the screen every time estrella makes a risky play. olga has to remind her that yelling won’t change anything.

— if estrella is quiet for more than five minutes, alexia knows something’s up. she’s learned the hard way that silence is never a good sign.

— alexia’s phone is filled with tracking apps and emergency contacts just because of estrella. life360, find my iphone, the whole shabang. olga thought it was overkill at first… until estrella went missing that one time. now she’s on board.

— estrella thinks it’s funny when alexia freaks out over “small stuff,” but she’s secretly grateful for how protective alexia is. even if she won’t admit it out loud.

— at this point, the team knows to keep an eye on estrella just to help alexia out. they’re like her unofficial babysitters.

— estrella swears she’s not trying to stress alexia out. it just… happens. she’s just naturally chaos.

— but no matter how much anxiety estrella gives her, alexia wouldn’t trade it for the world. she loves that kid more than anything, even if she’s convinced she’s shaving years off her life.

[all4aoki]

  ⊹ 𝓟ICK 𝓤P ˒ ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ𝓟ICK 𝓤P ⠀Ꮺ ָ࣪ ۰ ִ

a look inside of Aoki YN`s phone . . . enha x f!reader, poly!enha, enha8thmember ↺ 𝓛ibrary ࣪ ۪ ♡ᱹ

©all4aoki, 2024

ꔫ ˖ 개인 || ⵌ PERSONAL ?? model white iphone 13 lock screen you n ur boys home screen cute aesthetic layout you copied from tiktok case the ‘kitten around’ case by wallflower

᱖ Before you had this phone, you had an iPhone XR which you were pretty happy with. However, your sister got a new phone for one Christmas, so your parents got you a new one too. You’ve been using it ever since and with how often you drop it, it’s surprising that it’s gone so long without cracking. This current phone you have was given to you before the pink version of the iPhone was released, so unfortunately, you didn’t get that cute baby pink color. However, you’re content with the white that your parents picked out for you since white goes with everything.

Your lock screen is just of ot7 Enhypen and you (aka you and your boyfriends). Honestly, the picture isn’t anything special, but it’s still one of your favorites. It’s just such a cute picture. and your home screen was one you found on TikTok. Being a huge fan of anything pleasing on the eye, you adapted the style to your own electronic immediately and haven’t changed it since.

Sunoo got you your phone case for your most recent birthday. Originally, you wanted the Wallflower case that had the design of pointe shoes and ribbons, but it had been sold out in the iPhone 13 size for what felt like forever. So, Sunoo chose a different design and you ended up liking it even more than the first.

You have all of your socials and games located on this phone. Honestly, there isn’t a huge difference between this phone and your work phone, apart from this one containing the contacts of your family and non-idol friends. That being said, you rarely bring this phone out in public with you now both because of your group’s partnership with Samsung. Also, as the years have gone on, your privacy has become more and more important to you.

ꔫ ˖ 작업 || ⵌ WORK ?? model silver samsung galaxy flip4 lock screen you n ENGENE home screen plain layout case clear hello kitty case ordered from etsy

᱖ You had firmly believed that you would’ve never gotten a Samsung phone. This was only because phones are expensive and you’ve always had an iPhone that worked so there was no point dropping 1000+ dollars on a new one. But when Enhypen began endorsing Samsung, you had to get one. You decided on one of the flip phones because it was the same style your mom had and because you’d been influenced by watching ‘Business Proposal’ ><

Fans will zoom in on videos or take peeks in public to observe your guys’ phones so you weren’t able to make your lock screen a picture of your boys and you. But you settled for the next best thing: a cute interaction between you and ENGENE at one of Enhypen’s comeback shows! As for your home screen, you left the layout mostly basic. only adding some things like cute pictures, a calendar, etc.

You’ve always been a huge Sanrio fan, so it only made sense for you to have a phone case that was related to it in some way. You had planned on getting one with Cinnamoroll on it, but after finding two matching cases with Hello Kitty on them, you just had to get them. You have the clear version and Sangmi has the black version! Fans think it’s adorable that you both have matching cases. It was only an added plus that the cases came with an added charm to help you carry your phones around.

This work phone also has games on it, but you don’t have any socials on it except for Instagram and EN-line (like Phoning, but for enha!). Most of the time the staff films TikToks for you and posts selcas on Twitter, so you didn’t bother with downloading the apps on this phone. The only contacts you have on this phone are your members and your staff (manager, stylist & bodyguards).

ꔫ ˖ 연락처 // CONTACTS ⵌ !! whore 1 (affectionate) heeseung 쭌이! / jjongie! jay / whore 2 (affectionate) jake 남편🗣️ / hubby🗣️ sunghoon 꿀벌☺️ / honeybee☺️ sunoo 양양🌷 / yangyang🌷 jungwon no.1 sasaeng!👽 ni-ki

ꔫ ˖ EN라인 || ⵌ EN-LINE ??

᱖ Very similar to Phoning for NewJeans (except this was released before they even debuted :P) and Weverse. Except it’s solely for Enhypen and ENGENE!

Main features include… Data & Voice Lines (messages between members and voice notes you’re able to leave for fans); Physical Media (photo albums for each member); Class Schedule (calendars each member can post updates on like what they’re doing for the day, if they plan to go live, etc); Audio Transmission (where the members can make and share playlists / what kind of music you’re listening to or creating); SIGENAL (video lives); and DARK MOON (contains all Webtoon and stories related to Enhypen’s lore)

There is a premium version of the app called EN-Line+ but there are quite a few benefits that come with it! For example, it allows ENGENES to access chat rooms that are separated into ‘clubs’ and they can talk to each other. Sometimes you and your members join the convo, but it’s more fun to watch everything happen. This version of the app also gives exclusive BTS content on vlogs, concerts, filmings, etc. And! For every month ENGENEs are subscribed to EN-Line+, they get the option of 2 photocards and 2 other pieces of merch that are exclusive to the app!

마리셀의 노트 , just a little smthing while I finish up some other works☺️🌷thank you all so much for your patience and for the support!💕😻

[trans-femme-fag-dyke]

T4T sEggs Cracking

Sex changes when you transition as a t-girl. New realities come into focus. New turn-ons emerge. A world of novel psychological and physiological experiences are added to the mix, or replace it entirely. Hormones and their impact terraform the ecology into a mycelial divine feminine, replete with new pleasure pathways. In short, it is wild and beautiful, feral and oozing with potential.

What I wasn’t prepared for, though, was how transfiguring the experience of T4T sex would be. Not by a mile.

Degrading Glorification

(What follows is a dual narrative, embellished and made whole by my lover’s own description of our tryst, which may I tell you is really fucking hot. Anyone who finds discovery and meaning in the process of writing has my attention and, most likely, my lust).

Just another day on Grindr receiving unsolicited dick pic after dick pic from people who ignore my profile’s clear insistence on T4T only.

While I don’t avail myself of these opportunities, there is something to be said for the euphoria that comes from being seen by cishets as a girl. Even seeing me as an attractive t-girl, if they’re purely fetishizing that tribal identifier, doesn’t hurt. Having spent too many years in the closet as a boy-modular gay, I am immune to the aggression of those advances and treat it more like a research project, tagging each new appendage into its relevant mental taxonomy: thick, thin, black, white, clean, cum-covered, veiny, etc. Back in the day, these advances were perfectly acceptable — direct, to the point, like the hawking of wares in a saturated meat market. I was less interested in what they were attached to as I was in their function. Emotion and personality were cast aside.

As a t-girl, though, there is a crossing of the privilege divide into an East Berlin of fear and insecurity. Too often, and too unpublicized, are the examples of anti-trans violence that it’s simply not the same fuck economy that it used to be. And anyway, my orientation has changed.

Orientation shift in transition is a topic that could command an entire thesis, so I won’t go into it here. Suffice it to say that almost overnight, as the estrogen moved through my body, I lost my interest in gay or straight men. Perhaps because being with a gay guy, although still on the table before secondary sex characteristics set in and I could stealthily navigate those penetrations, would send a dysphoric signal deep into my programming.

I find myself attracted to trans energy mostly.

Grindr is a numbers game in Los Angeles. There’s so much flakiness you become accustomed to being ignored or conversations end abruptly. Not to mention that hooking up here is so governed by travel times which fluctuate wildly throughout the days asymmetrical commuting times, that the whole affair can be a non-started at the outset.

But she responded. Glorious brunette, with long wavy hair, small pursed lips and an aloofness that immediately activated my pathological desire of the emotionally unavailable. What can I say, my mother fucked me up.

She — let’s call her Adeline — lived about 10 minutes away, so in an abundance of well-heeled politeness cut with impatient lust, I went to pick her up.

Cue the usual slightly coy banter as we both worked each other out during the ride. The dissipation of fear which comes with these Grindr “dates” for traps, which always carry a soupçon of terror to them and see us scrambling to etch a last will and testament into our iPhone notes app and share location with friends as it plays out.

I emerged from the bathroom topless.

Oh fuck, she thought, nipple piercings. The most physical symbol of deviance there is.

We started making out on the sofa and immediately some force took a hold of me. I felt like our bodies were fusing inside a blacksmith’s forge. We were glitching like a hacked mainframe, opening up its secrets to Snowden’s deft digital lock-picking. We were like people who hadn’t eaten in days set loose on a Vegas buffet.

I ran my hands over her back and through her hair, interlocking my teeth around her neck and ears. Almost epileptic in spasms of uncontrollable, uncensored I searched for my frontal cortex and managed to articulate that we should move to the bedroom.

My friend S had told me to expect fireworks in my first T4T experience. Their look of both shock and empathetic excitement registered on their FaceTime framed face.

They hinted at the dynamic’s incendiary force with an elliptical smile, leaving me hanging like a teaser trailer.

“I can’t explain it, but there’s just something to that energy, that vibe. I’m so excited for you. Like fucking excited!”

And Jesus fucking christ, they were right. I can see why they held off on the detail. Language fails.

We made our way to the bedroom where I revealed my kink drawer. There’s a cornucopia of debauchery in this unassuming pine wood piece of furniture: masks, paddles, leashes, collars, nipple clamps and floggers.

We negotiated our limits, settling on consensual non-consent. In short, anything goes.

We couldn’t have been more perfectly matched. When she initially shared photos with me on the app she gave a trigger warning around the bruises I’d see. It just so happened that impact play and relishing in the blues, browns, yellows and purples of corporeal graffiti aftermath was something we shared.

“I don’t care if you draw blood,” I assured her.

“Well ok then, you pathetic little slut,” she hissed, “lay the fuck down.”

I hadn’t fully anticipated how rapidly she would turn on the sadistic domme energy and I didn’t question it. I couldn’t.

Mmmmmmmmm, mama’s hungry, I thought as my crotch began to throb.

I don’t need to pull my punches, she thought, I can really indulge this deeper cruelty in me.

“Yes, mistress!” I responded, getting into role as the slut spit dump I’d soon become.

I lay down.

“Open wide, slut,” she ordered as she spat on my face, all the while positioning her mouth over mine and dribbling long translucent threads of drool onto my tongue and down my throat. She lunged for my neck with lupine grace and hunger, digging her teeth in and unleashing eddies of dopamine and oxytocin. I could feel the fledgling bruises on my neck and knew they’d be difficult to hide but at this point she could have pushed a blade into my lungs and I’d have kissed her while the blood bubbled out of my mouth.

These were feelings I had never felt before.

It was like all my shame, low self-esteem, trauma, alienation, anxiety and isolation channeled a lightning strike turning sand into clear shards of luminescent glass.

It felt both individual and collective, all ruptures and salvation of minority stressed gender fuckery, raining down and being soaked up. An effervescent tribal alchemy of ecstatic release.

The power of consensual degradation cannot be underestimated. I took years of being trodden down by things beyond my control. The abuse of my mother, the deprivation of affection, the laundering of all currencies of love through a front of cold calculation. All of this turned to steam through the act of my submitting to it with someone who also made me vibrate with light. All of those times when I had no fucking say in what happened to me, as humanity depriving as it was and violently unfair, I now took back. I resignified it, reclaimed it, decolonized and liberated it.

She attached the leash to my collar and yanked me onto the floor.

“If you’re a good girl, you’ll get a treat.” She said sternly, with the consummate control of a well-etched domme.

Up until now, she’d only really experimented with this role but now, she leapt up into the saddle ready for battle. From where I crouched, lapping up her girl dick with such an eagerness to please, it felt like she’d been doing this all her life.

In the dawn of her 20s, this girl came with a level of sexual confidence and experience that can only be found in trans circles. It’s like our bodies are always searching for each other with odyssean ardor. Simultaneous electrons suspended in tandem states.

I clambered back onto the bed like a dog and she straddled me, our girl dicks entwined in her hand with a vibrator in between. Edging, foreplay, the beautiful mirage of the female orgasm which rises and falls, ebbs and flows, coming into focus then going blurry as the mind and the body speaks in foreign tongues.

It was the kind of sex you never want to end. Constant punishment, submission, bratty deliberate misbehavior, retaliation, good behavior and treats.

“You told me you were going to cum you fucking whore. Well, are you?!” she cursed.

“Fuck my pussy, mistress. I need something in me so I can cum for you.”

One, two, then three fingers entered me as she celebrated my gaping hole.

“I love how loose you are.”

Ugh, I felt so seen. I’ve been trying to make my ass loose for years. It’s been one of my sexual north stars. I want to be able to get entire cities inside me. Until my neo-puzzy arrives, my ass has been my pussy substitute and I’ve wanted her to stretch until my bud becomes labia and turns from circle into that canal like corridor of floral ingress.

It didn’t take long, with my ass full of her hand, and I reached that liquidless trap climax and lay there panting, dripping in spit, sweat, and a sense of sexed gender euphoria I had waited 39 years to feel.

Who knew that in order to feel my most beautiful, it would take this level of degradation.

We languished, dripping in sweat and overtaken by an exhaustion which was held in abeyance by the relentless motor of sex.

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to do that again,” I said, with the last remaining energy and breath left in me.

“We might not be able to. I’m probably moving to Berlin in a few weeks,” she responded with a signature level of matter-of-factness and regret.

Afterword

This is a post from Threads that resonated with me.

@aspirationaltea I think this post is me realizing T4T lesbian is the full explanation of my sexuality at least?

That’s how I walked away from the experience with Adeline. Literally and figuratively changed forever. In one fell swoop a single lover had the power to make me feel seen for the first time in my life.

Now of course any first time has the potential to carry the hyperbole of its impact. But the water that slacks the thirst of the desert stranded is the exact same water we all drink. The difference, however, is life saving.

I would usually chalk up an experience without more penetration as fun but not fulfilling. In this scene I had a few fingers inside me for a few minutes. And yet I lost all sense of time and place, sinking into the experience like feet in clittoral sand.

It was pure T4T lesbian sex, as much connection, edging and build as it was a wham bam teleology. The purpose was communion and connection.

T4T sex transfigures and transubstantiates the entire experience into a physical act. Inside every bite, kiss, spit, yank, finger and curse, was a microcosm of the entire experience of trans identity. Eucharist anointed trap fantasy.

Our shared struggles, estrogen shortages, dirty glances turned our way, rejections. Our alignments, the joyful tears t-girls shed over the smallest things as their emotional synapses reinitiate, our first sports bra. Everything is there, unspoken but enacted ritualistically like the world is burning all around us and we carry on regardless. Which is, alas, what it feels like a lot of the time.

At the core of the experience was the abiding sense of safety which comes from being intimate with someone who knows how important it is to cultivate that in as many spaces, few though they may be, as possible.

In addition, the dimension of kink/BDSM brings its own magnetic locus of individuation and resignification. We find submission, abjectification, degradation, and pain paired up with consent, control, compassion, negotiation, communication, and transcendence. We recontextualize experiences which in every other life domain are precursors or consequences of socially aberrant behavior or undesirable hierarchical role playing.

Whether the sub is in control or the dom is, just as with tops and bottoms, is a question for the ages. The person under the thumb, in so allowing it, arguably possesses some power over the person they artificially and consensually elevate to that position. When you have nothing to lose because you have relinquished it, you can only be net positive existentially.

The point is the horizontal socialism of the trans lesbian experience. No one person controls. All are equal and the roleplay is merely an enactment of the end of dominion by external forces.

For what baits the enemy like getting back on your feet or smiling in their face? As blood streams out of your nostrils and you turn to face your captor ready for another beating, you demonstrate an unwavering faith in the ultimate form of the Golden Rule: if your enemy strikes you, turn the other cheek and ask, “Have I been a good girl, Mistress?”

[no-stupid-questions-official]

I want to see if 1. anyone’s experiencing this as well and 2. how can I stop it from doing this

So AO3 will do this thing where it will basically force me reload to reload the page. I want to write a comment or (and more annoyingly) try to post a new fanfic. I hit post and bam- my page crashed and now I have to reload and retype EVERYTHING. I’ve been using and posting on ao3 for years now and just this year/past few months it’s started doing this. I don’t experience this on other sites or on any of my apps. Only found one reddit thread that kinda described my issue from like 7 years ago and of course no one could help op. Thread locked.

If additional context is needed I post via an iphone, safari. I don’t have firefox. My wifi connection is fine, full bars when I at least try posting a new fic so I don’t think it’s a wifi issue. I do use a vpn. Idk if any of this is affecting posting but I’ll leave it in here anyways if for some reason it would be?

-

[ohcorny]

are there iphone apps or settings that can lock you out of other apps for a set amount of time. i do all my writing on my phone and it's been real difficult to stop myself from scrolling shit and it'd be nice to lock myself out for a bit

e: ty for answers! i will try using downtime and see how that helps

[lotuslolitasblog]

ROTI phone hcs, go!!!

Anne Maria:

The phone case is pink.

VERY PINK.

Pink & purple leopard print. I am right. You can’t fricking deny it

She has a phone string with purple and golden charms on it

It’s a pretty new model.

There’s a crack on the upper right corner.

She has trouble typing up the code with her nails, so she has Touch ID.

Her lockscreen is probably some bad pic of her and her gal pals or a great one of her and Vito

Her home screen is some dreamy purple background. Probably some clouds with tiny sparkles all around

Her ringtone… this one was hard. I don’t know any techno! I decided to go with like the one song I know, Evacuate The Dancefloor by Cascada.

She has a special ring tone for Vito, Everytime We Touch (also by Cascada)

She talks about the most unhinged gossip on the phone in public

Every contact is saved with a pretty emoji next to them (Jo insisted that if she HAD to have her name saved with a heart, it had to be the black one)

B:

…

…

Nah, kidding.

He has a clear phone case. Simple, but efficient.

His phone is pretty old, and he knows it inside out.

His phone has been through some shit, but the screen is somehow intact.

His Lock Screen is probably some pretty science-ish thing, like a butterfly nebula.

His Home Screen is just one of the default ones.

His ringtone (I don’t know why anyone would call him, but anyway) is some instrumental… I can’t come up with what he’d listen to tbh.

Absolute meme lord. Has a meme or a GIF for every occasion.

He has one alarm at 6:30 every day and never misses it (TEACH ME YOUR WAYS B)

Brick:

Black leather phone case. Dare to tell me I’m wrong. I am not.

His phone is absolute blasted. You cannot tell me there aren’t at least ten cracks. That man is a KLUTZ

These bullet points really show you who my favourite character is up until now

His lock screen and home screen are the same green army pattern background.

He changes the Home Screen to a picture he stealthily took of Jo

Old model.

iPhone? What is that???

His ringtone is absolutely awful. No song in mind, but Brick just sounds like someone with absolutely no taste in music.

Reveille is his alarm sound which goes off at 0600 hours every day. He’s also an adept at waking up with one alarm. Bro is always ready to seize the day

Talks ridiculously loud over the phone

Has absolutely no social media. He is nowhere

Cameron:

Bought a phone with the prize money

It’s one of his most prized possessions

His mom bought him one of those mom phone cases with the wrap in front (I don’t know how to word that correctly)

It’s black

His lock screen is a picture of a butterfly. Not just any butterfly! A Danaus plexippus (AKA a monarch butterfly - the orange and black ones with those little white dots)

His home screen is a picture of him with Mike and Zoey

His phone is a pretty new model. His mom was afraid it would overheat too much if he had an older one

His ringtone is You’ve Got A Friend In Me

He doesn’t need an alarm because his mom wakes him up every day

Dakota:

Pink,pink,pink!

Bubblegum pink!

She has a personalised pop socket! It has D written in gold and the rest is - you guessed it - pink

Her lock screen is a picture of her and Sam (cutie piessss)

Home Screen is her favourite picture of her

It’s the newest model (obvi)

Touch ID & Facial recognition for easy use

Has paparazzis on speed dial

Her ringtone is Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen

If you have some time, check out the music video. The last few seconds are PRICELESS

She has every social media app you can think of

She’s verified too!!

Uses emojis religiously. Always uses !! or ?? instead of a single sign

Dawn:

Got a phone solely to be able to give tarot readings over call

She gives the money she makes from it to associations

She has a clear phone case, but she put an upright Fool card in it

It symbolises innocence and free spiritedness

I looked it up on Wikipedia. Thanks Wikipedia (Henry Cahill would be disappointed)

It’s a decently old model, but she doesn’t plan on changing it anytime soon

Somehow always charged

Her homescreen and lockscreen are different pictures of her friends (both human and animal)

Has a ringtone, but she can somehow always sense when someone will be calling a few seconds before it starts ringing

It’s probably some New Age music (Gwen: 😖)

Always answers 3 to 5 business days after you send a message. It’s better to call her directly

Jo:

A simple black phone case

Her Lock Screen is just a black background with white text that says: “Why are you even touching my phone?”

Her home screen is literally the worst picture of Brick ever.

She always manages to catch him at the worst moments

He used to hate it, but he finds it endearing now

Again, you can really see who are my favourites rn

Her workout playlist goes hard!

Her ringtone is It’s My Life by Bon Jovi

She doesn’t have an alarm

Alarms are for chumps

You’ll die before you ever see her use an emoji.

There’s a few cracks around the lower corners

It’s a miracle there aren’t more considering how much it falls while she runs

Her voice mail says: “It’s Jo. Just don’t call me.”

Lightning:

Newest model. There is no way he isn’t one of those people who change phones every time a newer one comes out

Has a personalised phone case.

It’s a blue one, with yellow lines, his jersey number and his name

Both the Home Screen and Lock Screen are pictures of him

As it should, king!!

His workout playlist is also great

He listens to Brick’s music recs too much though, so it’s not as good as Jo’s

Only sends voice messages

Sends every sports video he ever sees to Jo and Brick

Jo nearly blocked him because of it

Has an awesome group chat with the rest of his football team

Again, my favourites really show

His ringtone is Moves Like Jagger by Maroon 5

Thought Jagger was a football player for the longest time

Mike & Co.

Mi: Black phone case so the system won’t go crazy

Mi: His Lock Screen & Home Screen is a picture of him and Zoey

The System: Writes out entire convos in the notes app

V: Everytime he’s in control, he changes the Home Screen to a picture of him and Anne Maria

V: He also calls her every single time

Cutie pie

V: voice messages are his thing

V: definitely dropped it a dozen times. It’s cracked all over.

S: Follows every gymnast you can think of on social media

S: She’s the reason Mike has a Russian keyboard too

S: Her and Simone Biles are literally besties

S: Forced him to install Duolingo to learn Russian

Mi: He makes her learn Italian

MS: Tries to install dating apps every time he’s on the phone

MS: Searches for “Single Women In The Area” way too many times for it not to be concerning

Reminder: He’s married.

MS: Mike changed the password and no one can tell him what the new one is

C: “Alarms? Back in my day, we woke up with the sun!” *disables it*

C: Also doesn’t know the new password

Ma: Are you kidding? Obviously doesn’t know the password.

Ma: Guessed it once, and changed Mike’s ringtone to fart sounds

Mi: The original ringtone was Under Pressure by David Bowie & Queen

V: Likes to change it to Ice Ice Baby because Mike won’t notice it instantly

Ice Ice Baby <3 Thank you Laurie Elliott

Sam:

A Mario phone case. No other option.

His Lock Screen is the same as Dakota’s

CUTIE PIESSSSS OMG I LOVE THEM SO SO MUCH ASIDHDHS

*cough*

Anyways, his Home Screen is probably some game related Easter Egg.

Not an actual easter egg jic someone gets the wrong idea

His ringtone is Jump Up Superstar by The Living Tombstone

My personal fav version is the one by VGR

It’s a pretty new model

Dakota offered to buy him a newer one but he said it wasn’t necessary

It always has a low battery percentage so he carries a charger everywhere

Definitely a moderator on a few gaming rated subreddits or Discord servers

A lot more low-key than his gf on social media

They have matching profile pictures

Scott:

His phone is a hand me down

It’s so old it’s nearly a family heirloom

Dude doesn’t have a phone case

It SHOWS. His phone is beat up.

His lockscreen is a photoshopped pic of his sister’s head on the body of a donkey.

They’re each others biggest hater

His homescreen is just a big pile of dirt.

It always reminds him of home.

I’m having so much fun with this one you have no idea

Scott and Jo have the most insane Twitter beef I swear

There’s a Tumblr account dedicated to it.

Scott also has several fan accounts (all ran by me lmao)

His playlist is absolutely insane.

The only Kanye songs I listened to are Monster & American Boy - because he’s awful - and they’re both 10/10 songs I fear

Scott actually has an amazing taste in music

Dude probably loves Whistle

I hate to admit it but it’s a good song

His ringtone is Right Round by Flo Rida & Ke$ha

Staci:

Phone case is light blue.

Both backgrounds are family photos

The family group chat is crazy

She makes it her job to alter Wikipedia articles every weekend

Her calendar is full of family functions

Her ringtone is Beautiful atiful Liar by Beyoncé and Shakira

Unfortunately her music taste is great too

Her voice messages are infinitely long. So are her voice mails

Multiple people from Total Drama (Jo and Scott) have her blocked

Zoey:

Her phone case is clear. She slipped a Polaroid photo of the Revenge cast inside

She made her phone string herself. It’s full of cute charms like little mushrooms, flowers, ladybugs, leaves…

Her Lock Screen is a cute (and slightly goofy ) picture of her, Cam and Mike

Her Home Screen was a group selfie taken on a girl’s night she had with the Revenge girls. Jo has her middle finger out - it was painted black at Dakota’s insistence-, Dakota and Anne Maria are posing while Dawn and Staci have each other in a half-hug and Zoey is taking the picture and doing a peace sign

I should draw that sometimes…

Anyway, Zoey is definitely an avail emoji user too. Also kaomojis (/*•*)/

Her ring tone is Take Me Away by Christina Vidal

Freaky Friday anyone??

She posts the cutest pics on social media

Tries to defuse the Jo/Scott beef

Fails, miserably

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“Disenshittify or Die”

I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

Last weekend, I traveled to Las Vegas for Defcon 32, where I had the immense privilege of giving a solo talk on Track 1, entitled "Disenshittify or die! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification":

https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=54861

This was a followup to last year's talk, "An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification," a talk that kicked off a lot of international interest in my analysis of platform decay ("enshittification"):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rimtaSgGz_4

The Defcon organizers have earned a restful week or two, and that means that the video of my talk hasn't yet been posted to Defcon's Youtube channel, so in the meantime, I thought I'd post a lightly edited version of my speech crib. If you're headed to Burning Man, you can hear me reprise this talk at Palenque Norte (7&E); I'm kicking off their lecture series on Tuesday, Aug 27 at 1PM.

==

What the fuck happened to the old, good internet?

I mean, sure, our bosses were a little surveillance-happy, and they were usually up for sharing their data with the NSA, and whenever there was a tossup between user security and growth, it was always YOLO time.

But Google Search used to work. Facebook used to show you posts from people you followed. Uber used to be cheaper than a taxi and pay the driver more than a cabbie made. Amazon used to sell products, not Shein-grade self-destructing dropshipped garbage from all-consonant brands. Apple used to defend your privacy, rather than spying on you with your no-modifications-allowed Iphone.

There was a time when you searching for an album on Spotify would get you that album – not a playlist of insipid AI-generated covers with the same name and art.

Microsoft used to sell you software – sure, it was buggy – but now they just let you access apps in the cloud, so they can watch how you use those apps and strip the features you use the most out of the basic tier and turn them into an upcharge.

What – and I cannot stress this enough – the fuck happened?!

I’m talking about enshittification.

Here’s what enshittification looks like from the outside: First, you see a company that’s being good to its end users. Google puts the best search results at the top; Facebook shows you a feed of posts from people and groups you followl; Uber charges small dollars for a cab; Amazon subsidizes goods and returns and shipping and puts the best match for your product search at the top of the page.

That’s stage one, being good to end users. But there’s another part of this stage, call it stage 1a). That’s figuring out how to lock in those users.

There’s so many ways to lock in users.

If you’re Facebook, the users do it for you. You joined Facebook because there were people there you wanted to hang out with, and other people joined Facebook to hang out with you.

That’s the old “network effects” in action, and with network effects come “the collective action problem." Because you love your friends, but goddamn are they a pain in the ass! You all agree that FB sucks, sure, but can you all agree on when it’s time to leave?

No way.

Can you agree on where to go next?

Hell no.

You’re there because that’s where the support group for your rare disease hangs out, and your bestie is there because that’s where they talk with the people in the country they moved away from, then there’s that friend who coordinates their kid’s little league car pools on FB, and the best dungeon master you know isn’t gonna leave FB because that’s where her customers are.

So you’re stuck, because even though FB use comes at a high cost – your privacy, your dignity and your sanity – that’s still less than the switching cost you’d have to bear if you left: namely, all those friends who have taken you hostage, and whom you are holding hostage

Now, sometimes companies lock you in with money, like Amazon getting you to prepay for a year’s shipping with Prime, or to buy your Audible books on a monthly subscription, which virtually guarantees that every shopping search will start on Amazon, after all, you’ve already paid for it.

Sometimes, they lock you in with DRM, like HP selling you a printer with four ink cartridges filled with fluid that retails for more than $10,000/gallon, and using DRM to stop you from refilling any of those ink carts or using a third-party cartridge. So when one cart runs dry, you have to refill it or throw away your investment in the remaining three cartridges and the printer itself.

Sometimes, it’s a grab bag:

You can’t run your Ios apps without Apple hardware;

you can’t run your Apple music, books and movies on anything except an Ios app;

your iPhone uses parts pairing – DRM handshakes between replacement parts and the main system – so you can’t use third-party parts to fix it; and

every OEM iPhone part has a microscopic Apple logo engraved on it, so Apple can demand that the US Customs and Border Service seize any shipment of refurb Iphone parts as trademark violations.

Think Different, amirite?

Getting you locked in completes phase one of the enshittification cycle and signals the start of phase two: making things worse for you to make things better for business customers.

For example, a platform might poison its search results, like Google selling more and more of its results pages to ads that are identified with lighter and lighter tinier and tinier type.

Or Amazon selling off search results and calling it an “ad” business. They make $38b/year on this scam. The first result for your search is, on average, 29% more expensive than the best match for your search. The first row is 25% more expensive than the best match. On average, the best match for your search is likely to be found seventeen places down on the results page.

Other platforms sell off your feed, like Facebook, which started off showing you the things you asked to see, but now the quantum of content from the people you follow has dwindled to a homeopathic residue, leaving a void that Facebook fills with things that people pay to show you: boosted posts from publishers you haven’t subscribed to, and, of course, ads.

Now at this point you might be thinking ‘sure, if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product.'

Bullshit!

Bull.

Shit.

The people who buy those Google ads? They pay more every year for worse ad-targeting and more ad-fraud

Those publishers paying to nonconsensually cram their content into your Facebook feed? They have to do that because FB suppresses their ability to reach the people who actually subscribed to them

The Amazon sellers with the best match for your query have to outbid everyone else just to show up on the first page of results. It costs so much to sell on Amazon that between 45-51% of every dollar an independent seller brings in has to be kicked up to Don Bezos and the Amazon crime family. Those sellers don’t have the kind of margins that let them pay 51% They have to raise prices in order to avoid losing money on every sale.

"But wait!" I hear you say!

[Come on, say it!]

"But wait! Things on Amazon aren’t more expensive that things at Target, or Walmart, or at a mom and pop store, or direct from the manufacturer.

"How can sellers be raising prices on Amazon if the price at Amazon is the same as at is everywhere else?"

[Any guesses?!]

That’s right, they charge more everywhere. They have to. Amazon binds its sellers to a policy called “most favored nation status,” which says they can’t charge more on Amazon than they charge elsewhere, including direct from their own factory store.

So every seller that wants to sell on Amazon has to raise their prices everywhere else.

Now, these sellers are Amazon’s best customers. They’re paying for the product, and they’re still getting screwed.

Paying for the product doesn’t fill your vapid boss’s shriveled heart with so much joy that he decides to stop trying to think of ways to fuck you over.

Look at Apple. Remember when Apple offered every Ios user a one-click opt out for app-based surveillance? And 96% of users clicked that box?

(The other four percent were either drunk or Facebook employees or drunk Facebook employees.)

That cost Facebook at least ten billion dollars per year in lost surveillance revenue?

I mean, you love to see it.

But did you know that at the same time Apple started spying on Ios users in the same way that Facebook had been, for surveillance data to use to target users for its competing advertising product?

Your Iphone isn’t an ad-supported gimme. You paid a thousand fucking dollars for that distraction rectangle in your pocket, and you’re still the product. What’s more, Apple has rigged Ios so that you can’t mod the OS to block its spying.

If you’re not not paying for the product, you’re the product, and if you are paying for the product, you’re still the product.

Just ask the farmers who are expected to swap parts into their own busted half-million dollar, mission-critical tractors, but can’t actually use those parts until a technician charges them $200 to drive out to the farm and type a parts pairing unlock code into their console.

John Deere’s not giving away tractors. Give John Deere a half mil for a tractor and you will be the product.

Please, my brothers and sisters in Christ. Please! Stop saying ‘if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product.’

OK, OK, so that’s phase two of enshittification.

Phase one: be good to users while locking them in.

Phase two: screw the users a little to you can good to business customers while locking them in.

Phase three: screw everybody and take all the value for yourself. Leave behind the absolute bare minimum of utility so that everyone stays locked into your pile of shit.

Enshittification: a tragedy in three acts.

That’s what enshittification looks like from the outside, but what’s going on inside the company? What is the pathological mechanism? What sci-fi entropy ray converts the excellent and useful service into a pile of shit?

That mechanism is called twiddling. Twiddling is when someone alters the back end of a service to change how its business operates, changing prices, costs, search ranking, recommendation criteria and other foundational aspects of the system.

Digital platforms are a twiddler’s utopia. A grocer would need an army of teenagers with pricing guns on rollerblades to reprice everything in the building when someone arrives who’s extra hungry.

Whereas the McDonald’s Investments portfolio company Plexure advertises that it can use surveillance data to predict when an app user has just gotten paid so the seller can tack an extra couple bucks onto the price of their breakfast sandwich.

And of course, as the prophet William Gibson warned us, ‘cyberspace is everting.' With digital shelf tags, grocers can change prices whenever they feel like, like the grocers in Norway, whose e-ink shelf tags change the prices 2,000 times per day.

Every Uber driver is offered a different wage for every job. If a driver has been picky lately, the job pays more. But if the driver has been desperate enough to grab every ride the app offers, the pay goes down, and down, and down.

The law professor Veena Dubal calls this ‘algorithmic wage discrimination.' It’s a prime example of twiddling.

Every youtuber knows what it’s like to be twiddled. You work for weeks or months, spend thousands of dollars to make a video, then the algorithm decides that no one – not your own subscribers, not searchers who type in the exact name of your video – will see it.

Why? Who knows? The algorithm’s rules are not public.

Because content moderation is the last redoubt of security through obscurit: they can’t tell you what the como algorithm is downranking because then you’d cheat.

Youtube is the kind of shitty boss who docks every paycheck for all the rules you’ve broken, but won’t tell you what those rules were, lest you figure out how to break those rules next time without your boss catching you.

Twiddling can also work in some users’ favor, of course. Sometimes platforms twiddle to make things better for end users or business customers.

For example, Emily Baker-White from Forbes revealed the existence of a back-end feature that Tiktok’s management can access they call the “heating tool.”

When a manager applies the heating toll to a performer’s account, that performer’s videos are thrust into the feeds of millions of users, without regard to whether the recommendation algorithm predicts they will enjoy that video.

Why would they do this? Well, here’s an analogy from my boyhood I used to go to this traveling fair that would come to Toronto at the end of every summer, the Canadian National Exhibition. If you’ve been to a fair like the Ex, you know that you can always spot some guy lugging around a comedically huge teddy bear.

Nominally, you win that teddy bear by throwing five balls in a peach-basket, but to a first approximation, no one has ever gotten five balls to stay in that peach-basket.

That guy “won” the teddy bear when a carny on the midway singled him out and said, "fella, I like your face. Tell you what I’m gonna do: You get just one ball in the basket and I’ll give you this keychain, and if you amass two keychains, I’ll let you trade them in for one of these galactic-scale teddy-bears."

That’s how the guy got his teddy bear, which he now has to drag up and down the midway for the rest of the day.

Why the hell did that carny give away the teddy bear? Because it turns the guy into a walking billboard for the midway games. If that dopey-looking Judas Goat can get five balls into a peach basket, then so can you.

Except you can’t.

Tiktok’s heating tool is a way to give away tactical giant teddy bears. When someone in the TikTok brain trust decides they need more sports bros on the platform, they pick one bro out at random and make him king for the day, heating the shit out of his account.

That guy gets a bazillion views and he starts running around on all the sports bro forums trumpeting his success: *I am the Louis Pasteur of sports bro influencers!"

The other sports bros pile in and start retooling to make content that conforms to the idiosyncratic Tiktok format. When they fail to get giant teddy bears of their own, they assume that it’s because they’re doing Tiktok wrong, because they don’t know about the heating tool.

But then comes the day when the TikTok Star Chamber decides they need to lure in more astrologers, so they take the heat off that one lucky sports bro, and start heating up some lucky astrologer.

Giant teddy bears are all over the place: those Uber drivers who were boasting to the NYT ten years ago about earning $50/hour? The Substackers who were rolling in dough? Joe Rogan and his hundred million dollar Spotify payout? Those people are all the proud owners of giant teddy bears, and they’re a steal.

Because every dollar they get from the platform turns into five dollars worth of free labor from suckers who think they just internetting wrong.

Giant teddy bears are just one way of twiddling. Platforms can play games with every part of their business logic, in highly automated ways, that allows them to quickly and efficiently siphon value from end users to business customers and back again, hiding the pea in a shell game conducted at machine speeds, until they’ve got everyone so turned around that they take all the value for themselves.

That’s the how: How the platforms do the trick where they are good to users, then lock users in, then maltreat users to be good to business customers, then lock in those business customers, then take all the value for themselves.

So now we know what is happening, and how it is happening, all that’s left is why it’s happening.

Now, on the one hand, the why is pretty obvious. The less value that end-users and business customers capture, the more value there is left to divide up among the shareholders and the executives.

That’s why, but it doesn’t tell you why now. Companies could have done this shit at any time in the past 20 years, but they didn’t. Or at least, the successful ones didn’t. The ones that turned themselves into piles of shit got treated like piles of shit. We avoided them and they died.

Remember Myspace? Yahoo Search? Livejournal? Sure, they’re still serving some kind of AI slop or programmatic ad junk if you hit those domains, but they’re gone.

And there’s the clue: It used to be that if you enshittified your product, bad things happened to your company. Now, there are no consequences for enshittification, so everyone’s doing it.

Let’s break that down: What stops a company from enshittifying?

There are four forces that discipline tech companies. The first one is, obviously, competition.

If your customers find it easy to leave, then you have to worry about them leaving

Many factors can contribute to how hard or easy it is to depart a platform, like the network effects that Facebook has going for it. But the most important factor is whether there is anywhere to go.

Back in 2012, Facebook bought Insta for a billion dollars. That may seem like chump-change in these days of eleven-digit Big Tech acquisitions, but that was a big sum in those innocent days, and it was an especially big sum to pay for Insta. The company only had 13 employees, and a mere 25 million registered users.

But what mattered to Zuckerberg wasn’t how many users Insta had, it was where those users came from.

[Does anyone know where those Insta users came from?]

That’s right, they left Facebook and joined Insta. They were sick of FB, even though they liked the people there, they hated creepy Zuck, they hated the platform, so they left and they didn’t come back.

So Zuck spent a cool billion to recapture them, A fact he put in writing in a midnight email to CFO David Ebersman, explaining that he was paying over the odds for Insta because his users hated him, and loved Insta. So even if they quit Facebook (the platform), they would still be captured Facebook (the company).

Now, on paper, Zuck’s Instagram acquisition is illegal, but normally, that would be hard to stop, because you’d have to prove that he bought Insta with the intention of curtailing competition.

But in this case, Zuck tripped over his own dick: he put it in writing.

But Obama’s DoJ and FTC just let that one slide, following the pro-monopoly policies of Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II, and setting an example that Trump would follow, greenlighting gigamergers like the catastrophic, incestuous Warner-Discovery marriage.

Indeed, for 40 years, starting with Carter, and accelerating through Reagan, the US has encouraged monopoly formation, as an official policy, on the grounds that monopolies are “efficient.”

If everyone is using Google Search, that’s something we should celebrate. It means they’ve got the very best search and wouldn’t it be perverse to spend public funds to punish them for making the best product?

But as we all know, Google didn’t maintain search dominance by being best. They did it by paying bribes. More than 20 billion per year to Apple alone to be the default Ios search, plus billions more to Samsung, Mozilla, and anyone else making a product or service with a search-box on it, ensuring that you never stumble on a search engine that’s better than theirs.

Which, in turn, ensured that no one smart invested big in rival search engines, even if they were visibly, obviously superior. Why bother making something better if Google’s buying up all the market oxygen before it can kindle your product to life?

Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon – they’re not “making things” companies, they’re “buying things” companies, taking advantage of official tolerance for anticompetitive acquisitions, predatory pricing, market distorting exclusivity deals and other acts specifically prohibited by existing antitrust law.

Their goal is to become too big to fail, because that makes them too big to jail, and that means they can be too big to care.

Which is why Google Search is a pile of shit and everything on Amazon is dropshipped garbage that instantly disintegrates in a cloud of offgassed volatile organic compounds when you open the box.

Once companies no longer fear losing your business to a competitor, it’s much easier for them to treat you badly, because what’re you gonna do?

Remember Lily Tomlin as Ernestine the AT&T operator in those old SNL sketches? “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone company.”

Competition is the first force that serves to discipline companies and the enshittificatory impulses of their leadership, and we just stopped enforcing competition law.

It takes a special kind of smooth-brained asshole – that is, an establishment economist – to insist that the collapse of every industry from eyeglasses to vitamin C into a cartel of five or fewer companies has nothing to do with policies that officially encouraged monopolization.

It’s like we used to put down rat poison and we didn’t have a rat problem. Then these dickheads convinced us that rats were good for us and we stopped putting down rat poison, and now rats are gnawing our faces off and they’re all running around saying, "Who’s to say where all these rats came from? Maybe it was that we stopped putting down poison, but maybe it’s just the Time of the Rats. The Great Forces of History bearing down on this moment to multiply rats beyond all measure!"

Antitrust didn’t slip down that staircase and fall spine-first on that stiletto: they stabbed it in the back and then they pushed it.

And when they killed antitrust, they also killed regulation, the second force that disciplines companies. Regulation is possible, but only when the regulator is more powerful than the regulated entities. When a company is bigger than the government, it gets damned hard to credibly threaten to punish that company, no matter what its sins.

That’s what protected IBM for all those years when it had its boot on the throat of the American tech sector. Do you know, the DOJ fought to break up IBM in the courts from 1970-1982, and that every year, for 12 consecutive years, IBM spent more on lawyers to fight the USG than the DOJ Antitrust Division spent on all the lawyers fighting every antitrust case in the entire USA?

IBM outspent Uncle Sam for 12 years. People called it “Antitrust’s Vietnam.” All that money paid off, because by 1982, the president was Ronald Reagan, a man whose official policy was that monopolies were “efficient." So he dropped the case, and Big Blue wriggled off the hook.

It’s hard to regulate a monopolist, and it’s hard to regulate a cartel. When a sector is composed of hundreds of competing companies, they compete. They genuinely fight with one another, trying to poach each others’ customers and workers. They are at each others’ throats.

It’s hard enough for a couple hundred executives to agree on anything. But when they’re legitimately competing with one another, really obsessing about how to eat each others’ lunches, they can’t agree on anything.

The instant one of them goes to their regulator with some bullshit story, about how it’s impossible to have a decent search engine without fine-grained commercial surveillance; or how it’s impossible to have a secure and easy to use mobile device without a total veto over which software can run on it; or how it’s impossible to administer an ISP’s network unless you can slow down connections to servers whose owners aren’t paying bribes for “premium carriage"; there’s some *other company saying, “That’s bullshit”

“We’ve managed it! Here’s our server logs, our quarterly financials and our customer testimonials to prove it.”

100 companies are a rabble, they're a mob. They can’t agree on a lobbying position. They’re too busy eating each others’ lunch to agree on how to cater a meeting to discuss it.

But let those hundred companies merge to monopoly, absorb one another in an incestuous orgy, turn into five giant companies, so inbred they’ve got a corporate Habsburg jaw, and they become a cartel.

It’s easy for a cartel to agree on what bullshit they’re all going to feed their regulator, and to mobilize some of the excess billions they’ve reaped through consolidation, which freed them from “wasteful competition," sp they can capture their regulators completely.

You know, Congress used to pass federal consumer privacy laws? Not anymore.

The last time Congress managed to pass a federal consumer privacy law was in 1988: The Video Privacy Protection Act. That’s a law that bans video-store clerks from telling newspapers what VHS cassettes you take home. In other words, it regulates three things that have effectively ceased to exist.

The threat of having your video rental history out there in the public eye was not the last or most urgent threat the American public faced, and yet, Congress is deadlocked on passing a privacy law.

Tech companies’ regulatory capture involves a risible and transparent gambit, that is so stupid, it’s an insult to all the good hardworking risible transparent ruses out there.

Namely, they claim that when they violate your consumer, privacy or labor rights, It’s not a crime, because they do it with an app.

Algorithmic wage discrimination isn’t illegal wage theft: we do it with an app.

Spying on you from asshole to appetite isn’t a privacy violation: we do it with an app.

And Amazon’s scam search tool that tricks you into paying 29% more than the best match for your query? Not a ripoff. We do it with an app.

Once we killed competition – stopped putting down rat poison – we got cartels – the rats ate our faces. And the cartels captured their regulators – the rats bought out the poison factory and shut it down.

So companies aren’t constrained by competition or regulation.

But you know what? This is tech, and tech is different.IIt’s different because it’s flexible. Because our computers are Turing-complete universal von Neumann machines. That means that any enshittificatory alteration to a program can be disenshittified with another program.

Every time HP jacks up the price of ink , they invite a competitor to market a refill kit or a compatible cartridge.

When Tesla installs code that says you have to pay an extra monthly fee to use your whole battery, they invite a modder to start selling a kit to jailbreak that battery and charge it all the way up.

Lemme take you through a little example of how that works: Imagine this is a product design meeting for our company’s website, and the guy leading the meeting says “Dudes, you know how our KPI is topline ad-revenue? Well, I’ve calculated that if we make the ads just 20% more invasive and obnoxious, we’ll boost ad rev by 2%”

This is a good pitch. Hit that KPI and everyone gets a fat bonus. We can all take our families on a luxury ski vacation in Switzerland.

But here’s the thing: someone’s gonna stick their arm up – someone who doesn’t give a shit about user well-being, and that person is gonna say, “I love how you think, Elon. But has it occurred to you that if we make the ads 20% more obnoxious, then 40% of our users will go to a search engine and type 'How do I block ads?'"

I mean, what a nightmare! Because once a user does that, the revenue from that user doesn’t rise to 102%. It doesn’t stay at 100% It falls to zero, forever.

[Any guesses why?]

Because no user ever went back to the search engine and typed, 'How do I start seeing ads again?'

Once the user jailbreaks their phone or discovers third party ink, or develops a relationship with an independent Tesla mechanic who’ll unlock all the DLC in their car, that user is gone, forever.

Interoperability – that latent property bequeathed to us courtesy of Herrs Turing and Von Neumann and their infinitely flexible, universal machines – that is a serious check on enshittification.

The fact that Congress hasn’t passed a privacy law since 1988 Is countered, at least in part, by the fact that the majority of web users are now running ad-blockers, which are also tracker-blockers.

But no one’s ever installed a tracker-blocker for an app. Because reverse engineering an app puts in you jeopardy of criminal and civil prosecution under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, with penalties of a 5-year prison sentence and a $500k fine for a first offense.

And violating its terms of service puts you in jeopardy under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986, which is the law that Ronald Reagan signed in a panic after watching Wargames (seriously!).

Helping other users violate the terms of service can get you hit with a lawsuit for tortious interference with contract. And then there’s trademark, copyright and patent.

All that nonsense we call “IP,” but which Jay Freeman of Cydia calls “Felony Contempt of Business Model."

So if we’re still at that product planning meeting and now it’s time to talk about our app, the guy leading the meeting says, “OK, so we’ll make the ads in the app 20% more obnoxious to pull a 2% increase in topline ad rev?”

And that person who objected to making the website 20% worse? Their hand goes back up. Only this time they say “Why don’t we make the ads 100% more invasive and get a 10% increase in ad rev?"

Because it doesn't matter if a user goes to a search engine and types, “How do I block ads in an app." The answer is: you can't. So YOLO, enshittify away.

“IP” is just a euphemism for “any law that lets me reach outside my company’s walls to exert coercive control over my critics, competitors and customers,” and “app” is just a euphemism for “A web page skinned with the right IP so that protecting your privacy while you use it is a felony.”

Interop used to keep companies from enshittifying. If a company made its client suck, someone would roll out an alternative client, if they ripped a feature out and wanted to sell it back to you as a monthly subscription, someone would make a compatible plugin that restored it for a one-time fee, or for free.

To help people flee Myspace, FB gave them bots that you’d load with your login credentials. It would scrape your waiting Myspace messages and put ‘em in your FB inbox, and login to Myspace and paste your replies into your Myspace outbox. So you didn’t have to choose between the people you loved on Myspace, and Facebook, which launched with a promise never to spy on you. Remember that?!

Thanks to the metastasis of IP, all that is off the table today. Apple owes its very existence to iWork Suite, whose Pages, Numbers and Keynote are file-compatible with Microsoft’s Word, Excel and Powerpoint. But make an IOS runtime that’ll play back the files you bought from Apple’s stores on other platforms, and they’ll nuke you til you glow.

FB wouldn’t have had a hope of breaking Myspace’s grip on social media without that scrape, but scrape FB today in support of an alternative client and their lawyers will bomb you til the rubble bounces.

Google scraped every website in the world to create its search index. Try and scrape Google and they’ll have your head on a pike.

When they did it, it was progress. When you do it to them, that’s piracy. Every pirate wants to be an admiral.

Because this handful of companies has so thoroughly captured their regulators, they can wield the power of the state against you when you try to break their grip on power, even as their own flagrant violations of our rights go unpunished. Because they do them with an app.

Tech lost its fear of competitin it neutralized the threat from regulators, and then put them in harness to attack new startups that might do unto them as they did unto the companies that came before them.

But even so, there was a force that kept our bosses in check That force was us. Tech workers.

Tech workers have historically been in short supply, which gave us power, and our bosses knew it.

To get us to work crazy hours, they came up with a trick. They appealed to our love of technology, and told us that we were heroes of a digital revolution, who would “organize the world’s information and make it useful,” who would “bring the world closer together.”

They brought in expert set-dressers to turn our workplaces into whimsical campuses with free laundry, gourmet cafeterias, massages, and kombucha, and a surgeon on hand to freeze our eggs so that we could work through our fertile years.

They convinced us that we were being pampered, rather than being worked like government mules.

This trick has a name. Fobazi Ettarh, the librarian-theorist, calls it “vocational awe, and Elon Musk calls it being “extremely hardcore.”

This worked very well. Boy did we put in some long-ass hours!

But for our bosses, this trick failed badly. Because if you miss your mother’s funeral and to hit a deadline, and then your boss orders you to enshittify that product, you are gonna experience a profound moral injury, which you are absolutely gonna make your boss share.

Because what are they gonna do? Fire you? They can’t hire someone else to do your job, and you can get a job that’s even better at the shop across the street.

So workers held the line when competition, regulation and interop failed.

But eventually, supply caught up with demand. Tech laid off 260,000 of us last year, and another 100,000 in the first half of this year.

You can’t tell your bosses to go fuck themselves, because they’ll fire your ass and give your job to someone who’ll be only too happy to enshittify that product you built.

That’s why this is all happening right now. Our bosses aren’t different. They didn’t catch a mind-virus that turned them into greedy assholes who don’t care about our users’ wellbeing or the quality of our products.

As far as our bosses have always been concerned, the point of the business was to charge the most, and deliver the least, while sharing as little as possible with suppliers, workers, users and customers. They’re not running charities.

Since day one, our bosses have shown up for work and yanked as hard as they can on the big ENSHITTIFICATION lever behind their desks, only that lever didn’t move much. It was all gummed up by competition, regulation, interop and workers.

As those sources of friction melted away, the enshittification lever started moving very freely.

Which sucks, I know. But think about this for a sec: our bosses, despite being wildly imperfect vessels capable of rationalizing endless greed and cheating, nevertheless oversaw a series of actually great products and services.

Not because they used to be better people, but because they used to be subjected to discipline.

So it follows that if we want to end the enshittocene, dismantle the enshitternet, and build a new, good internet that our bosses can’t wreck, we need to make sure that these constraints are durably installed on that internet, wound around its very roots and nerves. And we have to stand guard over it so that it can’t be dismantled again.

A new, good internet is one that has the positive aspects of the old, good internet: an ethic of technological self-determination, where users of technology (and hackers, tinkerers, startups and others serving as their proxies) can reconfigure and mod the technology they use, so that it does what they need it to do, and so that it can’t be used against them.

But the new, good internet will fix the defects of the old, good internet, the part that made it hard to use for anyone who wasn’t us. And hell yeah we can do that. Tech bosses swear that it’s impossible, that you can’t have a conversation friend without sharing it with Zuck; or search the web without letting Google scrape you down to the viscera; or have a phone that works reliably without giving Apple a veto over the software you install.

They claim that it’s a nonsense to even ponder this kind of thing. It’s like making water that’s not wet. But that’s bullshit. We can have nice things. We can build for the people we love, and give them a place that’s worth of their time and attention.

To do that, we have to install constraints.

The first constraint, remember, is competition. We’re living through a epochal shift in competition policy. After 40 years with antitrust enforcement in an induced coma, a wave of antitrust vigor has swept through governments all over the world. Regulators are stepping in to ban monopolistic practices, open up walled gardens, block anticompetitive mergers, and even unwind corrupt mergers that were undertaken on false pretenses.

Normally this is the place in the speech where I’d list out all the amazing things that have happened over the past four years. The enforcement actions that blocked companies from becoming too big to care, and that scared companies away from even trying.

Like Wiz, which just noped out of the largest acquisition offer in history, turning down Google’s $23b cashout, and deciding to, you know, just be a fucking business that makes money by producing a product that people want and selling it at a competitive price.

Normally, I’d be listing out FTC rulemakings that banned noncompetes nationwid. Or the new merger guidelines the FTC and DOJ cooked up, which – among other things – establish that the agencies should be considering whether a merger will negatively impact privacy.

I had a whole section of this stuff in my notes, a real victory lap, but I deleted it all this week.

[Can anyone guess why?]

That’s right! This week, Judge Amit Mehta, ruling for the DC Circuit of these United States of America, In the docket 20-3010 a case known as United States v. Google LLC, found that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly," and ordered Google and the DOJ to propose a schedule for a remedy, like breaking the company up.

So yeah, that was pretty fucking epic.

Now, this antitrust stuff is pretty esoteric, and I won’t gatekeep you or shame you if you wanna keep a little distance on this subject. Nearly everyone is an antitrust normie, and that's OK. But if you’re a normie, you’re probably only catching little bits and pieces of the narrative, and let me tell you, the monopolists know it and they are flooding the zone.

The Wall Street Journal has published over 100 editorials condemning FTC Chair Lina Khan, saying she’s an ineffectual do-nothing, wasting public funds chasing doomed, quixotic adventures against poor, innocent businesses accomplishing nothing

[Does anyone out there know who owns the Wall Street Journal?]

That’s right, it’s Rupert Murdoch. Do you really think Rupert Murdoch pays his editorial board to write one hundred editorials about someone who’s not getting anything done?

The reality is that in the USA, in the UK, in the EU, in Australia, in Canada, in Japan, in South Korea, even in China, we are seeing more antitrust action over the past four years than over the preceding forty years.

Remember, competition law is actually pretty robust. The problem isn’t the law, It’s the enforcement priorities. Reagan put antitrust in mothballs 40 years ago, but that elegant weapon from a more civilized age is now back in the hands of people who know how to use it, and they’re swinging for the fences.

Next up: regulation.

As the seemingly inescapable power of the tech giants is revealed for the sham it always was, governments and regulators are finally gonna kill the “one weird trick” of violating the law, and saying “It doesn’t count, we did it with an app.”

Like in the EU, they’re rolling out the Digital Markets Act this year. That’s a law requiring dominant platforms to stand up APIs so that third parties can offer interoperable services.

So a co-op, a nonprofit, a hobbyist, a startup, or a local government agency wil eventuallyl be able to offer, say, a social media server that can interconnect with one of the dominant social media silos, and users who switch to that new platform will be able to continue to exchange messages with the users they follow and groups they belong to, so the switching costs will fall to damned near zero.

That’s a very cool rule, but what’s even cooler is how it’s gonna be enforced. Previous EU tech rules were “regulations” as in the GDPR – the General Data Privacy Regulation. EU regs need to be “transposed” into laws in each of the 27 EU member states, so they become national laws that get enforced by national courts.

For Big Tech, that means all previous tech regulations are enforced in Ireland, because Ireland is a tax haven, and all the tech companies fly Irish flags of convenience.

Here’s the thing: every tax haven is also a crime haven. After all, if Google can pretend it’s Irish this week, it can pretend to be Cypriot, or Maltese, or Luxembougeious next week. So Ireland has to keep these footloose criminal enterprises happy, or they’ll up sticks and go somewhere else.

This is why the GDPR is such a goddamned joke in practice. Big tech wipes its ass with the GDPR, and the only way to punish them starts with Ireland’s privacy commissioner, who barely bothers to get out of bed. This is an agency that spends most of its time watching cartoons on TV in its pajamas and eating breakfast cereal. So all of the big GDPR cases go to Ireland and they die there.

This is hardly a secret. The European Commission knows it’s going on. So with the DMA, the Commission has changed things up: The DMA is an “Act,” not a “Regulation.” Meaning it gets enforced in the EU’s federal courts, bypassing the national courts in crime-havens like Ireland.

In other words, the “we violate privacy law, but we do it with an app” gambit that worked on Ireland’s toothless privacy watchdog is now a dead letter, because EU federal judges have no reason to swallow that obvious bullshit.

Here in the US, the dam is breaking on federal consumer privacy law – at last!

Remember, our last privacy law was passed in 1988 to protect the sanctity of VHS rental history. It's been a minute.

And the thing is, there's a lot of people who are angry about stuff that has some nexus with America's piss-poor privacy landscape. Worried that Facebook turned grampy into a Qanon? That Insta made your teen anorexic? That TikTok is brainwashing millennials into quoting Osama Bin Laden? Or that cops are rolling up the identities of everyone at a Black Lives Matter protest or the Jan 6 riots by getting location data from Google? Or that Red State Attorneys General are tracking teen girls to out-of-state abortion clinics? Or that Black people are being discriminated against by online lending or hiring platforms? Or that someone is making AI deepfake porn of you?

A federal privacy law with a private right of action – which means that individuals can sue companies that violate their privacy – would go a long way to rectifying all of these problems

There's a pretty big coalition for that kind of privacy law! Which is why we have seen a procession of imperfect (but steadily improving) privacy laws working their way through Congress.

If you sign up for EFF’s mailing list at eff.org we’ll send you an email when these come up, so you can call your Congressjerk or Senator and talk to them about it. Or better yet, make an appointment to drop by their offices when they’re in their districts, and explain to them that you’re not just a registered voter from their district, you’re the kind of elite tech person who goes to Defcon, and then explain the bill to them. That stuff makes a difference.

What about self-help? How are we doing on making interoperability legal again, so hackers can just fix shit without waiting for Congress or a federal agency to act?

All the action here these day is in the state Right to Repair fight. We’re getting state R2R bills, like the one that passed this year in Oregon that bans parts pairing, where DRM is used to keep a device from using a new part until it gets an authorized technician’s unlock code.

These bills are pushed by a fantastic group of organizations called the Repair Coalition, at Repair.org, and they’ll email you when one of these laws is going through your statehouse, so you can meet with your state reps and explain to the JV squad the same thing you told your federal reps.

Repair.org’s prime mover is Ifixit, who are genuine heroes of the repair revolution, and Ifixit’s founder, Kyle Wiens, is here at the con. When you see him, you can shake his hand and tell him thanks, and that’ll be even better if you tell him that you’ve signed up to get alerts at repair.org!

Now, on to the final way that we reverse enhittification and build that new, good internet: you, the tech labor force.

For years, your bosses tricked you into thinking you were founders in waiting, temporarily embarrassed entrepreneurs who were only momentarily drawing a salary.

You certainly weren’t workers. Your power came from your intrinsic virtue, not like those lazy slobs in unions who have to get their power through that kumbaya solidarity nonsense.

It was a trick. You were scammed. The power you had came from scarcity, and so when the scarcity ended, when the industry started ringing up six-figure annual layoffs, your power went away with it.

The only durable source of power for tech workers is as workers, in a union.

Think about Amazon. Warehouse workers have to piss in bottles and have the highest rate of on-the-job maimings of any competing business. Whereas Amazon coders get to show up for work with facial piercings, green mohawks, and black t-shirts that say things their bosses don’t understand. They can piss whenever they want!

That’s not because Jeff Bezos or Andy Jassy loves you guys. It’s because they’re scared you’ll quit and they don’t know how to replace you.

Time for the second obligatory William Gibson quote: “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed.” You know who’s living in the future?. Those Amazon blue-collar workers. They are the bleeding edge.

Drivers whose eyeballs are monitored by AI cameras that do digital phrenology on their faces to figure out whether to dock their pay, warehouse workers whose bodies are ruined in just months.

As tech bosses beef up that reserve army of unemployed, skilled tech workers, then those tech workers – you all – will arrive at the same future as them.

Look, I know that you’ve spent your careers explaining in words so small your boss could understand them that you refuse to enshittify the company’s products, and I thank you for your service.

But if you want to go on fighting for the user, you need power that’s more durable than scarcity. You need a union. Wanna learn how? Check out the Tech Workers Coalition and Tech Solidarity, and get organized.

Enshittification didn’t arise because our bosses changed. They were always that guy.

They were always yankin’ on that enshittification lever in the C-suite.

What changed was the environment, everything that kept that switch from moving.

And that’s good news, in a bankshot way, because it means we can make good services out of imperfect people. As a wildly imperfect person myself, I find this heartening.

The new good internet is in our grasp: an internet that has the technological self-determination of the old, good internet, and the greased-skids simplicity of Web 2.0 that let all our normie friends get in on the fun.

Tech bosses want you to think that good UX and enshittification can’t ever be separated. That’s such a self-serving proposition you can spot it from orbit. We know it, 'cause we built the old good internet, and we’ve been fighting a rear-guard action to preserve it for the past two decades.

It’s time to stop playing defense. It's time to go on the offensive. To restore competition, regulation, interop and tech worker power so that we can create the new, good internet we’ll need to fight fascism, the climate emergency, and genocide.

To build a digital nervous system for a 21st century in which our children can thrive and prosper.

Community voting for SXSW is live! If you wanna hear RIDA QADRI and me talk about how GIG WORKERS can DISENSHITTIFY their jobs with INTEROPERABILITY, VOTE FOR THIS ONE!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/17/hack-the-planet/#how-about-a-nice-game-of-chess

Image: https://twitter.com/igama/status/1822347578094043435/ (cropped)

@fak3r@mastodon.social (cropped)

https://mamot.fr/@fak3r@mastodon.social/112963252835869648

CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.pt

[study-core-101]

Tips to Reduce Screen Time

Last summer break, my screen time went up by a lot. I had nothing to do and I was bored. And the difference from before was enourmous. I felt drained and tired from just being on the phone and then angry/discontent with myself for it. It was not nice. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only that has ever felt like that. So I decided to compile a list of things I did and other tips I heard about because, damn, it is so hard to came back from that.

Delete or block addictive apps after a certain time usage

Addictive apps, like Tiktok, Instagram, etc are one of the main causes of phone addiction. It's a key factor to reduce their usage or taking them out of the equation. Personally, when I deleted TikTok I felt disconnectes from my peers, so instead I found a fuction in my phone (pretty sure all Samsung and Iphones have it and dont know about others) that lets you set a limit and then blocks the app. So if you set 30 mins for Tiktok, once they run out you cant use it anymore, ergo you cant spent 3 hours doomscrolling.

Find or reconnect with hobbies that dont requiere a screen

Another one of the main reasons behind too much phone usage is boredom (or loss of attention span). The cure? Hobbies and fun activities so we dont run to our phones. Some hobbies may be hard at first (because of the short attention span social media often causes) but it is possible to slowly rebuild it. Some fun ideas:

Reading

Journaling

Origami

Bracelet making

Crafts

Sports or gym

Baking

Unplug or similar apps

(I swear this is not a hidden ad, I just dont know how to call this section). I have this app, you can see the name, which was reccomend to me and that works wonders in my opinion. Basically, before you can access a spreviusly selected app, it makes you go through a password and every 5 minutes it interrumpts you to repeat it (which only happens in the time period you select). I dont know if there are similar apps (if anyone know, let me know and I´ll add them to the section) but I found it really helpful, specially at night (which is the time I activate it) because it forces me to go to sleep instead of a 3am doomscroll.

Practise time-off

Keep your phone locked away. In a locked box, a block for all apps, give it to a friend, relative or roomie, whatever works for you. Do it for a few hours, start simple (one or two) and keep increasing. It will help with the phone dependency.

Schedule time for screens (or off-screens)

Limit your phone usage by creating a rutine about it. Example: 5pm to 7pm is phone-time / all devices are off between 10pm and 10am. Scheduling time for using them is more hard to mantain that scheduling time without them, in my opinion, but it may not be everyone experience.

Good luck reducing your screen time!!

[snowbunnywatching]

Could you judge my idea? Be gentle though 😐

A PSA system for Black men and white women to announce they’re dating. Each time a mixed couple reports themselves as dating, all iPhones, Androids, laptops, TVs, etc. within a 30-mile radius would receive an alert that’d let everyone hear the happy news. The new couple could put down their names or ask to remain anonymous, whatever they feel most comfortable with, but the purpose would be to build confidence for Black men and white girls.

Black guys who’ve developed shy, cautious personalities after internalizing a lifetime of racist rhetoric telling them they’re not good enough would quickly see just how valuable women find them to be, while hesitant white girls who perceive themselves as the only person around who’s attracted to Black men would realize just how widespread the ambition to date a Black man actually is. Imagine women who feel alienated about loving who they love suddenly receiving alerts about their friends, classmates, coworkers, cousins, aunts, sisters, and even mothers finding the new man they always wanted in their lives!

A simple app might seem nice, but I imagine someone would try to monetize it as soon as possible, and older Black men and white women who’re not as tech-savvy may not even discover it at all.

The downside would be the incessant pinging going off on every glowing screen; this would probably lead to demands for the notifications to be reduced to merely hourly (and eventually, just daily) summaries.

Other ideas could be announcements of new couples in the previews before movies, sections of newspapers or news sites solely dedicated to the ever-expanding list of mixed marriages, following the “happy birthday” announcements before sporting events with a new “best wishes” for all the new BM/wf relationships/marriages listed in the local area, etc.

Sorry if it's cliché, but hopefully there're at least some original, worthwhile ideas there.

I think it's a great idea.

A small modification: Instead of generating notifications, news of the happy couple appears on every user's home screen. Every user would have a section on their home screen that would show off random couples throughout the day.

The section would be locked, impossible to turn off or move. And clicking on it would allow you to view more information about the couple (should they choose to divulge it): Age, height, how they met, etc.

This way, every time you checked your phone, you would be greeted with a subtle reminder that Black men and white girls are falling in love all around you.