#Location Data Scraping

[kawaiiwizardtale]

Powerful location data scraping

Access insights on places data and gather information about various locations with our advanced web scraping solutions. Read more https://www.scrape.works/location-data

[locationscloud]

Harnessing Location Data for Effective Site Planning

In today's data-driven world, the power of location data cannot be overstated, especially in site planning and space optimization. Harnessing location data has transformed traditional site planning approaches, enabling businesses and organizations to make informed decisions that lead to maximized space usage, increased operational efficiency, and enhanced user experiences.

Location data is derived from various sources, including GPS satellites, Wi-Fi networks, and cellular towers. With the advent of smartphones and IoT devices, collecting and harnessing location data has become more accessible and accurate than ever before. This data provides insights into foot traffic patterns, dwell times, and movement trends, all of which are invaluable for site planners.

One key application of location data in site planning is retail optimization. Retailers can analyze foot traffic within their stores to identify high-traffic areas and dead zones. By understanding how customers move through a space, retailers can strategically place products, promotions, and signage to increase visibility and engagement. For instance, by identifying popular pathways, retailers can ensure that high-demand products are placed along these routes, increasing the likelihood of sales.

Location data also plays a crucial role in urban development and smart city initiatives. Planners can analyze commuting patterns, public transportation usage, and pedestrian traffic to design efficient transportation networks and infrastructure. By understanding how people move within a city, planners can create well-connected public spaces, optimize road systems, and improve overall urban accessibility.

[webscraping82]

Think Google Maps is just for directions? Think again. Businesses are turning pins into powerful insights from competitor tracking to lead generation. 👉 Read the article to know more: https://shorturl.at/20KM8

#GoogleMapsData #WebScraping #LocationIntelligence #DataDriven #PromptCloud

[3idatascraping]

A complete guide on extracting restaurant data from Google Maps includes using web scraping tools like BeautifulSoup or Scrapy in Python, leveraging the Google Places API for structured data access, and ensuring compliance with Google's terms of service. It covers steps from setup to data extraction and storage.

[iwebscrapingblogs]

Unveiling the Gastronomic Universe: Harnessing the Power of Restaurant Menu and Location Data Scraping

In the digital age, data is the new currency, and in the culinary world, restaurant menus and locations are treasure troves of information waiting to be explored. With the rise of food delivery apps, online reviews, and culinary tourism, the demand for comprehensive restaurant data has never been higher. Fortunately, the solution lies in the art of web scraping – a technique that allows us to extract valuable data from websites efficiently. In this blog post, we delve into the world of restaurant menu and location data scraping, exploring its benefits, challenges, and applications.

Understanding Restaurant Data Scraping

Restaurant data scraping involves extracting structured data from restaurant websites, including menus, locations, contact information, and more. This process typically utilizes web scraping tools and techniques to navigate through web pages, locate relevant data, and extract it in a usable format.

Unveiling the Menu: Extracting Culinary Delights

One of the primary objectives of restaurant data scraping is to extract menu information. Menus are not just lists of dishes; they represent a culinary narrative, showcasing a restaurant's identity, specialties, and culinary creativity. By scraping menu data from restaurant websites, businesses can gain insights into popular dishes, pricing strategies, ingredient trends, and menu innovations.

Pinpointing Locations: Mapping Culinary Landscapes

Location data scraping focuses on extracting information about a restaurant's physical location, including addresses, contact details, opening hours, and geographical coordinates. This data is invaluable for mapping culinary landscapes, identifying food trends across different neighborhoods, and optimizing delivery routes for food delivery services.

The Benefits of Restaurant Data Scraping

Market Research: By analyzing menu data from various restaurants, businesses can identify emerging culinary trends, consumer preferences, and competitive landscapes. This information is invaluable for market research and strategic decision-making.

Personalized Recommendations: Restaurant data scraping enables personalized recommendations for users based on their culinary preferences, dietary restrictions, and location. This enhances the user experience and increases customer satisfaction.

Operational Efficiency: For food delivery services and restaurant aggregators, location data scraping streamlines operations by providing accurate information about restaurant locations, opening hours, and delivery zones. This optimizes delivery logistics and enhances service reliability.

Competitive Intelligence: By monitoring competitor menus and pricing strategies, businesses can gain valuable insights into market dynamics, identify gaps in their offerings, and refine their marketing strategies to stay ahead of the competition.

Challenges and Considerations

While restaurant data scraping offers numerous benefits, it also presents several challenges and considerations:

Website Structure: Restaurant websites vary in structure and design, making it challenging to develop universal scraping algorithms. Customized scraping scripts may be required for each website, increasing development time and complexity.

Data Accuracy: Ensuring the accuracy and reliability of scraped data is crucial, as inaccuracies can lead to misleading insights and operational inefficiencies. Regular data validation and verification processes are essential to maintain data quality.

Ethical and Legal Considerations: Scraping data from websites without permission may raise ethical and legal concerns, particularly regarding copyright infringement and data privacy. Businesses must ensure compliance with relevant regulations and obtain consent where necessary.

Conclusion

In the era of big data, restaurant data scraping emerges as a powerful tool for unlocking valuable insights from the culinary world. By harnessing the power of menu and location data scraping, businesses can gain a competitive edge, enhance customer experiences, and navigate the ever-evolving landscape of the food industry. However, it is essential to approach data scraping ethically, respecting website terms of service and privacy policies, to ensure a sustainable and responsible data ecosystem. As technology continues to evolve, the possibilities for restaurant data scraping are limitless, promising to revolutionize the way we explore, experience, and appreciate the culinary universe.

[lensnure]

E-commerce data scraping provides detailed information on market dynamics, prevailing patterns, pricing data, competitors’ practices, and challenges.

Scrape E-commerce data such as products, pricing, deals and offers, customer reviews, ratings, text, links, seller details, images, and more. Avail of the E-commerce data from any dynamic website and get an edge in the competitive market. Boost Your Business Growth, increase revenue, and improve your efficiency with Lensnure's custom e-commerce web scraping services.

We have a team of highly qualified and experienced professionals in web data scraping.

[anaquariusfox]

I spent the evening looking into this AI shit and made a wee informative post of the information I found and thought all artists would be interested and maybe help yall?

edit: forgot to mention Glaze and Nightshade to alter/disrupt AI from taking your work into their machines. You can use these and post and it will apparently mess up the AI and it wont take your content into it's machine!

edit: ArtStation is not AI free! So make sure to read that when signing up if you do! (this post is also on twt)

[Image descriptions: A series of infographics titled: “Opt Out AI: [Social Media] and what I found.” The title image shows a drawing of a person holding up a stack of papers where the first says, ‘Terms of Service’ and the rest have logos for various social media sites and are falling onto the floor. Long transcriptions follow.

Instagram/Meta (I have to assume Facebook).

Hard for all users to locate the “opt out” options. The option has been known to move locations.

You have to click the opt out link to submit a request to opt out of the AI scraping. *You have to submit screenshots of your work/face/content you posted to the app, is curretnly being used in AI. If you do not have this, they will deny you.

Users are saying after being rejected, are being “meta blocked”

People’s requests are being accepted but they still have doubts that their content won’t be taken anyways.

Twitter/X

As of August 2023, Twitter’s ToS update:

“Twitter has the right to use any content that users post on its platform to train its AI models, and that users grant Twitter a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to do so.”

There isn’t much to say. They’re doing the same thing Instagram is doing (to my understanding) and we can’t even opt out.

Tumblr

They also take your data and content and sell it to AI models.

But you’re in luck!

It is very simply to opt out (Wow. Thank Gods)

Opt out on Desktop: click on your blog > blog settings > scroll til you see visibility options and it’ll be the last option to toggle

Out out of Mobile: click your blog > scroll then click visibility > toggle opt out option

TikTok

I took time skim their ToS and under “How We Use Your Information” and towards the end of the long list: “To train and improve our technology, such as our machine learning models and algorithms.”

Regarding data collected; they will only not sell your data when “where restricted by applicable law”. That is not many countries. You can refuse/disable some cookies by going into settings > ads > turn off targeted ads.

I couldn’t find much in AI besides “our machine learning models” which I think is the same thing.

What to do?

In this age of the internet, it’s scary! But you have options and can pick which are best for you!

Accepting these platforms collection of not only your artwork, but your face! And not only your faces but the faces of those in your photos. Your friends and family. Some of those family members are children! Some of those faces are minors! I shudder to think what darker purposes those faces could be used for.

Opt out where you can! Be mindful and know the content you are posting is at risk of being loaded to AI if unable to opt out.

Fully delete (not archive) your content/accounts with these platforms. I know it takes up to 90 days for instagram to “delete” your information. And even keep it for “legal” purposes like legal prevention.

Use lesser known social media platforms! Some examples are; Signal, Mastodon, Diaspora, et. As well as art platforms: Artfol, Cara, ArtStation, etc.

The last drawing shows the same person as the title saying, ‘I am, by no means, a ToS autistic! So feel free to share any relatable information to these topics via reply or qrt!

I just wanted to share the information I found while searching for my own answers cause I’m sure people have the same questions as me.’ \End description] (thank you @a-captions-blog!)

[greatkittencloud]

TW : Blood , Injuries , Mention of Violence

Black Nova

Chapter 10

Location: RAF Base

Time 0800 Hours

Three months had passed. Nova was bit more comfortable with team than she was before. She didn't show it but she admired everyone , she had developed feelings for them

Nova had those feelings buried under concrete and barbed wire.

Weapons shouldn’t have soft spots.

So she buried hers deep beneath discipline, silence, and training so relentless it numbed the noise.

But even so... every once in a while, she’d catch herself watching them.

Watching him.

When Ghost adjusted his gloves with unconscious precision. When he stood beside her in the briefing room, shoulder just brushing hers. When he made an offhand remark so dry she almost smiled behind her mask.

Weakness.

She crushed it every time.

Because she wasn’t built for warmth or laughter or friendships forged over war and blood.

She was a weapon.

That morning, she stood by the gear table, loading her rifle with quiet efficiency. The team was preparing for recon drills in the nearby woods.

“Morning, Nova,” Gaz greeted, walking past with a grin.

She nodded once, silent.

Behind her, Soap nudged Ghost. “Told you she’s warming up. One of these days she might even say ‘Hi' back.”

Ghost didn’t look up. “Doubt it.”

But his eyes flicked toward her.

And when she glanced back at him—just for a second...he was already looking.

Nova quickly turned away.

Buried it again.

Weapons don’t get soft.

Weapons don’t care.

But she did.

And it scared the hell out of her.

Location: Eastern Europe – Abandoned Satellite Bunker

Time: 0100 Hours

The sky was black, no clouds. The Task Force 141 approached the crumbling satellite. Intel suggested it had been reactivated someone was using Cold War tech to transmit ghost signals.

“We get in, plant the charges, pull the data off the relay, and get out,” Price briefed over comms. “Quiet and quick."

The facility was built into a ridge. It had the feel of something dead—but Nova knew better. Rot didn’t mean harmless.

She moved ahead of Ghost, checking corners, ears tuned for the hum of distant power lines.

He followed silently. Trusted her lead.

They made it to the main chamber tall walls, old server racks covered in dust. The relay tower’s core blinked with unnatural red light, modern tech wired into rusted frames.

Nova crouched beside the server housing. “They’ve modified this. New energy source.”

She glanced at the floor. “Motion sensors.”

Her gaze flicked to where he pointed—barely visible pressure plates.

“Careful.”

He nodded “Downloading now. 67%…” Ghost said.

Nova’s voice came low. “Movement ,west corridor.”

Nova looked up. Her hand went to her weapon, slowly. “We’ll finish in thirty seconds.”

But thirty seconds was too long.

BOOM!

Everything exploded.

Ghost was thrown backward, slammed into a beam. His head cracked against it, helmet sparing him from the worst—but not all.

Nova hit the ground hard. Metal tore across her side. Her mask tore up, blood streaming from her temple. The left side of her body throbbed, numb and screaming all at once.

Her ears rang.Smoke filled her lungs.

“Ghost—” she tried, coughing. “Ghost!”

He didn’t answer.

She pushed up on one arm. Her vision doubled, fading at the edges—but she saw him.

Unmoving. Slumped near the wreckage, blood trailing from beneath his mask.

She crawled to him.

Her hand pressed to his neck.

Pulse—faint.

Her breath caught in her chest.

No. No, no, no.

She didn’t notice the gash in her side, the burns along her arm, the cracked bone in her wrist. She didn’t care.

She had to move him.

Her arms locked around him. She ignored all the pain just as she had countless time. Her boots scraped over glass and metal.

"You better not die Ghost"

Behind her, more of the ceiling began to crumble.

The comms crackled.

“Nova, status—? We lost your signal. Nova, come in!”

She barely heard it. How could she with her ears ringing

Her only focus was the man in her arms—not the growing darkness at the edge of her sight.

She made it to the evacuation point—barely.

Her boots dragged in the dirt, every nerve in her body screaming, but she didn’t stop. Not with Ghost slumped in her arms, barely breathing.

The chopper thundered above. Gaz and Soap sprinted toward her, relief crashing across their faces until they saw the state of them both.

“Bloody hell—Nova!”

“Get the gurney, now!” Soap barked toward the medics.

She didn’t register the words. Everything blurred. Her arms refused to let go of Ghost, even as the medics pried her hands away.

"Trauma to the head, possible skull fracture," one medic shouted over the noise. "Burns on the left side, unconscious. shrapnel stuck inside!"

“He needs oxygen , his BP is dropping. Get the mask on him!” another ordered, securing Ghost onto the gurney.

Gaz came in front of her. “Nova—hey. Can you hear me?”

Her body swayed. " I'm Okay"

Her mask was cracked, half-shattered from the blast. Her breathing rasped through what was left.

“Nova—your mask’s compromised,” Soap said, beside Gaz. “We need to get it off—alright?”

She blinked slowly.

One of the medics gently reached for the buckles.

“Wait” she murmured, too soft.

But the clasp gave way.

The front fell forward.

And for the first time, Gaz and Soap saw her.

Blood streaked her cheekbone. Some flowing through her skull. Ash clung to her jaw. Her lips were pale, her one eye was bloody. But beneath all that—young. Younger than they’d guessed.

Barely more than a girl.

Soap exhaled. “Shit…”

Nova blinked at them, dazed—too far gone to react to the exposure. Her breaths coming short. Her legs gave up and she collapsed to the ground.

The medic pressed gauze to her temple , holding her up “She’s bleeding alot”

As they lifted her onto a second gurney, her eyes locked onto Ghost’s stretcher.

Her vision was turning dark , eyes fluttering close, finally letting the black take her.

Gaz watched as the bird lifted off, carrying them both back to base.

“I didn’t think…” he started, voice low. “I didn’t think she was that young.”

Soap stared up at the sky.

“Doesn’t matter. She dragged a six-foot-five man through hell with one arm.”

He looked back toward where she’d collapsed.

"That's what a weapon does I guess"

Thank you for reading!

Taglist: @hyperfixiation-station , @massivescissorsthingperson , @kaoyamamegami , @sweetybuzz25 , @sheepispink , @warrior-xe , @enfppuff.

[cursedwithcaution]

Okay idk if this has already been theorized but I think I know what MDR is doing.

MDR spends all day sorting numbers based on, essentially, vibes. Helly is told that she needs to look for “scary numbers.”

Down on the testing floor, Gemma is put through rooms whose names align with MDR’s files.

Lumon is trying to create a version of severance that will allow people (probably the ultra rich) to siphon any unpleasant experience, ranging (from what we’ve seen) from dental procedures to writing thank you notes.

Gemma is asked how she feels afterwards. She tells them that her hand hurts. Not the emotion, just the physical pain that stays with her when she leaves the room.

The severance chip as we know it is locationally activated. We have the exceptions with OTC and the ORTBO (unless that wasn’t actually outside the facility), but the chips are based on location or manual control by a third party.

But we don’t always know where there will be an unpleasant experience. We can predict that the dentist will be uncomfortable or painful, but we don’t know if we’re going to, for instance, fall down and scrape a knee. But once we know something unpleasant or “bad” is about to happen, our brains react with stress, fear, etc.

I think MDR’s job is to isolate the numbers that represent Gemma’s uncomfortable (“negative”) emotions, repeating this process over and over until Lumon can use the data to activate severance chips with emotional responses rather than based on location. Because the goal, based on what we know and can guess, is for severance to be used to keep certain people from suffering, leaving a portion of themselves to experience anything they deem too mundane, painful, or upsetting.

Gemma’s brain has been severed into who knows how many innies. She’s been pushed to the limit, likely in ways worse than what we saw in episode 7.

I think MDR are sorting the numbers that represent pain/discomfort, and each room is designed based on the greatest amount of pain experienced in the other rooms, leaving Cold Harbor as the final boss of “how much can we make an innie suffer before they break?” Or something like that.

For some reason, Mark S is the only person who can finish Cold Harbor. He is unknowingly creating the worst torture specifically for Gemma. By sorting scary numbers into little boxes.

[mariacallous]

In late January, a warning spread through the London-based Facebook group Are We Dating the Same Guy?—but this post wasn’t about a bad date or a cheating ex. A connected network of male-dominated Telegram groups had surfaced, sharing and circulating nonconsensual intimate images of women. Their justification? Retaliation.

On January 23, users in the AWDTSG Facebook group began warning about hidden Telegram groups. Screenshots and TikTok videos surfaced, revealing public Telegram channels where users were sharing nonconsensual intimate images. Further investigation by WIRED identified additional channels linked to the network. By scraping thousands of messages from these groups, it became possible to analyze their content and the patterns of abuse.

AWDTSG, a sprawling web of over 150 regional forums across Facebook alone, with roughly 3 million members worldwide, was designed by Paolo Sanchez in 2022 in New York as a space for women to share warnings about predatory men. But its rapid growth made it a target. Critics argue that the format allows unverified accusations to spiral. Some men have responded with at least three defamation lawsuits filed in recent years against members, administrators, and even Meta, Facebook’s parent company. Others took a different route: organized digital harassment.

Primarily using Telegram group data made available through Telemetr.io, a Telegram analytics tool, WIRED analyzed more than 3,500 messages from a Telegram group linked to a larger misogynistic revenge network. Over 24 hours, WIRED observed users systematically tracking, doxing, and degrading women from AWDTSG, circulating nonconsensual images, phone numbers, usernames, and location data.

From January 26 to 27, the chats became a breeding ground for misogynistic, racist, sexual digital abuse of women, with women of color bearing the brunt of the targeted harassment and abuse. Thousands of users encouraged each other to share nonconsensual intimate images, often referred to as “revenge porn,” and requested and circulated women’s phone numbers, usernames, locations, and other personal identifiers.

As women from AWDTSG began infiltrating the Telegram group, at least one user grew suspicious: “These lot just tryna get back at us for exposing them.”

When women on Facebook tried to alert others of the risk of doxing and leaks of their intimate content, AWDTSG moderators removed their posts. (The group’s moderators did not respond to multiple requests for comment.) Meanwhile, men who had previously coordinated through their own Facebook groups like “Are We Dating the Same Girl” shifted their operations in late January to Telegram's more permissive environment. Their message was clear: If they can do it, so can we.

"In the eyes of some of these men, this is a necessary act of defense against a kind of hostile feminism that they believe is out to ruin their lives," says Carl Miller, cofounder of the Center for the Analysis of Social Media and host of the podcast Kill List.

The dozen Telegram groups that WIRED has identified are part of a broader digital ecosystem often referred to as the manosphere, an online network of forums, influencers, and communities that perpetuate misogynistic ideologies.

“Highly isolated online spaces start reinforcing their own worldviews, pulling further and further from the mainstream, and in doing so, legitimizing things that would be unthinkable offline,” Miller says. “Eventually, what was once unthinkable becomes the norm.”

This cycle of reinforcement plays out across multiple platforms. Facebook forums act as the first point of contact, TikTok amplifies the rhetoric in publicly available videos, and Telegram is used to enable illicit activity. The result? A self-sustaining network of harassment that thrives on digital anonymity.

TikTok amplified discussions around the Telegram groups. WIRED reviewed 12 videos in which creators, of all genders, discussed, joked about, or berated the Telegram groups. In the comments section of these videos, users shared invitation links to public and private groups and some public channels on Telegram, making them accessible to a wider audience. While TikTok was not the primary platform for harassment, discussions about the Telegram groups spread there, and in some cases users explicitly acknowledged their illegality.

TikTok tells WIRED that its Community Guidelines prohibit image-based sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and nonconsensual sexual acts, and that violations result in removals and possible account bans. They also stated that TikTok removes links directing people to content that violates its policies and that it continues to invest in Trust and Safety operations.

Intentionally or not, the algorithms powering social media platforms like Facebook can amplify misogynistic content. Hate-driven engagement fuels growth, pulling new users into these communities through viral trends, suggested content, and comment-section recruitment.

As people caught notice on Facebook and TikTok and started reporting the Telegram groups, they didn’t disappear—they simply rebranded. Reactionary groups quickly emerged, signaling that members knew they were being watched but had no intention of stopping. Inside, messages revealed a clear awareness of the risks: Users knew they were breaking the law. They just didn’t care, according to chat logs reviewed by WIRED. To absolve themselves, one user wrote, “I do not condone im [simply] here to regulate rules,” while another shared a link to a statement that said: “I am here for only entertainment purposes only and I don’t support any illegal activities.”

Meta did not respond to a request for comment.

Messages from the Telegram group WIRED analyzed show that some chats became hyper-localized, dividing London into four regions to make harassment even more targeted. Members casually sought access to other city-based groups: “Who’s got brum link?” and “Manny link tho?”—British slang referring to Birmingham and Manchester. They weren’t just looking for gossip. “Any info from west?” one user asked, while another requested, “What’s her @?”— hunting for a woman’s social media handle, a first step to tracking her online activity.

The chat logs further reveal how women were discussed as commodities. “She a freak, I’ll give her that,” one user wrote. Another added, “Beautiful. Hide her from me.” Others encouraged sharing explicit material: “Sharing is caring, don’t be greedy.”

Members also bragged about sexual exploits, using coded language to reference encounters in specific locations, and spread degrading, racial abuse, predominantly targeting Black women.

Once a woman was mentioned, her privacy was permanently compromised. Users frequently shared social media handles, which led other members to contact her—soliciting intimate images or sending disparaging texts.

Anonymity can be a protective tool for women navigating online harassment. But it can also be embraced by bad actors who use the same structures to evade accountability.

"It’s ironic," Miller says. "The very privacy structures that women use to protect themselves are being turned against them."

The rise of unmoderated spaces like the abusive Telegram groups makes it nearly impossible to trace perpetrators, exposing a systemic failure in law enforcement and regulation. Without clear jurisdiction or oversight, platforms are able to sidestep accountability.

Sophie Mortimer, manager of the UK-based Revenge Porn Helpline, warned that Telegram has become one of the biggest threats to online safety. She says that the UK charity’s reports to Telegram of nonconsensual intimate image abuse are ignored. “We would consider them to be noncompliant to our requests,” she says. Telegram, however, says it received only “about 10 piece of content” from the Revenge Porn Helpline, “all of which were removed.” Mortimer did not yet respond to WIRED’s questions about the veracity of Telegram’s claims.

Despite recent updates to the UK’s Online Safety Act, legal enforcement of online abuse remains weak. An October 2024 report from the UK-based charity The Cyber Helpline shows that cybercrime victims face significant barriers in reporting abuse, and justice for online crimes is seven times less likely than for offline crimes.

"There’s still this long-standing idea that cybercrime doesn’t have real consequences," says Charlotte Hooper, head of operations of The Cyber Helpline, which helps support victims of cybercrime. "But if you look at victim studies, cybercrime is just as—if not more—psychologically damaging than physical crime."

A Telegram spokesperson tells WIRED that its moderators use “custom AI and machine learning tools” to remove content that violates the platform's rules, “including nonconsensual pornography and doxing.”

“As a result of Telegram's proactive moderation and response to reports, moderators remove millions of pieces of harmful content each day,” the spokesperson says.

Hooper says that survivors of digital harassment often change jobs, move cities, or even retreat from public life due to the trauma of being targeted online. The systemic failure to recognize these cases as serious crimes allows perpetrators to continue operating with impunity.

Yet, as these networks grow more interwoven, social media companies have failed to adequately address gaps in moderation.

Telegram, despite its estimated 950 million monthly active users worldwide, claims it’s too small to qualify as a “Very Large Online Platform” under the European Union’s Digital Service Act, allowing it to sidestep certain regulatory scrutiny. “Telegram takes its responsibilities under the DSA seriously and is in constant communication with the European Commission,” a company spokesperson said.

In the UK, several civil society groups have expressed concern about the use of large private Telegram groups, which allow up to 200,000 members. These groups exploit a loophole by operating under the guise of “private” communication to circumvent legal requirements for removing illegal content, including nonconsensual intimate images.

Without stronger regulation, online abuse will continue to evolve, adapting to new platforms and evading scrutiny.

The digital spaces meant to safeguard privacy are now incubating its most invasive violations. These networks aren’t just growing—they’re adapting, spreading across platforms, and learning how to evade accountability.

[drabblesandimagines]

Dove

Leon Kennedy x fem reader Thinking of making this a little series, will be a fluff, bit of a slow burn, bodyguard trope?

You aren’t sure how you’d got through the last few hours.  Everything’s a blur as you try to think back of the horror that had occurred, now you’re now sat in an unfamiliar chair in an unfamiliar office. Your right arm is in a sling, shoulder throbbing somewhat from a reset dislocation, broken fingers splintered together on the same arm, medical tape holding a wound closed on your temple, disinfectant swiped across the numerous scrapes, your body aching with developing bruises on your legs, poking out from under your dress, from the fall down the stairs – the fall that apparently ended up saving your life from the unearthly creature that had rampaged through your workplace and tore your co-workers apart.

After being treated by a DSO medic, you’d been escorted by a tall, armed to the gills, annoyingly silent man. He’d confiscated your phone, despite the fact the screen was smashed and wouldn’t turn on, and taken you across the city to the main HQ, ushered up a side entrance into the room you now sat, told you to wait, and left you alone for what felt like hours.

The door eventually opens and a smartly dressed, pretty woman, hair pinned up in a bun and wearing glasses enters, immediately heading to the other side of the desk and taking what you assumed was her seat. A handsome man accompanied her, shaggy brown hair, dressed in cargo pants, fingerless gloves, knife strapped to his thigh, finished off with a leather jacket, a holster poking out from underneath. He gives you a sympathetic once over as he sits down besides you, careful not to brush your knee with his own as he does. Considerate.

“Were you given adequate pain medication?” The lady asks abruptly, beginning to type on her keyboard.

You stare at her a moment – she’s all business. “Er… Yeah. Thanks.” Though you’re sure the two of them have noticed the wince as you shuffled in your seat. The medic had offered you stronger stuff but you’d declined, wanting to keep your wits about you. “Sorry, what’s happening now?”

“I’m Ingrid Hunnigan, this is Agent Kennedy.” She nods to the man opposite her.

“Name’s Leon.” The man besides you offers his hand and you notice he’s adapted for your incapacitated arm, in what will surely result in a very awkward handshake but the gesture is nice. You take it, hoping the tremor in your grip isn’t so painfully obvious. “Hi. Erm, I’m-”

“Dove.” Hunnigan cuts you off. “I am aware of your identity, but we will be referring to you as Dove.”

“It’s a codename.” Leon explains, a little less business. “For your safety.”

Hunnigan pauses in her typing, hitting backspace slowly as she replies. “Agent Kennedy will be your protection detail until we get this mess squared up.”

Your breath catches in your throat at her choice of word, a sick feeling twisting in your stomach. “Mess? It was a massacre in there-”

“I know. We know.” The agent besides you stresses. “I’m sorry you had to see all that.”

“Am I the only one who…?” You don’t know why you ask.

“I’m afraid so.” Hunnigan replies, a little softer in tone. “We’re going to send you to a safe house. Agent Kennedy will stay with you.”

“O-okay.” You nod, not taking it all in. “You… You think they’d send whatever that thing was after me?”

“That’s what we need time to establish.” Hunnigan replies. “From the CCTV, after the attack, there was a breach on the database. We need to establish how much data they managed to extract, if any. Agent Kennedy will keep you updated as much as he can when he receives any intel.” She turns more to him then, cutting you out of the conversation. “I’ll send the co-ordinates of the safe house when you’re out of the city. They’re loading up an SUV with supplies for at least a week. If it goes on longer, we’ll arrange a supply drop via another location.”

“That long?” You feel like you’re interrupting.

“Worse case scenario, Dove.” Leon offers you a smile. “I’m sure we’ll have you back home in no time. Did they send you away with any meds?”

“The medic sent in a report – with a treatment plan. It’s in the information pack, prescribed medicine is in with the supplies. Again, enough for a week.” Hunnigan replies. “I’ve arranged clothes too – medic guessed your size for me. We’ll be keeping your phone for now.”

“Why?”

“We can’t allow you to contact anyone – for your safety and theirs.”

Your heart skips a beat at that comment. “Wait… You think I might be behind this, don’t you?”

Hunnigan purses her lips. “It is an avenue we need to explore. There are questions as to why you alone survived. We will be dispatching a team to your residence once the two of you are out of the city to help in our investigation.”

“Again, that’s just protocol.” Leon tries to reassure, but your mind is whirling. “No-one is accusing you of anything, Dove.”

“I… I’ve worked here for years, I passed all the clearance checks. I wouldn’t, I didn’t…”

“As Agent Kennedy said, it’s just protocol. If you have nothing to hide, there is nothing to fear.” Hunnigan resumes tapping away at the keyboard as she talks, pausing as the computer emits a ping. “SUV’s ready. I suggest you two go.”

Leon gets to his feet, once more offering his hand to help you to yours. He smiles, sympathetically, as he takes in your appearance – your face has lost what little colour it had.

“Time to go, Dove. It’ll be all right.”

You want to say no, you feel like you need to stay to plead your innocence, but you catch sight of the gun holstered by his side and the flame of defiance is extinguished. You take his hand, allowing him to pull you to your feet. He places his hand on the small of your back to guide you back through the door and you can’t work out if it should feel like comfort or a threat.

--

You felt numb as Leon had escorted you to a large SUV with blacked out windows in an empty carpark. He’d opened the door for you, helped you climb in before hesitating.

“Need a hand with your seatbelt?”

You stare at him for a moment too long.

“Because of your arm, I mean.”

“Oh. Please.”

He leans over you, grabbing the seatbelt and clicking it into place.

“Right. Comfy?”

“Yeah.” You swallow. “Thanks.”

He nods, closes the door behind him – softly, you note, rather than a slam and it’s then you realise that you also can’t see out the windows. He hops up into the front, buckles his own seatbelt and starts the engine, swinging the SUV out of the parking space with ease. You can’t really see anything from where you’re sat, bar the back of his head and it must be deliberate.

“Hopefully it’s not too long of a drive.” He comments. “Had one that was a twelve hours’ away once and we are not allowed to stop for bathroom breaks.”

“Are you allowed to tell me how far away it is when you know?”

“Don’t see why not. Hunnigan will ping it through once we’re clear enough.”

It’s hard to tell how much time has passed when, eventually, the promised ping echoes around the car. You can hear him tap his fingers against something and he hums to himself.

“We’re in luck – about two hours away, Dove. Want some music on? Don’t have any CDs but got the radio.”

Maybe the music will help drown out how loud your heart is thudding in your ears. ”Yeah, sure.”

He fiddles with the dial – sound crackling around the car before it settles on some acoustic tune you don’t recognize. Must be some easy listening station.

“You can nap, if you like.”

“Maybe.” Though you’re not sure how you’ll ever sleep again after today.

The rest of the drive passes in silence, apart from the sound of the radio. You close your eyes a few times, leaning your head back against the seat but the creature seems burned into your retinas, haunting your vision.

“This is us.” Leon breaks the silence as you feel the car turn and he reduces the speed. He switches off the car and unclicks his seatbelt, turning back to face you. “Wait there just a moment, okay?”

“Yeah.”

 He smiles, opens his door and hops out, again closing the door softly behind him. What must be a few minutes later, your door opens and he once again offers his hand.

“Ready?

You unclip your seatbelt with your good hand before accepting his outstretched one, helping you step down from the SUV. You’re in a garage now of some sort – spacious enough to fit the car and what looks to be a chest freezer, washer and tumble dryer - the whole room illuminated by an orange bulb.

“So, we said safe house – seems more like a safe bungalow to me. I’ll give you the tour.” He gestures forward towards an open door and you walk forward, once again his hand falling to the small of your back. It leads through to a modest sized kitchen – usual white appliances and opens out into a living room with two couches, a coffee table and an entertainment unit with a television. There are two more doors along the wall, but what really strikes you is how small the windows all are, covered in thick panes of glass.

Bulletproof, you wonder.

“Bathroom’s this one,” he opens the door in demonstration, revealing a typical bathroom, before moving along. “And the bedroom.” It has a double bed, white linen sheets, a wardrobe and dresser. “Your bedroom,” he corrects. “I’ll be on the couch.”

“Oh. Is that comfortable?”

He smiles at your concern. “I’m pretty good at sleeping anywhere, but it looks comfortable enough. Speaking of, it’s pretty late so I think we should call it a night.” He ducks into the bathroom, pulling out a washbag from under the sink and empties the contents on the counter. “Standard toiletries kit to start us off. I’m gonna start bringing in the supplies. Sound good?”

You nod and he heads back towards the garage. You kick off your shoes before you step into the bathroom and close the door, twisting the lock closed. You use the facilities with some difficulty, your first visit since being an arm down, though thankful to be in a dress so as not to battle with trousers. After what some might call a best attempt of washing your hand, you pick up the toothbrush and immediately put it back down in annoyance as you realise you’ll need to deal with the toothpaste first. Thankful for the flip cap, the tube slips from your grip as you squeeze, shooting across the counter and knocking a glass off the counter, sending it smashing to the floor.

“Fu-” The word doesn’t even make it out of your mouth when the door is broken open, slammed against the wall and Leon is stood there, gun raised as you scream.

He scans the room with his eyes, concedes it’s clear and lowers his gun. “What happened? You okay?”

“I… I d-dropped the t-t-toothpaste and smashed the g-glass and…” Your breath catches in your throat again, tears burning in your eyes.

“Hey,” he holsters the gun on his thigh. “Hey, it’s okay, you’re okay. Sorry for scaring you. I thought there was a window in here.”

He looks down at the broken glass that’s exploded over the floor and your sock-clad feet. “Sit down, all right? I’ll clear this up.”

“No, I s-should-”

“I can do it. Just sit, please. I’ll go grab a dustpan – they have one. Not my first safe house.” He soothes, heading off into the kitchen cupboards in search of it.

You sit down on the closed toilet seat lid and wonder bitterly if he’s at more safe houses than his own home. You take the moment to try and settle your breathing, your heart still pounding.

Leon appears at the door once more, grinning as he holds the dustpan and brush aloft in triumph. “Found it.” He crouches down, beginning to sweep up the glass. You watch in silence as he tackles the floor methodically, making sure to brush along each square of bathroom tile until he seems satisfied with his work.

“There. All done.” He places it to the side and grabs the troublesome toothpaste tube, before standing up to his full height. “So, this was the culprit, huh?”

You nod. “I don’t know what happened - the only difference was the toothbrush being on the counter, so I should be able to do it, just-”

He picks up the toothbrush and squeezes a blob of toothpaste on it. “On the house.” Leon jokes, offering it back to you. You stand up and accept it, hesitantly.

“I kinda feel pathetic.” You admit.

“Dove…” You’re getting a little used to the name now. It sounds nice off his tongue – soft and sweet. “You’ve had a shitty day, give yourself a break.”

“No, I mean, it just feels like you’re my servant or something – sweeping up, squeezing out my toothpaste...”

“To protect and serve’s the motto.” He smiles at your confused look. “I was a cop before I was an agent.”

“And this is the stuff you did as a cop?”

“Yes, alongside the helping old ladies with their groceries, helping ducks cross the street…” He teases, before nodding at the toothbrush in your hand. “I’ll leave you to it.”

After brushing your teeth without further incident and taking a few more moments to compose yourself, you exit the bathroom. Leon’s stood at the kitchen counter, paper bag in hand, looking at pill packets. There’s a couple of duffel bags near the garage door, one unzipped.

“Medical notes say it’s painkiller time, I’m afraid.” He grabs a glass from the cupboard, fills it up with water from the tap and places it down besides two white pills. “They’ve given you some sleeping tablets as well, but that’s up to you.”

“Do they stop you dreaming?”

Leon grimaces at your question. “From personal experience, yeah. No dreams.”

You hold out your hand. “Then I’ll take them.”

He nods, shaking another two pills out of a bottle and into his hand, picking up the other two and drops them in your hand. You open your mouth and throw them in, before accepting the glass of water, swallowing it all down.

“So, er, this is gonna be a little bit awkward, but I don’t know what you prefer to sleep in, obviously, but I’m assuming not that.”

“Oh. Yeah, no.”

“So, I pulled out a couple of things.” He nods towards the bedroom, where you can see some items of clothing laying out on the bed. He’s turned the bedside lamp on, the room softly illuminated in a white glow.

“You really are a safe house pro.”

“Ha, yeah.” He grins, rubbing the back of his head. “I guess my question is, do you need a hand with changing? 100% respectful offer, obviously.”

You nod. “Please.”

“Okay. After you.”

You walk into the bedroom, Leon keeping his distance this time. There’s an oversized t-shirt in the pile, looks like it will reach your knees. You pick it up with your good hand, clutching it close to your chest and turn to face him.

“Can you help with the sling?”

“Yep.” He nods – professional, unstrapping it with ease and removing it gently. “Afraid medic says you need to sleep with the sling for a week.”

“Mm.” You nod, hanging your arm down loose before turning around. “I guess if you could unzip and I’ll…”

“Got it.” He tugs down the zipper of your dress slowly – if it was some other encounter you’d say he was being a tease. He stops as he reaches the small of your back, just above your underwear. “What can I do now?”

Your breath hitches in your throat, but there’s no getting around it now. “Any good at undoing a bra? Professionally.”

“Professionally, yep.” You feel gentle fingers deftly unclasp it with ease.

“I think I’ve got it from now until the sling needs back on, so-”

“Say no more. Just call when you’re ready.”

The door closes behind you and you exhale, trying to compose yourself. It’s more months since a man had helped you out of a dress and this, after everything today and the situation you’re in, unsure if he sees you as victim or villain, shouldn’t be making you feel flustered.

Gingerly, you slip one arm out of the dress, followed by the other, wincing as you do so and allowing it to pool down at your feet. Next comes your bra, and then you gently pull the t-shirt over your head, again flinching as your shoulder smarts.

Decent, or decent enough, you call out. “Leon? I’m ready.”

“Coming in.” He announces, pausing a moment before opening the door and immediately moves to pick up the sling from where he placed it on the bed. “I’ll be as gentle as I can.”

With practiced hands, he positions your arm into the sling, adjusting it carefully and fastening it in place once more. “There. Feel okay?”

“Yeah.” You look him in the eyes then – beautiful, blue eyes, before fighting back a yawn. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He smiles. “That will be the sleeping pills kicking in. I forgot to mention they’re real heavy duty.”

“Mm.” You sit down on the bed then, a little too heavily, before picking up your discarded dress on the floor. “Could you bin this?”

“Of course.” He takes it from you, no question. “Anything else I can do?”

“No. Thank you.”

“You don’t need to keep thanking me, Dove. It’s all right – I told you, part of the job.”

“Still, thank you.” You mumble, head feeling heavy.

“Here,” he pulls back the covers as you scooch yourself back and lean your head back on the pillow, tucking the duvet in over you. “Arm still okay?”

You nod, looking up at him with bleary eyes.

“I swear what happened wasn’t anything to do with me. I swear.”

“Shh,” Leon hushes. “I know.” He feels it in his gut, felt it since the moment he lay eyes on you in Hunnigan’s office. “Maybe tomorrow we’ll hear some updates. But, for now, just sleep. Okay, Dove?”

“Sleep, okay…” You mumble, closing your eyes.

Leon hovers a moment, noting the change in your breathing as the sleeping pills pull you under. He turns off the bedside lamp and leaves the bedroom, quietly, your dress clutched in his hand. He places it in the kitchen bin – there’s an incinerator round the back to erase all trace of their visit, but he’ll do that in the morning.

He makes his way over to the sofa and lies down, not even bothering to remove his boots.

He won’t be sleeping tonight.

-- Do let me know if you'd be interested in a part two! x EDIT: Part two!

Masterlist . Requests welcome . Commissions/Ko-Fi

[carry-on-my-wayward-butt]

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[canmom]

Hypothetical Decentralised Social Media Protocol Stack

if we were to dream up the Next Social Media from first principles we face three problems. one is scaling hosting, the second is discovery/aggregation, the third is moderation.

hosting

hosting for millions of users is very very expensive. you have to have a network of datacentres around the world and mechanisms to sync the data between them. you probably use something like AWS, and they will charge you an eye-watering amount of money for it. since it's so expensive, there's no way to break even except by either charging users to access your service (which people generally hate to do) or selling ads, the ability to intrude on their attention to the highest bidder (which people also hate, and go out of their way to filter out). unless you have a lot of money to burn, this is a major barrier.

the traditional internet hosts everything on different servers, and you use addresses that point you to that server. the problem with this is that it responds poorly to sudden spikes in attention. if you self-host your blog, you can get DDOSed entirely by accident. you can use a service like cloudflare to protect you but that's $$$. you can host a blog on a service like wordpress, or a static site on a service like Github Pages or Neocities, often for free, but that broadly limits interaction to people leaving comments on your blog and doesn't have the off-the-cuff passing-thought sort of interaction that social media does.

the middle ground is forums, which used to be the primary form of social interaction before social media eclipsed them, typically running on one or a few servers with a database + frontend. these are viable enough, often they can be run with fairly minimal ads or by user subscriptions (the SomethingAwful model), but they can't scale indefinitely, and each one is a separate bubble. mastodon is a semi-return to this model, with the addition of a means to use your account on one bubble to interact with another ('federation').

the issue with everything so far is that it's an all-eggs-in-one-basket approach. you depend on the forum, instance, or service paying its bills to stay up. if it goes down, it's just gone. and database-backend models often interact poorly with the internet archive's scraping, so huge chunks won't be preserved.

scaling hosting could theoretically be solved by a model like torrents or IPFS, in which every user becomes a 'server' for all the posts they download, and you look up files using hashes of the content. if a post gets popular, it also gets better seeded! an issue with that design is archival: there is no guarantee that stuff will stay on the network, so if nobody is downloading a post, it is likely to get flushed out by newer stuff. it's like link rot, but it happens automatically.

IPFS solves this by 'pinning': you order an IPFS node (e.g. your server) not to flush a certain file so it will always be available from at least one source. they've sadly mixed this up in cryptocurrency, with 'pinning services' which will take payment in crypto to pin your data. my distaste for a technology designed around red queen races aside, I don't know how pinning costs compare to regular hosting costs.

theoretically you could build a social network on a backbone of content-based addressing. it would come with some drawbacks (posts would be immutable, unless you use some indirection to a traditional address-based hosting) but i think you could make it work (a mix of location-based addressing for low-bandwidth stuff like text, and content-based addressing for inline media). in fact, IPFS has the ability to mix in a bit of address-based lookup into its content-based approach, used for hosting blogs and the like.

as for videos - well, BitTorrent is great for distributing video files. though I don't know how well that scales to something like Youtube. you'd need a lot of hard drive space to handle the amount of Youtube that people typically watch and continue seeding it.

aggregation/discovery

the next problem is aggregation/discovery. social media sites approach this problem in various ways. early social media sites like LiveJournal had a somewhat newsgroup-like approach, you'd join a 'community' and people would post stuff to that community. this got replaced by the subscription model of sites like Twitter and Tumblr, where every user is simultaneously an author and a curator, and you subscribe to someone to see what posts they want to share.

this in turn got replaced by neural network-driven algorithms which attempt to guess what you'll want to see and show you stuff that's popular with whatever it thinks your demographic is. that's gotta go, or at least not be an intrinsic part of the social network anymore.

it would be easy enough to replicate the 'subscribe to see someone's recommended stuff' model, you just need a protocol for pointing people at stuff. (getting analytics such as like/reblog counts would be more difficult!) it would probably look similar to RSS feeds: you upload a list of suitably formatted data, and programs which speak that protocol can download it.

the problem of discovery - ways to find strangers who are interested in the same stuff you are - is more tricky. if we're trying to design this as a fully decentralised, censorship-resistant network, we face the spam problem. any means you use to broadcast 'hi, i exist and i like to talk about this thing, come interact with me' can be subverted by spammers. either you restrict yourself entirely to spreading across a network of curated recommendations, or you have to have moderation.

moderation

moderation is one of the hardest problems of social networks as they currently exist. it's both a problem of spam (the posts that users want to see getting swamped by porn bots or whatever) and legality (they're obliged to remove child porn, beheading videos and the like). the usual solution is a combination of AI shit - does the robot think this looks like a naked person - and outsourcing it to poorly paid workers in (typically) African countries, whose job is to look at reports of the most traumatic shit humans can come up with all day and confirm whether it's bad or not.

for our purposes, the hypothetical decentralised network is a protocol to help computers find stuff, not a platform. we can't control how people use it, and if we're not hosting any of the bad shit, it's not on us. but spam moderation is a problem any time that people can insert content you did not request into your feed.

possibly this is where you could have something like Mastodon instances, with their own moderation rules, but crucially, which don't host the content they aggregate. so instead of having 'an account on an instance', you have a stable address on the network, and you submit it to various directories so people can find you. by keeping each one limited in scale, it makes moderation more feasible. this is basically Reddit's model: you have topic-based hubs which people can subscribe to, and submit stuff to.

the other moderation issue is that there is no mechanism in this design to protect from mass harassment. if someone put you on the K*w*f*rms List of Degenerate Trannies To Suicidebait, there'd be fuck all you can do except refuse to receive contact from strangers. though... that's kind of already true of the internet as it stands. nobody has solved this problem.

to sum up

primarily static sites 'hosted' partly or fully on IPFS and BitTorrent

a protocol for sharing content you want to promote, similar to RSS, that you can aggregate into a 'feed'

directories you can submit posts to which handle their own moderation

no ads, nobody makes money off this

honestly, the biggest problem with all this is mostly just... getting it going in the first place. because let's be real, who but tech nerds is going to use a system that requires you to understand fuckin IPFS? until it's already up and running, this idea's got about as much hope as getting people to sign each others' GPG keys. it would have to have the sharp edges sanded down, so it's as easy to get on the Hypothetical Decentralised Social Network Protocol Stack as it is to register an account on tumblr.

but running over it like this... I don't think it's actually impossible in principle. a lot of the technical hurdles have already been solved. and that's what I want the Next Place to look like.

[rentherainbringer]

How to 'Lock' Your Fics on Ao3

This Guide was created on a PC, mobile may differ but likely not greatly. If you encounter issues, please feel free to contact the mods directly for help.

We recently had a problem with someone scraping Ao3 works for their data set and/or AI training model.

Obviously, this is absolutely out of line, but there's little to no regulation AI right now & not much we can do to defend ourselves from theft besides filing DMCA reports & restricting access to only Archive Users on Ao3 [aka Locking], which I will show how to do below.

You can find the Tumblr post HERE.

Thank you sincerely to the community on Reddit & that Tumblr user for spreading the word.

Locking A New Work:

Open Ao3, create your new work

From there, scroll down to Privacy, look for this section:

3. Select 'Only show your work to registered users'.

Locking An Existing Work:

Open your Dashboard

Locate the Work you want to lock, open it

Right next to the 'Add Chapter' button in the top left corner, you will see 'Edit'. Open that.

Scroll down to Privacy, just like above

Toggle 'Only show your work to registered users' on!

P.S. hi :] -R

[iwebscrapingblogs]

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