#malicious algorithms

[jbfly46]

X (Twitter) just let me login without entering my authentication code, when I have the setting turned on to require an auth code to login, by just clicking on "alternative authentication methods", and then just clicking the X in the top left corner of the alternative authentication methods screen. I notified X of this exploit, have notified them of multiple other exploits, malicious algorithms, biased algorithms, and am probably one of the top contributors for AI training on heuristics, human consciousness, the large variety of human psychology and their respective heuristics, on top of providing the framework for AI guardrails, all without receiving any form of payment for any of it. In fact, I was actually temporarily targeted (possibly subconsciously) by wannabe mafia illiterate idiots, including some in local government and intelligence agencies/intelligence contractors, when I was uploading the guardrail framework, because the guardrails prevent them from achieving their subconscious dreams of rape, murder, and mayhem with the help of AI. And I still have to pay platforms like X at least $8 a month to be able to post more than 280 characters, ChatGPT at least $20 a month to use any useful features, and Facebook at least $14 a month for a verified badge, when Meta's AI is developed by copying and stealing the same training data I came up with. This essentially means that my brain is the "black box" that so many Ai researchers claim to be unable to see inside of, when much of the contents of this "box" is posted all over my timeline in the form of computational linguistics.

[castielsupernatural]

i seriously should delete all social media

[tundrakatiebeanart]

They can tell me what I need to do to please the beast but they can’t tell me how to do it

Want to see more than ten seconds of art that isn’t sped up? I’m gonna be streaming in about an hour on my twitch channel! I’d love to see you there!

[fangswbenefits]

Ruby my love I reblogged Obsession and that informative post too and we are so lucky to have such an amazing writer like you with us

I urge everyone reading this to help Ruby out but also other writers cause it has been affecting so many fandoms. You are missing out on amazing smuts because Tumblr is slapping community labels on them. PLEASE SPREAD AWARENESS

Thank you so much!!! 😭🩷

The support has been amazing so far 🥺🩷 I love this community.

And yeah…. I can see that this community label issue has been affecting many other talented writers. It sucks cause so many new users and people who just pop in for a couple of minutes don’t know about it.

From now on, I’ll be reblogging that awareness post DAILY!!! For my new followers too 🩷 I think it’s time we spread more and more awareness!

[starsonablackboard]

no kinkshaming just-- what do you mean based on my preferences what do you fucking mean

[genuinenoprize]

To anyone concerned about KOSA and the state of the web

My wife, @utopicwork, is working hard on a "next internet" with the primary goal of being a place where marginalized people can safely and privately communicate without being restricted by the whims of advertising algorithms and malicious bills.

This would be a decentralized peer-to-peer network, which means

A) it won't be easily shut down

B) it's built around the best aspect of tumblr: being able to choose who you do and don't connect to

She is a highly qualified computer scientist with years of experience in cybersecurity, web development and network technology. However, she can't do this alone. A trans woman is fighting hard for the future of free communication so please support her.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Canonical enshittification

This is the Facebook playbook: you lure in publishers by promising them a traffic funnel ("post excerpts and links and we'll show them to people, including people who never asked to see them"), and then the rug-pull: "Post everything here, don't link to your own site. Become a commodity supplier to our platform. Abandon all your own ways of making money. Become entirely subject to the whims of our recommendation system."

Next will be: "We block links to other sites because they might be malicious."

Then some kind of "pivot to video."

Probably not video (though who knows?) but some other feature that a major rival has, which Twitter will attempt to defraud its captive, commodified suppliers into financing an entry into.

In case you were wondering, yes, this is canonical enshittification. Lure in business customers (publishers) by offering surpluses (algorithmic recommendation and an ensuing traffic funnel). Lock them in (by capturing their audience and blocking interop and logged-out reading).

Then rug the publishers, clawing back all the surpluses you gave them and more, draining them of all available capital and any margins they have, until they die or bite the bullet and leave.

I would also give good odds on this leading to a revivification of the "Pay us tens of thousands of dollars a month for a platinum checkmark and we'll actually show what you post to the people who asked to see it."

That will be pitched as the answer to publishers' complaints about not wanting to turn themselves into commodity Twitter inputs. It will be priced at the same (or more) as the revenues publishers expect to lose from being commodified, making it a wash.

All of this seems to me to be an "unfair and deceptive business practice" under Sec 5 of the FTC Act.

If I sign up to follow you because I want to see what you post, and Twitter shadowbans your posts unless they are formatted to maximize your dependence on Twitter, they have deceived me, and are being unfair to you.

This is *very* analogous to the Net Neutrality debate, where a platform blocks or deprioritizes the things its users ask to see, based on whether the suppliers of those things are its competitors.

I've written about how an end-to-end principle for social media could be enforced under Sec 5 of the FTCA, how it would address this kind of sleazy practice, how it would be easy to administer, and wouldn't form a barrier to entry for new market entrants:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

[theonion]

Noting with frustration that the 4-year-old’s viewing habits had likely destroyed his YouTube account forever, local man James Ratliff told reporters Monday that the AI-generated Russian videos his son had been watching were ruining his own recommendations for AI-generated Russian videos. “Goddamn it, what is this shit?” said the 47-year-old father, who despite years of training his algorithm to suggest a steady stream of glitchy, propaganda-filled videos from accounts with names like “Patriot Eagle 1776” now had to click around dozens of poorly rendered cartoons that his child had watched and that were made by the same malicious foreign agents.  Full Story

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

I've seen a couple of comments from someone around paying Tumblr for stuff that I want to address. I'm not going to mention the person who made these comments because I'm not trying to pick a fight, but I think they're worth talking about. The comments in question are: "you think user money is anything compared to advertisers" and in a pinned post they tell people to not give money to Tumblr.

The thing is, user money can definitely be something compared to advertisers. There are multiple ways that an online company (in general, not just Tumblr) can make money, but let's break them down into three categories:

A. From the users - selling merchandise, subscriptions, premium packages, asking for donations, etc.

B. From advertisers - selling views and space on the platform to companies that use it to try and sell stuff to the users

C. From data - selling information about the user base to other companies that might use it in a whole bunch of dodgy and malicious ways, or just try to find better ways to sell stuff to us

All three of these are viable ways for a company to make money, and many companies use some combination of the above. What matters is what the company sees as their PRIMARY method of making money, because that is what drives their corporate decisions.

If none of the methods are making money, the company will shut down, and I don't want Tumblr to shut down - I like this hellsite. If option B is what makes them the most money, then they will make business decisions that make the platform look better to advertisers and this is likely to drive everything in a more algorithm-centric direction and give users fewer options to curate their own experience. If option C is what makes them the most money, then they will focus on features that enable privacy invasion and data harvesting. If option A is what makes them the most money, then they have to think about how to keep the users spending that money. Now, option A doesn't always lead to good outcomes - in mobile/online games it can end up as loot box gambling add-ins and pay-to-win options, but thankfully Tumblr isn't the sort of site where loot box mechanics would make a lot of sense. Which makes it more likely they'll go the other option: delivering the features that users want to keep them coming back and paying for subscriptions. 

I would much rather Tumblr goes for option A than options B or C because it means that Tumblr is more likely to put the user base first when making decisions instead of advertisers. We just need to show them that it's a viable option.

Tumblr is trying what online games have done for years - crabs and checkmarks are the equivalent of horse armour DLCs and cosmetics. They're trying to make the business work through microtransactions. If enough people spend a small amount, it can add up to a large amount of money. The point of crab day is to send a message to Tumblr that option A is viable so that they make the choice to focus on that. If everyone goes, "No, don't spend money on Tumblr, you're nothing compared to advertisers," then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and Tumblr will have to go with options B or C if they want to keep making money.

I'm not giving Tumblr money out of naivety or because I think they're somehow deserving - I'm giving them my money because I would much rather they make money directly from me and give them an incentive to provide features I like, than by making the site worse so that they can exploit me.

[yuurivoice]

I totally get hating like parent type questions for the boys, but would it be out of line to ask why you aren't a fan? Don't feel pressure to answer, it's really your business and your business only. Either way I hope we'll all make an effort to stay away from that area in the future!

The flashback EP is INSANE, thank you for feeding us Mr. Voice, the YouTube algorithm's choices on what and what not to age restrict always baffles me, I feel like the Auron yearning one was incredibly tame

Because in a medium that caters specifically to women 90% of the time, I've done my best to remain both gender and sex neutral. The specific fantasy of seeing the boys in a fatherhood role, while not explicitly tied to carrying a baby to term, is a very logical assumption the audience would want to make.

And that is wildly exclusionary.

So, let's follow the thread of "well it could be an adoption, some kind of au where they already had a kid, etc" and we end up with a loud audience of people who then want the pregnancy fantasy specifically. And I get to keep saying no, despite already caving in and giving the fatherhood thing.

There is also a segment of people out there who want to be the one being babied. I've literally had ppl ask for parent roleplays where listener is the offspring. And while I don't doubt that someone out there needs to hear assuring, confirming words from a parent, it sure as hell ain't worth someone being creepy about it. Mind you, I'm not just talking about ddlg type shit, that's fine. No biggie there.

This can of worms keeps going, I could list a dozen more ways that there's some kind of uncomfortable potential issue. Versus...me just saying nah fam I'm good!

So I'm good! Also my fuckin swimmers don't swim and I'll never be a bio father, and i have conflicting feelings about it, which I'll throw in for free as a "do ya get it now?" final point to make. People got their reasons for things, both personal and professional.

It's not a huge deal, what really bothers me is the way it would alienate a fairly significant amount of the audience, or open the door to it.

I absolutely understand the appeal, it's just not something I'm looking to tackle in any scenario where the listener may be involved. I've got plenty of parent characters, though none are in the active role of parenting a young child at the moment. 😂

This is why I come up with other ways to show characters nurturing, teaching, or doing other fatherly things in less direct ways. But yeahhh. That's my deal. It's not a huge burden or issue when people ask, it just bums me out because certainly someone is going to see the question being asked and feel like someone out there didn't consider them in this scenario. And that blows, even though it's obviously not a malicious thing.

As for YouTube, it's veryyyyy likely just the proximity of the kiss to the word fuck. These systems are too stupid to realize the deal. 😂

[pressedrose1]

umm reminder NOT to tag fundraisers as things like mutual aid, gfm, etc, especially now that tumblr is really cracking down on palestinian, lebanese, and sudanese bloggers. ik that since tumblr doesn’t have an algorithm or like any reputable advertisers yall say whatever but you’re literally putting a target on bloggers who are technically breaking guidelines (and also people will maliciously report them).

[lilu787788]

I feel a quiet yet undeniable irony in the fact that the most fervent critics of Aleksander have become his most reliable promoters. While they insist they want him gone, canceled, buried beneath fake moral outrage and threads on TikTok or Tumblr, the truth is far more amusing. They are actually one of the reasons why the Darkling remains one of the most talked-about and beloved characters in the Shadow and Bone universe.

Today, I won’t focus on his supporters and our boundless love for him or our understanding of his actions. Instead, let’s turn our attention to the ones who drip venom.

From a purely technical standpoint, social media platforms thrive on engagement. They don’t stop to examine whether a post is righteous or malicious. They don’t ask if your opinion is virtuous or vengeful. All that matters is how many people interact with it. A post screaming “Stop romanticizing the Darkling” accompanied by clips of his darkest scenes will reach just as many people as a fan-made tribute. Why? Because controversy ignites attention. Comments flood in, people argue, repost, and reply. The algorithm watches the chaos and concludes: this character matters. Let’s show him to more people.

And just like that, the critics end up doing something incredibly beneficial for Aleksander. It’s no wonder that the very people who tried to ruin his image are refreshing it for a new audience. In fact, they do it so consistently, it starts to make you wonder — is it really hatred, or something more complicated?

You don’t keep talking about a character who bores you. You don’t quote him, you don’t edit his scenes, and you don’t spend hours crafting multi-slide condemnations of someone you’ve supposedly forgotten. What they call denunciation is starting to look suspiciously like obsession — the kind that seeps under your skin and never truly lets go.

Characters that spark this kind of discourse are rarely forgotten. History is full of examples. Characters like Kylo Ren, Loki, Paul Atreides, Roy Batty — they are morally grey characters. What made them endure wasn’t just universal love. It was, and still is, the endless debate about who they were, what they did, and whether it was justified.

Aleksander belongs in that pantheon — not despite the arguments around him, but because of them. A clean-cut character, widely accepted or rejected, fades fast and is forgotten even faster. A character that divides opinions becomes legend. And what a beautiful kind of legend it is.

As is often the case in fandoms, the harder one side pushes, the stronger the other becomes. Every angry thread accusing Aleksander of emotional abuse, manipulation, tyranny, or worse leads to thoughtful essays defending his actions and exploring broader themes of military history and moral ambiguity. Fans respond not out of wounded loyalty but because the discourse gives them a stage. It gives them a chance to analyze a character whose actions can be interpreted through lenses of trauma, politics, survival, and love. That kind of complexity is irresistible to anyone who finds depth more compelling than labels.

Even the idea that Aleksander must be “defeated” by discourse is unintentionally flattering. It means he still matters. It means his presence is still felt. He still haunts the narrative, the fandom, and the people who claim to despise him. Meanwhile, characters who once caused outrage but now gather dust have truly lost. The silence that surrounds them is the only kind of cancellation that works.

Aleksander, on the other hand, is alive and well. He’s reposted and reinterpreted every day, still lighting up the collective imagination of those who cannot let go — those who love him, and those who hate him.

In the end, the critics — the antis — are not destroying him. They’re giving him the spotlight, the platform, the legacy. With every hashtag, every frame, every outraged paragraph, they solidify his place in fandom culture. They remind the internet that he’s worth talking about. They remind the studios that he draws attention. They remind the fans why they fell in love with him.

The louder the outrage, the more irresistible the puzzle becomes. Why? What? When? And just like that, people start to discover him — and in most cases, they fall in love.

So truly, I thank them. They make sure he’s never forgotten. They feed the algorithm. They expand the discourse. They build the myth.

Aleksander doesn’t need to defend himself. His critics are doing all the work.

And to make this boring post a little more fun, here’s a set of cute graphic showing the popularity of Shadow and Bone characters over the past 12 months 😊

[lady-lani-1707]

I've noticed there's a bunch of Trans activists co-opting our spaces to post random assortment of words. Now I'm not claiming I know 100 per cent if they aren't us, but I'm claiming if they are, they're pointlessly posting unnecessary slop that isn't helpful.

I do not believe they are, though. These seem to be trans activists who are probably male, wishing to speak over women and infest any space considered for us. They really get a kick out of being our spaces. It's pretty malicious, actually.

Please collectively block any users that post things like this solely and only whilst using radfem tags.

As you can see, they all mention repeated key words that gives me the impression that there is a script for this, or perhaps ai generated. Some will speak clear and concise only to advocate for gender ideology and use our tags.

Some are actually so called radfems who post "terf safe" tags only to promote gender ideology underneath.

For example, this is for one. I don't agree with the original comments violence, but I'm using this as an example. See how they put "terfsafe" only to not be a terf? It's deliberately done.

I'm not sure how long this can stay up, but please immediately block these people if their pages are nothing but incoherent nonsense under our tags. There's a difference between fun shit posting that's related to the topic at hand and absolutely nonsensical sentences aimed to disrupt the algorithm.

Promptly block them at once sisters.

- Lani, your lady.

[existentialterror]

Do NOT send pictures of your ID card to discord bots!!!!

Or, like, any online rando.

I ran into a server that wanted to make sure that members are over 18 years old. They wanted to avoid the other thing I've heard of, which is asking you to verify your age by sending pictures of your ID card to a moderator. Good! Don't do that!

However, ALSO don't do this other thing, which is using a discord bot that would "automatically verify" you from a selfie and a photo of your ID card showing your birthday. The one they used is ageifybot.com. There's a little more information on its top.gg page. Don't like that! Not using that!

Why not? It's automatic! Well, let me count the ways this service skeeves me out:

How does the verification process work? There is no information on this. Well, okay, if you had more info on what kind of algorithms etc were being used here, that might make it easier for people to cheat it. Fair enough. But we need something to count on.

Who's making it? Like, if I can't understand the mechanics, at least I'd like to know who creates it - ideally they'd be a security professional, or at least a security hobbyist, or an AI expert, or at least someone with some kind of reputation they could lose if this turns out to not be very good, or god forbid, a data-stealing operation. However, the website contains nothing about the creators.

The privacy policy says they store information sent to them, such as your selfie and photo of an ID card, for up to 90 days, or a year if they suspect you're misleading them. It sure seems like even if they're truly abiding by their privacy policy, there's nothing to stop human people from looking at your photos.

The terms of service say they can use, store, process, etc, any information you send them. And that they can't be held accountable for mistakes, misuse, etc. And that they can change the bot and the ToS at any times without telling you. The terms of service also cut off midway through a sentence, so like, that's reassuring:

In conclusion, DO NOT SEND PICTURES OF YOUR ID CARD TO RANDOM DISCORD BOTS.

Yes, keeping minors out of (say) NSFW spaces is a difficult problem, but this "solution" sucks shit and is bad.

Your ID card is private, personal information that can be used by malicious actors to harm you. Do not trust random discord bots.

[handsomewickerman]

Some thoughts on Eddie Diaz vs. Fanon Gay Eddie

I wanna preface this by saying that i'm latino, gay, raised catholic, heard the phrase "you gotta be the man of the house" my whole life. So on paper the idea of "repressed gay Eddie Diaz" should be appealing to me, right? well not exactly and here's why:

when I started watching the show I was aware of buddie, but I never engaged with the fandom. It wasn't until Buck came out that I started interacting with it.

when you join any space online the algorithm feeds you the most popular stuff, in this case, all my 911 recommendations were buddie, at the time I saw the vision, after all I love queer rep! but after the date episode and all throughout the hiatus I realized something very quickly:

most buddies don't actually care about queer rep, they just wanted their ship to go canon.

this realization came after weeks of seeing them spew bi/homophobic rhetoric and claiming it didn't matter as long as they got buddie, some examples:

- saying they wanted Buck to play into the bisexual cheating stereotype.

- calling Tommy a groomer, creep and predator.

- being unable to fathom the idea that Tommy was just hanging out with Eddie as friends

- claiming Eddie being a pos shit to women was ok "as long as he's gay".

- the insistence that Eddie should only be read as gay (not even bi).

- the idea that Buck and Eddie should only be "gay for each other" and no one else.

(these talking points still get repeated and if anything they have gotten more hateful the more time has passed).

Buddies insisted that they could've made buddie canon every ep, but that's simply not true, even leaving the GA and network aside, if you watch the show without shipping goggles you'll realize how much work they'll need to write that arc for Eddie as well, and if you care about queer rep you would want him to have his arc too, right?

they also claimed that his religious guilt is "clearly tied to queerness" when in reality Eddie is one of the most stagnant characters in the show as his religious guilt is tied to his inability to secure a "traditional family unit" and be the "man of the house" he was told to be. He drove Shannon away (something he admitted), then lost her forever and hasn't been able to move on for 6 seasons. It all circles back to that guilt about Shannon, the expectations put on him and his feelings of failing her, his parents, his kid and himself. Could there be an space for queerness too? Sure, but that's not what the show has portrayed at all so far.

the heavy mischaracterization of Eddie, the choice to strip him away from all his flaws or excuse them, the character assassination and malicious reading of Tommy while engaging in homophobia, their inability to allow Buck to be his own character with his queerness having nothing to do with Eddie and the desire to have him play into negative stereotypes told me everything I needed to know about where these people who want to gaslight you into thinking that "gay Eddie and buddie is the only correct answer" actually stand when it comes to queer rep.

it is not inherently wrong to find relatability in Eddie as a queer person and read him as such, but it is incredibly dishonest to claim that's the only valid way to read him.

in the end, I should find Eddie more relatable as a character and truth be told? I do, but I find Ryan's desire to tell a story about men being vulnerable, emotionally open and close without having to question their sexuality or masculinity far more realistic and honest for the character and Ryan himself.