#I'd rather cause unnecessary alarm about this than have people lose things

[wemlygust]

this is how I learned the payment processor mafia is going after itch.io too... Fuck. Apparently Itch.io said in their statement here (https://itch.io/updates/update-on-nsfw-content) that, "We understand this action is sudden and disruptive, and we are truly sorry for the frustration and confusion caused by this change." No apology for the abrupt loss of income and major life disruption they just caused without any warning/prior notice, I notice. Only for "frustration and confusion." That's pretty pathetic. Do better, Itch.io. Anyway... I think people need to be backing up fanfics and fan art stored on tumblr.com (and preferably putting them on archive of our own where they'll actually be safe and still easily searchable, but AT LEAST please back them up to your local storage or cloud drives or save their URL's on archive.org) as of like yesterday, because the payment processors are going after everyone, and everyone is caving, and tumblr HAS mass-nuked "porn" before, including queer content and romance content that wasn't even actually explicit (which is NOT to say that it'd be okay if it were "just" the explicit content under threat, no, that's not okay at all even on its own, I just want people to realize that if their fic isn't explicit that doesn't mean a corporate robot won't auto-sort it into the burn pile anyway). Anyway, with all this news about the payment processors (which to be clear means VISA and Mastercard, aka the ultra-mega-corps that have a leash on... basically every company everywhere), combined with the actively malevolent trashfire in the whitehou- the trashfire in the whole American federal government, I am afraid that tumblr, and other monetized platforms that host fan content and queer content, might be about to hit that "mass delete everyone's heartfelt hard work without any warning" button again. Emphasis on "again". This has happened more than once before, on tumblr, fanfiction.net, and other sites that rely on advertising (and since this is coming from VISA and Mastercard now, there's pressure on ad-less, end-user-purchase-funded apps and websites now too). And obviously this whole rambly mess of a post I'm writing here is in reply to a post about this exact thing happening being inflicted on indie game devs on itch.io, and users of itch.io, without any prior warning even though those devs may rely on itch.io for to pay their rent and buy groceries. Also, just in case anyone doesn't know this already, you can back up/upload your own original fiction---and I think original comics too, even though the ability to put visual content on ao3 is really new (possibly still janky?) and not many people have used it yet---to archiveofourown.org as well. It's not restricted to fanfiction only, even though that's the vast majority of content on the site. You just pick the "fandom" category called "Original Work" when you upload, if I'm remember right. And of course, there are backup options like: 1. your own local storage on your phone or computer, or on an old laptop or phone that you still have, etc.

2. dropbox

3. onedrive

4. google drive

5. proton drive (like google drive but more private! and smaller unless you pay, I think... But text files are tiny!)

6. whatever the IOS/Apple equivalent is? 7. archive.org (the wayback machine! save the URL's of your favorite fic prompt reblog chains)

8. your phone manufacturer's cloud service or "secure folder" service, if you have one

9. Good old fashioned printing things out (murder trees!)

.... Anyway, yeah, just please backup your creative creations in as many different places/using as many methods as you can, so that you have redundancy. But also: the method you actually use is better than a hypothetical better method that you don't use. Tldr: backup your work!

Don't keep the only copy of it only on tumblr, fanfiction.net, Wattpad, or etc, where it can get randomly deleted by capitalists.

given the shit going down on itch, are you redeploying your work onto a new site?

I wasn't hit on anything (I don't actually release erotic work and was spared this whole incident, besides watching some friends get hit) but I've pulled the music I had up for the moment, if only to see if I can think of a better answer for how to get everything accessible in one place.

theoretically there shouldn't be a problem with the games I work on, but I'm still a bit soured after watching how long this took to release a post-action statement, following a long history of them being bad with communication. this entire thing wasn't itch's call, but from a straightforward business standpoint, it's shaken loose some already present trust issues I had with how communication and payment were being handled

at the very least, I don't trust the platform to communicate enforcement and policy changes with enough clarity and timeliness to make me feel comfortable using it as a primary distribution hub

so in short, nothing's changed on my end because nothing non-redundant was on itch. going forward, who knows