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ms-demeanor · 6 months ago

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I've seen you say a few times that it's a good idea to have a password manager; could you explain why? I always feel like I'm missing something when it's mentioned because it's phrased as if there's an obvious danger that password managers protect you from, but I'm honestly not sure how they help keep passwords secure.

The obvious danger is human nature. Humans are bad at creating passwords; your passwords are almost certainly easy to guess, repeated across different accounts, or both, because that is just how the vast VAST majority of people create passwords, because humans are bad at creating passwords. Everybody knows "the rules" for creating passwords (don't use the same password on multiple websites, don't include personal details in your passwords, don't use very common words or letter or number sequences in your passwords, don't tell other people your password) and people break all of those rules anyway.

A standalone (not in-browser like firefox or chrome password manager, though those are better than nothing) password manager stores your passwords, generates complex passwords for you, and can also be used for things like storing notes on passwords (like "did I put my MFA on my email or my cellphone or an app for this password?" or "here are the made-up answers to the security questions I used for this website because I definitely didn't use real answers or answers I'd used on previous websites" or "these are the bills associated with this credit card").

With the way the current security landscape works, there are two things that are extremely important when you are creating a password:

Uniqueness

Complexity

The overwhelmingly prevalent way that people get "hacked" these days is through credential stuffing.

Let's say that your private data was revealed in the Experian breach a decade ago. It revealed your name, email address, and phone number. Now let's also say that your private data was revealed in one of the many breaches from social media sites; that one revealed your name, email address, phone number, password, and security questions.

If someone wants to try to gain access to one of your accounts - let's say your bank account - if they have your name and phone number (usually extremely easy to find online), they can cross-reference that information with data that has been revealed in previous breaches - now they've got your name and your email address (which you probably used to sign up for your online banking and have ABSOLUTELY used as your login for accounts all over the place) and at least one password that you've used somewhere.

But the thing is, they don't have one password. They have every password associated with that email address that has ever been revealed in a breach. If you go to the site haveibeenpwned.com you can enter your email and see how many times your email address has appeared in a breach. You can compare that with the number of passwords that were revealed in those breaches and you can ask yourself "what did those passwords have in common?"

Because I can tell you, my Tumblr password from 2013, my Kickstarter password from 2014, and my Disqus password from 2017 (all revealed in various breaches) probably had a lot in common.

So, now the hacker has: your name, your email (which is probably your username), and various passwords they can try to use to log in. Did you use the same password for Facebook and Twitter eight years ago? Did you use parts of that password for creating your bank password? If you heard that twitter passwords were exposed in a breach you probably changed that password, but did you change the bank password that you built on the same structure? Probably not.

So what people will do is gather up all of this information and guess. They'll try your 2017 Disqus password to see if it will get access to your bank account. They'll try your 2020 Gravatar password. They'll try your 2024 Internet Archive Password.

And the reason they do this is because it works.

And the reason that it works is because we are all fucking garbage at remembering unique, complex passwords so instead of creating actually unique, complex passwords most people pick one memorable word or phrase, one memorable number, one unusual character, and *MAYBE* one feature of the site they're creating the login for and they use that template forever (1988Tumblrmacabre!, 1988Facebookmacabre!, 1988Ticketmastermacabre!) OR they create one password that they think is complex enough and use it across multiple sites with minor tweaks ($n0h0mi$hRu13z, sn0h0mishRul13z!, $n0h0mi$hWA) as needed for the sites' password requirements.

So most of what password managers do that is a drastic security improvement over people creating and memorizing passwords is that they create passwords that are functionally impossible to guess and functionally impossible to memorize. The problem with memorizing passwords (which is what you're doing if you're creating a bunch of passwords that you type in all the time) is that you can't actually remember all that many passwords so you'll repeat those passwords. The problem with creating passwords on your own is that passwords that humans create are pretty guessable. Even if you're doing a passphrase that's a long string of words you're probably working with common words ("correct horse battery staple" as opposed to "truculent zygote onomatopoeia frangible") and your password is more guessable than you'd really want it to be. Password managers don't do that, they generate gibberish.

Perhaps you are that rare person who gets out a set of dice and a notepad and rolls up every character for your password and memorizes it and never repeats, and if that's you, you could still benefit from a password manager because a password manager makes it easier to change that unique complex password when it is inevitably revealed in a breach.

So, okay, let's check in with where we're at:

Password managers mean that you don't have to memorize your password, which means that you don't need a password that is easy to memorize, which means that they can create passwords that are extremely complex and are therefore very difficult to guess. This protects you from crackers who will try to brute force your password.

Password managers mean that you don't have to remember extremely complex passwords for every account, which means that you are less likely to repeat your password in whole or in part across multiple accounts. This protects you from credential stuffers, who will try to use your password from one account that was revealed in a breach to open other accounts that were not.

Because password managers can generate and store complex passwords essentially instantly, you can replace passwords nearly effortlessly when there is a breach (no need to 'come up with' a new password, no issues with learning or memorizing it).

There are, however, advantages beyond that.

One major, MAJOR advantage of a properly-used standalone password manager is that it makes you safer from various kinds of phishing attempts and link hijacking. When you are setting up a password in your password manager (PWM from here on), you should be on the website that you want to log in to. The PWM will give you the option to save the domain that you're logging in to. That means the PWM will remember the correct URL for your Tumblr login so when you go to the tumblr login screen in the future, it will offer to fill those fields. What it will NOT do is offer to fill those fields if someone sends you an email that spoofs tumblr support and wants you to log in at "tumblr.co" or "tumblr-support.com." Knowing this, and knowing that you should be putting your credentials in through the PWM fill option rather than copy/paste, is a GREAT way to protect against phishing that is often overlooked and definitely under-discussed.

Another advantage is that a standalone PWM will let you store secure notes with your passwords so that you can do things like keep track of recovery codes for the website, or generate gibberish answers to security questions. Security questions and answers are often revealed in breaches, can't be reset by the user as easily as a password, are repeated across websites MUCH more than passwords, and can be used to take over an account and reset the password. You shouldn't be giving real security answers, or even fake-but-repeated security answers; you should treat each of those like a password that needs to be complex and unique, which means that they need to be stored someplace (like a password manager).

I also personally use my password manager to store my car insurance information, my driver's license info, and payment details for easy entry, making it convenient for a lot of thing beyond password storage. (Bitwarden. My password manager is bitwarden. I recommend Bitwarden. go to ms-demeanor.com and search "bitwarden" to learn more.)

As to how they keep your passwords safe, aside from ensuring that you don't enter your credentials into a skimming site, a good password manager is well encrypted. Your password safe should be functionally impossible to crack and what people tend to not realize is that a proper password manager (like bitwarden) doesn't keep all your passwords in one encrypted safe, each one of your passwords is in its own encrypted safe. If someone hacks Bitwarden it's not like using a huge amount of effort breaking into a bank vault and finding a big pile of money, it's like using a huge amount of effort breaking into a bank vault and finding a big pile of bank vaults. Each password within your vault requires decryption that is functionally impossible to crack (at least with a good password manager, like bitwarden, the password manager I recommend and think that people should use).

Additionally, just as, like, a side note: password managers never accidentally leave caps lock on or forget which characters are capital or lower case and don't require the use of two hands and focused attention on the keyboard. You're never going to mistype your password if the password manager is filling it, and you would not believe the number of people we support at work who require password resets because they are typing their password wrong and don't realize it.

TL;DR:

Password managers make better passwords than you can and they make it possible to instantly create, store, and enter complex passwords, which prevents password cracking and makes people less likely to reuse passwords. They are heavily encrypted and should be functionally impossible to access, and each individual password within the manager should also be encrypted if you use a good password manager. Password managers also prevent people from entering their credentials on scam sites by only filling on matched domains. Standalone password managers (not browser password managers) also allow users to create and store unique security questions and account details to prevent bad actors from gaining access with stolen security answers. The password manager I recommend is Bitwarden.

If people used password managers to create, store, and use unique and complex passwords, and if they did regular backups of their system I think that probably about half of the InfoSec field would be out of a job.

Please use a password manager!

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tthoroughfare · 3 months ago

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some random modern!abby headcanons as i Cannot think about anything else. NSFW in the latter half spit kink asf i’m not sorry

she’s chronically offline. has social media but does not use it — her IG has one photo from 3 years ago and the only other social media she has is a facebook account she made when she was 14. her entire page is just shit her dad tags her in; photos of her he’s taken while they’re on vacation, cringey middle aged humor, the Facebook Parent works

90% of the time only uses her phone for what a phone is actually for. probably has a super old one because she doesn’t see the point in replacing it; it’s somehow in like perfect condition though

texts in perfect grammar. before you got used to it you literally thought she was mad at you all the time. hasn’t got it figured out what emojis make sense contextually because she doesn’t really use them and occasionally sends you baffling messages like:

“Got off early. Can’t wait to see you. 😬” (was rushing and thought it was a smile)

but sometimes it’s also very cute, like a grandma who just figured out how to text:

“Do you want to tag along with Manny and Nora to a concert on Saturday? The people they were supposed to go with can’t anymore. 🎶🕺🎸”

the type of gf who will get you doing the most random activities. she’s constantly trying new hobbies and always wants you to be a part of it. she’ll decide on a sunday night she wants to pick up rock climbing, have you both signed up and in the climbing gym monday

or she’ll decide on a whim she wants to take you to a restaurant someone recommended even though it’s an hour and a half drive away

med student abby is canon abby…

she really didn’t want to be a cliche and go into it just because it’s what her dad does, but she was always encouraged to excel academically and found herself naturally drifting in that direction

she makes it look easy, but it’s really not. she gets stressed about everything a lot (particularly wrestling with worries about letting her dad down, which you reiterate she couldn’t do if she tried), but doesn’t really show anyone apart from you. you always make her feel better, though, just as she does for you with your problems

grew up well-off, but isn’t a dick about it. very generous with her money, always buying you little treats and picking up the bill despite your protests. takes you on weekends away wherever possible, or a bigger vacation somewhere tropical during the summer

honestly not the best cook… she’s just used to making food for herself, which tends to be pretty plain. gym bro meals ugh. however, has one or two incredible recipes she can pull out the BAG. makes them for you when she knows you’ve had a long day

would 100% be that post of the guy who set his alarm purposefully earlier so that he could wake up and cuddle his partner before he had to actually get up. she’s normally up before you, regardless of the day or time. abby’s an early riser; she loves the morning. you always stir with a warm drink on the bedside table, and either the sound of her pottering around the apartment or a text saying something along the lines of:

“Heading to the gym. Gave you a kiss before I left but you were still clean out, LOL.”

has extremely random and rogue music taste. same with movies. you figure this out not long into knowing her, when you’re talking about favorite films and she deliberates before carefully stating that her all-time top three are flushed away, interstellar and an old foreign movie you couldn’t pronounce if you tried

speaking of — loves movies! you guys frequent the cinema, but also like to stay in and have movie nights at home. you’ll watch just about anything together, taking it in turns to choose. when you stay in, you make it a Whole Thing. all the bedding gets moved to the living room, you buy snacks, she sits and lets you meticulously paint a face mask on her

sometimes, you’ll attentively watch the whole thing. sometimes, if you get halfway through and it’s not the best, she’ll allow her fingers to trail down from their position atop your upper arm in a manner she knows you’ll pick up on. dipping under your shirt and rubbing loose, gentle circles at your hip for what feels like forever, before nudging at your jaw with her nose and planting a light kiss. you turn to meet her, eyes flitting between hers and her lips; closing the gap and smirking against her mouth, “you’re not subtle.”

blowing air out of her nose and shrugging, she brings her free hand up to the nape of your neck, deepening the kiss. it’s slow and deliberate, everything from the way she moves her lips against yours, to how she steadily shifts you on top of her. she likes to take her time with you, gets off when you have to say please

segueing into nsfw… praise kink spit kink gentle domination vers dynamic hey now

loves it when you show her how desperate you are for her, through words or otherwise. while i can’t see her being much of a talker herself (not to say that’s at all), she encourages your blathering about how good she feels, how much you need her. bonus points if you throw her name in there somewhere

should the occasion arise will absolutely put you through the mattress with the strap, but much more so an acoustic girl. two finger tongue combo diva. for her, it’s all about feeling you. how you contract around her, the little signals your body gives her she’s learned so well

to her, that’s the main point of sex. feeling as much of you as she can, feeling close to you, showing you how much she worships you. it’s filthy, yet reverent and devoted. gets a little possessive sometimes, because you’re hers and only she can have you how she does

whether it be arched up, her fingers plowing into you as she kisses her way over your upper back, hand threaded through your hair. stopping to suck a mark where your neck meets your shoulder, murmuring to ask if you can take three (she knows you can, just wants to hear you say it)

or on top of her, legs slotted together and your hand firmly bracing yourself on her knee whilst you rut against her. hearing her get slightly louder and higher pitched, revelling in the way she looks up at you, brows drawn and eyes full. shared wetness pooling and mingling, her hands all over you like she can’t decide which inch of sweat-sheened skin she wants to touch more

or after you’ve eaten her out and she’s still coming down, you running a hand over the outside of her thigh then kissing over her stomach — making your way back up to her lips, allowing her to taste herself through the sloppy, open-mouthed kiss. licking into her dirtily, running a thumb over her lower lip and softly telling her to open. abby doing as you say; always does as you say. a glob of spit falling from your mouth to hers which she accepts gladly, breathing jagged as she swallows. spurred on, dragging you back in with fervor, moving a hand to circle over your sopping clit

she’s never been like this with anyone, never wanted everything of a person so badly. she’d do anything for you, to you, let you do anything to her

while she does like it to be languid, to last, sometimes she can’t help herself. it’ll be the morning and she’ll rouse, tired eyes dragging over your form. abby shifting closer and wrapping an arm around your waist, you’ll stir a little and groan softly, bringing a hand up to cup her cheek and pivoting your head to give her a kiss. both brains still foggy, operating on basic wants, it doesn’t take long for it to turn from an innocent good morning peck to a desperate mess of tongues. then, to her mouthing at your neck, sliding her fingertips over your bare torso to knead at your breast. you’ll tilt your head back, let out a mewl of her name, before remembering it’s a weekday.

“what time is it?” you’ll ask, freezing and subconsciously trying to look at the clock.

“don’t worry, we’ve got time,” she’ll respond against your skin without missing a beat, hand making its way between your legs and coaxing a sharp exhale from you, “i’ll be quick, i promise.”

she knows you well — she certainly can be quick. still has time to make you that coffee she always does, too.

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wcters · 1 year ago

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SPECIAL GUEST

pairing: matthew sturniolo x fem!reader

word count: 2.6k

summary: y/n joins the triplets on the cut the camera podcast to talk about having a boyfriend who’s a triplet, social media, and hobby’s

warnings/contents: dirty/sexual jokes, swearing, sexual innuendos

author’s note: not a warning but thank you @whoetoshaw for some inspiration. please check her out! i will probably make another one 🤍

“Good morning campers, welcome back to the cut the camera podcast. It’s your hosts Nick Sturniolo,” Nick introduced, “Matt Sturniolo,” Matt told the camera, “and Chris Sturniolo.” The boys finished. “And we have a special guest if you couldn’t hear her laughing at us, Matt’s girlfriend, Y/n!” Nick told the camera as it showed you in your seat, smile on your face as you waved. “Happy to be here.” You spoke to the camera. It then panned to Matt sitting his his seat with his cheeks turning pink. “We had to beg her for so long to feature in one of these.” Chris laughed, shifting his hat as he spoke into the mic. “We had to buy her a box of Diet Coke.” He deadpanned. You smiled in response.

“Okay, to be fair, I’m not a social media person. I think the only social media I have and use a lot is Instagram and Facebook.” The three boys laughed as you mentioned Facebook. “It’s for family members! My grandparents have a hard time figuring out social media apps. But either way, have Tiktok but don’t even remember the last time I posted on there.” You tried to think but nothing was popping up. “That brings me into the first question,” Chris interrupts you, “what’s it like dating an “influencer” as some would call us while you just ━━ quite recently actually ━━ made your accounts public?”

“━━ before you speak,” Nick interrupted as Chris gave him an annoyed look and Matt groaned. “Here he goes.” Matt whispered into the mic. “I was just going to say she should introduce herself!” He yelled in defense as he put his hands up. “Oh shit, true.” Chris gestured to you. “Hello everyone, I am Y/n and I am a friend of the triplets and Matt’s girlfriend.” You started to introduce. “I like how she said a friend of the triplets and not just Matt’s girlfriend.” Nick laughed. “You know it babe.” You replied, laughing in your seat. “Anyway, I am nineteen. I am from Canada, and moved to LA around two ━━ three years ago? Yeah. Sorry, what was the question before?” “See, Chris? She has manners. You need to learn some.” Nick teased. “Shut the fuck up. The question was what’s it like to date an influencer?” Chris asked. Matt turned his head toward you.

“I’m not really sure what it’s like to not date an influencer since Matt was like . . . my first “real boyfriend” you could say, but I would assume it’s similar to a relationship with a non-influencer. You do the same things: dates, sleepovers, movies, etc. But he’s away sometimes,” you shrug, “when you guys went on tour, Matt was away a lot and we had to do long distance for a bit. I think it was hard for both of us ━━”

“━━ more for me.”

“━━ but it’s what happens when you date someone as famous as you guys are. I know what I was getting into, same with the social media part. I knew I would be on camera sometimes, especially because you guys vlog and other things. You guys respected my want to be off camera and I remember, Matt was so worried when we got together because we really liked each other but social media was his job, but I was fine with that! Of course I would be.”

“I was so worried,” Matt breathed out, “like I had mentioned before that I did what I do and she had mentioned that she didn’t want to be online, but when it got serious I didn’t want for this whole thing to be ruined because of what I do, you know?” “Of course,” Nick butted in, “and especially hate that she could’ve gotten ━━ no offense Y/n.” You nodded, “none at all. Completely agree.” “You would’ve felt a little scared, no?” Matt and you nodded. “I didn’t, and don’t, want her to be effected negatively from it. I mean, it’s inevitable really, but still. I couldn’t help it, still can’t, I’m her boyfriend.” “I knew what I was getting into,” you spoke, “it’s what happens in most male celebrity, youtuber fan bases. You guys get hate too sometimes.”

Chris nodded. “I think me and Nick were a bit unsure too. We had known you for awhile and we liked you. We talked to Matt about it too. Just saying like “watch out for hate,” and “support her,” and shit like that. You didn’t need any help at all.” “Like I said, I knew what I was getting into. I have friends that are dating some popular content creators and we have talked about it before. That’s how I know what to experience and how to deal with it. Thank you ━━“ there was a bleep as you said her name “━━ love you to bits.”

“What is it like to be on the podcast?” The youngest boy asked, looking at his phone and then to you. “To be honest? It feels great. I have seen this set from when it was just an idea to it actually happing and it is truly amazing to see what these boys can do.” You we’re honest, these boys had such great ideas and it felt unreal to see them come true. “Matt, you have such a nice girlfriend.” A laugh that sounded more like a giggle came out of Matt’s mouth. “Thanks. She is.” He replied, moving the mic. There was laughing around the table.

“This would’ve been super awkward if you were like “no, I hate her!”” You joked. Nick put his hand over his mouth. “I don’t know what I would do if that actually happened.” “Well good thing I’m not going to say that.” Matt spoke, looking at his girlfriend. “Thanks. What a man everyone,” you clapped your hands, “get yourself someone like this guy over here.” You pointed to him.

“Yes!” Nick yelled, clapping too. “And, there’s two other brothers . . . but one is gay. He is still available? Boys? Hit that line. And Chris’s too,” you pointed to the long-haired brother, “it’s too often he tries to get into the bed with me and Matt because he hates sleeping alone.” You whispered into the mic. The camera moved to Matt nodding and then to Chris as he started to protest. “No! You’re just over too often. Stop hogging my brother. I slept with him first ━━ wait!” He puts his hands up. You moved your hand over you mouth in shock as Matt leaned his head against the table and Nick copied your movement. “Not like that! I meant we,” pointing to Matt, him, and Nick, “had sleepovers before you did.” “Bitch, don’t bring me into this.” Nick chimed in. “Real.” You agreed.

“Let’s just move on!” Your boyfriend suggested as he lifted his arms up. “What is like dating a triplet?” He asked. “It’s not that much from dating a regular guy, apart from the fact that either one of these kids is following him everywhere ━━ mostly Chris ━━“ which earned a “what?” from the guy “━━ and sometimes I’ll like . . . steal a sweater or some sweats or something from Matt and then I’ll just be on the couch and one of the boys will come in and be like “I’ve been looking for that” and it gets confusing.” You laughed. “But besides some of those confusions, it’s like dating a guy and having two best friends that come with him.” “A package deal.” Nick agrees. You snapped your fingers at him, “yes. Exactly like that. And it’s so fun. It can get annoying, but what’s any kind of relationship if you don’t get annoyed?” “Yeah guys. I may be annoying, but you still like me.” Chris jumped in. “Yeah, sometimes I doubt that.” “Me too.” The other brothers agreed. “That was so inspiring.” Nick said. “Thank you.” You did a fake bow in your seat.

“You also help keep the house clean since you practically live over at our house.” Matt added. “I do, I do. I literally have clothes and my skincare shit at you house. And a toothbrush ━━”

“━━ And a toothbrush.” Matt said at the same time. “It’s convient for sleepovers!” Nick explained. “And also because you do just live here. There have been so many times where I’ve knocked on Matt’s door and then opened it and Matt’s just playing games while you’re chilling in his bed.” You nodded, shrugging. It was true. “Dude ━━ I have gone to wake up Matt for the day and I won’t even notice she’s there until I hear her move or some shit cause she’s all up under the blankets. Surprised you’re even under the blankets with Mr. Blanket stealer over here.” Chris points to Matt as Nick nodded his head and you laughed.

“I just tug em’ back. Or he just grabs me. This kid . . . I swear it’s like I’m never close enough.” “I just run hot you’re always cold.” Matt retaliated. “You run hot because you steal all the blankets!” Nick yelled. “I feel sorry for Chris every time you guys have to share a bed.” “Do you really though?” The boy in question asked. “. . . Not really, no. I like my blankets. Maybe you can teach him to share Y/n.” “I will certainly try.”

“And she can teach you fuckers to clean,” Matt retorted, “every time I go into your room it’s like I am walking through a morgue.” After he finished there was a “hey!” from Chris and a “that’s not true!” from Nick. “Keep me out of this.” You held your hands up in defense. “I will clean what I need to.” “She’s like a second mom.” Chris compared. “Don’t say that. That’s weird.” Matt muttered into the mic. “Yeah, this is like the same argument as the use of mommy and daddy.” Nick agreed. “Now, you just made it weird,” Chris pointed at Nick. “How about we move on so we can stop this from getting even weirder.” Matt clapped his hands.

“Yes. Next question. You watch our videos I would assume?” Nick asked. “Of course, who would I be if I didn’t?” You replied. “Period.” Chris replied. Nick gave him a side eye, “anyway . . . How do you feel that people are writing fan fiction about your boyfriend?” You covered your mouth with your hand. “What?” Matt asked, looking scared. “You guys are going to hate me for this.” You spoke. “You didn’t make one about Matt did you?” Chris joked. “No! I wasn’t that weird. But a canon event in every girls childhood ━━ and I mean every single one - was writing or at least reading fan fiction. Brittany Broski is so real for talking about it. Me? It was the guy who played in Doctor Who. The 2000s one.” “David Tennant?” “Yes. I was an avid Wattpad user. You could catch me on there every fucking day dude. I think I still have my account.”

A scream filled the room as everyone looked at Nick. “We have to find it and go through it. But . . . I still can’t believe you used Wattpad.” “Dude, ask any mentally unstable female girl and I promise you, she will tell you she did. I don’t use it anymore, but I was obsessed.” “Are the videos awkward to you because you used to write shit or no?” Chris jumped in. “A little bit. I mean, it must feel weird getting fan fiction written about anyone. But I think because I’ve been in that spot and writing it that I understand a bit more,” you admitted, “the videos are great ━━ like every video of yours is - and it’s so funny to see your reaction.” “We need to bring you sometime if you’re up for it.” Matt suggested. “Maybe?” You shrugged, dragging the word out. “It would be super funny.” Nick commented. “Oh for sure, but I don’t know if I’m ready to go back to that phase in my life.” You grimaced.

“Hashtag trauma.” Chris responded. “Please never say that again,” Nick murmured. Matt agreed with a “that was so cringey.” “Really though,” you laughed, “you get it.” Chris got up from his seat and high-fived you. “Have you guys ever read fan fiction outside of filming?” “Oh, switcharoo question. I mean, I have to check and find stories and make sure we don’t get demonetized. I don’t know about these two.” Nick answered first. “I haven’t, but I find it weird that Matt has wattpad downloaded . . . And that he asked people to send some to him.” Chris spoke. “It’s not like that!” Matt yelled, putting his face in his shirt. “Matt, honey. It’s fine.” You joked. “Oh my god.” His voice was muffled from the sweatshirt.

“Is that how you got into reading like . . . Actual books?” Nick asked you. “Not really. I’ve been a reader since I learned to read, but it probably had some effect on my reading.” You responded. “I read a lot now, too. Like if you guys are filming I’ll just hangout im Matt’s room or something and read.” “She’s always reading.” Matt said into the mic. “No actually. We could be getting picked up by Matt and this kid is in the passenger seat with a book in her hand. How can you even read in the car?” Chris blurted. “I actually don’t get car sick. I think I’ve been car sick once. I sleep in the car too. And I have the best naps in the car. It’s just something puts me to sleep. I’m not sure what.” You explain. “But yeah, I do read a good amount. I’ve got Matt to read a little too. Chris would you ever read?” “Probably not,” he answered,” just have too much going on. And no offence, but if I have time off I’m not going to sit down and read. There’s so many other things I could do.” You nodded your head, “to each their own.” “I’ll like nap or something. I feel like we’re all avid nappers.” Chris asked.

“No, totally. I love napping.” Matt answered. “Me too.” Nick agreed. “I’ll only get up if I have to.” “I’ll only get up if Y/n gets up or if Chris wakes me up. There’s not a lot that will get me up. Except if I need to pee or we have something that day.” Matt added on. “It’s true,” you nodded, “he will not let me go. And if I get up, he will get up and pull me to the couch if I’m not already on it and just lay there.” Your boyfriend nodded. “Hey, at least you have a personal pillow.” Chris added on. You nodded again. “You should by lucky? You know how many girls would want Chris to do that?” The blonde boy continued. Chris made a weird face. “Hey guys, make a fan fiction about it.” Matt looked at the camera. “No!” Chris yelled, slapping Matt’s finger that was pointing to the camera. “I’m just kidding, I don’t really care as long as they’re not super weird and gross.” “Cheers to that.” Nick agreed.

“On this note, I think we should wrap it up.” Nick announced. “That was today’s episode, it was amazing. Everyone thank Y/n for coming on the podcast.” Chris faced you, speaking into the mic. “It was an absolute pleasure. I would love to come back if you would have me.” You thanked them. “Of course. We won’t let you leave.” The blonde boy joked. “Just kidding, but still, thank you for coming on and we will see you guys next time. Bye!” Everyone waved to the different cameras before it showed you in your seat with Matt sitting next to you. “He’s secretly clingy.” You said before the camera shut off.

#emma writes #sturniolo triplets #matt sturniolo #chris sturniolo #nick sturniolo #christopher sturniolo #nicolas sturniolo #matthew sturniolo #sturniolo fanfic #sturniolo x reader #matt sturniolo x reader #x reader #x fem!reader #fanfic #imagine #cutthecamerapodcast #sturniolo #youtube

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reminiscingtonight · 10 months ago

Text

Tech Support

Alexia Putellas & Putellas!Reader (Jana Fernández x Putellas!Reader)

Word Count: 1.2k

[WOSO Masterlist]

“So I am… supposed to click this?”

Alexia’s hand is swatted away at record speed before she can make contact with the screen.

“No, this one.”

Who would’ve thought. Captain of the country. Legend of your club. The La Reina may be feared by players worldwide, but even she could be beaten by something as simple as a new phone.

The two of you have been at this for a couple hours now.

When your sister first slid the box across the table at you, your eyes nearly bulged out of your head. You didn’t even have time to thank Alexia before she crushed your dreams right then and there. What you first thought was a present for you turned out to be a resigned plea for help.

As the resident tech genius you were high in demand. Last week it was setting up your mami’s tablet. Yesterday it was fixing Olga’s laptop. And today it seems to be Alexia’s turn.

Though now that you think about it, “genius” may be a stretch. It’s not until the third time you stop yourself from throwing Alexia’s phone at her that she lets it slip that Alba was actually her first call for help. It’s no surprise to hear that your middle sister was quick to refuse, given that the last time she helped Alexia set up a phone resulted in heated words and staunch refusal to speak to one another for two weeks.

Given that she’s your club captain the loss in communication is something you can’t risk, but you’ve always thought of yourself as gifted when it comes to technology. If you could teach your mami how to use facebook without spamming her personal page with posts about you and your sisters, surely helping Alexia transfer her data and set up a new phone would not be too hard of a challenge.

Oh how you’re wrong.

Though you’re only eight years younger than Alexia, she still manages to struggle as if she’s well into her nineties.

Ask if she’s backed up her data? Might as well have told her to recite the first fifteen digits of pi.

Ask if she’s taken note of the apps she needs to redownload? Might as well have asked if she knew the secret to happiness.

Tell her to grant certain apps permissions to her phone? Might as well have told her you were transferring to Real Madrid.

Ask her to re-sign back into her multitude of accounts? Might as well have asked her to transfer to Real Madrid.

If you had known just how teeth pulling this would be, you would have left Olga to deal with Alexia herself.

Despite your clear and well-informed instructions of what to click where, which settings to enable or disable, Alexia kept bulldozing through your words, thinking she knew better.

Spoiler, she did not.

Jana’s already been by to give you some words of encouragement, but after the fifth time you quietly asked if she could make up an excuse to drag you out, she hunkered down on a nearby couch with Olga. The two of them, traitors at heart, are having a blast watching some trashy reality tv show while you struggle away with Alexia.

At this point you’re one more question away from factory resetting Alexia’s new phone, but a promise from Olga to buy you lunch and a burning desire to prove to Alba that you’re a better teacher than she is leaves you clinging to the last piece of sanity you have.

After what seems like an eternity, Alexia finally sits back from where she’s been hunched over your shoulder, poking and prodding at her phone.

“I still don’t understand why I have to set up a passcode when I could just use my fingerprint to unlock everything.”

The only word capable of describing Alexia at this moment in time is brooding. Arms crossed, face drawn in a frown, your thirty-year-old sister is brooding over your insistence at setting a passcode.

You sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose. “What if you’re at training and you need Mapi to pull up something from your phone while your hands are busy?”

Alexia huffs, smile on her face as she thinks she’s got you. “Simple, I would never trust Maria with my phone!”

“Ale!” you groan. “That’s not the point.”

She’s not wrong. The last person to mistakenly trust the blonde haired woman with their unlocked phone received the device back with fifteen added stories to their instagram account. Though that was on the tamer side of what the defender was capable of, no one’s really let her borrow their phone since.

You catch Jana’s twinkling eyes over the back of the couch as she shares a giggle with Olga.

“Okay, what if I get hurt on the pitch and you’re too busy consoling me? I’m sure Jana would appreciate being able to use your phone to call mami to let her know I’ve been hurt.”

Alexia rolls her eyes. “First, Jana already has mami’s phone number. Pretty sure she likes your girlfriend more than the both of us.”

The number of times Eli has called you just to ask if Jana would be coming over for a family dinner would be insulting if you weren’t smitten with the idea of your girlfriend having fit right into your own family. Though the two of you haven’t officially been together long, years of friendship meant Eli was more than delighted when she found out the two of you were together. It also meant she was quick to catch Jana up on any and all family events she was hosting.

“Also, that’s not a problem because mami never misses one of our games so she’d already be there!”

It’s almost as if Olga can see the steam coming out of your ears. She’s quick to walk over, rubbing you back apologetically before throwing an arm around Alexia’s shoulder.

“Would you please set one for me, amor? Sometimes I misplace my phone and yours is closer.”

It’s maddening the way Alexia instantly starts nodding like a lovesick puppy. She plucks the phone right out of your hands, swiping until she can get to the right screen.

From over Alexia’s shoulder Olga gives you a wink.

With her girlfriend wrapped tightly around her, you take your cue to exit.

Jana opens her arms wide and you enter willingly. The older girl chuckles when you instantly bury your face against her stomach, arms tightening around her legs.

“I wanna go home,” you grumble, ignoring the way you can feel the vibrations of Jana’s laughter.

“Don’t you wanna stay for lunch?”

As much as you loathe the hours wasted on Alexia, the promise of free sushi did sound pretty good. All you have in your fridge is some leftover pasta from the night before, and you’re never one to pass up free food.

“Hermanita, what’s this I’m seeing about unlocking my phone with my face?”

You stiffen.

On second thought, leftovers didn’t sound too bad.

#alexia putellas x reader #alexia putellas imagine #jana fernandez x reader #jana fernandez imagine #woso x reader #woso imagine #Ace writes

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elliestwoleftfingerss · 2 months ago

Text

marry that girl, marry her anyway - simon riley x female!reader

author's note: i was in a writing mood, so voila! (my cat was sat in my lap and i couldn't move, so i was forced to do something Imfao shush)

synopsis: you and simon make a pact to marry at thirty if you're both still single.

pairing: childhood best friend!simon riley x female!reader (use of y/n)

proofread: none.

warnings: very mild language, mentions of substance use (alcohol), suggestions to simon's past, simon and reader bestie-d so hard that they made a marriage arrangement <3

"if neither of us are married by the time we're thirty," a twelve-year-old you told simon, holding up your pinky finger in hope that he'd wrap his around yours, sealing the promise you were about to make. "we'll marry each other. you promise?"

offering you a shy smile, simon reached his hand out and used his own little finger to curl around yours. "yeah. i promise."

truth be told, you were both naive kids in the stage of growing up where you had no idea about all the up's and down's of life outside of childhood. the deal, as you saw it now, was something silly; something that you'd both look back on and think, 'how stupid were we to make a promise like that?' being it unlikely you'd actually go through with it. you'd probably forget about it in years to come.

simon moved away some time during secondary school, and you didn't get to see much of him anymore. your conversations consisted of chasing each other over facebook accounts that weren't yours, sneaking your parents' laptop into your bedroom to talk to your friend uninterrupted. you'd both spend hours talking late into the night, rubbing away sleep and prying your eyes open every time your body tried to rest.

it was strange not seeing him in school anymore; that's where you saw him the most, and that's where you'd met. a pair of young seven-year-olds, sitting on opposite sides of a rotting park bench in your crappy primary school. seven-year-old you sat silently, eating your lunch, when simon sat down on the other end of the bench. that's when you looked over at him and innocently offered him a sandwich from your pink, sparkly packed lunch box.

and the friendship just blossomed from there.

you really missed him. at times, you'd catch yourself thinking about him when you weren't talking and instead imagined him sitting right beside you, speaking to you like he'd never left at all. it was bittersweet.

the pair of you kept in contact, but it became difficult as you got older. you had more responsibilities, more reasons that pulled you away from the dream world you experienced whenever you got the opportunity to talk to him. the dream world where you could be best friends forever. but life was never like that.

as you grew up, messages were periodically exchanged. the occasional 'hey, how are you?' message here, the sporadic 'we should meet up' phone call there. it was rare that you two would actually see each other, seeing as you lived your own busy lives, but it was the thought that counted.

you were just glad that, even though he wasn't in your life as much as he once had been, he still took it in himself to check on you. that warmed your heart.

it was almost like a ritual at this point. your phone chimed, the familiar sharp ding drawing your attention. you flipped the device over and opened the notification, your thumb hovering over the screen as you read the message in front of you.

hey. i'm back in town this week, for your birthday. figured we could meet up? go for coffee?

you couldn't help the way your heart skipped a beat at simon's text. he'd remembered your birthday; and he wanted to meet up.

your fingers drifted over the digital keyboard as you thought of a reply before you started typing out a message. the tapping of your fingertips was the only noise as you read what you'd written before sending the text off.

hey,

i'm having a small get-together at my house. you should come. it'd be nice to see you again.

the green active dot floated beside his profile picture - or lack, thereof - before three small circles jumped up at the bottom of the screen to indicate that he was typing again. the phone pinged again.

count me in.

and that was the last message you received before he arrived a week later. it was a saturday evening, and some of your close family and friends were gathered in your house, drinking and chatting. you'd given simon your address, but you were yet to see him.

unbeknownst to you, he slid through the front door, greeted by a few members of your family as he slinked into the small house. as he was paused at the door, he caught sight of you fluttering between rooms, drink in hand. a small, crooked smile graced his face as he spotted you, before he was dragged back into conversation.

you escaped to the freedom of your kitchen after a long conversation with your mother, which you found yourself zoning in and out of, leaning your back against the closed door with a sigh. you forgot how tiring parties could be, especially when you were the host.

with your cup - now empty - in your other hand, you picked yourself up and walked across the kitchen to refill it. the plastic solo cup crinkled as you put it down on the kitchen island, humming a quiet, incoherent tune to yourself as you sought out a replenishment.

aha! your fingers wrapped around the neck of a two-litre bottle of lemonade, holding it to your chest as you twisted the cap. the sizzle of the evanescent beverage masked the sound of the kitchen door opening.

when you turned around to pick up your cup, you almost dropped the plastic bottle to the ground out of shock. a mountain of a bloke stood in the doorway, hands slipped into the pockets of his dark jeans as he took a few steps forward, into the light. his thick plane of chest muscle rippled beneath the tight constraints of a black polo-shirt.

"y/n," he said, that familiar manchunian accent rolling over you like a wave, encapsulating you like a warm blanket.

you stood there for a moment, a little too dumbstruck to come up with a coherent thought. of course, you could recognise that accent anywhere - tinged with a mixture of gruffness and amusement, as per usual.

you knew he'd grown up - obviously - and he joined the military. but you did not expect that.

"simon," you murmured, putting down the bottle so it wouldn't end up slipping from your suddenly-sweaty hands. "jesus christ, you look so-! i didn't recognise you!" you stuttered.

"it's nice to see you too, y/n," he chuckled, the sound deep and gruff in his throat. he strolled forward some more, his steps leisurely as he stopped at the island that separated the pair of you. he put down a card and small, wrapped box that he'd had tucked under his arm. "happy birthday."

"thanks," your gaze fell to what he'd put down on the countertop, before running back up and landing back on his face. "can i get you a drink?"

"please, love," he gave a curt nod, pulling his hands from his pockets and propping them against the edge of the island instead. the petname slipped from his lips as smooth as butter. "anything'll do."

you bent down behind your side of the counter, searching the lower cabinets for another cup. the cover also gave you the opportunity to hide the flush that had appeared on your face and neck. hoo, was it suddenly hot in here? you should open a window, y/n.

"so, the big three-oh, eh?" simon said as you popped back up with an extra cup in your hand. a lazy smirk appeared on his face as he watched you pour him a drink. "that went by quick."

"tell me about it," your eyes darted up to meet his as you tightened the cap on the plastic bottle of lemonade. "how've you been?"

simon's fingers curled around the edge of the island as he didn't let his eyes waver from you. as much as you thought he'd changed, he thought the exact same of you. "that's a loaded question," he chuckled. "mostly good. busy."

you carefully slid the mixed drink over to him. "you still with the military?"

"yup," he said with a soft sigh. "special forces."

both of your eyebrows cocked up simultaneously. "that's an achievement."

"i guess so..." he said, ever the person to avoid too much intrusion. he wasn't all that fond of talking about himself. he paused in his endeavours and picked up the cup, taking a sip before he spoke again. "enough about me; how are you?"

"good, thanks," you said simply.

you were, in all honesty, too distracted to make full conversation as you took in his appearance. the person who was once a scrawny, prepubescent boy was now a giant of a man, built like a tank as he filled in the kitchen doorway. simon riley, the kid who was built like a bean stalk and stayed the same height until he was a teenager, was now standing in your kitchen.

but he wasn't a child anymore, no. he was a man. and a massive one at that.

"what brings you back down this way?" you spoke up, your head cocking slightly to the side as your eyes ran back up to his face. and that's when you saw it. the smirk he was wearing. that god forsaken smirk, the same one that'd got you both in trouble too many times to count. it was painfully obvious that he was thinking about something, and his facial expression was an open door into his train of thought. he was stirring something up, and he was well aware that you knew. "why're you looking at me like that?"

he gave a small shrug and put his cup down on the island, letting his smirk drop to a more neutral expression. "it's your birthday, and i haven't seen you in person for... a while. i couldn't pass it up."

something in your head didn't fully believe him. as much as you loved him, you thought he had another reason to be here. he lived a busy life; surely he wouldn't come all this way for some lousy party? "is that- is that all?"

"actually, come to think of it," he hunched a little over the kitchen island as he peered down into the interesting depths of his drink. "there is something else."

you blinked at him expectantly, wondering what it was he had to say. he pushed the tip of his tongue into his cheek, choking back a small laugh. he couldn't believe he was about to bring this up.

"y'know, when we were little," those brown eyes fluttered back up to meet yours, "you made you promise me something."

he laughed a little louder this time at your expression of apparent confusion. funny. you were always so enthusiastic about the future, and now you couldn't even remember the little thing you told him, though. it wasn't so little, after all. that little promise stuck with simon, and he wasn't a man to break something like that, as much as people would take the piss out of him.

"you had me promise that i'd marry you, by the time you turned thirty," you watched as the behemoth of a man gently pushed his cup across the island, following close behind it so he could step towards you. "what'dya think of that, love?"

oh. well. you didn't expect that.

you don't know what you'd expected. it'd been nearly two decades since you told him you'd marry him. you thought he'd forgotten. heck, you'd forgotten yourself.

"i was a kid, i didn't know what the hell i was on about," you said, eyes slowly following him as he moved himself closer. "we made that promise when we were children."

"it was still a promise. it was real to you."

now that the memory was fresh in your mind, you could see it as clear as day. it was some time during break, at school, and you and simon were sitting under an overgrown willow tree at the near back of the school field - your willow tree.

the grass was green and overgrown underneath, the long, drooping branches just touching the ground. the tree was so overgrown that the grass never got it's monthly cut around the base of the tree; just lazily cut around the perimeter, and it made the perfect cushy spot to shade yourself: from the weather, from the teachers, from the other kids. it was your own little haven where you and simon hid beneath.

you'd both been sat against the trunk, staring into the mass of willow branches as you quietly unpacked your lunch. you pulled two clingfilm wrapped sandwiches from your bag, tossing one to simon. he usually came to school without lunch, which you picked up on, and it became a ritual for you to make an extra sandwich for him and stuff it in your backpack.

the sandwich hit his chest, and he huffed, murmuring a thanks as he started unwrapping it. and that's when your uncensored mouth worked before your little brain could keep up.

"i think we should get married when we grow up," you said, so casually, as if you were having a conversation over tea - well, sandwiches.

simon, who had just taken a bite of his sandwich, stopped mid chew, a bit of lettuce peeking between his lips. his head whipped over to look at you. "come again?" he cocked an eyebrow, his tongue slipping out to pull the piece of greenery into his mouth.

"i said i think we should get married," you said again, your gaze finally darting over. you snickered at his expression. "not now, obviously. when we grow up."

"where'd this idea come from?" he asked, getting over his bewilderment and biting off another bit of salad sandwich.

"dunno," your thumb came up to wipe some stray butter on your top lip, inspecting it before licking it off. "sounds kinda nice. just living with your best friend. ooh, no. we'd need at least four dogs and six cats, too."

simon laughed at your innocent delusion. you may have been close in age, just children, but he didn't really buy into ideas like that. he knew better, when he shouldn't have. they reminded him of his mother and father's marriage - once happy, once full of love, before something changed, some flip was switched. and the entire family; simon, tommy, and their mother, got the brunt of their father's uprising.

but maybe with his best friend, it wouldn't be such a bad thing. they get along just fine, and who would he be to say no to retiring to rest every night to find his bed full of dogs? he wasn't... opposed?

"okay," he swallowed down his mouthful. "but what's in it for me? you get all these animals, but what do i get?"

you thought about it as you thumbed through the layers of your sandwich. "you get to spend more time with me."

"right."

"thirty."

"thirty what?"

"if neither of us are married by the time we're thirty, we'll marry each other. you promise?" you blinked at him, holding up your free hand.

"i promise."

simon folded his arms across his chest, now stood before you. you'd backed up against the fridge, and his movements to lean on the island in front of you pulled you from your recollections.

"yeah... i guess it was... real to me," you murmured, gently shaking your head as you looked back up at him. his smirk had been replaced by a thoughtful look as he inspected you from head to toe. "but it's not that easy anymore, simon."

"of course it is. we can go, right now," he slowly took a sip of his drink before laying it down on the counter, out of the way. "what do you say, y/n?"

"i say..." your words trailed off to silence.

it sounded stupid. you couldn't just go off and marry him. you had responsibilities. you had a life. so did he. and an important one, at that. was that going to put everything else on the line? everything you'd both built? is this the whole reason he came to the party tonight?

but the line between what you needed and what you wanted were two different things. and yet, they started to blur. fading into one life where you had everything you required, and everything you desired. and what you wanted right now?

you wanted him. you needed him.

"marry me, y/n?" his voice had dropped an octave, and he'd taken a step closer to you. you watched him hopelessly, pushing your hair back from your face.

"yes," you whispered, so quietly he probably wouldn't have heard had he not been standing so close.

and with your breathless acceptance, he slammed his lips against yours.

author's note: i blatantly REFUSE to believe that this man isn't a hopeless romantic 😌💅 hope you enjoyed, me pookarinos <3

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kde-plasma-official · 2 months ago

Text

Hey guys, quick PSA on Meta and them using your data for AI training:

Since April 7 this year they have a new privacy policy in place that, if you don't opt-out, will use your:

name

user name, profile picture, description

avatar

reels

photos and their descriptions

comments

from Instagram, your

name

user name, profile picture

avatar

posts

activity in public groups, channels, on public pages

comments

reviews and posts on Facebook marketplace

from Facebook, and your

profile picture, status

avatar

descriptions of groups / channels you created and joined

any conversations you held with Meta AI

any group chats you added Meta AI to

in WhatsApp to train their Meta AI models.

This change will start on May 27th, setting the deadline to the 26th to decline to their use of data.

How do you opt out? Meta provided two opt-out forms for that:

For Facebook, fill out this form,

For Instagram there is this one,

For WhatsApp, use this link and then pick the "Data Subject Rights Form" (translation may vary). Then pick the third option. Read through the links they gave you (or don't) and at the bottom select "I want to make an objection". Then fill out with your Email address and Phone number used for WhatsApp. Pick a real E-Mail address, they get back to you. You will have to explain yourself to them. If you are from the EU and need a template try the following:

I am exercising my rights under Article 21 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to object to the processing of my personal data on the basis of legitimate interests.

I also object to the use of any of my data for AI training purposes. This includes, but is not limited to, the collection, storage, analysis, profiling, sharing, and any other form of processing of my personal data as stated in your privacy policy.

The processing under "legitimate interests" affects my fundamental rights to privacy and data protection as guaranteed under the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (Articles 7 and 8). Specifically, it impacts my right to control how and when my personal data is used, shared, and profiled without my explicit consent.

I request that you immediately cease all processing activities related to my personal data where "legitimate interests" is the basis. I request any of this data to be deleted. Furthermore, I request that you confirm in writing that these activities have been ceased and data has been deleted.

This is just thrown together in hopes that it sounds like I know my stuff. If you are not from the EU, try reading through it anyways, compare the articles stated in my template with something from your country. Usually there's always a loophole if you look hard enough.

For Facebook and Instagram you have to be logged in with an account to use these forms, but once you are logged in, you can enter any email you want to. If you have multiple accounts, click the link multiple times, one for each email address.

You just need to log in to one account, not all of them.

You don't need to provide a reason.

They should auto-accept your request and send you an Email with confirmation.

Edit: WhatsApp Link Edit edit: WhatsApp Link (again) and template I used

#whatsapp #facebook #instagram #meta ai #meta #privacy

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all-the-fish · 1 year ago

Text

Oh, you know, just the usual internet browsing experience in the year of 2024

Some links and explanations since I figured it might be useful to some people, and writing down stuff is nice.

First of all, get Firefox. Yes, it has apps for Android/iOS too. It allows more extensions and customization (except the iOS version), it tracks less, the company has a less shitty attitude about things. Currently all the other alternatives are variations of Chromium, which means no matter how degoogled they supposedly are, Google has almost a monopoly on web browsing and that's not great. Basically they can introduce extremely user unfriendly updates and there's nothing forcing them to not do it, and nowhere for people to escape to. Current examples of their suggested updates are disabling/severly limiting adblocks in June 2024, and this great suggestion to force sites to verify "web environment integrity" ("oh you don't run a version of chromium we approve, such as the one that runs working adblocks? no web for you.").

uBlockOrigin - barely needs any explanation but yes, it works. You can whitelist whatever you want to support through displaying ads. You can also easily "adblock" site elements that annoy you. "Please log in" notice that won't go away? Important news tm sidebar that gives you sensory overload? Bye.

Dark Reader - a site you use has no dark mode? Now it has. Fairly customizable, also has some basic options for visually impaired people.

SponsorBlock for YouTube - highlights/skips (you choose) sponsored bits in the videos based on user submissions, and a few other things people often skip ("pls like and subscribe!"). A bit more controversial than normal adblock since the creators get some decent money from this, but also a lot of the big sponsors are kinda scummy and offer inferior product for superior price (or try to sell you a star jpg land ownership in Scotland to become a lord), so hearing an ad for that for the 20th time is kinda annoying. But also some creators make their sponsored segments hilarious.

Privacy Badger (and Ghostery I suppose) - I'm not actually sure how needed these are with uBlock and Firefox set to block any tracking it can, but that's basically what it does. Find someone more educated on this topic than me for more info.

Https Everywhere - I... can't actually find the extension anymore, also Firefox has this as an option in its settings now, so this is probably obsolete, whoops.

Facebook Container - also comes with Firefox by default I think. Keeps FB from snooping around outside of FB. It does that a lot, even if you don't have an account.

WebP / Avif image converter - have you ever saved an image and then discovered you can't view it, because it's WebP/Avif? You can now save it as a jpg.

YouTube Search Fixer - have you noticed that youtube search has been even worse than usual lately, with inserting all those unrelated videos into your search results? This fixes that. Also has an option to force shorts to play in the normal video window.

Consent-O-Matic - automatically rejects cookies/gdpr consent forms. While automated, you might still get a second or two of flashing popups being yeeted.

XKit Rewritten - current most up to date "variation "fork" of XKit I think? Has settings in extension settings instead of an extra tumblr button. As long as you get over the new dash layout current tumblr is kinda fine tbh, so this isn't as important as in the past, but still nice. I mostly use it to hide some visual bloat and mark posts on the dash I've already seen.

YouTube NonStop - do you want to punch youtube every time it pauses a video to check if you're still there? This saves your fists.

uBlacklist - blacklists sites from your search results. Obviously has a lot of different uses, but I use it to hide ai generated stuff from image search results. Here's a site list for that.

Redirect AMP to HTML - redirects links from their amp version to the normal version. Amp link is a version of a site made faster and more accessible for phones by Bing/Google. Good in theory, but lets search engines prefer some pages to others (that don't have an amp version), and afaik takes traffic from the original page too. Here's some more reading about why it's an issue, I don't think I can make a good tl;dr on this.

Also since I used this in the tags, here's some reading about enshittification and why the current mainstream internet/services kinda suck.

#modern internet is great #enshittification #internet browsing #idk how to tag this #but i hope it will help someone #personal #question mark

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months ago

Text

Enshittification isn’t caused by venture capital

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

Many of us have left the big social media platforms; far more of us wish we could leave them; and even those of us who've escaped from Facebook/Insta and Twitter still spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to get the people we care about off of them, too.

It's lazy and easy to think that our friends who are stuck on legacy platforms run by Zuckerberg and Musk lack the self-discipline to wean themselves off of these services, or lack the perspective to understand why it's so urgent to get away from them, or that their "hacked dopamine loops" have addicted them to the zuckermusk algorithms. But if you actually listen to the people who've stayed behind, you'll learn that the main reason our friends stay on legacy platforms is that they care about the other people there more than they hate Zuck or Musk.

They rely on them because they're in a rare-disease support group; or they all coordinate their kids' little league carpools there; or that's where they stay in touch with family and friends they left behind when they emigrated; or they're customers or the audience for creative labor.

All those people might want to leave, too, but it's really hard to agree on where to go, when to go, and how to re-establish your groups when you get somewhere else. Economists call this the "collective action problem." This problem creates "switching costs" – a lot of stuff you'll have to live without if you switch from legacy platforms to new ones. The collective action problem is hard to solve and the switching costs are very high:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/29/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms/

That's why people stay behind – not because they lack perspective, or self-discipline, or because their dopamine loops have been hacked by evil techbro sorcerers who used Big Data to fashion history's first functional mind-control ray. They are locked in by real, material things.

Big Tech critics who attribute users' moral failings or platforms' technical prowess to the legacy platforms' "stickiness" are their own worst enemies. These critics have correctly identified that legacy platforms are a serious problem, but have totally failed to understand the nature of that problem or how to fix it. Thankfully, more and more critics are coming to understand that lock-in is the root of the problem, and that anti-lock-in measures like interoperability can address it.

But there's another major gap in the mainstream critique of social media. Critics of zuckermuskian media claim those services are so terrible because they're for-profit entities, capitalist enterprises hitched to the logic of extraction and profit above all else. The problem with this claim is that it doesn't explain the changes to these services. After all, the reason so many of us got on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram is because they used to be a lot of fun. They were useful. They were even great at times.

When tech critics fail to ask why good services turn bad, that failure is just as severe as the failure to ask why people stay when the services rot.

Now, the guy who ran Facebook when it was a great way to form communities and make friends and find old friends is the same guy who who has turned Facebook into a hellscape. There's very good reason to believe that Mark Zuckerberg was always a creep, and he took investment capital very early on, long before he started fucking up the service. So what gives? Did Zuck get a brain parasite that turned him evil? Did his investors get more demanding in their clamor for dividends?

If that's what you think, you need to show your working. Again, by all accounts, Zuck was a monster from day one. Zuck's investors – both the VCs who backed him early and the gigantic institutional funds whose portfolios are stuffed with Meta stock today – are not patient sorts with a reputation for going easy on entrepreneurs who leave money on the table. They've demanded every nickel since the start.

What changed? What caused Zuck to enshittify his service? And, even more importantly for those of us who care about the people locked into Facebook's walled gardens: what stopped him from enshittifying his services in the "good old days?"

At its root, enshittification is a theory about constraints. Companies pursue profit at all costs, but while you may be tempted to focus on the "at all costs" part of that formulation, you musn't neglect the "profits" part. Companies don't pursue unprofitable actions at all costs – they only pursue the plans that they judge are likely to yield profits.

When companies face real competitors, then some enshittificatory gambits are unprofitable, because they'll drive your users to competing platforms. That's why Zuckerberg bought Instagram: he had been turning the screws on Facebook users, and when Instagram came along, millions of those users decided that they hated Zuck more than they loved their friends and so they swallowed the switching costs and defected to Instagram. In an ill-advised middle-of-the-night memo to his CFO, Zuck defended spending $1b on Instagram on the grounds that it would recapture those Facebook escapees:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/29/21345723/facebook-instagram-documents-emails-mark-zuckerberg-kevin-systrom-hearing

A company that neutralizes, buys or destroys its competitors can treat its users far worse – invade their privacy, cheap out on moderation and anti-spam, etc – without losing their business. That's why Zuck's motto is "it is better to buy than to compete":

https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/zuckerberg-its-better-to-buy-than-compete-is-facebook-a-monopoly-42243

Of course, as a leftist, I know better than to count on markets as a reliable source of corporate discipline. Even more important than market discipline is government discipline, in the form of regulation. If Zuckerberg feared fines for privacy violations, or moderation failures, or illegal anticompetitive mergers, or fraudulent advertising systems that rip off publishers and advertisers, or other forms of fraud (like the "pivot to video"), he would treat his users better. But Facebook's rise to power took place during the second half of the neoliberal era, when the last shreds of regulatory muscle that survived the Reagan revolution were being devoured by GW Bush and Obama (and then Trump).

As cartels and monopolies took over our economy, most government regulators were neutered and captured. Public agencies were stripped of their powers or put in harness to attack small companies, customers, and suppliers who got in the way of monopolists' rent-extraction. That meant that as Facebook grew, Zuckerberg had less and less to fear from government enforcers who might punish him for enshittification where the markets failed to do so.

But it's worse than that, because Zuckerberg and other tech monopolists figured out how to harness "IP" law to get the government to shut down third-party technology that might help users resist enshittification. IP law is why you can't make a privacy-protecting ad-blocker for an app (and why companies are so desperate to get you to use their apps rather than the open web, and why apps are so dismally enshittified). IP law is why you can't make an alternative client that blocks algorithmic recommendations. IP law is why you can't leave Facebook for a new service and run a scraper that imports your waiting Facebook messages into a different inbox. IP law is why you can't scrape Facebook to catalog the paid political disinformation the company allows on the platform:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

IP law's growth has coincided with Facebook's ascendancy – the bigger Facebook got, the more tempting it was to interoperators who might want to plug new code into it to protect Facebook users, and the more powers Facebook had to block even the most modest improvements to its service. That meant that Facebook could enshittify even more, without worrying that it would drive users to take unilateral, permanent action that would deprive it of revenue, like blocking ads. Once ad-blocking is illegal (as it is on apps), there's no reason not to make ads as obnoxious as you want.

Of course, many Facebook employees cared about their users, and for most of the 21st century, those workers were a key asset for Facebook. Tech workers were in short supply until just a couple years ago, when the platforms started round after round of brutal layoffs – 260,000 in 2023, another 150,000+ in 2024. Facebook workers may be furious about Zuckerberg killing content moderation, but he's not worried about them quitting – not with a half-million skilled tech workers out there, hunting for jobs. Fuck 'em. Let 'em quit:

https://www.404media.co/its-total-chaos-internally-at-meta-right-now-employees-protest-zuckerbergs-anti-lgbtq-changes/

This is what changed: the collapse of market, government, and labor constraints, and IP law's criminalization of disenshittifying, interoperable add-ons. This is why Zuck, an eternal creep, is now letting his creep flag fly so proudly today. Not because he's a worse person, but because he understands that he can hurt his users and workers to benefit his shareholders without facing any consequences. Zuckerberg 2025 isn't the most evil Zuck, he's the most unconstrained Zuck.

Same goes for Twitter. I mean, obviously, there's been a change in management at Twitter – the guy who's enshittifying it today isn't the guy who enshittified it prior to last year. Musk is speedrunning the enshittification curve, and yet Twitter isn't collapsing. Why not? Because Musk is insulated from consequences for fucking up – he's got a huge cushion of wealth, he's got advertisers who are desperate to reach his users, he's got users who can't afford to leave the service, he's got IP law that he can use to block interoperators who might make it easier to migrate to a better service. He was always a greedy, sadistic asshole. Now he's an unconstrained greedy, sadistic asshole. Musk 2025 isn't a worse person than Musk 2020. He's just more free to act on his evil impulses than he was in years gone by.

These are the two factors that make services terrible: captive users, and no constraints. If your users can't leave, and if you face no consequences for making them miserable (not solely their departure to a competitor, but also fines, criminal charges, worker revolts, and guerrilla warfare with interoperators), then you have the means, motive and opportunity to turn your service into a giant pile of shit.

That's why we got Jack Welch and his acolytes when we did. There were always evil fuckers just like them hanging around, but they didn't get to run GM until Ronald Reagan took away the constraints that would have punished them for turning GE into a giant pile of shit. Every economy is forever a-crawl with parasites and monsters like these, but they don't get to burrow into the system and colonize it until policymakers create rips they can pass through.

In other words, the profit motive itself is not sufficient to cause enshittification – not even when a for-profit firm has to answer to VCs who would shut down the company or fire its leadership in the face of unsatisfactory returns. For-profit companies chase profit. The enshittifying changes to Facebook and Twitter are cruel, but the cruelty isn't the point: the point is profits. If the fines – or criminal charges – Facebook faced for invading our privacy exceeded the ad-targeting revenue it makes by doing so, it would stop spying on us. Facebook wouldn't like it. Zuck would hate it. But he'd do it, because he spies on us to make money, not because he's a voyeur.

To stop enshittification, it is not necessary to eliminate the profit motive – it is only necessary to make enshittification unprofitable.

This is not to defend capitalism. I'm not saying there's a "real capitalism" that's good, and a "crony capitalism" or "monopoly capitalism" that's bad. All flavors of capitalism harm working people and seek to shift wealth and power from the public and democratic institutions to private interests. But that doesn't change the fact that there are, indeed, different flavors of capitalism, and they have different winners and losers. Capitalists who want to sell apps on the App Store or reach customers through Facebook are technofeudalism's losers, while Apple, Facebook, Google, and other Big Tech companies are technofeudalism's great winners.

Smart leftism pays attention to these differences, because they represent the potential fault lines in capitalism's coalition. These people all call themselves capitalists, they all give money and support to political movements that seek to crush worker power and human rights – but when the platforms win, the platforms' business customers lose. They are irreconcilably on different sides of a capitalism-v-capitalism fight that is every bit as important to them as the capitalism-v-socialism fight.

I'm saying that it's good praxis to understand these divisions in capitalism, because then we can exploit those differences to make real, material gains for human thriving and worker rights. Lumping all for-profit businesses together as identical and irredeemable is bad tactics.

Legacy social media is at a turning point. Two new systems built on open standards have emerged as a credible threat to the zuckermuskian model: Mastodon (built on Activitypub) and Bluesky (built on Atproto). The former is far more mature, with a huge network of federated servers run by all different kinds of institutions, from hobbyists to corporations, and it's overseen by a nonprofit. The latter has far more users, and is a VC-backed corporate entity, and while it is hypothetically federatable, there are no Bluesky services apart from the main one that you can leave for if Bluesky starts to enshittify.

That means that Bluesky has a ton of captive users, and has the lack of constraint that characterizes the enshittified legacy platforms it has tempted tens of millions of users away from. This is not a good place to be in, because it means that if the current management choose to enshittify Bluesky, they can, and it will be profitable. It also means that the company's VCs understand that they could replace the current management and replace them with willing enshittifiers and make more money.

This is why Bluesky is in a dangerous place: not because it is backed by VCs, not because it is a for-profit entity, but because it has captive users and no constraints. It's a great party in a sealed building with no fire exits:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/14/fire-exits/#graceful-failure-modes

Last week, I endorsed a project called Free Our Feeds, whose goals include hacking some fire exits into Bluesky by force majeure – that is, independently standing up an alternative Bluesky server that people can retreat to if Bluesky management changes, or has a change of heart:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/14/contesting-popularity/#everybody-samba

For some Mastodon users, Free Our Feeds is dead on arrival – why bother trying to make a for-profit project safer for its users when Mastodon is a perfectly good nonprofit alternative? Why waste millions developing a standalone Bluesky server rather than spending that money improving things in the Fediverse.

I believe strongly in improving the Fediverse, and I believe in adding the long-overdue federation to Bluesky. That's because my goal isn't the success of the Fediverse – it's the defeat of enshtitification. My answer to "why spend money fixing Bluesky?" is "why leave 20 million people at risk of enshittification when we could not only make them safe, but also create the toolchain to allow many, many organizations to operate a whole federation of Bluesky servers?" If you care about a better internet – and not just the Fediverse – then you should share this goal, too.

Many of the Fediverse's servers are operated by for-profit entities, after all. One of the Fediverse's largest servers (Threads) is owned by Meta. Threads users who feel the bite of Zuckerberg's decision to encourage homophobic, xenophobic and transphobic hate speech will find it easy to escape from Threads: they can set up on any Fediverse server that is federated with Threads and they'll be able to maintain their connections with everyone who stays behind.

The existence of for-profit servers in the Fediverse does not ruin the Fediverse (though I wouldn't personally use one of them). The fact that multiple neo-Nazi groups run their own Mastodon servers does not ruin the Fediverse (though I certainly won't use their servers). Not even the fact that Donald Trump's Truth Social is a Mastodon server does anything to ruin the Fediverse (not using that one, either).

This is the strength of federated, federatable social media – it disciplines enshittifiers by lowering switching costs, and if enshittifiers persist, it makes it easy for users to escape unshitted, because they don't have to solve the collective action problem. Any user can go to any server at any time and stay in touch with everyone else.

Mastodon was born free: free code, with free federation as a priority. Bluesky was not: it was born within a for-profit public benefit corporation whose charter offers some defenses against enshittification, but lacks the most decisive one: the federation that would let users escape should escape become necessary.

The fact that Mastodon was born free is quite unusual in the annals of the fight for a free internet. Most of the internet was born proprietary and had freedom foisted upon it. Unix was born within Bell Labs, property of the convicted monopolist AT&T. The GNU/Linux project set it free.

SMB was born proprietary within corporate walls of Microsoft, another corporate monopolist. SAMBA set it free.

The Office file formats were also born proprietary within Microsoft's walled garden: they were set free by hacker-activists who fought through a thick bureaucratic morass and Microsoft fuckery (including literally refusing to allow chairs to be set for advocates for Open Document Format) to give us formats that underlie everything from LibreOffice to Google Docs, Office365 to your web browser.

There is nothing unusual, in other words, about hacking freedom into something that is proprietary or just insufficiently free. That's totally normal. It's how we got almost everything great about computers.

Mastodon's progenitors should be praised for ensuring their creation was born free – but the fact that Bluesky isn't free enough is no reason to turn our back on it. Our response to anything that locks in the people we care about must be to shatter those locks, not abandon the people bound by the locks because they didn't heed to our warnings.

Audre Lorde is far smarter than me, but when she wrote that "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house," she was wrong. There is no toolset better suited to conduct an orderly dismantling of a structure than the tools that built it. You can be sure it'll have all the right screwdriver bits, wrenches, hexkeys and sockets.

Bluesky is fine. It has features I significantly prefer to Mastodon's equivalent. Composable moderation is amazing, both a technical triumph and a triumph of human-centered design:

https://bsky.social/about/blog/4-13-2023-moderation

I hope Mastodon adopts those features. If someone starts a project to copy all of Bluesky's best features over to Mastodon, I'll put my name to the crowdfunding campaign in a second.

But Mastodon has one feature that Bluesky sorely lacks – the federation that imposes antienshittificatory discipline on companies and offers an enshittification fire-exit for users if the discipline fails. It's long past time that someone copied that feature over to Bluesky.

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

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

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/20/capitalist-unrealism/#praxis

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