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sutekh94 · 12 days

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Hoooh boy do I have some thoughts about Cohost shutting down.

I've been working on this post for a few days, letting thoughts simmer enough to be presentable enough, so… here goes something!

Yeah, I'm sad about that. Not surprised that it happened, but still sad. Cohost had a good philosophy behind it, wanting to build a social media platform without much of the usual trappings, and I appreciate all the work its creators, Anti-Software Software Club, put in to make that philosophy real. And it was real, if only for a couple of years. I'm so glad my art found an audience there, even getting a few lovely comments. I feel bad for everyone who set up shop there who now has to scramble towards other platforms to host their stuff on. I can understand why some people decided they were finished with social media after the site announced they were gonna shut down at the end of 2024.

I really wish Cohost succeeded as a social media platform.

And I will miss it.

All that said… (here come the controversial takes)

I don't hold much sympathy for its staff and ASSC. It really felt like they had no business sense nor did they want to have any business sense. That showed especially in how unprofessional some of their financial updates - and lack thereof on occasion - were. Casually saying "oops I forgot to do the update for X month" despite further funding for the site hinging on regular posting of said updates, acting all "we're your friends!!!" at times, and so on. Then there were things like the eggbux debacle, ASSC thinking they were gonna turn Cohost into a Patreon competitor without having the knowledge or resources to do that, Stripe policies aside. I'm aware that was one of ASSC's original goals for the platform, but still. I gotta factor in some of the monumental moderation fails the platform's had, including the Nazi incident. Their policies regarding generative "AI" - seriously, not blanket banning generative "AI" was asking for trouble. Oh, and an aura of negativity and toxic positivity that pervaded the place partially because of that inadequate moderation, and partially because that's what Cohost's culture was like to an extent. Still, my Discord server has more moderators than Cohost ever had - three, myself included, compared to one. That's comparing a platform with about 130 users (I'd say 12-15 of them are active and posting on the server) as of the time I'm writing this against a platform with over 25,000 users at the time of the shutdown announcement.

This might seem harsh considering Cohost's staff were known users and public faces there. I don't know any of them personally. I don't wanna pretend like I do. But I also don't wanna pretend like ASSC could do no wrong and Cohost was some heavenly paradise. One of the most popular posts on the site in its final months, at least regarding the number of comments and responses to it, was "Cohost So White", a lengthy timeline detailing some of the most notable moderation fails and racist incidents that've occurred on the site over its history. Much of that negativity I mentioned earlier stemmed from how bigoted and racist chunks of the userbase could be - and the times that was left unchecked until staff was bullied into removing offending posts and banning the people behind them. Remember the Nazi incident I mentioned earlier?

In short, a Nazi made a Cohost account to stalk and harass a Jewish person there. The Jewish person tried reporting the account, posting evidence of the Nazi's behavior off-site, and Cohost staff… did nothing about it initially because "they've done nothing wrong on Cohost so far" or words to that effect, causing the Jewish person (among others) to almost leave Cohost. Staff was then bullied into banning the Nazi and afterwards said things like "we're bound to screw up on moderation decisions every now and again". There's more to the Nazi incident than that, but I don't want this post to be entirely about that. Still, I get it. Moderation is tricky. People make mistakes. But that was an egregious moderation failure that should never have happened.

Disregarding all that, Cohost had this feeling of a group of friends creating a social media platform for themselves, their friends, and friends of friends, but it never grew out of that hobbyist mindset. Cohost felt like a very anti-social place more often than not. Discoverability was always spotty. Tag shotgunning was common especially for artists like me wanting to have as much reach as possible. The only major attempt to make discoverability better IMO, tag synonyms, came in too late to be relevant. Needed and welcomed, but still. Same for certain changes to moderation policies - the "missing stair" policy and so on, even if I feared they could've been weaponized against fair and civil criticism of the platform.

This is a personal thing, but I never gelled with the site's culture. I was mainly there to post my art; the site being NSFW/18+ friendly was a huge reason why I joined, and to its credit, Cohost never lost that particular quality throughout its existence. I didn't interact with people much there, and venturing outside of my carefully-curated feeds, both main and bookmarked, could feel as draining as doomscrolling on Twitter. Almost like Twitter's negativity sort of migrated over to Cohost and became integrated into Cohost's culture. Again, I'm not saying the entire platform was like that, just that the negativity sometimes drowned out all the shitposts and CSS crimes and whatnot.

Don't get me wrong. Cohost shutting down is a loss for the Internet as a whole for reasons I explained up top. I'll always appreciate it for what it tried to do and all the good it managed to do over the time it existed. I don't wanna walk away feeling like I'm blindly bashing on it with a sledgehammer or, worse, celebrating its downfall with a bag of popcorn in hand. It's just… Things could've and should've been so much better. There were more than enough misgivings on ASSC's behalf that didn't help matters. That's really why I'm sad yet not surprised about Cohost shutting down. Cohost deserved better. Much better.

The reason why I've been so critical about Cohost is… I give a shit. It's clear I'm passionate enough about Cohost to say what I said here. I genuinely wanted things to be better there. If I truly didn't care, this post wouldn't exist, and it's possible I never would've given Cohost a chance in the first place. Regardless, the fact that so, so, SO many people are sad about it shutting down speaks volumes. I enjoyed my time there despite all its faults, but that doesn't mean I could act as if those faults didn't exist. My personal experiences with Cohost weren't everyone's personal experiences.

I'm aware that places like Pillowfort have some of the same problems Cohost had, namely an uncertain financial and long-term future. It's why Pillowfort and other small platforms need support now more than ever, and I'm glad to see that some of Cohost's userbase has migrated over to Pillowfort. Unless you're gonna bail on social media entirely after Cohost shuts down (again, I don't blame you for wanting to do that at this point), you're best off diversifying where you post, especially if you're an artist and/or a writer. If you can spare the money, you should send a few bucks towards these smaller platforms to help keep them afloat. At any moment, that smaller platform you've made a home on can just… shut down one day, planned or not.

#sutekh's rants #cohost #cohost shutdown #rip cohost #vent post?#maybe?

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grungepoetica · 1 year

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so i just learned about the anti-software software club and Cohost

#grungepo thoughts #idk if i want to join cohost as grungepoetica juuuust yet #but it's definitely a good place for my irl self to do digital shit if i treat it like i would a (semi) professional twitter #cohost

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lukadjo · 13 hours

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Cohost is dying 😭

They are shutting it down

And it seems anti software software club is getting shuttered as well

#cohost

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justinspoliticalcorner · 2 months

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Andy Kroll and Nick Surgey at ProPublica:

A network of ultrawealthy Christian donors is spending nearly $12 million to mobilize Republican-leaning voters and purge more than a million people from the rolls in key swing states, aiming to tilt the 2024 election in favor of former President Donald Trump. These previously unreported plans are the work of a group named Ziklag, a little-known charity whose donors have included some of the wealthiest conservative Christian families in the nation, including the billionaire Uihlein family, who made a fortune in office supplies, the Greens, who run Hobby Lobby, and the Wallers, who own the Jockey apparel corporation. Recipients of Ziklag’s largesse include Alliance Defending Freedom, which is the Christian legal group that led the overturning of Roe v. Wade, plus the national pro-Trump group Turning Point USA and a constellation of right-of-center advocacy groups.

[...]

Ziklag’s 2024 agenda reads like the work of a political organization. It plans to pour money into mobilizing voters in Arizona who are “sympathetic to Republicans” in order to secure “10,640 additional unique votes” — almost the exact margin of President Joe Biden’s win there in 2020. The group also intends to use controversial AI software to enable mass challenges to the eligibility of hundreds of thousands of voters in competitive states. In a recording of a 2023 internal strategy discussion, a Ziklag official stressed that the objective was the same in other swing states. “The goal is to win,” the official said. “If 75,000 people wins the White House, then how do we get 150,000 people so we make sure we win?”

According to the Ziklag files, the group has divided its 2024 activities into three different operations targeting voters in battleground states: Checkmate, focused on funding so-called election integrity groups; Steeplechase, concentrated on using churches and pastors to get out the vote; and Watchtower, aimed at galvanizing voters around the issues of “parental rights” and opposition to transgender rights and policies supporting health care for trans people. In a member briefing video, one of Ziklag’s spiritual advisers outlined a plan to “deliver swing states” by using an anti-transgender message to motivate conservative voters who are exhausted with Trump.

But Ziklag is not a political organization: It is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charity, the same legal designation as the United Way or Boys and Girls Club. Such organizations do not have to publicly disclose their funders, and donations are tax deductible. In exchange, they are “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office,” according to the IRS. ProPublica and Documented presented the findings of their investigation to six nonpartisan lawyers and legal experts. All expressed concern that Ziklag was testing or violating the law. The reporting by ProPublica and Documented “casts serious doubt on this organization’s status as a 501(c)(3) organization,” said Roger Colinvaux, a professor at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law.

[...]

“Dominion Over the Seven Mountains”

Ziklag has largely escaped scrutiny until now. The group describes itself as a “private, confidential, invitation-only community of high-net-worth Christian families.” According to internal documents, it boasts more than 125 members that include business executives, pastors, media leaders and other prominent conservative Christians. Potential new members, one document says, should have a “concern for culture” demonstrated by past donations to faith-based or political causes, as well as a net worth of $25 million or more. None of the donors responded to requests for comment.

Tax records show rapid growth in the group’s finances in recent years. Its annual revenue climbed from $1.3 million in 2018 to $6 million in 2019 and nearly $12 million in 2022, which is the latest filing available. The group’s spending is not on the scale of major conservative funders such as Miriam Adelson or Barre Seid, the electronics magnate who gave $1.6 billion to a group led by conservative legal activist Leonard Leo. But its funding and strategy represent one of the clearest links yet between the Christian right and the “election integrity” movement fueled by Trump’s baseless claims about voting fraud. Even several million dollars funding mass challenges to voters in swing counties can make an impact, legal and election experts say.

Ziklag was the brainchild of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur named Ken Eldred. It emerged from a previous organization founded by Eldred called United In Purpose, which aimed to get more Christians active in the civic arena, according to Bill Dallas, the group’s former director. United In Purpose generated attention in June 2016 when it organized a major meeting between then-candidate Trump and hundreds of evangelical leaders.

After Trump was elected in 2016, Eldred had an idea, according to Dallas. “He says, ‘I want all the wealthy Christian people to come together,’” Dallas recalled in an interview. Eldred told Dallas that he wanted to create a donor network like the one created by Charles and David Koch but for Christians. He proposed naming it David’s Mighty Men, Dallas said. Female members balked. Dallas found the passage in Chronicles that references David’s soldiers and read that they met in the city of Ziklag, and so they chose the name Ziklag.

The group’s stature grew after Trump took office. Vice President Mike Pence appeared at a Ziklag event, as did former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Sen. Ted Cruz, then-Rep. Mark Meadows and other members of Congress. In its private newsletter, Ziklag claims that a coalition of groups it assembled played “a hugely significant role in the selection, hearings and confirmation process” of Amy Coney Barrett for a Supreme Court seat in late 2020.

Confidential donor networks regularly invest hundreds of millions of dollars into political and charitable groups, from the liberal Democracy Alliance to the Koch-affiliated Stand Together organization on the right. But unlike Ziklag, neither of those organizations is legally set up as a true charity. Ziklag appears to be the first coordinated effort to get wealthy donors to fund an overtly Christian nationalist agenda, according to historians, legal experts and other people familiar with the group. “It shows that this idea isn’t being dismissed as fringe in the way that it might have been in the past,” said Mary Ziegler, a legal historian and University of California, Davis law professor. The Christian nationalism movement has a variety of aims and tenets, according to the Public Religion Research Institute: that the U.S. government “should declare America a Christian nation”; that American laws “should be based on Christian values”; that the U.S. will cease to exist as a nation if it “moves away from our Christian foundations”; that being Christian is essential to being American; and that God has “called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.”

One theology promoted by Christian nationalist leaders is the Seven Mountain Mandate. Each mountain represents a major industry or a sphere of public life: arts and media, business, church, education, family, government, and science and technology. Ziklag’s goal, the documents say, is to “take dominion over the Seven Mountains,” funding Christian projects or installing devout Christians in leadership positions to reshape each mountain in a godly way. To address their concerns about education, Ziklag’s leaders and allies have focused on the public-school system. In a 2021 Ziklag meeting, Ziklag’s education mountain chair, Peter Bohlinger, said that Ziklag’s goal “is to take down the education system as we know it today.” The producers of the film “Sound of Freedom,” featuring Jim Caviezel as an anti-sex-trafficking activist, screened an early cut of the film at a Ziklag conference and asked for funds, according to Dallas.

[...] A driving force behind Ziklag’s efforts is Lance Wallnau, a prominent Christian evangelist and influencer based in Texas who is described by Ziklag as a “Seven Mountains visionary & advisor.” The fiery preacher is one of the most influential figures on the Christian right, experts say, a bridge between Christian nationalism and Trump. He was one of the earliest evangelical leaders to endorse Trump in 2015 and later published a book titled “God’s Chaos Candidate: Donald J. Trump and the American Unraveling.” More than 1 million people follow him on Facebook. He doesn’t try to hide his views: “Yes, I am a Christian nationalist,” he said during one of his livestreams in 2021. (Wallnau did not respond to requests for comment.)

[...]

“Operation Checkmate”

In the fall of 2023, Wallnau sat in a gray armchair in his TV studio. A large TV screen behind him flashed a single word: “ZIKLAG.” “You almost hate to put it out this clearly,” he said as he detailed Ziklag’s electoral strategy, “because if somebody else gets ahold of this, they’ll freak out.” He was joined on set by Hiss, who had just become the group’s new day-to-day leader. The two men were there to record a special message to Ziklag members that laid out the group’s ambitious plans for the upcoming election year. The forces arrayed against Christians were many, according to the confidential video. They were locked in a “spiritual battle,” Hiss said, against Democrats who were a “radical left Marxist force.” Biden, Wallnau said, was a senile old man and “an empty suit with an agenda that’s written and managed by somebody else.”

[...] A prominent conservative getting money from Ziklag is Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer and Trump ally who joined the January 2021 phone call when then-President Trump asked Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes to flip Georgia in Trump’s favor. Mitchell now leads a network of “election integrity” coalitions in swing states that have spent the last three years advocating for changes to voting rules and how elections are run. According to one internal newsletter, Ziklag was an early funder of Mitchell’s post-2020 “election integrity” activism, which voting-rights experts have criticized for stoking unfounded fears about voter fraud and seeking to unfairly remove people from voting rolls. In 2022, Ziklag donated $600,000 to the Conservative Partnership Institute, which in turn funds Mitchell’s election-integrity work. Internal Ziklag documents show that it provided funding to enable Mitchell to set up election integrity infrastructure in Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

[...] For Operation Watchtower, Wallnau explained in a members-only video that transgender policy was a “wedge issue” that could be decisive in turning out voters tired of hearing about Trump. The left had won the battle over the “homosexual issue,” Wallnau said. “But on transgenderism, there’s a problem and they know it.” He continued: “They’re gonna wanna talk about Trump, Trump, Trump. … Meanwhile, if we talk about ‘It’s not about Trump. It’s about parents and their children, and the state is a threat,’” that could be the “target on the forehead of Goliath.” The Ziklag files describe tactics the group plans to use around parental rights — policies that make it easier for parents to control what’s taught in public schools — to turn out conservative voters. In a fundraising video, the group says it plans to underwrite a “messaging and data lab” focused on parental rights that will supply “winning messaging to all our partner groups to create unified focus among all on the right.” The goal, the video says, is to make parental rights “the difference-maker in the 2024 election.”

According to Wallnau, Ziklag also plans to fund ballot initiatives in seven key states — Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Montana, Nevada and Ohio — that take aim at the transgender community by seeking to ban “genital mutilation.” The seven states targeted are either presidential battlegrounds or have competitive U.S. Senate races. None of the initiatives is on a state ballot yet. “People that are lethargic about the election or, worse yet, they’re gonna be all Trump-traumatized with the news cycle — this issue will get people to come out and vote,” Wallnau said. “That ballot initiative can deliver swing states.” The last prong of Ziklag’s 2024 strategy is Operation Steeplechase, which urges conservative pastors to mobilize their congregants to vote in this year’s election. This project will work in coordination with several prominent conservative groups that support former president Trump’s reelection, such as Turning Point USA’s faith-based group, the Faith and Freedom Coalition run by conservative operative Ralph Reed and the America First Policy Institute, one of several groups closely allied with Trump.

ProPublica takes a look at a secretive Christian Nationalist organization called Ziklag, a network of ultrawealthy Christian donors seeking to mobilize Republican-leaning voters to turn out for the general election with three different operations: Checkmate, Steeplechase, and Watchtower.

Read the full story at ProPublica.

#Ziklag #Christian Nationalism #Seven Mountains Dominionism #Peter Bohlinger #Leonard Leo #Ken Eldred #United In Purpose #Miriam Adelson #Barre Seid #Lance Wallnau #Drew Hiss #Cleta Mitchell #Operation Checkmate #Operation Steeplechase #Operation Watchtower #Turning Point USA

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princehendir · 11 months

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i've seen you posting about cohost and i've been poking around and i've seen some references to making payments to support the site. do you know if those payments are mandatory for all users, or if they're similar to tumblr's current style of optionally paying for additional services/merch or opt-in monthly payments?

It's completely non-mandatory, & very similar to what Tumblr is currently doing. Cohost is fully free to sign up & use, and currently the people behind it are very firm on the position of all base site features being free forever. Optionally, a Cohost Plus subscription is 5$ a month/50$ a year, which gives you a higher image upload size limit and some exclusive subscriber emojis, there's also some other silly & cosmetic stuff planned for the future. Nothing vital. They also sell some merch through the anti-software software club website.

#*guy who knows weirdly too much about merchant services providers voice* also it looks like they run their payments through Stripe #which is very upstanding of them imo. and inspires confidence.

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cyanocittae · 1 year

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hey you should all go check out cohost

i'm on there now too

it's run by the anti software software club, there's no algorithm, it's like tumblr before everything started Going To Shit™

lemme know if u also have an account!!

((this doesn't mean im leaving tumblr, i will be active on both for now))

#cohost #tumblr alternative

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a-small-batch-of-dragons · 2 years

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Safe Place

Prompt: Detroit: Become Human prompt! (If you still wrote this fandom)Connor and Nines both believe that they have to be useful, and if they aren't being useful, they have to stay completely and utterly out of the way. Meaning, when they're at home with Hank and they aren't doing chores, they've hidden themselves in the garage/basement/random ads places around the house.

Somehow Hank (and Gavin?) Start to convince the two they don't have to be useful just to be around people/in order to be safe

- Auggie

Read on Ao3

Warnings: self esteem issues, some self destruction although it’s not intentional (androids don’t feel cold like humans), anti android sentiments

Pairings: gen

Word Count: 5035

Call it what you like, the remnants of some long-forgotten protocol, so old that the software engineers forgot they built it into their systems, or the lingering trauma of being abused and debased by anti-android humans, or even just some desire to still be of use to Lieutenant Anderson.

Whatever it is, it keeps Connor and Nines retreating to a creaky closet in the very back of the garage, hidden away until they can be of use again.

Connor started it. Admittedly, Connor started a lot of things, seeing as his model predates the RK900 by several iterations, but this one in particular he has no issue claiming as his idea.

Admittedly, this did originate when Lieutenant Anderson was far more vocally anti-android, if not in the explicit threats than in his complete and utter disdain for Connor. The lieutenant has since expressed that he no longer holds this perspective, and in fact has several times been written up for disciplinary hearings because of his explosive conduct toward other anti-android activists, but some habits are hard to break.

Especially when they’re coded into subroutines that predate deviancy.

It had been after another long night when Connor insisted the lieutenant was in no shape to drive. He’d driven him home as the older man slumped against the side of the car, helping him out to his front door, out of the snaw-soaked clothes and beer-stained boots, and down to his bedroom. Sumo had sniffed curiously at him—Connor had an idea of just what the dog was able to detect on the both of them and did not blame him in the slightest when he whined and went to the other side of the house.

“Ah, damn dog,” Lieutenant Anderson had grumbled, “no sense of loyalty.”

“On the contrary, Lieutenant,” Connor had said as he lowered him to the bed, “Sumo has proven that he is a loyal companion to you by allowing you to be helped to bed by a trustworthy source.”

The lieutenant had scoffed. “Trustworthy my ass, you’re the one who dragged me out of here to go and investigate a sex club.”

“And he trusted me to help you do so. You and I both know that spending your evenings with a loaded gun doesn’t lead anywhere good.”

It had been quiet after that for a moment, then a hand had landed clumsily on Connor’s face. Shocked—well, he hadn’t known it was shock, not then—Connor had accidentally let the lieutenant go too quickly and he landed hard on the bed.

“My apologies, Lieutenant, I did not mean to drop you.”

“Sure, you didn’t.” The man had rolled over and shoved his face in a pillow. “Why don’t you go fuck off to your little storage closet until you gotta drag my ass outta here again, huh? Be a good little android.”

Connor had stayed long enough to see that the man would indeed slip back to sleep in a safe way without risk of asphyxiation or ethanol poisoning before turning to close the door.

He paused, LED cycling yellow.

Technically speaking, he didn’t have a storage closet. He had a small apartment, sure, as a base for Cyberlife to keep track of him so he didn’t have to go all the way back to the tower every time, but that was hardly a storage closet. It was large enough to house him, a table, and several shelves of stable thirium for consumption and/or replacement. Not within the boundaries of what could be considered a storage closet, unless the lieutenant was referring to the exorbitant walk-in closets that frequented the upper class penthouses of downtown cities.

No, if Connor were to find a storage closet, he would find a proper one.

He wondered as he searched what it was that made him want to obey this specific order. He did not feel inclined to follow most of the lieutenant’s orders to ‘be a good little android,’ as he puts it. Indeed most of his efforts were to the exact opposite.

But this one…the lieutenant had a difficult evening, most of it at Connor’s behest. Granted, they were doing what they were supposed to do, but still…

Spraying water on him, while the fastest way to sober him up, may have been considered quite rude.

No, it was rude.

Effective, but rude.

That seemed to be a common denominator in most of Connor’s behavior toward the lieutenant.

So this once, he would be polite. It was only fair.

Software instability increased.

He shook himself out of the subroutine and continued searching for a closet. There was one closet in the kitchen, but that housed a vacuum and several cleaning products. It would not be possible to fit inside it as well, and Lieutenant Anderson would probably not appreciate all of his belongings being displaced in such a manner. So this would not do.

There was also the closet in the bedroom, but that seemed even less likely to work. For one, it would require disturbing the lieutenant again, and two, he has previously expressed that he doesn’t enjoy being surprised. An android in his closet would certainly surprise him.

So he ventured into the garage. The car was parked, perfectly straight, and there were a few other items dotted around. Several were automotive, likely bought in anticipation of their phasing out as more and more humans chose to use fully automated cars and cabs, and dog food for Sumo. In one corner, however, there was a single storage locker.

Connor walked over and opened in, LED spinning.

Current Objective: [ ] Locate Storage Closet

[ ] Rusty

[ ] Discreet Location

[ ] Chance of Discovery?

Connor turned back toward the door. Hank did not come into the garage unless it was to get to his car or to get food for Sumo, and the bag in the kitchen was still halfway full. It was unlikely that Hank would choose to leave before Connor was alerted to another case.

Current Objective: [ ] Locate Storage Closet

[ ] Rusty

[X] Discreet Location

[X] Low Chance of Discovery

The rust would be tolerable. It would not spread to him, nor would the same type of corrosion be capable of causing him damage.

Current Objective: [X] Locate Storage Closet

[X] Rusty

[X] Discreet Location

[X] Low Chance of Discovery

He opened the locker and stepped inside, shutting it behind him. He checked the mechanism from the other side, ensuring he could open and close the door from both sides, before settling in for the next foreseeable time frame.

Perhaps this would not be so bad.

It was not, in fact, and in a few hours, they were called in again. The lieutenant seemed to be in much better spirits and didn’t comment on the fact that Connor had been in his house not long after the alert had gone out.

It worked.

And, like any good subroutine, once it has been proven to work, it runs without interruption.

So whenever the lieutenant would order him to a storage closet, or to go off and be a good little android, he would go to the garage and step into the storage locker, closing it and standing there until he was to do something again.

Until the day after they went to Kamski’s.

Software instability increased.

Connor’s hands were shaking. They were not supposed to do that. They were supposed to be balanced and measured and he was not supposed to be upset. Androids didn’t feel emotions. They didn’t do that. That was not something they were programmed to do and thus they did not do it.

“Hey.”

Connor jerked his head up and looked over. Lieutenant Anderson glanced over at him again.

“You’re shaking like a leaf, kid.”

“My apologies, Lieutenant. I do not know what is wrong with my systems.”

The man huffed something that sounded approximately like damn androids and their formalities before speaking at an audible volume. “You’re upset, Connor. That’s okay.”

“Androids do not get upset.”

“Well, maybe this one does.”

The car stopped at a red light. The lieutenant sighed and turned to face him.

“You wanna talk about what just happened?” 

Something hot and uncomfortable shot through Connor’s circuits. “I am aware that I set back our mission and I failed to complete my task. I see no reason to linger on such a failure.”

“I’m not talking about that, Connor, I’m talking about what actually happened.”

“That did actually happen, Lieutenant—“

“That’s not what I’m talking about.” The light turned green and they started driving. “Why don’t you do me a favor and tell me exactly what events occurred as soon as we walked into Kamski’s pool room.”

Connor frowned, LED spinning yellow. “We walked inside. Kamski was swimming with two Chloe model androids. The third one, the one that met us at the door, helped him out of the pool and gave him a robe.”

The car turned down another street. “Then what?”

“Then we asked about deviants. Kamski answered a few of the questions, albeit rather obliquely—“

The lieutenant snorted.

“—but insisted that we would receive more useful assistance if we destr—“

Connor stopped. He did not tell his vocal processor to stop, but he stopped talking.

“Then,” came the quiet prompt, “then what?”

“He—“ Connor swallowed— “he retrieved the Chloe that had met us at the door. Explained to us that she was an android.”

“And then?”

“He…he made her kneel.”

It was a common sign of deference, of power. For the one who knelt, it meant submission, subservience. Surrender, even. But Chloe had just looked like she was there, not doing it actively out of her own choice, only because Kamski had told her to.

“Then what, Connor?”

“Kamski retrieved a firearm. From a desk by the pool. He…he gave it to me.”

His memory banks helpfully played the footage back of the gun trained on Chloe.

“He told me ‘destroy this machine, and I’ll tell you everything I know.’”

Was he speaking in his own voice? In Kamski’s? He didn’t know.

“‘O-or, spare it, if you feel it’s alive,’” he continues, not sure what it was that he was saying anymore, “‘but you’ll leave here without having learned anything from me.’”

“And what did you do, Connor?”

“I—I—“

Software instability increased.

“What did you do,” Lieutenant Anderson asked again, his voice closer, “what did you do, Connor?”

“I couldn’t shoot,” Connor mumbled, “I…I didn’t shoot her. I couldn’t.”

“That’s right. You didn’t shoot.”

Something warm touched his shoulder. He turned, noticing it was a hand. The lieutenant’s hand. He looked up. The lieutenant was looking at him with a strange expression on his face.

“You didn’t shoot,” he said again, still speaking in a quiet voice Connor had never heard him use before, “and then we left. That’s what happened, Connor.”

“But I failed.”

“You didn’t. You chose not to do something, that’s not the same as failing.”

“But we didn’t learn anything from him! We didn’t—“

“Easy, Con, you’re spinning like a light show over there.”

“What?”

Lieutenant Anderson smiled and tapped his temple. Oh. His LED.

“Look at me.”

Connor blinked.

“That’s it, you just look at me. Only at me, Con, that’s it. There you are.” He managed to hold the lieutenant’s gaze. “Good job. Just keep looking at me, okay?”

“I don’t understand what looking at you is supposed to accomplish.”

“Well,” the lieutenant drawled, “you’re panicking right now—“

“Androids don’t panic.”

“—okay, well, your LED is flashing red, then, and I need you to focus on me so we can calm you down a bit.”

“I am calm.”

The lieutenant just raised an eyebrow.

Warning: several systems compromised. Core overheating. Software instability increasing.

“O-oh.”

“Yeah, Con, it’s okay. Just keep looking at me, okay?”

Current Objective: [ ] Look at Lieutenant Anderson

“That’s it, you’re doing a good job.” He shifted in the car seat. “Now, I want you to tell me five things you can see.”

Current Objective: [ ] Look at Lieutenant Anderson

[ ] Shaving Cream

[ ] Freckle

[ ] Asymmetry

[ ] Necklace

[ ] Split Lip

“You have shaving cream just under your left ear,” Connor said, “and a freckle underneath your right nostril. Your left eye is slightly higher than your right and you’re wearing a thin cord necklace. Your lip is split.”

“Good job.” He swiped at the shaving cream and rubbed it on his jacket. “And thanks. Always miss one spot. Now, can you tell me four things you can hear?”

Current Objective: [ ] Look at Lieutenant Anderson

[ ] Car Engine

[ ] Birdsong

[ ] Wind

[ ] Hank Lieutenant Anderson’s Voice

“The car, the birds, the wind, and your voice.”

“Good. That’s really good, Con. What about smell, can you smell three things?”

Current Objective: [ ] Look at Lieutenant Anderson

[ ] Beer

[ ] Cologne

[ ] Kamski’s Pool

“I—your jacket still smells like beer,” he started, “and I can smell your cologne.”

“Good, Connor, one more thing.”

“I—I can still smell the chlorine from Kamski’s pool.” His eyes widened. “I can still smell it. From where he touched me.”

“Hey, stay with me,” the lieutenant said sharply, “come on, I need you to focus, can you do that for me?”

Current Objective: [ ] Look at Lieutenant Anderson

“Yes. Yes, I can do that.”

“Good. You’re doing a really good job, Connor, really good. We’re almost there. Can you name two things you can touch?”

Connor’s hands twitched. “My clothes and…and my coin.”

“Can you show me one of your coin tricks?”

His hands move without thinking, tossing the coin back and forth between them, over and over until he caught it between two fingers.

“Don’t tell anybody I said this,” the lieutenant said, his voice lowering even more, “but that’s really cool.”

“It is?”

“Yeah, Con, it’s cool.”

“O-oh.”

Software instability increased.

“Can you name one thing you can taste?”

Connor ran his tongue around his mouth. “Thirium.”

“Good job, Connor, you did real good. You did it.”

“What—what did I do?”

Lieutenant Anderson smiled and sat back. “You calmed down. Your LED’s yellow now, that’s better than red, isn’t it?”

Yes, yes, it was. Connor blinked and looked around. The car had been pulled over into an empty lot, parked as the snow blew by. “When did we stop?”

“A while ago. I wasn’t gonna drive with you all upset.”

Current Objective: [X] Look at Lieutenant Anderson

Connor looked back at the lieutenant. “Thank you for helping me. Crisis management is part of standard police training, and you are…you’re good at it.”

He snorted. “Well, I don’t know about that. I did pick up a few things about handling upset people, but that—that was just the senses test, Con.”

“The senses test. A grounding technique for individuals that struggle with anxiety and other distressing conditions.”

“That’s right.”

Connor looked back down at his coin, flipping it back and forth. “Outside of Kamski’s, you said you thought I did the right thing.”

“I did. I do.”

“Even though it didn’t advance our mission?” 

“Yeah, Con. I didn’t want you to kill that girl either. Not that you should’ve done it if I did,” he said quickly, “but no, I’m not upset over you not wanting to play some sick twisted game of Kamski’s.”

He clapped his shoulder.

“You don’t have to just be a good little android for people like that, okay?”

“O-okay.”

The lieutenant had nodded and the car had driven off again, but his words still looped in Connor’s memory banks. And that night, he climbed into the locker and stayed there, closing his eyes and trying to remember what it felt like to just have help calming down.

It was…nice.

He didn’t mind being a ‘good little android’ for the lieutenant.

And so it went.

Then the uprising had happened and Connor was a deviant. He didn’t have objectives and missions anymore, he just had himself. He got to decide what he wanted to do.

And when Lieutenant Anderson had asked if he needed a place to stay, well…

He wanted to go. And so he did.

Now his objectives were making sure the fridge was clean, that they had groceries, that Sumo got walked regularly and the lieutenant went to bed on time. His health was improving—slowly, there was only so much Connor could do—but he stopped drinking so much, started getting more restful sleep, and spent time out in the city showing Connor around.

But Connor still went to the locker when the lieutenant went to sleep. He didn’t know where else to go.

And then Nines.

Nines.

They had been raiding a Cyberlife warehouse. Trying to find out what else the company was hiding now that the androids were free. They’d stumbled across a massive storage container marked PROTOTYPE: DO NOT OPEN and the lieutenant had scoffed.

“That’s as good as an open invitation, isn’t it?”

But even he fell silent when they revealed an RK900, the next model in Connor’s series, who looked around as his systems came on line and then stared at Connor.

“Connor?”

Connor had stepped forward, raising his hand as the synth skin peeled back to reveal his chassis, holding it out. The RK900 had done the same, initiating a base system interface.

In hindsight, it was unclear whether it was an effect of Connor’s deviancy, the RK series’s software similarities, or an unknown feature of the RK900. Whatever it was, it was effective.

Upon retelling the story, the lieutenant snorts and ruffles Connor’s hair.

“You mean you spent two seconds holding each other’s hands and then turned to me and said you had a new baby brother.”

The RK900—Nines, as he had said when he chose his name, came home with them that evening. The lieutenant had watched fondly as Connor had showed him around, as they met Sumo, and then proceeded to ‘spoil him rotten’ with cuddles and pets until he laid on top of both of them and refused to let them move.

Nines was a good android. And he was Connor’s brother.

So when Connor went to the locker after the lieutenant went to bed, Nines had followed.

“What are you doing?”

“I spend the night in here.”

“What for?”

“I—“ Connor stopped. Why did he do that? “…I don’t know.”

Nines tilted his head, LED spinning yellow. “Is it something you used to do before you deviated?”

“Yes.” 

“Could you…stop doing it?”

“Theoretically, yes. I just—I suppose it’s habit at this point.”

“Where did it come from?”

“One night during the investigation. The lieutenant told me to be a ‘good little android’ and go back to my storage closet. I did not have one, so I thought this one would suffice. And it has.”

Nines frowned, glancing at the door back into the house. “Does he know?”

“I think so. He’s never commented on it.”

“Does he still want you to do it?”

“When I don’t have a task to perform to be useful, I perform this one.”

“Oh.” Nines’s LED spun again. “May I come in too?”

Connor had moved over and Nines had stepped in. They shut the door.

“It is small.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Neither do I.”

“Do we just…wait, then?”

“That’s what I’ve always done.”

“Okay.”

And that was that.

At night, when they had no more tasks to do, they would go into their storage locker and wait. Sometimes they would go into stasis, sometimes they wouldn’t. It was…nice.

And then one day, Nines had disappeared from the precinct around 11:35am and was nowhere to be found. The lieutenant had shouted at another officer who had been working with him, trying to find out where he was.

Connor knew.

“Lieutenant, I think I know where he is, I’m going to go find him.”

“Yeah, yeah, go for it.” He’d glared one more time before throwing himself in his desk chair. “Call me the second you find him, you hear?”

Connor had nodded and he went back to the lieutenant’s house, carefully going into the garage and knocking on the storage locker door. It had opened to reveal Nines with a bright red LED and shaking hands.

“What happened,” Connor asked quietly, stepping inside and shutting the door, “are you okay?”

“I…I was…bad,” Nines whispered, “and…and the officer told me to go away.”

“What happened,” he repeats, “can you tell me exactly what happened?” 

“We—I don’t know! I was just trying to help and do the paperwork and everything and then he—he yelled at me and said I was bad.” Nines’s hands shook harder. “I don’t know what I did wrong.”

“Shh, shh, you didn’t do anything wrong.” Connor reached out and stilled his hands. “Look at me, Nines.”

Nines had turned. “C-Connor, I want a hug.”

“Come here, then.”

He’d pulled Nines into a hug and held on in the cold and drafty storage locker. He held his brother as his shoulders shook and he sniffled into his collar.

“It’s okay, Nines,” he said softly, “you’re gonna be okay. Sometimes things happen. It’s okay.”

“I want to stay in here,” Nines whispered, “I want to stay here where it’s safe and we don’t have to go outside ever again.”

“But outside has Sumo.”

“Oh. I like Sumo.”

“I like Sumo too. He likes us back.”

“…can we go pet Sumo?”

“Yeah, let’s go pet Sumo.”

He’d texted the lieutenant on the way inside. The lieutenant had texted back, saying they could stay home, he’d be there in a few minutes. Nines crouched down and let Sumo sprawl across his lap, burying his face in the dog’s fur as Sumo let out a low growl.

“It’s okay, Sumo. We’re just a bit upset.” 

Sumo let out a low bark and settled in as Connor cuddled up to Nines’s side again.

“It’s okay,” he whispered, “you’re okay.”

They went into the locker when they had nothing else to do, and they went into the locker when they had nowhere else to go.

It was nice.

And then it became winter again.

And the locker was cold.

Snow and ice blew into the garage, chilling the metal until it was too cold to touch, blasting through the rusted holes until they had to stand with their arms wrapped around each other to stay warm. Nines had his head tucked over Connor’s shoulder, his nose buried in the crook of his neck. Connor balled his hands up in Nines’s coat and pressed their chests together to keep the thirium pumps from being exposed.

It was cold.

They each ran the calculations separately and they knew they could last the night, they just had to hold on.

Just hold on.

And that was that.

So it’s a complete surprise when Sumo starts barking inside.

“Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know. I don’t detect any intruders.”

“Maybe he’s just upset?”

They can hear the lieutenant inside, wondering why Sumo is barking up such a storm. They hear whining and the scrape of his nails against the door.

“Alright, alright, I’ll open it, calm down.” A screech as the door opens. “There, you happy?”

More whining as Sumo races into the garage, before the locker shakes and shudders as Sumo paws at it. He barks again, louder. 

“What are you doing? There’s nothing in there, what—“

Both of the androids flinch as the lieutenant yanks open the locker door, cold air flooding the inside.

“What,” he says quietly, “the fuck are you two doing?”

“Lieutenant?”

“Why,” he asks again, anger rising in his voice, “are you two out here freezing instead of being inside?”

“This is the storage locker, we’re supposed to be in here.”

“The fuck you are, what are you doing?” The lieutenant reaches in and tries to pull them out. “You’re gonna freeze to death out here, the fuck’s wrong with you?”

They refuse. Connor sets his jaw. “You told me to go back to my storage closet, Lieutenant, this is my storage closet.”

“When the fuck did I say that?”

“After the Eden Club.”

Several emotions flicker across the lieutenant’s face before he takes a deep breath. Something seems to change in him and he reaches down at pats Sumo, who has desperately been trying to get at the two brothers.

“Why don’t you just come out of there for a second,” he says quietly, “and we can talk about this? You can explain everything and I can not freeze to death out here.”

It’s true, the lieutenant’s temperature is dropping steadily. Nines glances at Connor and Connor nods, slowly letting go. Sumo whines and practically shoves them all back inside before sprawling across both frigid androids.

“Right,” the lieutenant says, sitting on the couch as Connor looks up at him, “now, after the Eden Club, you said? About a year ago?”

“Yes. We had just returned from the park and I helped you into bed.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And you told me to be a good little android and go back to my storage closet until I was useful again.”

 “And you took that as go into the old locker in my garage?”

“I…didn’t have a storage closet, Lieutenant. So I found one to go into. It was out of the way and you didn’t have to worry about it.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “And you…kept doing that?”

“Yes, Lieutenant.”

“Nines? You too?”

Nines nods. “It’s a task to perform when we have no other tasks to perform.”

“And is that where Connor found you that day when you disappeared?”

“Yes, Lieutenant.”

“You guys are killing me with that ‘lieutenant’ business,” he says quietly, “you know my name. You can use it.” 

Connor swallows as he sees Nines glance at him out of the corner of his eye.

“Hey, hey,” comes the quiet voice as Connor swallows again, “you’re spinning red again, Con, it’s okay. What’s my name?”

“Hank Anderson.”

“That’s right.” He crouches down in front of Connor. “So you can use it.”

“H-Hank?”

“Yeah, Con, that’s right.”

Hank ruffles his hair and looks over at Nines.

“You too.”

“Hank.”

“Right.” Hank groans slightly as he sits down. “Now, are you telling me that you two have been spending your nights in that old ass locker?”

They nod.

“And when you’re upset, you go there too?”

“It’s safe in there,” Nines mumbles, “I like it.”

“Me too.”

Hank stares at them for a moment before he nods. “Alright. How about a compromise: I don’t want you boys freezing out there, you want your safe place. Why don’t we move it into the other bedroom?”

They both draw back. “But that’s not out of the way.”

“You see me go in there?”

“…no.”

“Then there we go.” He stands up. “C’mon, I’m not moving that thing by myself.”

The two androids scramble up to follow him and they manage to get the locker into the spare bedroom. A cloud of dust kicks up as they open the door but the room looks…fine. It looks like a bedroom. They set the storage locker against the wall and Hank nods.

“Right. That’s better, isn’t it? Now I won’t worry that you’re freezing out there, huh?”

Connor nods. “You’re sure you won’t mind?”

“No, Connor, I don’t mind you being in here. Actually—“ Hank leans against the door jamb— “this whole room could be your storage closet.”

They both turn and stare at him.

“Not right now, not until you’re comfortable,” he says, holding out a hand, “but I don’t come in here very often and you two need more space that’s not that tiny thing. And we’re gonna have a longer talk about what being ‘useful’ and ‘having tasks’ and all that shit, but not right now.”

“We…we can have this whole room?”

“Yeah, Nines, you can.”

Nines wanders over to the bed and touches the sheets. “These are soft.”

“I bet.”

“I…I would like a hug, Hank.”

Hank smiles. “Well, come here.”

Nines almost runs over and lets Hank hug him, rubbing his back and ruffling his hair. After a few seconds, he holds his other arm out.

“Con, you too.”

“Hank, I—“

Connor doesn’t have a chance to finish before Nines is reaching out and pulling him in.

“Shit, you two are cold,” Hank grumbles, “under the covers, the both of you. Sumo!”

Sumo trots in and happily jumps up on the bed. Hank points sternly at him.

“You’re only up there because you have a job, mister. You warm these two up, you hear me?”

“Hank, I—“

“We don’t—“

Hank hears none of it, sheparding the two of them over to the bed and making sure they get under all the covers. He folds his arms and stares at them.

“Now, you’re gonna get some sleep or stasis or whatever it is you do, and you’re gonna be warm and rest, you hear me? We’ll deal with the rest of this in the morning.”

“Okay.”

“Good.” Hank adjusts the covers over each of them, making sure they’re covered, pausing when Nines sniffled. “What is it, Nines?”

“You’re a really good dad.”

Hank splutters for a moment before he shakes his head and ruffles Nines’s hair. “Go to sleep, you menaces.”

“Night, dad.”

Hank shakes his head again as he closes the door behind him.

Nines turns over to look at Connor. “I…I like this, Connor.”

“I like this too. It’s warm.”

“And soft.”

Nines looks over at the locker. “Can we stay here tonight?”

“Yeah. Yeah, let’s stay here tonight.”

Hank’s right. They’re going to have to talk about this more. But for now…

This is nice.

#dragonbabbles #detroit become human #dbh #fic

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bit-b · 1 year

Text

Anti-piracy? Anti-emulator? Anti-consumer.

Disclaimer: I am NOT a lawyer. Do not take anything in this post as legal advice.

I just saw the promotion of a thing recently. For the sake of not inadvertently advertising their crap, I will not be naming who it was and/or what the product was that they were trying to push. I will say that it had to do with video game anti-piracy and emulation.

Lemme start out by saying that I avoid emulation whenever possible. I like playing my games the way they were intended to be played, on the consoles they were made for. In fact, people who follow me could probably vouch for the kind of crazy hurdles I've jumped through to pull off certain game streams.

Also, I DO NOT in any way endorse piracy. I'm a major advocate of paying for the content that you enjoy. If people don't pay for a group's work, that group won't have money. If they don't have money, they won't be able to do more work. Even if you wanna use a game or program a decade out of print, I still feel that it's a good gesture to own that product.

THAT SAID: EMULATION IS NOT PIRACY.

I can understand the confusion. After all, there are people online that host illegal copies of ripped games. And emulators have enabled people to be able to play those illegal rips without actually owning the game. It's easy to jump to the conclusion that every use of an emulator must be bad. In actuality, the emulators themselves are not illegal.

Pretty much all emulators out there are not based on the original code of the consoles. Emulation is possible due to years of 3rd-party tinkering and reverse-engineering to make certain games run on different systems.

So if you own the game, if you have the tools to rip said game, and if you use an emulator capable of playing that game on another device, then nothing was stolen. You're just choosing to play the game in a way that makes you happy.

It only becomes illegal if you choose to post those game files online for anyone to use. Because at that point, it can be argued that you're handing the files over to people that have not payed for the privilege to play. You would be denying the devs and publishers the right to profit from their work.But again, if you're not distributing content, no illegal actions are taking place.

So it makes me sad to see people look at emulation software and say "God, why do they let these kinds of tools exist?! Don't PIRATES use this software?? How is this allowed?!?" Because it tells me that people don't consider the context and intent of the use of these tools. It's like getting upset about hammers existing because some people have used hammers for murder.

For a different example, let's imagine that someone photocopied a card game, laminated them, and played with them in their swimming pool.

Now, imagine people complaining:

"Wait, you didn't scan those cards and print new ones to make those, did you?! That's a crime!!"

"You're not supposed to play card games in the pool!! It wasn't designed for that!!"

"Aren't you worried that the card manufacturers are gonna arrest and sue you?!"

"Don't you know they MAKE waterproof cards?! Why would you skirt around their official product?!"

And I say:

If any copies were made, it was only out of necessity for the tinkering process. Copies were not distributed to other people.

Just because a thing wasn't originally designed for something doesn't mean it CAN'T. If anything, showing that it's possible to make a thing do something it normally shouldn't is kind of interesting.

How is it illegal to take something you purchased and use it in a different way? You could buy a golf club and use it as a baseball bat. Should you be penalized for that?

Even if the product-maker makes the same kind of alternate product, what's forcing a person to use the official one over their own?

Like I said. DON'T pirate. Own your games and software. But I feel like people equate tools used by pirates as piracy itself. And that's not a fair judgement.

----------------------------------------

Now, that's just the FIRST part. The second is the anti-piracy.

Like I said, devs need money. I want to support them in their profession. I want to own what they create. And I encourage everyone to pay for the things they use. But what I can't stand is this idea that software NEEDS extra anti-piracy built in. (outside of the anti-piracy measures already implemented in your game launcher) In my opinion, adding extra layers of anti-piracy does nothing but harm the end-user.

Pirates don't use software with all the security stuff built into it. They use CRACKED versions. It takes a little time for them to crack it. But once they do, they have full unlimited access.

Meanwhile, I've heard only a handful of cases where 3rd-party anti-piracy measures are removed by the developers after it's no longer necessary. This means that everyone who bought legitimate copies of the product will likely be forever locked down by these stupid extra measures. And this sends the paying customers through all sorts of hoops.

They might have to always tag a security server on startup.

They might have monitoring software running routine checks.

The processes in the background might sap precious PC resources that the end-users don't want taken up.

Depending on how the anti-piracy was implemented, it could cause stability issues for the software.

The only true benefit I've seen for 3rd-party anti-piracy is the guarantee that the devs and publishers will be making their sales during the first 2 weeks of a product's life. Even then, people have managed to crack certain anti-piracy within the first 2 days. So it's not even a full guarantee. This type of anti-piracy is completely one-sided on benefits. The customer doesn't get anything out of these security measures at all. If anything, the customer would benefit greatly from NOT having them.

----------------------------------------

I've said it several times in this rant, but I really do want to see devs and publishers get their money. Especially when they've done a great job. I've just bought 2 games that just recently ditched their anti-piracy. But that's a privilege that I rarely give.

We live in an age where new experiences and tools are being made and released every single day. And thanks to this, I have a bounty of buying options available. I can easily pass on someone's product if I don't appreciate a company's distribution tactics. And I am more than happy to miss out on a fun experience if it means dealing with less bullcrap. And the more time that passes, the less relevant your product is.

I believe adding extra anti-piracy measures will only ruin your reputation. If you don't want to be consumer-friendly, I can easily find someone else that will. And don't you DARE be surprised when an up-and-coming developer blows past you, lacking all those shareholder-appeasing anti-piracy measures that you love so dearly.

#anti piracy #emulation #video games #roms #piracy

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