#how-to terms of service

[nyyyxmidnight]

Outside of the already brought-up, excellent point that popups are garbage accessibility and user experience that most people block or click confirm to get rid of without even glancing at the text;

people don't even read the contracts they sign on paper for loans, cars, houses, credit cards, etc., that involve real-life money and consequences, and you think somehow that a website on the Internet can force people to read its ToS? On the "This Website Is Specifically For Reading" website? Naw. Never happening.

I also wanna point this out:

How much of that expensive server space is occupied by bullshit that doesn't belong on an archive for fanworks?

Server space is dirt cheap. Bandwidth is expensive. If no one is looking at the irrelevant non-fanwork posted, they cost pretty much nothing.

I don't pretend I know the solution to make people actually read the ToS. Bigger, more important websites have failed and keep failing at making people read their ToS/privacy policy/acceptable use policy every day, and they will keep failing at it in the future. I just don't think it's the dire problem you portray it as for AO3.

(Also, personal rant: yeah sure reading ToSes is boring and a chore but fucking hell if you're gonna create an account on a website and use it, reading the ToS is the least you can fucking do!!! Ignorance of the law is not a valid argument!!!)

January 2025 Newsletter, Volume 196

In January's newsletter, Policy & Abuse at AO3 made a pie chart of the tickets they received in 2024, Open Doors completed many archive imports, and Communications and Fanlore prepared for International Fanworks Day 2025 (IFD)! Read more at: https://otw-news.org/ycknh4n3

[dapper-lil-arts]

If Scitwi had Whatsapp 🤔

[chubbychiquita]

i want to return to my carefree roots in 2025, permastoned, softening, playing video games, in a manageable amount of credit card debt to uber eats, sharing fun facts about survival cannibalism and the american revolution

[anti-ao3]

if you still donate to ao3 even though:

ao3 censors any support for palestine

they barely improve the website despite surpassing their donation goals every single time

they do not see anything wrong with RPF that sexualizes REAL minors

they excuse racist fanworks, they actually suspend anyone who does not feel comfortable with pedo/incest shippers, or literally anyone who labels themselves antis or anti p/roships

they also don't see anything wrong with ai generated stories that most likely steal from real writers that put their heart and soul into their works

and perhaps a lot more things they do that i might be forgetting

seriously.

if you get mad at marginalized ppl calling out ao3, and you act entitled when your fandom interests are being threatened, then you're a privileged asshole. if you call everyone "puritans" or "stupid kids" for being critical of ao3, you're a privileged asshole. this is not about you. this is about the actual harm ao3 does to real people. your favorite fanfictions should not be your priority. especially if you want to keep supporting palestine or people of color in general, you can't just get mad when they point out the flaws of ao3 and stop supporting them when they're not convenient to you.

[burntblueberrywaffles]

Anyways in case you’re not aware ITS AGAINST THE AO3 TERMS OF SERVICE TO MONETIZE YOUR WORK.

If you take commissions that’s your business but you can NOT mention it on ao3 or link any commercial website!!!

[qoldenskies]

Hi so I'm binging all of Canary Continuity-

yes it's 00:30 but fuck it we ball

Anyhoo! Slightly dark note but Donnie is... relatable, with the apologizing. I always feel like I need to apologize for every little thing, especially since I complain about little (yet understandable, tbh) things a lot. And the way you wrote him, with the fact that he has a spreadsheet for keeping track of any social blunders, just sort of clicks, in a way. Like, I can understand the way he's feeling (obviously not... later on, but y'know. With the need to apologize for everything because of the crime of existing and taking up space)

Ok I think I've rambled enough about the unfortunate connectability so onto the real point of this ask! LAJFKLSDJFLKDSJFKLDSAJLAKJFDKSFJKLCJKDS IT'S SO DAMN GOOD

YOUR WRITING? HOLY SHIT! CHEF'S KISS. SWEET UBE WAFFLES THIS IS AN INCREDIBLE FIC (SERIES).

-🌌

fellow "i need to apologize for Everything even when it's barely obtrusive or a problem like at all" neurodivergents rise up,, it was a huge issue of mine when i was way younger LOL

anyways thank you very much <3333 mwah mwah mwah

[dancingplague]

Fun fact, this is true in the sense that AO3 does not host anything but text, but it implies that you cannot embed a text adventure and have it be interactive on the work page, and that is *not* true, you can, it's just tricky.

The trick here is that AO3 lets you embed media from archive.org and archive.org has an in-browser MS-DOS emulator. As far as I know, I am the only person who has ever taken advantage of this, for an extremely simple little experiment game that I am still fond of.

Now the tricky part is that this is an MS-DOS emulator. So you can't just upload your z-code file and expect it to run. Instead you have to, uh. Well. You have to.

Okay if I'm being honest I forget how I did this part. It was March of 2022 which was the worst of what was in retrospect clearly post concussion syndrome, I only very vaguely remember doing this project and I didn't write it down. I think I must have found some way to convert the z-code file because I definitely wrote the game in Inform 7. The game does run though! You can type commands into the emulator from the AO3 work directly! As long as you are not using firefox. I do not necessarily recommend following these steps especially the part where you get a mild head injury and don't write anything down

[seaofreverie]

Feeling so thankful for this series of MAD! lyric videos today, because thanks to it I won't have to use the unimaginative names of "wild synth break 1" and "wild synth break 2" when refering to these parts of the song in my album review, but rather their true & official names: [unsettling synthesiser noises] and [heavenly choir + metallic chugging], respectively

[avrorean]

"Adobe employee here! Instead of looking through all the fine print in our ToS, let acrobat ai(our product) summarize it for you :)"

[kittygawa--jr]

girl who has so many thoughts and opinions about the new randy bullshit but is definitely not politically or socially read enough to make them

[autisticaradiamegido]

day 26

someday if i can figure out how the hell people get these things made i would like to do some little destiny & malice acrylic charms. i think those are so fun. and while i mostly want them for Myself i figure that if i DID figure out the process, i should maybe open up the option to anyone else that might want them, soooo...

informal poll: if i figure out how all that works, would any of y'all be into that, and approximately how many of you?

[itsybitsybatsyspider]

Deleted Adobe Photoshop (which bums me out because i felt like i was really getting the hang of it. Booo to their new terms of service) and downloaded Clip Studio Paint instead!

Probably gonna try out some sketches tomorrow to get comfortable using it!

back at it again with the new drawing platform learning curve. yyyyaayyyy

[vulturevanity]

Youtube keeps randomly hiding my comments and replies for no reason, I don't know how to work around that because none of the comments that get hidden have anything in common (I'm not "spamming", I'm not swearing, I'm not using "ad-unfriendly words", I'm not talking about any "ad-unfriendly subjects", the videos I'm commenting on are completely tame, the people I'm replying to aren't spamming or bots) and at this point I'm just assuming comments are straight-up broken because of that.

[000marie198]

I hate it here

Nobody even overviews, let alone reads, the TOS or privacy policy of any new app or account or site.

Bruh, this thing you insistently recommended to everyone you know has spyware which mines and transfers your personal info, did you even stop to think for a moment

[trans-axolotl]

What is harm reduction outreach? I saw you mention it in a post.

Sure!

So I do outreach through an org in my city that provides harm reduction services to people who use drugs and sex workers. We have specific areas of the city that we go to on specific days, and also do deliveries. We also do at least one overnight shift a week to be able to better provide services to sex workers. For outreach, we hand out safer use supplies including needles, sharps bins, tourniquets, cookers, sterile water, stems, Narcan, fentanyl test strips, condoms, lube, bad date sheets, wound care supplies, food, water, etc. We also try to help provide people referrals to services like HIV and Hep C care, share what resources in the city are trans friendly and how to navigate social services with the least bullshit, and also provide peer support and harm reduction education to help people have all the information they need to make choices, and help reduce risk.

It's really important to us that we are not acting like exploitative nonprofits that come in, hoard resources, and expect people to be grateful. outreach is pretty much done entirely by people who are also drug users and sex workers. We are also really involved in local advocacy--we participate in a decriminalization campaign, a drug users union, and a sex work advocacy coalition. and i think nonprofits and government attempts to coopt harm reduction are so fucked up and actively harmful--you can't do harm reduction without also fighting to abolish the oppressive systems that are targeting drug users and sex workers. we have a lot of ties to the community that we're doing harm reduction in--for most of us it just is our community + neighborhoods lmao, and we make sure that we're always getting feedback, respecting autonomy and consent, and building mutual relationships. we've been around for a while and do have a lot of community trust, but we always want to be making sure we're respecting what people want and need instead of coming in with ideas about what services + supplies they want.

anyway. harm reduction is so fucking important to me and it's not just like, something i do to like, build my resume or to try to "save people." i'm a former sex worker and when i first started doing sex work, i didn't have any information, community, or access to anything that would have helped me to be able to work safer. it fucked me up pretty bad and i survived a lot of violence. i wish so fucking badly i had all those things, and it's super important to me to try to build community, care for each other, resist fucked up systems and protect each other.

[dickie-braindamage]

if i was ever (god forbid) getting fucked by a cis guy the thought of faking it wouldn’t even cross my mind. complete straight face. silence. however. make no mistake. if i’m fucking with a strap on you best believe i’ll be panting and moaning and if you’re just using me as a dildo i’ll be whining and begging you to let me cum in you. i will fully commit to the fantasy and that is a THREAT