#it was right up there with having to say 'csam attacks' to get them to take my compartmentalization of information concerns seriously

[runawaymarbles]

The midjourney stuff just reminds of when we were trying to find a new platform to host the ao3 donation form, and companies kept trying to tell me about all their "ai" features that would track donor engagement, and figure out the optimal pattern to email individual donors asking for follow up donations, and all the ways they suggest we manipulate people into staying on our websites. It was a great way to filter out who either wasn't listening to us when we described our ethics and donor base, or just didn't believe us.

Now granted ao3 is a unique case based on a) the amount of page views we get in any given time period and b) the fact that most donors absolutely do Not want to be identified as such anywhere, (the default "list of recent donors" module got nuked Immediately) but it surprised me some that the concept of "donors who value their privacy and would be furious at even the whiff of AI" is unique. Some of us really are just existing in different worlds.

[decepti-thots]

I had no idea that anything was actually happening with otw but thank you I see this as a sign to start downloading all my fav fics lol

On reflection, I suppose I did make that comment offhandedly without thinking that many people have no idea what I'm talking about- it concerns stuff I suppose falls into that "if you're in circles that know it seems obvious, if not you have no idea it exists" valley.

I should probably clarify that that post wasn't me talking about some imminent risk of AO3 as a platform imploding or disappearing or anything, and nobody needs to start panicking in that regard. I was referring to the current boiling over of a lot of very long term (like, back to when it was founded) institutional/structural/operational issues within the OTW as an org that have been coming out over the past week or so. So me looking at being less solely reliant on AO3 was more a matter of longterm "seems a good idea not to be on just this one platform having these issues" planning and not anything anyone needs to be worried about like, right now.

...and because I know folks not as familiar with this same longterm stuff WILL ask, I'll put a brief summary below the cut for if any of you are curious. However, please be aware, this discussion will by necessity include reference to an incident last year in which OTW volunteers were sent CSEM/CSAM materials as part of a horrendous targeted campaign; while nothing graphic regarding CSA itself is discussed, I mention it here for post filtering and general warning purposes.

So these past couple of months there has been a sustained fan organizing action going on under the name #endOTWracism, which is a specific, targeted attempt at pushing for the OTW to make good on promises they made in 2020 to look at improving their response to racism on their platform. There's an FAQ covering the scope of the action (which ended yesterday, and ran through May) here.

I've been following this with very great interest and it's brought a lot of really good focused discussion out in fan communities, bringing back up a lot of talking points which have historically been shouted down re: the OTW and its poor (one might say "nearly entirely negligent") response to racism in fandom over the span of its existence, and the long standing attempts to get them to address this.

Anyway, one of the posts I especially was recommended that looked at it from the perspective of someone with experience in volunteering and organizing was this post, which takes a look specifically at the issues of how the OTW is structured as an org in a practical, real-world sense. I think it's a great post that brings a really good, grounded approach to the whole issue, looking not just at the big ideas but at how to really run a functioning organisation in a way that is able to be e.g. antiracist. A post like that of course brought in a lot of discussion of... how the OTW is structured and functions day-to-day! That being the topic at hand, and folks wanting to bring their own experiences to the table.

Which, both on that post itself and elsewhere, has uh. Brought some stuff to light that makes even the most hardcore OTW skeptic look like maybe they were overly optimistic. To be quite honest

Some highlights:

Last year, there was a horrendous attack in which OTW volunteers were directly emailed and bombarded with high volumes of CSEM. This was of course horrifically traumatising and scary, and even at the time it was noted that the OTW's response to this was wildly negligent in terms of taking action to safeguard and help their volunteers. Well, it turns out that a) this was an escalation of preexisting issues that the OTW knew about and failed to reasonably address, b) they took a HIDEOUSLY unethical approach to how CSEM distribution attempts were moderated on the platform and just dumped it on one unsupported volunteer who was left horribly burned out by the experience. This post has a good summary and roundup. The fallout from this entire debacle is way too much for me to summarize in full but suffice to say: folks are thinking maybe people should consider not continuing to volunteer for an org that is this unethical and exploitative towards its workforce in a way that directly puts that at serious risk! This is a standpoint I would agree with given there's seemingly also been internal retaliation against the person speaking out! This is terrible! I feel so bad for all these poor volunteers! I have been reading about and fuming regards this situation for two days now and it truly is awful.

There has recently been an instance in which Chinese OTW volunteers got hung out to dry regards their specific work with OTW on Weibo, where it was made clear to them that the org really wasn't interested in any of the work they were doing to engage with and support specifically Chinese fandom. Basically, "we don't really think this is worth doing, and noone involved in the board etc even speaks Chinese, so whatever". This follows an observed and longstanding pattern of higher ups at the OTW undervaluing... basically anyone who isn't part of Western anglophone fandom.

In general, just a LOT of current and past OTW volunteers talking on various platforms about the sheer dysfunction that means things at OTW are deeply incapable of getting basic shit done at best and straight up chew well meaning volunteers up and spit them out at worst. This is basically the nth round of this exact cycle since the OTW began, but in conjunction with the above, it seems to be getting a lot more attention than such things usually do.

This is only some of the stuff that's going on right now but basically, every single issue of internal bullshit the OTW has been accruing as an org for the past ~15 years seems to be blowing up at once, and it's really the first time I've considered that this time it might, in the long run, have a serious impact on the viability of the org in the future. (As things stand: it absolutely should do, because any org that so comprehensively fails the human beings working for it in such an immediate, real life sense needs to make huge immediate changes or fuck right off tbh.)

So that's a bad summary of... SOME of the stuff going on right now. It's a lot. Needless to say.

I wanted to make this post for a couple reasons. One: many folks came into fandom well after the AO3 was just this... site that was there, used by default, and which just sort of operates and you don't think about how. Which is understandable. A person coming into fandom in a post-AO3 world will see the site the same way one sees Twitter or Tumblr or Wattpad; a thing too big and too... default to really concern yourself with the details of how it came to be so big, and used by default. I, personally, have been in online spaces since I was very young, and AO3 launched when I was around sixteen, many years into my experiences with the fandom spaces it came out of. I was around at the time that the OTW and AO3 were proposed, developed and began to expand in scope. I was in circles where folks were talking about this stuff in a very direct way, basically. So I think I have a decent enough sense of context to help lift that veil a little for folks who have no such advantage, and also to help highlight that these are issues years and years in the making, not sudden revelations as they sometimes seem.

Two, because I expect to see many, many folks trying to pass this off as "discourse" or "wank" or "purity culture" in the coming weeks as the fallout continues, and I want dig my ankles in and say if you try that shit on with me I will laugh you off my blog. I think this post makes my opinion fairly clear on where I draw the line between "dumb fandom wank" and "this is not dumb fandom wank, this is serious shit"; it is well before this stuff. So.

tl;dr: I don't know what the OTW will look like in a year or two or five, and this shit has reminded me I shouldn't bank on pretending I do. So, I'm mirroring stuff elsewhere, not because I think the org will collapse, but because maybe the centralization of fandom is overall bad, actually. I encourage folks to consider their own feelings on the topic, since this is as good a reason as any to consider for yourself how you feel about this stuff.

[qqueenofhades]

I've been hearing some deeply worrying things about 4 surveillance/censorship bills: https:// www.badinternetbills .com/

From what I've been able to gather online, these bills (the Kids Online Safety Act, EARN IT Act, STOP CSAM Act and RESTRICT Act) all proclaims to be about protecting children online, but the evidence I've seen from various articles highlights that they all share the same serious flaws of being too overly broad and vague, with various stipulations and elements that would actually not only fail to protect children, but also outright lead to incredibly invasive censorship.

There's even been an explicit admission from far right wing groups like the Heritage Foundation and the Family Research Council that they actively plan to use the first bill (and likely the others) to silence LGBT media online.

They outright stated as such here:

https:// www.heritage.org /gender/commentary/how-big-tech-turns-kids-trans

https:// twitter.com /ButNotTheCity/status/1661560827164471296

The first two are supported by a religious fundamentalist group who used to go by Morality in Media.

And the first three bills have massive bipartisan support, with EARN IT and STOP CSAM already on the calendar to be heard in the Senate, and significant celebrity support for the first bill.

IIRC, SESTA/FOSTA also had similar results akin to KOSA, and that turned out to be a disaster.

...I can't help but be extremely worried, because any reaction to these bills has been lukewarm and lacking, with barely any significant pushback.

Basically yeah, this is what I mean when I say that regulating social media is currently almost impossible in a useful and productive way. Both left and right will talk about "protecting children online," which in my opinion is a bullshit metric anyway because it's a) so wildly unspecific and b) usually means OH NO A CHILD MIGHT SEE TITTIES moral panic, rather than actually addressing the violent extremist/far right/Nazi/other types of terrorist content that is far more of a threat. The right wing wants to use it to demonize LGBTQ content, because that's their goal with literally everything right now. The left is caught between a rock and a hard place where they want to regulate and/or punish Big Tech for all that casual democracy-destroying-for-profit that they've been doing, but haven't figured out how to apply that effectively, get it passed, or otherwise achieve the desired results. So they end up signing onto these vague "Protect The Children" acts which are extremely vulnerable to being manipulated by bad actors (and are often deliberately designed by said bad actors in the first place) to look like they're addressing the problem. Which they're not. They're not getting at the tech oligarchs who actually control these platforms, they're not putting in meaningful safeguards, they're just thinking that requiring individuals to submit age verification for porn sites or whatever is somehow going to fix this. Which. It will not.

The good news here is that every few years there's a lot of alarm about some bill that's going to Break The Internet As We Know It, and while we obviously need to pay attention to those and keep abreast of what's going on, that has not actually happened yet and even fucking nightmare-city SCOTUS recently declined to dismantle or otherwise significantly overhaul Section 230, which would have opened the door to all kinds of micromanaging/policing/bad-faith lawsuits from people who scream about "Free Speech!!!" and then want to destroy it for everyone who is not them. So yes, obviously, continue to exercise your rights, contact your representatives, make sure people know what is at stake etc -- but there are good people working on this, such as the Wikipedia foundation and others, who have been battling literal DECADES of attacks on the open web and have been in this fight for the long haul. They'll be in it for this one too, so if you're exceptionally worried, I would advise you to look into foundations/organizations working on this. They have a whole lot of structure and experience, I'm sure they would welcome volunteers, and you can join the effort that's already underway, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel and build an opposition movement from scratch. So yeah.

[sorryyourenglishteachersucked]

The thing about how modern fandom has organized into a war between "antis" and "proshippers" is that...there are so many things that are WAY bigger than fandom wank wrapped up in this, and it is terrifying how all of this gets reduced into ultimately meaningless wank about which fictional dolls should kiss.

Let me ask you a couple of questions:

When you say "antis DNI", do you mean "antis" as in people who claim to be "protecting fandom" with their ship policing but have only ever gone after ONE het ship en masse for SOME ~inexplicable~ reason, assume their (mostly queer) peers are sexual predators by default and have to be trained out of predation and that many of us can be corrupted at the drop of a hat, see a fan space that isn't designated for them and assume it must be so closed off to harbor child abusers, hear "sexual expression" in largely queer spaces and immediately think "PEDOPHILIA AND INCEST!!" with absolutely no critical thought, are content to throw really heavy violent criminal accusations at largely marginalized people over flimsy-at-best evidence (and yes, finding entertainment value in the fictional dynamic between two people with an age gap that may be questionable irl IS flimsy at best), think that fandom will somehow manage to promote incestuous abuse even after Game of Thrones failed to do so despite having a much larger audience and having framed its questionable content as being ~there for realism~; and instead of just Disliking things, insist on finding reasons that no one can possibly like it without being A Horrible Person, often while arguing that questionable content in their own preferred media is Totally Fine IRL Actually and in the MOST extreme cases, actually seeking out real CSAM to weaponize against the targets of their ire?

Or do you mean people who dare to acknowledge that hey, there's a lot of irresponsible-at-best marketing and framing in mass media, like how rich and famous writers and directors insist on including gratuitous graphic sexual violence and excluding POC for "historical accuracy" in fantasy settings with dragons and shit, and a lot of racism and other really questionable shit in fandom, the fact that fandom is mostly composed of marginalized people does NOT make this okay, and hmm, maybe we need to criticize that and find a way to reduce it?

When you say "proshippers DNI", do you mean "proshippers" as in self-righteous edgelords who treat anyone setting a boundary about potentially triggering content in their own fan space as a personal attack, cannot hear criticism of their favorite thing without screaming "CENSORSHIP!" just like any right-wing chud but veiled in the language of social justice, defend hate speech and symbols in fan spaces in the name of "protecting freedom of expression" (at least as long as the hate is not aimed at them); turn edgy fanfiction into the golden calf of queer liberation such that it is not just an EXAMPLE of queer media that is often disproportionately attacked, but THE be-all and end-all of queer rights, make openly hating children and infantilizing teenagers into a cornerstone of their public-facing personalities and act like random rude 14-year olds on the internet are a bigger threat to queer expression than SESTA/FOSTA and payment processor cutoffs; deliberately chase children out of fandoms of media for children, and often create content with the primary motive of upsetting as many people as possible more than actually enjoying it themselves?

Or do you mean people who recognize that designating spaces for freedom of expression, including sexual expression, is really, really important especially for the historically marginalized groups that created the framework of transformative fandom culture; that there will ALWAYS be people who want to explore darker subject matter in fiction and coming up with tools to make that safer for all involved is a more beneficial AND more practical endeavor than banning most "bad" content outright; and that broadening the definition of "pedophilia" (which, yes, the former definition of "antis" ARE very much doing - here's a hint: for just one example, no matter the age gap, a relationship between two adults will NEVER be pedophilia, ever) and assuming it MUST be at the root of any "deviant" sexual expression has a long and bloody queerphobic history and it's REALLY FUCKING ALARMING how that mentality, right down to "freak" as the peak insult, has been so thoroughly introduced into a microcosm that is mostly composed of queer and otherwise marginalized people just by disguising it in the language of social justice?

Because, idk about you, but I don't want either of the former definitions up in my shit, but the latter? The latter positions can and should coexist.

We should be criticizing how entertainment juggernauts abuse their power and reach to keep society venerating people who look and act like their CEOs above all else, we should be criticizing the way "conventional" (read: "slap a bikini model on the ad and frame her as the product") sex appeal is treated as a necessity for marketing anything to adults, and we should be criticizing how often taboo fetishism is marketed by multi-billion dollar companies to the demographics most likely to be desperate enough to forget that some taboos exist for a damned good reason (i.e., lonely straight men with disposable income) just because that might give them a better quarterly report!

We should also be criticizing the wave of "LGBT-positive" thinly-veiled conservatism that's popping up in line with rainbow capitalism and teaching people how to recognize that just because someone can speak the language of progressivism and social justice, that doesn't necessarily mean their values have the best interest of marginalized people other than themself at heart.

The fact that this near-inevitably ends up spiraling into a highly polarized screaming match, occasionally touching on the bigger picture but only briefly before circling back to what is still EXTREMELY niche drama is...disheartening to say the least, because these are very real issues with way bigger implications than just ship wars. Bigotry making excuses for itself (the eagerness to call a ship "pedophilia" that is rarely directed at het ships, the fact that the energy put into fighting "problematic ships" by mostly queer and disabled small-time creators is rarely directed at major media creators, the ableism of "yeah well toughen up or gtfo snowflake", the defense of hate speech in the name of "freedom of speech" as if that hasn't been a neo-nazi dogwhistle for decades, etc.) and the concept of how hobbies can be used to radicalize people into some really awful ideologies, misdirection, overstatement of harm, understatement of harm, echo chambers that enable such overstatement and understatement of harm, the veneration of a platonic ideal of "children" as a rhetorical device while throwing actual children under the bus (exactly as anti-choice politicians do, but yet again veiled in the language of social justice) - all of that is wrapped up in this.

It is, by far, my least favorite mass fandom drama to date.

[madamtrashbat]

A couple of thoughts

We doin' okay, Cats family? We're good? Good. I have one last thing to add.

This is kinda about pro- and anti-shippers, but it's really more about fandom culture in general and just my experiences. You can read it, if you want, or not.

Up to you.

I've been doin' this for a while. A good fifteen years at least, closer probably to sixteen. I've been doing things in fandom for longer than some of my mutuals have been alive.

(Oh Jesus)

And there's something I gotta tell you guys, both as a person who has been doing fandom-y stuff for years and for someone who literally has college degrees in English Literature and Creative Writing.

Being an anti is not normal.

And I know that comes across as harsh and mean and it sounds unreasonable but I'd like to explain what I mean by that.

I can trace back being an anti to two main sources: Voltron and Star Wars. I was never into Voltron or really even around anyone who was but I remember the screaming and fighting over the ships, and I remember the hellish crusade that began when people dared to ship Rey and Kylo Ren together. It was nasty, guys. It was absolutely insane that suddenly people were doing this over fictional ships, that people were being sent actual abuse and hatred because someone wanted the broody shitlord man and the unwashed desert scrounger to smooch. Like... imagine that in real time.

I was not, nor have I ever been, a Reylo shipper, but you know what I did, when that ship began, and I didn't like it? I ignored it and went about my day. Because that's how I was taught. Nothing in the fiction world was worth fighting over. It was not worth getting into arguments over. What was the point?

Then the antis got bolder, started branching out, and when people like me started standing up and saying, "Hey, stop being a dick to people!" someone hired the world's best PR machine and suddenly people who were not antis were pedophiles and abusive and incestuous.

How's that for some whiplash.

This anti movement of berating, bullying, harming, and threatening has been their MO, and it's dangerous. And now, they all buy their own bullshit. They actually think people like me are all out here twisting our mustaches like Snidely Whiplash and diddling kids. Without a shred of irony, they believe this.

Proship only labeled itself that as a response to the antiship, and antiship, make no mistake, named itself first. It was not anti-pedophile. It was not anti-incest. It was not anti-abuse.

It was all about disliking fictional ships that other people enjoyed, and thus attacking people over it.

And it's pointless. It's driven a child to suicide. It has gotten people fired. It has ruined careers, livelihoods, friendships. For nothing. For a boogeyman that doesn't exist.

Sex experts across the board all agree that what gives us our jollies is not at all what we want in real life. There's some wild statistic like 70% of women have had a sexual fantasy about rape at least once in their lives. About rape! That act that most AFAB people have a deep ingrained fear of! And we've used it to get off! Because sexual fantasy isn't that deep. Our brains are idiots. And since time immemorial, we as humans have written just the most fucked up shit.

It's even in the Bible. Humans have been nasty forever. And it doesn't mean shit.

It's in the TV shows. It's in our movies. It's in our books. It's in our music, our podcasts, everything. Being an anti is not the way of humanity at all. Ever. Except for like... maybe the puritans but they sucked so who cares about them.

Antis believe a lie. They believe a lie and they hurt people for it. I am not in any way, shape, or form exaggerating when I say I am fearful for those who regularly interact with me, because I am worried that one day the art they make or the "clout" they carry isn't going to be enough to save them from their friendship with me and antis will tear them to shreds. Because that is how they behave. They may not think they're bullies, and they may think they're in the right, but I want you to look up the Youtube RPF kid who killed themselves over anti harassment. Look at that horrible ask I just got. This is how they behave.

And that is what proshippers stand against. It's a stance against bullying, harassment, threats. That is it. There are plenty of proshippers out in the world that would never, ever think of writing anything involving someone underage, or between relatives, or involving anything gruesome. Because that's not what it's about.

Antis are new in the world of fandom, and they are the absolute root of toxicity. I do not exaggerate. They waste the time of agencies actually trying to eradicate CSAM by sending them art someone drew of a teenage character that isn't real. They've driven people to suicide. They've outright admitted to not caring about actual humans as much as they care about fictional ships. They have shown time and time again that they are not above abuse, vitriol, and bullying. There are blogs that post stories from ex-antis who say they were afraid to say anything different than their anti friends for fear of righteous backlash.

I repeat: I am legitimately afraid that my friends are going to get dogpiled and harassed because they dare to be my friend. That fear is not baseless. And it's all because of the way antis act.

I am liberal with the block button. I try to maintain boundaries because I don't want to see any of that shit as much as they don't want to see any of mine (though only a very scant few actually block me back, which is a joke in and of itself). But it still slips through. And I hate it, every time I see it.

Because this is not the way we're supposed to be. We are not supposed to be at odds with each other. We are supposed to share and have fun and be joyful about some people in lycra.

But because some people wanted to put on the pilgrim hat and play Morality Council to someone who's been doing this for years, I gotta tiptoe around people that think I'm actually out in the world diddling children. Do you know how fucked up that is. Do you know how that feels? To not only have someone make that judgment without any evidence, but to tell it to other people who don't know me either?

When someone finally snaps and starts biting back, it's not out of nowhere. And antis never, ever see themselves as doing something wrong. But they are. They are wrong.

Can I let you in on a little secret?

Seriously, just between you and me, come here.

If you think it's wrong to bully someone because of fiction, then you're proship. That is the long and short of it. No more or less. I hate to break it to you, but that is the only definition, and anyone who says it's something else is lying to you for their own gain.

And sure, there are lots of people who try to hide behind the proship label as they do shitty things. But antis do the same. Humans being assholes and trying to blame it on something else is not new.

The fact that people have come to me and told me that the antis have made them feel uncomfortable, that they're afraid if they do something they might view as negative they might receive hate, that people are actually AFRAID of people in this fandom, is not okay.

There was a fandom I was involved in where one of the prominent people actively hated me and I was never afraid of what she would do. I am afraid of the antis in this fandom, though. Because they have teeth and they like to use them.

Fandom isn't supposed to be like this. Nobody should be screaming at teenagers for talking to adults in fandom, infantilizing them like they're not a whole autonomous human. Nobody should be telling someone to kill themselves because they ship Tuggerstrap. Nobody should be afraid of the other people in their fandom.

Antis, if any of them even read this (I doubt it, but just in case), I want you to look around. The people who are neutral are not afraid of what the proshippers will say to them. They are afraid of you. You and your ilk are the ones causing the damage, and you are the outliers in the entire world of fiction. You're a loud minority that thinks it knows better when it knows absolutely nothing.

Ruminate on that.

My blog is still a safe space from bullying, abuse, and nastiness. If someone is being mean to you, you will always find a friend here. And if you can't say the same, then what's wrong with you?

Be excellent to each other. Stop making people afraid.

And sit down and ask yourself what it is you really want when you make vague posts about people and tell people vicious, awful things. What are you hoping to gain.

[lily-orchard-gossip-blog]

Hey, I know this is completely out of left field, and has nothing to do with Lily, but it's incredibly urgent and honestly horrifying.

Are you familiar with the EARNIT Act?

It's an online censorship and surveillance act that was introduced 2 years ago by Senator Blumenthal and Graham, and is supposedly about protecting children online. But various online privacy groups and human rights groups have noted that it not only doesn't protect children, it actually makes them LESS safe while being heavily aimed at attacking encryption.

Well, it's back. As of 2/10/2022, The same people have managed to get it past committee, and now it's currently being fast-tracked to reach the Senate Floor. If this bill gets through, there's a good likelihood that the follow will happen (copied from a list made by a bunch of people on the EARNIT Act's biggest flaws):

there’s a high chance that LGBT and race-related content will be targeted and censored, since the bill is being pushed by a known Hate Group called NCOSE (formerly known as Morality in Media). If you're part of any LGBT groups, whether it be a fandom, a support group, or even just posting anything related to LGBT or racial content, THEY CAN CENSOR IT against your will. They can choose to silence you just because you saying anything LGBT related, being LGBT might be "unsafe for kids". And given the kind of people pushing this, who's to say they won't find loopholes or excuses to expand that definition to include other things that we take for granted? Like NSFW content, or just simply having views that contradict what they consider to be "correct"?

it will remove encryption from the internet, making privacy nonexistent. All of your private messages/anything will no longer be private. This puts a lot of people who rely on encryption to protect themselves in serious danger. Activists in countries where they are considered a menace will no longer be able to protect their identities. Abuse victims, who rely on encryption to hide themselves from their abusers cannot do so anymore. And the average person will have to deal with the government spying on all of their private messages, details, photos, sensitive information, and so forth.

making the internet (And the United States for that matter) much less secure against hackers, foreign entity attacks, because to be able to enforce this act, all websites would be required to stick a backdoor into their site's defenses for the government to have a guaranteed entry. But in doing so, they give hackers and foreign spies an easy entry point as well, thus also making this bill an impending national security nightmare for the USA on TOP of being invasive.

And (ironically), not only making the internet LESS safe for kids, but also making the internet and government less able to deal with child and sexual predators. By letting third parties spy on kids' most private thoughts and photos, they are basically making it much easier for child abuse to occur, making it much easier for predators online to find and target these kids. And by forcing websites to become state actors and collect CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material), they basically make that evidence completely inadmissible in court due to violating the fourth amendment (unreasonable/unlawful search and seizure). Which means that sexual predators are more likely to run free.

Yeah, this is a terrifying bill.

Twitter posters and various groups have been gearing up to try to spread awareness of this bill, along with it's newer siblings the "Child Online Safety Act" and the NUDGE act, and I was kinda hoping you could help spread the word as well.

These are the tags associated with this on Twitter: #EarnItAct #StopTheEARNITAct2022 #STOPTHEEARNITACT #StopTheEARNITAAct2022

There is a script being passed around that might help.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1huD5Ldd1lPTECYTEb9Gg2ZzrqW6Y9tryHT-MdjOl8kY/edit

https://www.noearnitact.org/

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/campaigns/oppose-earn-it-act/

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/02/activists-writers-and-security-experts-all-oppose-earn-it-act

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20220201/11235048400/senators-myths-facts-about-earn-it-is-mostly-myths-not-facts.shtml

Well, this looks concerning 😟

[sketchy-the-changeling]

Hey, I know this is completely out of left field, but it's incredibly urgent and honestly horrifying.

Are you familiar with the EARNIT Act?

It's an online censorship and surveillance act that was introduced 2 years ago by Senator Blumenthal and Graham, and is supposedly about protecting children online. But various online privacy groups and human rights groups have noted that it not only doesn't protect children, it actually makes them LESS safe while being heavily aimed at attacking encryption.

Well, it's back. As of 2/10/2022, The same people have managed to get it past committee, and now it's currently being fast-tracked to reach the Senate Floor. I should note that this bill has not fixed any of the problems that the first iteration 2 years ago was criticized for, and if anything has gotten worse. If this bill gets through, there's a good likelihood that the follow will happen (copied from a list made by a bunch of people on the EARNIT Act's biggest flaws):

there’s a high chance that LGBT and race-related content will be targeted and censored, since the bill is being pushed by a known Hate Group called NCOSE (formerly known as Morality in Media). If you're part of any LGBT groups, whether it be a fandom, a support group, or even just posting anything related to LGBT or racial content, THEY CAN CENSOR IT against your will. They can choose to silence you just because you saying anything LGBT related, being LGBT might be "unsafe for kids". And given the kind of people pushing this, who's to say they won't find loopholes or excuses to expand that definition to include other things that we take for granted? Like NSFW content, or just simply having views that contradict what they consider to be "correct"?

it will remove encryption from the internet, making privacy nonexistent. All of your private messages/anything will no longer be private. This puts a lot of people who rely on encryption to protect themselves in serious danger. Activists in countries where they are considered a menace will no longer be able to protect their identities. Abuse victims, who rely on encryption to hide themselves from their abusers cannot do so anymore. And the average person will have to deal with the government spying on all of their private messages, details, photos, sensitive information, and so forth.

making the internet (And the United States for that matter) much less secure against hackers, foreign entity attacks, because to be able to enforce this act, all websites would be required to stick a backdoor into their site's defenses for the government to have a guaranteed entry. But in doing so, they give hackers and foreign spies an easy entry point as well, thus also making this bill an impending national security nightmare for the USA on TOP of being invasive.

And (ironically), not only making the internet LESS safe for kids, but also making the internet and government less able to deal with child and sexual predators. By letting third parties spy on kids' most private thoughts and photos, they are basically making it much easier for child abuse to occur, making it much easier for predators online to find and target these kids. And by forcing websites to become state actors and collect CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material), they basically make that evidence completely inadmissible in court due to violating the fourth amendment (unreasonable/unlawful search and seizure). Which means that sexual predators are more likely to run free.

Yeah, this is a terrifying bill.

Twitter posters and various groups have been gearing up to try to spread awareness of this bill, along with it's newer siblings the "Child Online Safety Act" and the NUDGE act, and I was kinda hoping you could help spread the word as well, given that you're friends with LGBT people.

These are the tags associated with this on Twitter: #EarnItAct #StopTheEARNITAct2022 #STOPTHEEARNITACT #StopTheEARNITAAct2022

There is a script being passed around for calling Senators that might help. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1huD5Ldd1lPTECYTEb9Gg2ZzrqW6Y9tryHT-MdjOl8kY/edit https://www.noearnitact.org/

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/campaigns/oppose-earn-it-act/

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/02/activists-writers-and-security-experts-all-oppose-earn-it-act

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20220201/11235048400/senators-myths-facts-about-earn-it-is-mostly-myths-not-facts.shtml

This really feels like something you're copypasting into people's ask boxes and I don't appreciate that.

As a person that makes their living online, I am VERY well aware of the act and have taken the necessary actions to encourage the people that have power to do something about it to do so. I do not live under a rock.

[kumaradosha]

You can ignore this if you want but I do want to give my two cents regarding the Ponk post

cSam had mutilated cponk’s arm, took one of his lives and tortured him over keycards that didn’t work (that was what cPonk was upset over, cause he doesn’t know the revive book exists, seeing as he doesn’t interact with many other people) and presumably, over that time cPonk had spent it trying to rationalize what he went through and told himself that it was because Sam thought it was best for the prison and allowed himself to forgive cSam

So cPonk had a right to be mad that cSam let cDream out, he doesn’t want cSam to have tried harder cause cSam has already ruined his own life because of the prison and cPonk wants cSam to self reflect on his own actions, not die

And cPonk was allowed to be mean about it, cSam told him that he would have hurt cPonk again just for the prison that already ruined him, cPonk wasn’t kicking him around

I mean, I respect your opinion, considering you stated it without attacking me personally. (I realized the keycard thing after making the post, my bad.)

But like, Sam didn't let Dream out? He tried his best? And if that wasn't good enough, it implies Ponk wanted him to try harder. It makes no sense to criticize someone for failing to prevent something from happening while also saying they shouldn't have bothered. It's stupid. And clearly Sam was getting that sense, too, considering he eventually replied with "That means I should have tried harder" (paraphrasing). And considering the blame and kicking around he'd undeservedly gotten all that day because Dream got out, that only adds to the outrage that Ponk of all people would blame Sam for a lack of effort.

And sort of a tangent, why did Ponk even steal the keycards? As a joke? First of all, that already shows that he's not taking Sam's job seriously, or else it wouldn't be a funny joke. Second, once Sam made it clear that he considered it a liability despite them being outdated, a good partner would have respected his wishes. It was so stupid to hold on to them and not give them back when Sam asked, ESPECIALLY because Ponk had no reason not to. It's like he was dangling something that gave Sam anxiety over his head JUST to laugh about it. People can stop saying I don't watch, because I watched that, bros.

Instead of respecting that Sam feels very serious about the security of the prison and the secrecy of the keycards, he put on the blinders to all but self and stubbornly insisted on having them for absolutely zero reason. This once again proves Ponk only cares about himself and his own feelings and wishes and priorities. It literally doesn't matter that Ponk thought they weren't a big deal. It matters that he didn't respect that Sam did. I hate to bring this up again considering how much I've been mocked for likening it to abuse I've experienced, but it is a big red flag for people to cross your boundaries and go against your wishes because they think it's not a big deal.

And there's actually legitimate reason to not want anybody to possess those keycards, because they could hint at at least the mechanism behind how to open the doors. Every bit of information could be used against the prison; it needs to remain secret.

So in Sam's eyes, Ponk was betraying him by threatening his main purpose and the safety of the entire server for no reason. And he had to choose between doing what he saw as his vital duty that he is sacrificing so much for (which he is now being berated about by everyone INCLUDING PONK saying it was so important and he failed) or being selfish and biased and go easy on his lover just because he's personally attached to him, even though that would be a security risk to everyone else.