#that's because I'm protecting it from data scraping

[sarroora]

For archiving reasons ~ I'm just sharing a couple pics from my Eevee & Pikachu blocknote designs for EgyCon and artist alleys.

--

The blocknote is a double-design of 40 sheets. Created in Affinity Designer which I HIGHLY RECOMMEND as an Adobe Illustrator alternative.

Before cutting:

Tester sample to make sure the blocknote is sturdy and usable. Cutting still needs to be a bit cleaner:

Prototype packaging:

This blocknote took a ridiculously long time to create, though - so I gotta streamline my process somehow.

[stranded-ziggy]

Aziraphale || Good Omens

[ao3scrapesearch]

Alright! Sorry for being so absent today! I was building a tool so you can all check your own names on demand.

I am asking that you not talk about it on Hugging Face. I'm sure word will get there eventually, but I'd like to avoid them accessing this as much as possible. Feel absolutely free to spread around Tumblr.

AO3 search tool is here! Use page 1 to search scraped fics by username. Use page 2 to search by work ID (which you'll need to do if you're looking for an anonymous work).

Or you can use this version, which is strongly recommended if you've published more than about 20 fics on the username you're searching.

If you're unsure which to use:

The first link is better if your entire username is a common word. For example, if you're username is just "bread" then you probably can't search yourself in the second link. The first version is way slower, so I recommend trying the second link first and using the first link as a backup option if the second fails.

The first link contains a page to search by work ID. This is good if you have an anonymous or orphaned fic, since that's not going to appear by searching your username.

The second link is better if you have a LOT of fics. It will give you a count of fics so you don't have to add them up. It will show the top 2,000 work results found.

If you have more than 2,000 published works, first off, I am jealous of your motivation. But second, that won't display right on the public version of the tools. You can send an ask or DM to have me do a custom search for you if you have more than 2,000 total works under 1 username.

You can also ask or DM if your entire username is a common word, because you're likely to get drowned out of the search results in that case. Try the tool first, but if it returns a lot of author results for your search, and YOUR name isn't in the results, ask me! There's a decent chance you're in there, but one of the tool's weak points is searching extremely common words.

In case this post breaches containment: this is a tool that only has access to the work IDs, titles, author names, chapter counts, and hit counts of the scraped fics for this most recent scrape discovered in April 2025. There is no other work data in this tool. This never had the content of your works loaded to it, only info to help you check if your works were scraped. If you need additional metadata, I can search my offline copy for you if you share a work ID number and tell me what data you're looking for. I will never search the full work text for anyone, but I can check things like word counts and tags.

Please come yell if the tool stops working, and I'll fix as fast as I can. Version 1 is slow as hell, but it does load eventually. Give it up to 10 minutes, and if it seems down after that, please alert me via ask! Anons are on if you're shy. Version 2 typically loads results within 1 minute and handles most users well.

On mobile, enable screen rotation and turn your phone sideways. It's a litttttle easier to use like that. It works better if you can use desktop.

Some FAQs below the cut:

"What do I need to do now?": At this time, the main place where this dataset was shared is disabled. As far as I'm aware, you don't need to do anything, but I'll update if I hear otherwise. If you're worried about getting scraped again, locking your fics to users only is NOT a guarantee, but it's a little extra protection. There are methods that can protect you more, but those will come at a cost of hiding your works from more potential readers as well.

"I don't want to know!": This tool is 100% optional. If you don't want to know, simply don't click the link. You are totally welcome to block me if it makes you feel more comfortable.

"Can I see the exact content they scraped?": Nope, not through me. I don't have the time to vet every single person to make sure they are who they say they are, and I don't want to risk giving a scraped copy of your fic to anyone else. If you really want to see this, you can find the info out there still and look it up yourself, but I can't be the one to do it for you.

"Are locked fics safe?": Not safe, but so far, it appears that locked fics were scraped less often than public fics. The only fics I haven't seen scraped as of right now are fics in unrevealed collections, which even logged-in users can't view without permission from the owner.

"My work wasn't a fic. It was an image/video/podfic.": You're safe! All the scrape got was stuff like the tags you used and your title and author name. The work content itself is a blank gap.

"It's slow.": Unfortunately, a 13 million row data dashboard is always going to be on the slow side. I think I've done everything I can to speed it up, but it may still take up to 10 minutes to load. It's faster if you can use desktop, but it should work on your phone too.

"My fic isn't there.": If it was published after March 15th, 2025, that was likely after all of the scraping took place. Otherwise, from what I can tell so far, the scraper's code just... wasn't very good, so most likely, your fic was missed by random chance. I am continuing to look for methods to reduce the chances of a work getting scraped anyway, and I will share on this blog if/when I find something that works.

Thanks to everyone who helped with the cost to host the tool! I appreciate you so so so much. As of this edit, I've received more donations than what I paid to make this tool so you do NOT need to keep sending money. (But I super appreciate everyone who did help fund this! I just wanna make sure we all know it's all paid for now.)

(Made some quick edits to the post on 04-May-2025 to update information a bit!)

[pressureplus]

Sebastian Solace Injury Headcannons

Warnings: Mentions of blood, anxiety, and Injury, but nothing too particularly graphic, You show up at his shop hurt and he takes care of you

(The way he cares for your injuries slightly varies depending on your relationship)

◞꒷◟ ͜ ͜ ◞ྀི◟୨୧◞ྀི◟ ͜ ͜ ◞꒷◟◞꒷◟ ͜ ͜ ◞ྀི◟୨୧◞ྀི◟ ͜ ͜ ◞꒷◟

Platonic

• Immediately starts to chastise you the second he can smell the blood on you

• He doesn't have a nose, so how he scrunches it up is beyond you

• Your med kit isn't free, so you definitely owe him and yes, he will remember you owe him

• You can't refuse tho, he's already patching you up before you can really do anything about it

• What are you gonna do, fight him? Fight a thing more than 5 times your size with claws like steel knives? I don't think so.

• He's pretty good at patching wounds, and stays relaxed the whole time he's doing it

• The motions are practiced and easy as he cleans and gauzes and wraps you up

• "Because I pity you, I'll even let you lay on the cot in the corner of my shop, hmm?"

• Understands you are useless and stupid and small, so he guesses he can help you out and demand whatever extra data you have I'm your pockets about a week from now

• He isn't exactly the most concerned with your well-being, but does go out of his way to help you and take care of you sooo...

• You must mean something to him right?

If you're not together but he likes you

• Actually gets a little worried

• He flusters easily, the crush he has for you making it a little bit more difficult for him to think clearly

• That crush making his harsh reactions harsher and his soft ones hard to verbalize

• He grabs you

• I don't have any other way to put this, he literally just reaches out and grabs you before he really thinks about it

• You don't get an explanation, you don't get scolding, he just huffs and gets pissy while he's patching you

• "I thought you were better than this- You REALLY ended up this hurt over something so easy to get away from?"

• Yes, he knows the foul mouth he's got is tanking his chances of ever actually being with you, but he already figures you're never going to want to kiss a fish so why should he care?

• Even if rejection is imminent and unavoidable, and even if he feels the constant need to be mean to you so he can protect himself, he'll still take care of you

• He does like you for a reason- a lot of reasons. And he thinks about those reasons quite a bit... Of course he wants you to be okay

• You're his favorite person, and he would rather die than admit that but also would 100% prioritize your medical care over working his shop

• Him being so fast to grab and tend to your wounds is probably one of the only things you've ever seen from him that's made you sure he doesn't hate you

• Look, there's no way this man would be smoothing his thumb over your newly applied bandages and looking upset at the notion you'd be hurt without you being SOME kind of important

• It doesn't matter how stupid you are, dummy or not, this shit is painfully obvious when he's getting vulnerable over the idea of you getting a nasty enough scar

• Will not let you leave the cot in the room until you're all better, so get ready to be defensively degraded by your favourite shopkeeper for several consecutive days!

If you are together

• Open. Meltdown.

• Panicking, throwing the door on his little store closed and coddling you like you'll fall apart if he's not treating you with the utmost care

• Even scraped knees and bumped elbows get treated like they need full medical, so you can imagine the sort of reactions you're getting to actually bleeding

• Part of him immediately blames himself while he's frantically tending to your injuries, thinking he should have watched you better today, thinking that he should have protected you right

• The next part of him promises he'll be getting whoever or whatever did this to you back for it just as soon as you're all mended and comforted

• He's a mess, a muttering, coddling mess

• You get little kisses to the bandages, as well as some quiet murmurs that attempt to get onto you for not being careful

• The grip you've got around this man's heart is too much for him to be angry, nor pretend to

• You may nearly make him cry if it's bad enough, and his hands may shake at the sight of you so hurt

• Will threaten you if you even THINK about dying, remember he can do worse to you and will if you don't shut up, he can't cope with thinking about losing you shut up shut up shut up-

• Until you're healed, you aren't leaving his bed. He puts you in HIS bed and cuddles up to you any chance that he gets

• You're going to get teased when you're all better and his brain registers it's not a big deal, but until then this is your big, protective fishy husband whether you two have gotten married officially or not

[violainebriat]

It's a bit weird typing out a full post here on tumblr. I used to be one of these artists that mostly focused on posting only images, the least amount of opinions/thoughts I could share, the better. Today, the art world online feels weird, not only because of AI, but also the algorithms on every platform and the general way our craft is getting replaced for close to 0 dollars. This website was a huge instrument in kickstarting my career as a professional artist, it was an inspiring place were artists shared their art and where we could make friends with anyone in the world, in any industries. It was pretty much the place that paved the way as a social media website outside of Facebook, where you could search art through tags etc. Anyhow, Tumblr still has a place in my heart even if all artists moved away from it after the infamous nsfw ban (mostly to Instagram and twitter). And now we're all playing a game of whack-a-mole trying to figure out if the social media platform we're using is going to sell their user content to AI / deep learning (looking at you reddit, going into stocks). On the Tumblr side, Matt Mullenweg's interviews and thoughts on the platform shows he's down to use AI, and I guess it could help create posts faster but then again, you have to click through multiple menus to protect your art (and writing) from being scraped. It's really kind of sad to have to be on the defensive with posting art/writing online. It doesn't even reflect my personal philosophy on sharing content. I've always been a bit of a "punk" thinking if people want to bootleg my work, it's like free advertisement and a testament to people liking what I created, so I've never really watermarked anything and posted fairly high-res version of my work. I don't even think my art is big enough to warrant the defensiveness of glazing/nightshading it, but the thought of it going through a program to be grinded into a data mush to be only excreted out as the ghost of its former self is honestly sort of deadening.

Finally, the most defeating trend is the quantity of nonsense and low-quality content that's being fed to the internet, made a million times easier with the use of AI. I truly feel like we're living what Neil Postman saw happening over 40 years ago in "amusing ourselves to death"(the brightness of this man's mind is still unrivaled in my eyes).

I guess this is my big rant to tell y'all now I'm gonna be posting crunchy art because Nightshade and Glaze basically make your crispy art look like a low-res JPEG, and I feel like an idiot for doing it but I'm considering it an act of low effort resistance against data scraping. If I can help "poison" data scrapping by wasting 5 minutes of my life to spit out a crunchy jpeg before posting, listen, it's not such a bad price to pay. Anyhow check out my new sticker coming to my secret shop really soon, and how he looks before and after getting glazed haha....

[hismourningflower]

「 forget you | hoyoverse fanfiction 」 dan heng & kaeya x gn!reader | angst, amnesia | general fanfiction. ↳ additional tags. angst with no comfort, established relationships, mentions of alcohol & drinking (kaeya), i'm not sorry ↳ ehehe... oops... happy one hundred to the xianzhou jade !!

data has been uploaded! - send an ask to join the taglist; specify genshin, honkai or both! @lovingluxury, @dumbificat, @starryshinyskies, @ryuryuryuyurboat, @ainescribe, @soleillunne

the jade's guidelines | genshin m.list | honkai m.list | previous work

DAN HENG didn't quite know what to expect when welt texted him about your situation. his own partner in an accident? he knew that he should have been persistent and gone with you and march 7th. he should have fought to go with you, he should have- he should have done a lot. after a few painstaking days of you being trapped in a comatose state within belobog's hospital with every visitation request denied, dan heng decided that he had more than regrets about this.

he spent his days and evenings restless, pacing his room with every thought rushing through his mind; would you survive? would you hate him? he figured you had every right to despise him. no amounts of time spent with his head in documentation, tracing over booklets of planets and history books regarding the aeons could ease his mind.

dan heng felt guilt, as if he only had himself to blame for standing there so quietly as you and march excitedly announced that you were going to belobog on behalf of himeko. march chimed in that you'd use it more as a shopping trip and whilst you laughed it off, dan heng silently wished he could go just to protect you. you were capable but he was anxious, losing you was the last thing he wanted.

this feeling would eat at him for as long as the doctors tending to you kept rejecting the astral express' visitation requests. he wanted to see you and now it felt as though he had to pay the price - another price... wasn't he paying enough already? his heart could rot from the amount of guilt he withheld inside of him, not daring to utter it to the older members of the crew. it could break his ribs, tear him open but he'd refuse to mention it.

miserable, dark grey clouds covered belobog's usual sunshine, painting the city in a dull appearance that could only match dan heng's numb emotions as the astral express crew navigated the streets of the city, finally on their way to see you. in march's bandaged hands - she'd taken the lesser of the injuries, coming back onboard the express with a few scrapes - was a beautifully wrapped bouquet of flowers, a bittersweet get-well-soon gift in light of the news that they'd receive along with their permission from the doctors; you had amnesia and they were still testing what you remembered from the accident.

he was nervous - no, he was far more than nervous. it showed on his face the moment they all solemnly shuffled into the tight hospital room, grimacing as they brushed against each other to gather around your bed. except there wasn't a form of excitement on your tired face but rather a look of confusion. welt cleared his throat first, eyes darting to look at dan heng's sudden loss of colour that drained from his face.

"they don't remember," he whispers to himself, as if no one else was around him. he takes a moment to lean back on the wall, "they don't remember me."

it takes welt's hand on dan heng's back to guide him out of the room shakily but nothing feels real anymore. all the memories, chaste kisses and moments where dan heng had done more than warm up to you in light of his past and previous life. you remembered none of it, not an ounce of the love he'd grown comfortable enough to give you, nothing.

dan heng's legs feel weak under him as his heart tears apart. perhaps this was a clean slate in terms of his regrets in protecting you, he could have done better and now he has a chance to wipe it all clear for you - you're not angry at him but he knows it's because you simply don't remember what happened.

he'll protect you better this time, more closely and not taking his eyes off of you. maybe one day, he'll tell you about the relationship the two of you shared; the kisses under the stars and the nights curled up together reading your own books. he would still love you. he'd always love you.

it felt like a fever dream when amber came to find KAEYA while he was on a commission for the knights. he hadn't been drinking on the job when the brunette arrived nor had he consumed any that morning... so how come she was spewing nonsense about you being seriously injured on a commission?

the cherry on the top? you didn't recognise a single person who'd visited you on bedrest. not jean, not barbara, not mika or lisa, not even noelle. and as your partner, kaeya was terrified by that prospect. you saw noelle and jean daily, always in cohorts with them - hell, you would see lisa sometimes more than you saw him, thanks to the busy nature of his rank.

if you didn't remember them without a sliver of recognition, would you remember him? he found it hard to breathe the whole way back to the city of mondstadt with a restless young brunette at his side and - begrudgingly, kaeya hadn't even invited him along - the owner of the dawn winery. diluc was equally as pained to hear of your accident from amber and who was he to not be there during possibly one of the most painful times of his brother's life? he'd done him wrong before, multiple times and perhaps he had tried to brush their brotherly relationship off but he was his brother, his found family. now, he needed him.

there was only so much dread that could consume kaeya's tall body. the peaceful sounds of mondstadt no longer soothed him on his walk to the city like it usually did after a commission, no. in fact, it was killing him. he wanted to hold your face in his hands, his breath fanning over your lips as he stares into your hands. he wanted to see that beautiful smile of yours again, the way you roll your eyes at his drinking antics.

what was he supposed to do if you had forgot about him too? amber says you'd taken heavy trauma to the head. amnesia... amnesia is what ruined his life this time? not family issues and abandonment, not a family death and the awful grip of guilt and anger... amnesia. memory loss. something that had so bitterly taken his beloved from him. you'd been the first person kaeya had truly warmed up to since he drifted away from diluc. the first person to see his true sides, to see his sheer raw emotions.

kaeya had had plenty of time to prepare for this endeavour on the way into the city, knowing the chances you'd forgotten him were plenty high with how you'd forgotten the other knights. yet to hear you utter the words "who are you?" with such an innocent look to your face, overridden by confusion, it shattered his heart. his lungs felt like he was suffocating and he almost wanted to choke out 'your partner' into the air but he doesn't.

instead, with the reassuring touch of diluc's calloused hand on his shoulder, kaeya forces a weak smile onto his face, sun kissed skin glowing in the golden light of the sunset that breaks through the open window in your room as he clears his throat to reintroduce himself to you, "i'm kaeya."

his voice cracks, a dead giveaway to those in attendance that he was struggling with the reality of this. because of you, he'd lacked to drink as much on the evenings but now... diluc was already preparing to drag his brother away from the taverns, muttering curses that drinking was not the right coping mechanism. he'd be at his brother's side even if the latter reeked of wine.

kaeya would love you all over again, he'd spend so much time with you it would be suffocating if only it meant you fell in love with him again. a second chance to right his wrongs, to kiss those lips again. you were his, he wasn't going to let you fall into the hands of anyone else. he'd fix this.

⊹˚₊‧───────────────‧₊˚⊹

© thexianzhoujade 2024. | do not re-upload, copy, translate, etc. my works on any form of media.

[airrec]

Hi all, just wanted to put out a head's up that all of my fics are now archive-locked (that is, you must have an AO3 account to see them as they are only available to logged-in users) to protect them. So if you can't see them, don't worry - they have not been deleted and will never be.

I have made this decision due to the rise of data-scraping for AI purposes. I know that AO3 is doing its damn best with issuing takedowns etc. whenever it occurs, and I'm immensely grateful for it, but I'm just... I'm just tired. I'm tired of knowing that my stories are being stolen and that there's next to nothing I can do about it.

And I really didn't want to do this, genuinely I didn't, because I want anyone who searches to be able to find and read my stories, but now I feel that I must, because locking them is one of the only ways to protect them from bots. To other writers, I encourage you to also consider the possibility, too; you do not deserve to have your hard work spat upon and demeaned in such a manner.

To those who are not bots, to any human who chooses to specifically download and then put any of my fics through generative AI for whatever slop comes out the other end, please know this: you are a thief, and you are hurting both yourself and other people immeasurably by doing such. And also I despise you personally.

[adorkastock]

Hi Adorkastock!

With the new agreement between Tumblr and OpenAI/Midjourney, I immediately started worrying about your poses being scraped without your knowledge/consent (well, scraped *again*, we already know DeviantArt did it, I got hit there too).

There's apparently a toggle you can use in your blog settings to opt out of third party forwarding (although it's not confirmed if Midjourney/OpenAI will honour that), and if you want more protection I'd suggest looking into whether or not you could apply Nightshade and/or Glaze to your photos before posting, which would make them useless for LLMs to use as training data.

Thank you for everything you do, I've been following you for many years now and your references have been an amazing resource.

Thank you so much! Yes, I have all but completely given up on keeping my poses out of computer generated image databases. There's too much of me everywhere online and a bunch of my stuff was probably in the initial scraps from places like DA and Pinterest. But I'm glad you sent this because even though Tumblr is being a shit on a stick and not making the OPT OUT DEFAULT AS IT SHOULD BE just like DA did, you asking this might mean more people see this so they can go opt out on all their blogs. I came back to tumblr because DeviantArt did this exact thing. Companies have a chance to stand with artists, stand with creative people, but again and again they choose shiny things and money over us. Ty for the heads up even though I did know and I've already done this. Such an exhausting song and dance to be trapped in over and over and over.

[catkelpie]

Right. I haven't really posted anything personal here for a while...and I haven't written all that much fanfic either. But today I feel I have to make a statement of sorts. And it's twofold.

Part 1: it's okay to have phases where you don't write. It's okay if those phases are long, too. There are authors, there are other people who will tell you to write anyway, to force yourself, and even if it's just 10 minutes, just two sentences. Sadly, that doesn't work for me. If I don't have time or energy to write, I don't have it (which has been the case for way longer than I like right now). And yes, perhaps I do need to give myself a little nudge. It's always easier if there's an unfinished story there, not a new one waiting for me to start writing it. But also, just writing for 10 minutes...even that is too much at the moment, and if I actually start writing, 10 minutes won't do. I need to get into the flow, to focus, and then I'm very likely to write for at least an hour or two. Anyway, all of this as a very personal insight and as something that might very well be connected to how my neurodivergent brain works, but also as something that may be akin to your approach if your brain works in any way similar to mine. Something that may help you to not feel all that bad about not having written anything in a while, with all those voices telling you to just keep writing anyway. Take your break if you need it, however long it may be. And no, just because you haven't written anything doesn't mean you've lost it. Not your creativity, not your abilities. It will come back, like riding a bike.

That being said, here comes part 2: I am FURIOUS. AO3 has once again been scraped by data thieves, feeding the works of our hearts and brains to AI. I had my works protected by having them only accessible for registered users, but apparently that wasn't enough. Over half of my works are on the list of works that were scraped. I did not consent to this, and nor did any other fanfic writer there, I'm sure. And it hurts, and it feels frustrating, infuriating that there seems to be NOTHING we can do to protect our creative work. Work of love, of passion, work that we create for free, in what little free time we have, to share with other fans of the fandoms we love. And yes, it is WORK nevertheless. And it honestly feels as if we were being assaulted in some shady corner, our creations ripped out of our hands, to be fed to that monstrosity that is AI. I feel violated. I feel angry. I feel frustrated and sad. And I honestly ask myself why I even tried to protect my works from this, thus keeping them away from any guest readers as well. So to anyone defending AI and claiming that "writing" a story with AI is art, go f*** yourself! On behalf of all the writers who actually pour their heart and soul into their stories. Because even if we share it for free, YES, it is still work, contrary to letting soulless AI spout out some wannabe story by using the works (and WORDS) stolen, ROBBED, from others.

[genericpuff]

Remember when I mentioned the closure of MochaJump? Well, we're about to lose Inkblot, too, unless we do something.

Anyone who knows me here knows I'm all about decentralizing the Internet, but especially the online art scene. We artists are extremely limited in our options for posting, often times forced to stick to exploitative platforms like Twitter and Instagram. And as I've gone into at length before, part of the struggle in decentralizing the online art scene is building viable long-term alternatives, something that's become increasingly difficult to do in today's online economy and culture.

InkBlot.art is one such alternative that is now on the brink of closure. Its members received an email from the owner, Jacob Brown, laying his heart out about the state of the site and his own struggles in maintaining it in its current form without any form of sustainable monetary support.

Is Inkblot as populated with the "potential" for millions of followers like Instagram and Twitter? No. Does it come pre-packaged with the nostalgia a lot of us are seeking from "old sites" like DeviantArt? No. But it will never get the chance to become those things unless we do our part to help. Inkblot is another drop in a massive bucket of attempts to provide safer and more artist-focused alternatives to many of the enshittified corporate platforms that steal our data, scrape our art for AI, and snuff out our voices with algorithms - we shouldn't overlook the opportunity to try and save it unlike all the others that have failed and shut down despite their best efforts. A better future will not fall into our laps - proactive change starts with us.

I'm going to be tossing a few dollars their way on their Ko-Fi, and I highly suggest you do the same if you have anything to spare. Even if it still amounts to "nothing", we have to be willing to do our part to protect these spaces and keep them alive, because if we as artists aren't willing to fight for these communities, who will?

[raichett]

Hi all, just wanted to put out a head's up that all of my fics are now archive-locked (that is, you must have an AO3 account to see them as they are only available to logged-in users) to protect them. So if you can't see them, don't worry - they have not been deleted and will never be.

I have made this decision due to the rise of data-scraping for AI purposes. I know that AO3 is doing its damn best with issuing takedowns etc. whenever it occurs, and I'm immensely grateful for it, but I'm just... I'm just tired. I'm tired of knowing that my stories are being stolen and that there's next to nothing I can do about it.

And I really didn't want to do this, genuinely I didn't, because I want anyone who searches to be able to find and read my stories, but now I feel that I must, because locking them is one of the only ways to protect them from bots. To other writers, I encourage you to also consider the possibility, too; you do not deserve to have your hard work spat upon and demeaned in such a manner.

To those who are not bots, to any human who chooses to specifically download and then put any of my fics through generative AI for whatever slop comes out the other end, please know this: you are a thief, and you are hurting both yourself and other people immeasurably by doing such. And also I despise you personally.

[tendermiasma]

Sorry if this is kinda a depressing question, but how do you find the will power to keep posting your art? Personally I'm struggling to be more confident in sharing my art in a world full of ai programs data scraping and being really scared of putting myself out there consistently, I don't understand how others manage to keep doing it. How did you overcome nervousness (if any) as a beginning artist? I keep scrapping blogs and remaking and burning out and then deleting again before I do it all over.

I'm sorry you're struggling with art, it's not fun. In my case I have this unfortunate disease that makes me think everyone needs to see every thought about my obsessions that passes through my brain and I've been that way forever. I have a lot of feelings about the things I love and this is how I communicate them. I'm as frustrated at AI as anyone else but sharing my art is just a really enjoyable part of my life and it's the remedy to things that upset me. I don't see a reason to cede ground to something inferior that will get destroyed in litigation anyway because nothing can be copyrighted. It's also kind of my job to be online because it's where a lot of networking happens; being prepared for financial disruption is a powerful motivator.

It sounds like you're getting a little bogged down in the blogmaking stage so I'd try not messing with UI or organization and just focusing on making and posting art for a while. The other stuff can be done later. From my experience in doing things that are intimidating, they'll never not be intimidating until you do it so you just have to push through for a bit. Also putting Glaze and Nightshade on your work help protect against AI scraping.

[pizzaronipasta]

READ THIS BEFORE INTERACTING

Alright, I know I said I wasn't going to touch this topic again, but my inbox is filling up with asks from people who clearly didn't read everything I said, so I'm making a pinned post to explain my stance on AI in full, but especially in the context of disability. Read this post in its entirety before interacting with me on this topic, lest you make a fool of yourself.

AI Doesn't Steal

Before I address people's misinterpretations of what I've said, there is something I need to preface with. The overwhelming majority of AI discourse on social media is argued based on a faulty premise: that generative AI models "steal" from artists. There are several problems with this premise. The first and most important one is that this simply isn't how AI works. Contrary to popular misinformation, generative AI does not simply take pieces of existing works and paste them together to produce its output. Not a single byte of pre-existing material is stored anywhere in an AI's system. What's really going on is honestly a lot more sinister.

How It Actually Works

In reality, AI models are made by initializing and then training something called a neural network. Initializing the network simply consists of setting up a multitude of nodes arranged in "layers," with each node in each layer being connected to every node in the next layer. When prompted with input, a neural network will propagate the input data through itself, layer by layer, transforming it along the way until the final layer yields the network's output. This is directly based on the way organic nervous systems work, hence the name "neural network." The process of training a network consists of giving it an example prompt, comparing the resulting output with an expected correct answer, and tweaking the strengths of the network's connections so that its output is closer to what is expected. This is repeated until the network can adequately provide output for all prompts. This is exactly how your brain learns; upon detecting stimuli, neurons will propagate signals from one to the next in order to enact a response, and the connections between those neurons will be adjusted based on how close the outcome was to whatever was anticipated. In the case of both organic and artificial neural networks, you'll notice that no part of the process involves directly storing anything that was shown to it. It is possible, especially in the case of organic brains, for a neural network to be configured such that it can produce a decently close approximation of something it was trained on; however, it is crucial to note that this behavior is extremely undesirable in generative AI, since that would just be using a wasteful amount of computational resources for a very simple task. It's called "overfitting" in this context, and it's avoided like the plague.

The sinister part lies in where the training data comes from. Companies which make generative AI models are held to a very low standard of accountability when it comes to sourcing and handling training data, and it shows. These companies usually just scrape data from the internet indiscriminately, which inevitably results in the collection of people's personal information. This sensitive data is not kept very secure once it's been scraped and placed in easy-to-parse centralized databases. Fortunately, these issues could be solved with the most basic of regulations. The only reason we haven't already solved them is because people are demonizing the products rather than the companies behind them. Getting up in arms over a type of computer program does nothing, and this diversion is being taken advantage of by bad actors, who could be rendered impotent with basic accountability. Other issues surrounding AI are exactly the same way. For example, attempts to replace artists in their jobs are the result of under-regulated businesses and weak worker's rights protections, and we're already seeing very promising efforts to combat this just by holding the bad actors accountable. Generative AI is a tool, not an agent, and the sooner people realize this, the sooner and more effectively they can combat its abuse.

Y'all Are Being Snobs

Now I've debunked the idea that generative AI just pastes together pieces of existing works. But what if that were how it worked? Putting together pieces of existing works... hmm, why does that sound familiar? Ah, yes, because it is, verbatim, the definition of collage. For over a century, collage has been recognized as a perfectly valid art form, and not plagiarism. Furthermore, in collage, crediting sources is not viewed as a requirement, only a courtesy. Therefore, if generative AI worked how most people think it works, it would simply be a form of collage. Not theft.

Some might not be satisfied with that reasoning. Some may claim that AI cannot be artistic because the AI has no intent, no creative vision, and nothing to express. There is a metaphysical argument to be made against this, but I won't bother making it. I don't need to, because the AI is not the artist. Maybe someday an artificial general intelligence could have the autonomy and ostensible sentience to make art on its own, but such things are mere science fiction in the present day. Currently, generative AI completely lacks autonomy—it is only capable of making whatever it is told to, as accurate to the prompt as it can manage. Generative AI is a tool. A sculpture made by 3D printing a digital model is no less a sculpture just because an automatic machine gave it physical form. An artist designed the sculpture, and used a tool to make it real. Likewise, a digital artist is completely valid in having an AI realize the image they designed.

Some may claim that AI isn't artistic because it doesn't require effort. By that logic, photography isn't art, since all you do is point a camera at something that already looks nice, fiddle with some dials, and press a button. This argument has never been anything more than snobbish gatekeeping, and I won't entertain it any further. All art is art. Besides, getting an AI to make something that looks how you want can be quite the ordeal, involving a great amount of trial and error. I don't speak from experience on that, but you've probably seen what AI image generators' first drafts tend to look like.

AI art is art.

Disability and Accessibility

Now that that's out of the way, I can finally move on to clarifying what people keep misinterpreting.

I Never Said That

First of all, despite what people keep claiming, I have never said that disabled people need AI in order to make art. In fact, I specifically said the opposite several times. What I have said is that AI can better enable some people to make the art they want to in the way they want to. Second of all, also despite what people keep claiming, I never said that AI is anyone's only option. Again, I specifically said the opposite multiple times. I am well aware that there are myriad tools available to aid the physically disabled in all manner of artistic pursuits. What I have argued is that AI is just as valid a tool as those other, longer-established ones.

In case anyone doubts me, here are all the posts I made in the discussion in question: Reblog chain 1 Reblog chain 2 Reblog chain 3 Reblog chain 4 Potentially relevant ask

I acknowledge that some of my earlier responses in that conversation were poorly worded and could potentially lead to a little confusion. However, I ended up clarifying everything so many times that the only good faith explanation I can think of for these wild misinterpretations is that people were seeing my arguments largely out of context. Now, though, I don't want to see any more straw men around here. You have no excuse, there's a convenient list of links to everything I said. As of posting this, I will ridicule anyone who ignores it and sends more hate mail. You have no one to blame but yourself for your poor reading comprehension.

What Prompted Me to Start Arguing in the First Place

There is one more thing that people kept misinterpreting, and it saddens me far more than anything else in this situation. It was sort of a culmination of both the things I already mentioned. Several people, notably including the one I was arguing with, have insisted that I'm trying to talk over physically disabled people.

Read the posts again. Notice how the original post was speaking for "everyone" in saying that AI isn't helpful. It doesn't take clairvoyance to realize that someone will find it helpful. That someone was being spoken over, before I ever said a word.

So I stepped in, and tried to oppose the OP on their universal claim. Lo and behold, they ended up saying that I'm the one talking over people.

Along the way, people started posting straight-up inspiration porn.

I hope you can understand where my uncharacteristic hostility came from in that argument.

[ao3scrapesearch]

Im a little confused. So the ... thing that our data was being used for was permanently disabled right? Does that mean we still need to issue copyright take downs and stuff? Or lock our fics still? I'm not sure what the disabled thing means. There's a lot of technical jargon and I'm not familiar with ai stuff at all but I definitely dont want my work stolen::(( all 10 of my little fics were on the scraped list already so I'm a bit anxious. Thank u for all the work you've all already done for us!!

To my knowledge, no! You shouldn't need to issue take downs now. The main source is permanently disabled (meaning no one can use that data unless they happened to download it before the guy was flagged for copyright violations), and I don't think we have a safe contact to report on the other site.

Locking fics seemed to offer some protection from this. Overall, when people have told me specifics, I've heard from users with mostly public fics that most or all of their works were taken. For users with mostly locked fics, I've mostly heard that a large fraction of their works were taken, but a lower amount than those who had everything public.

Horrible advice, I fear, but the best thing I think you can do for now is try not to be anxious about it and let yourself accept that there's nothing you could've really done differently. I will update if and when I get more information on anything else we should be doing as a group, but the way I see it, you have a few personal options right now.

Choose to continue sharing works the way you always have. If the joy you get from sharing your work is great enough, it can be worth it to you to take the risk of having your work scraped again.

Continue sharing, but take steps to reduce the risk you get scraped again. This is stuff like locking your fics to users only, using invite-only collections to control who has access to read your fics, or going to another host entirely if you're worried AO3 can't support your privacy needs.

Choose not to share your work at all. If the positives you get out of sharing your writing don't feel worth the negatives of it potentially being scraped again, you don't have to share your works.

You don't have to pick one of these and stick with it forever. Maybe for a bit, you feel that option 3 is the best for you, but you can always change your mind later and go to option 1 or 2. If this has upset you enough and you need time to mentally recover from it, take that time.

Personally, I fall somewhere between a 1 and a 2 at the moment. I've accepted that my works may get scraped, but I also think there's got to be a better way to protect them a little more, which is why I'm still looking into all of this even though that main dataset has been disabled. I'd like to be more prepared for the next time this happens because AO3 will continue to be an attractive target for AI scrapers, and I'm sure attempts will happen again.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

any particular reason youre not using GDocs? I didnt use to, but since getting my shit stolen ive chosen the lesser evils of CLOUD

I just generally try to use google as little as possible. (Which reminds me, I need to find a new email provider). I generally avoid cloud services just for grumpy old person reasons; they're fiddly and keep changing the rules and I'm not a fan of the sorts of "conveniences" such things tend to offer.

I'm not sure how the cloud makes it harder to have your work stolen. I don't think there's any particular danger to storing stories on the cloud unless you're particularly overzealous about protecting your work from the potential of future AI scraping (google absolutely are capable of using cloud-stored documents for this if they choose to do so, they already scan your emails for keywords to know what to sell you, any 'privacy' they offer applies to outsiders getting your data, not them using or selling it themselves), but just technically speaking it's far easier to get your work stolen if you store your drafts on the internet. I mean, that's where people are stealing it from. If they're stealing your devices to steal your work, the cloud doesn't help because pretty much everyone has their devices set to auto-login for things they use every day (like accessing your drafts). I just can't see a situation in which using the cloud makes your data safer than storing it at home.

I don't use gdocs because I don't like google, have a personal dislike of cloud services (just for Old Man Yells At Cloud stupid reasons), and it just... doesn't offer me anything I'd need. I can't see any advantage to using gdocs, I already have libreoffice. Why would I put myself in a situation where I need internet access to write? It doesn't offer me anything useful that my own computer doesn't already have.

I work between two computers (my desktop and my laptop, depending on if I'm writing in bed or not) and transfer files between them on a flash drive, so I have three reasonably up-to-date copies of my draft at all times. I also queue updates onto my site frequently so if there's a housefire or something almost all my work is uploaded to both Wordpress and Patreon, waiting to be released to the public, and easily retrievable. So losing my work isn't a concern.

[stephofromcabin12]

Hey; there was an update on the ai data scraping situation: https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/s/mdYk5bGmWe

Some locked fics also got scrapped it seems

Well, all my fics already were in the pool, so...

It's more of a statement to lock them than a safety measure.

As in: I publish this shit for you I literally have no reason to publish it other than to let others enjoy what I write, and now you've taken advantage of the goodness of my heart, so I'm locking my fics to make it harder for you: Keep it up and no one gets to read my work.

I hate to sound dramatic but my finger is lingering over the delete work button, and it's not going to take much to turn this shit into an email chain. Encrypted email chain. If that even exists.

Otherwise, I guess my work will have to be private until AI hopefully implodes and dies. Then I'll pop a bottle of champagne and republish everything, because surprise I actually do want people to share in the joy of reading my work, free of charge and free of all this bullshit threatening that joy, because I'm–oh, you know–a decent human being with a moral compass, and compassion, and a brain, and whatnot. Crazy. I know.

It virtually does null and zero to lock your works if people want to scrape them. There is nothing you can do to protect your work, other than inventing your own encrypted hosting site, or simply not publishing it, I guess. Doesn't sound very fun to me...

From what I've seen most fellow fic writers are in agreement that if you (as in a general you, not you specifically, anon) can't respect what we do for free, because we want to, then we'll simply pull our works from the internet, for good. No more fanfiction. Have fun generating slop and sucking up our drinking water, I hope it was worth it. Oh, I hope the mediocre, repetitive, misspelled, poorly structured, couldn't find a narrative if it kicked it in the shins, absolute tapestry of shit AI cooks up for you, using people's earnest work, is everything you dreamed of.

If you write fanfic and publish it online, you're pretty much screwed as far as precautions go. Same for artists, and anyone who posts, comments or writes something on most social media apps these days. Yippy skippy.

But I'm like totally chill about it and sooooo happy that nothing is sacred on this godforsaken planet :)