#turn tumblr into a nonprofit

[juh-wasnt-deactivated19691231]

ok in the bread one they mentioned the irony of running ads for ad-free i think. but this. this.

just.

it’s the online equivalent of getting mugged by your boss

[borderlinebelle]

Hi 😈

I’m back on my worst behavior as it’s springtime now.

I’ll be streaming today from my 2nd to last day at the office at my toxic nonprofit job while sharing stories of my journey to the big “i quit” 🤭 Feel free to come and go as I share my weird wild and unhinged world. 😚

Thank you to my mutuals, both old and new… from this year and 12 years ago, that continued to encourage me to shape my own reality and chose my own happiness and health above corporate America. 🥲

[dylawas-reblogs]

Genuine question @ me: why can't you get it together (rant in tags)

[autolenaphilia]

It's funny how clearly uninformed a lot of criticism of Mozilla and its browser Firefox is. Like people say "it's just another corporation, out to make profit, just like Google." And that ordinary users promoting Firefox are just giving them free advertising.

It's in basically any post criticizing Mozilla, including on this site. Like using tumblr search I quickly found a post that was largely positive, but argued that Mozilla operates "under capitalist incentives" And outside tumblr I found a blog post out on the interwebs that criticized Mozilla and outright wondered "I don't know if Mozilla's business model ever made sense, it makes a lot more sense if it's something closer to a nonprofit rather than a commercial entity."

Well, let's research the Mozilla Corporation, see what that business model actually is. Let's begin that research by going to the wikipedia article, and read the two introductory paragraphs. And it turns out that it's "a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation", which is a non-profit.

"The Mozilla Foundation will ultimately control the activities of the Mozilla Corporation and will retain its 100 percent ownership of the new subsidiary. Any profits made by the Mozilla Corporation will be invested back into the Mozilla project. There will be no shareholders, no stock options will be issued and no dividends will be paid. The Mozilla Corporation will not be floating on the stock market and it will be impossible for any company to take over or buy a stake in the subsidiary."

Turns out that it is not just "closer to a non-profit", it is literally a non-profit. Turns out you only needed two paragraphs on wikipedia to learn that, the most basic online research possible, which basically every post I found criticizing Mozilla failed to do.

This is entirely different from any other entity calling itself corporation, which is all about creating profit or money for its shareholders, the "capitalist incentives" spoken about earlier.

If you read further into that article, you will learn that the Mozilla corporation literally only exists separate from the foundation for tax and legal purposes, but it's still a non-profit operation.

This makes it reasonably immune from the enshittification process I've written about before. there is no incentive to fuck over the experience for end users for the sake of shareholder profits, like what tumblr is doing right now.

It means that Firefox is an exemption to the rule that "if something is free, you are the product", because there is no product to produce profits for shareholders, it's a charitable endeavour for a free and open internet, as laid out in the Mozilla manifesto.

This doesn't mean non-profits make corruption impossible, there is plenty of corruption in non-profit foundations. But unlike actual capitalist corporations, it doesn't have the greed and corruption built in. And if you are going to criticize Mozilla and Firefox, which it does sometimes deserve, you should have your basic facts straight before doing so, if you expect me to take you seriously.

[erisenyo]

Fandom Trumps Hate is an annual fanworks auction that raises money for a number of small, progressive nonprofits: organizations that support trans rights, that advocate for immigrants and refugees, that protect pollinators and work on habitat restoration, support people seeking abortions, and more. (You can see the full list of 2024 organizations here.) Over the past seven years, thousands of fans have come together through the auction to raise nearly $240,000.

There are two ways to participate in Fandom Trumps Hate:

sign up to create fanworks. Fan creators are the ones who make the auction happen by offering their time and talents to other fans. You'll have space to tell potential bidders what kinds of things you're especially excited to create, as well as what kinds of things fall outside your sphere of interest or comfort. You'll also have the chance to narrow down the list of organizations that your auction will support, if you feel strongly about a couple of causes in particular. Signups are open through February 19th. You have the full year to create your piece for your bidder!

bid on creators who are offering to make ATLA fanworks. Is there a tumblr shitpost you'd love to see turned into a fic? A scene in your head you'd love to see captured in art? A fic you'd love to get a culture picker or translation or beta reader for? Bidding on another fan creator is a great way to make that happen! If you win an auction for a given creator's work, you'll make a donation to one of the organizations that creator has identified, and then you and that creator can get started dreaming up the fanwork that will hit your sweet spots. Bidding will be run from March 5th-March 9th.

We've had a handful of prior ATLA fics written for the auction in prior years (including two by me! And a few more for Legend of Korra!), as well as even more art, and it would be amazing if there lots more this year! If you are a lover of ATLA fic (or gifsets, or vids, or art, or any other kind of non-tangible fanwork) please consider signing up as a creator, or taking part as a bidder!

Please reblog to spread the word to other ATLA fans and creators!

[annabannnananana]

who tf is anna banana? (intro/byf)

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literally nobody just a banana with internet access who likes to write and draw and shitpost and dump headcanons

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about me:

• 22, turning 23 on July 7 woohoo :D (if you want you can wish me a happy bday then!)

• she/her pls and thanks :)

• bi / ace! 🩷💜💙 / 🖤🩶🤍💜

• cancer ♋️ 🦀 (the zodiac, not like I have cancer 😭 - no offense to those who do have cancer)

• I have adhd and t1d, I post about it occasionally but it’s not the focus of my blog :)

• I occasionally post art and stuff like icons/pfps, headers, & wallpapers idk :p (always like & reblog if you save and always give credit if you use pls and thanks!! also feel free to req any specific ones!!)

• i’m not super active rn, been very distracted from tumblr as of late and not likely to refocus on it anytime soon, but I still appreciate and usually answer messages and asks and occasionally being tagged in reblog chains 🙃

• I mostly just reblog cool stuff , shitpost, and occasionally ramble about hyperfixations

favorite things:

• favorite color: pink 🩷

• favorite food: waffles 🧇

• favorite animal: wolf/fox 🐺🦊

• favorite season: summer ☀️

• favorite show: arcane league of legends 💣⚔️

• favorite movie: 10 things I hate about you 📋

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here’s stuff about my writing! 👇🏻

writing requests are always open unless i say they’re closed! :)

what i WILL write:

• headcanons, fics, oneshots, reader inserts, multi-chapter stories on occasion

• reader of any gender identity and sexuality (if unspecified i will default to gn!reader), kid! or adult!reader, reader of any species or robot!reader

what i will NOT write:

• nsfw, self h@rm, relationship with 6+ year age difference, minor x adult, noncon, incest, abusive OF ANY KIND.

• ddlg / omorashi / emeto / scat

• oc x canon - apologies, but I’ll never be able to understand your oc well enough to know which actions would best fit their character in any scenario or which way would be the best way to write them because of who they are, hope you understand </3

• age regression - sorry, but with what little I know about it & how little experience I have with it I don’t feel equipped to write it!

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here’s stuff about my art! 👇🏻

just like writing, art requests are always open unless I say they’re not!

• I don’t post art too much but occasionally I’ll post either a quick messy sketch that I’m incredibly proud of or a piece that took 2 months that I’m not as proud of, idk why, art is wild

• working on drawing humans and a little bit of animals like dragons & canines here and there!! I’d LOVE to be able to animate one day in the very distant future :0

• same as writing, I will not draw nsfw, self h@rm, relationship with 6+ year age difference, minor x adult, noncon, incest, abuisve, omorashi, ddlg, emeto, scat

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I will write and draw for any fandoms I’m actively in which include:

• arcane

• fnaf & all fangames

• monster high

• ever after high

• mlp

• miraculous ladybug

• spop

• gravity falls

• the owl house

• wings of fire

• helluva boss & hazbin hotel (critical fan)

^ and there’s probably like 30 more i forgot, so if you want you can send me an ask sometime to ask if I’m in a certain fandom that my silly brain forgot to put here! :D

feel free to ask me or talk to me about anything, my inbox is always open !!

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speaking of asks, I have a few rules for asks:

• please don’t send me asks asking for money. I love donating money to nonprofit organizations, local unhoused people, charities, homeless shelters, etc but I don’t appreciate asking me for money over Tumblr bc I’ll never be sure whether you’re scamming/grifting/e-begging me, and I don’t tolerate any of those.

• please don’t send me asks intended to start discourse. if you send me an ask that is made clearly just to start arguments and piss people off, you’ll probably get an immediate block. That’s not an excuse to go and do it with anon on, though!

• please don’t send me asks questioning my beliefs, methods, or interests with the sole intention of arguing with me. If you don’t understand something I like/do/etc, feel free to privately dm me to ask me a few *POLITE* questions! If you’re just trying to be rude, fuck off.

• do not send me an ask (or dm) without reading my DNI. if you try and talk to me, and I go into your profile and discover you’re part of my DNI list, you’re getting an immediate block. sorry not sorry

• don’t say shit to me with anon on. If you’re gonna be an asshole, might as well turn anon off. all that’s gonna happen is that you’re gonna get blocked and I’ll forget you exist in the next 2 days.

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my tags:

• my writing - #banana writes

• my art - #banana art

• my txt - #banana talks

• my response to asks - #banana ask

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almost last but not least, my DNI:

DO NOT FOLLOW ME OR INTERACT WITH ME OR ANY OF MY POSTS IF YOU ARE:

comship, pedo, zoo, bigot, racist, ableist, terf/truscum, anti lgbtq+, anti neopronouns, scientologist, n@zi, nsfw blog (not including artistic nudity), gore/violence blog, tone indicator misusers (e. g. using /srs on joke/satire posts), ddlg/any kind of ageplay, transmedicalist, jk rowling or scott cawthon supporter, misogynist, makes jokes about self h@rm r@pe violence etc, and just an asshole in general

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and one last thing before I go!

I do usually follow back if you seem cool, but remember, DO NOT follow me if you’re in my DNI list. if you do, you’re getting blocked immediately. and if you do follow me please change your pfp so I know you’re not a bot!! this is important!! thank you!!

well that’s all I have to say. have a nice day/night! cya!!

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also userboxes:

all userboxes by @xxx-ang3l-w1th-a-sh0tgun-xxx

also my blinkies:

made in blinkies.cafe ! go check it out!!

-anna banana ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

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P. S. I update my pinned post & bio every so often so remember to check every now and then to see if I added anything new & important!!

P. P. S. I’m starting a taglist!! I will tag a list of people who are part of my taglist at the end of all my writing, dm me if you follow me & wanna be part of that list!!

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[copperbadge]

If you could buy Tumblr, would you?

Hm, an interesting thought!

If I were capable of buying Tumblr this would imply one of two things: either Tumblr is so devalued and has become so cheap to maintain that a single man living in downtown Chicago with two cats to feed could afford to buy it and keep it, or I have somehow come into enough wealth that I am capable of squandering millions on the Hellsite.

(Or I'm running the most incredible con, which is actually the most flattering option.)

If we're talking a situation where Tumblr would cost me roughly the price of a third cat to purchase and maintain, sure. Buy it, keep it like a pet. This is a bit of an unrealistic vision of things, because under what circumstances would this possibly happen, but as long as we're in unreality, let's pretend I could also simply add and remove features at will. That's some fun shit. Sure, I would.

The more realistic option (for a given value) is that I have mysteriously come into a massive sum of money and could afford to purchase Tumblr. In this scenario, I could likely afford to operate it at a loss only for so long, but I don't actually know how much Tumblr costs on a yearly basis to keep it operational. Most of the problems with most social media, however, come from the fact that they don't just have to break even, they have to turn a profit to continue to function, or they have to have regular infusions of venture capital. A thorny issue.

Ideally what I would do once Tumblr was purchased, and presuming all the other share/stakeholders and investors were paid off, was immediately convert it to a nonprofit. What you can do with nonprofit cash is a lot smaller than what you can do with for-profit levels of investment, but turning Tumblr into a nonprofit has the immediate advantage of no longer having to make money. Tumblr can actually run at a "loss" if it's a public service, because it's all donation-supported anyway. I could think of half a dozen immediate easy targets for major gift fundraising for "Tumblr 503", and I would immediately begin planning both an annual campaign (that's what you see Wikipedia and AO3 doing each year) and a capital campaign to create an endowment to protect the org from future depredation.

Depending on funding I would also be willing to create an arm of the Tumblr Foundation that could start separate initiatives like legal protection for activists on the platform, AI that is better at recognizing illegal content so we don't have huge buildings of poor traumatized motherfuckers doing that moderation work, and such things. This isn't at all uncommon -- the nonprofit I work for now is a medical nonprofit, but even as small as we are, we have numerous different initiatives, from political lobbying to pharma outreach to a helpline for the newly diagnosed to a yearly conference for doctors in the field to funding for young researchers.

Would it work? Dunno. Possibly not, I'm not experienced in backend management of a massive website. But I know people who are, and if the money was there I'd take a stab at it. Worst case scenario, we just take it private again and sucker a couple of billionaires out of their money a second time. Promise if the nonprofit doesn't work and we sell Tumblr to the highest bidder, everyone on the site when we do gets a cut.

[citadelofmythoughts]

Honestly, it's starting to feel like we're gonna need to pull an AO3 for all fandom content if we're gonna be able to keep our communities together. Like, we really need a fan run, nonprofit blog/community site that isn't okay with AI stealing our work that we can use to interact with each other because all of the big social media platforms have been falling apart lately.

Yup. This is going to be the 2nd home I'm (potentially) losing. I walked away from Twitter for obvious reason but I'll be here until they turn the lights off.

Finding or creating a site that is as curateable as Tumblr is gonna be a tall order though but something has to be done.

[pangolin-404]

Im honestly really worried for ranboo. Most people that get this big on the internet either get desensitized to stuff and become a bit of an asshole (or a full asshole) or get destroyed because of how much they care. Ranboo seems to be heading towards the second category and I wish for them to be okay

[post]

I really have no idea where I see Ranboo going from here. There are plenty of big creators who do good (Jacksepticeye's Thankmas, MCC charity events) and to me, the Particles for Palestine event was like that. A big creator utilizing their platform to raise awareness and charity. I... genuinely I don't see how people are so upset with Ranboo over . what? Not doing more? Not coming out with in-depth, nuanced reactions to global events? When they probably knew as much as you or I did.

Yes he broke promises, he is not a guiltless victim; he kept playing TLOU2 even after told of its inspiration, he didn't do as much charity as he said he would, and it's good he's acknowledging that, but this visceral reaction to him runs deeper than that, it looks like? I feel like he should stop raising peoples' expectations and over-promising; he's one guy, he's young.

I know it's probably mostly in Twitter--in the Tumblr tags, the worst I saw was a couple people calling them spineless (sorry Ranboo, but good lird, he is a little bit spineless for not telling people to stop idolizing him). But I can't wrap my head around the logic behind people going after his ankles.

Now, I personally can't think of anyone fitting the "get destroyed" option you claim has happened, Anon. So I'll be honest I think it's a little bit overdramatic, but I agree with you in that I'm also worried for Ranboo.

I worry that a whole nonprofit will be too much for them. That is a whole organization, and even if they have others working with them, that is a lifelong commitment. This is something he cannot back out of (or he will be making another empty promise) or give to someone else to handle (he said he would be active in it).

Ranboo has Generation Loss/Chronicle 0, White Noise, The Sorry Boys (if that still exists. please it's been months,), his usual streams and YouTube videos, and his own personal life and self to tend to. Genuinely, I worry a whole entire nonprofit organization that intends to address very heavy topics will break the camel's back. I don't know what that will look like, but I doubt it'd be great for his mental health and anxiety (and I worry talking too much about that, lest I get parasocial, if I haven't already!).

(I'll be honest, I don't expect the organization to go anywhere past its first few months of existence; if it does, it will be without their major role in it, or they'd be stretched too thin. I feel bad for saying that.)

All due respect to him, of course, but he is a variety gamer on twitch dot teevee, and I do not understand why people demand more and more charity and apology from him when his job is to play video games and make people laugh.

I get why people want him to state his stances, to be assured he supports Palestine. To be vocal about a tragedy happening. I get why people expect a charity stream during pride month, or an eventual donation to somewhere to help during a disaster. What I do not understand is how this isn't enough for some people.

to quote something I said when talking to a friend about this: I think he should tweet "yall need to respect me as a regular everyday person and stop seeing me as a paragon" and delete twitter and turn off the internet in his house

[hootfort]

one hit update when??

Hi gamers!

So, if you've interacted with me in any sort of passive way, you'll probably know my life is always some sort of trainwreck. I've had a chapter (well, multiple, given their length) of One Hit ready to go since I last updated, but life has gotten in the way.

For the people who have left comments, sent asks, or messaged me and not received a response, I'm sorry. I see pretty much everything, but mentally, it's hard to find the energy to reply in a manner that feels fair to you. I want to meet you with the same attention and care that you have shown me, but my brain hasn't been up to it.

TL;DR - One Hit will get updated now that it's summer. I can't promise when, but I promise that it will happen. I'm studying at a place that lied to my face and has driven me to my limit, not academically but mentally. Picking up the pieces and creating a future that I can survive is exhausting, but I'm getting there. The lovely messages and comments are often the highlights of my month, and I am utterly grateful for all of your kindness. All of you are wonderful, and this fandom has been one of the driving forces for me to reach the finish line.

In no particular order, I was and still am enduring a lot of harassment/discrimination in my academic life. It's to the point where I'm facing the very real prospect of having to move to another university to continue my education beyond my current degree, but this final year and the state of my department is... a lot. I'm dealing with the aftermath of turning against a nonprofit that got me started with writing; the cornerstone of my identity since 2017 is in shambles, and that organisation was why I went to university to study what I do.

I don't want to out myself too hard here, but I cannot emphasise how crushing the sequence of events has been. Everything that we were promised when enrolling in this place was a lie. When I last updated, I was attempting to get out of a predatory internship that I had to quit THREE SEPARATE TIMES, and this was an internship shared by my university. I was being felt up, for lack of a better explanation, by a former driving instructor who took thousands of pounds from my family and utterly destroyed my self-confidence and my trust in the world. A large part of who I am and who I want to be is gone, and reconciling that has been difficult.

So, yeah. My life has been a mess. For more reasons than this, but those are my biggest feelings.

I'm getting there. I'm not even sure this is all pertinent information, but I logged into Tumblr and saw all of these alerts, and I feel like I owe it to people to tell them why I was gone. Because I love this fandom, I love the people in it. I love your art, your fanfics, and the countless other things that you do for a world that can seem so dark.

The world is lucky to have you guys in it, and I really want to thank you profusely for what you've done for my life, even if it wasn't visible through updates. My little corner of the internet makes me so happy, and it brings me great peace and comfort to know that now I've survived hell, I can enjoy hanging around a little more for now.

Fingers crossed that it won't take me forever to update this time.

- Min :)

[screampotato]

Would automattic consider turning Tumblr into an actual nonprofit with autonomy in its fundraising? I really believe this is the only model that will work for this kind of site. That's basically how most traditional forums operate. Nonprofit with a small salaried staff and a large voluntary staff.

[aryas]

Hey there, I was reading the replies on a post about the new Alt Shift X video asking for info about it and saw you mentioned this:

Plus, I lost all respect for him [Alt Shift X] when he tried to make money off asoiaf fanfic without the authors' permission a few years back.

Do you mind elaborating if possible please? I haven't heard of this at all! I've enjoyed his general attitude in the past because he seemed somewhat reasonable, but got sticky feelings because he used Midjourney/machine generated art of characters in his Jon Snow video (I noticed Alys Karstark especially - weird because she's not that obscure). I don't want to be looking for reasons to nitpick anybody's behaviour but there is a hardline for me with people who profit off fandom which is respecting the purity/nonprofit/artistic driven nature of fannish creations. This is why I find the Midjourney more egregious than normal.

Thank you and hope you have a fab day, and love your cover photo!

Hi,

Here's a call out post of an author whose fic was used without their permission.

(the fact I managed to dig up this old wank from tumblr's disastrous search engine is no small feat lol)

He also posted audios of Braime fic iirc.

Some people were questioning whether it was truly Alt shift X behind this and not some other wanker posing as him but turns out it was really him since he later apologised and took down the content.

[the-sleepy-archivist]

Tumblr to Sell User Content to OpenAI and Midjourney

Based on internal documentation and communications leaked to the news website 404 Media, Tumblr has reached an agreement with Midjourney and OpenAI to sell user-generated Tumblr content to them for use in training their AI models: link.

Tumblr has not officially announced this yet, but after 404 Media’s article (login wall, full article text here) was published, @staff released a statement saying that you can turn off sharing your Tumblr data with third parties, including Tumblr partners and AI companies, via a toggle in your blog settings. Instructions for doing that are here. Note that this is a per-blog setting, so you’ll need to do it for your main blog and any sideblogs you have.

It’s worth noting both OpenAI and Midjourney have probably already used Tumblr data to train their models. Both companies make use of the LAION dataset, which is a huge set of data scraped from the internet by a Germany nonprofit organization, and LAION was scraping the web long before AI started making headlines.

From that angle, this still isn’t great, but it’s also not the end of the world. Agreements like what Tumblr and Midjourney/OpenAI have ostensibly reached will pipe new Tumblr data to them directly on an ongoing basis, but at least now we will have the ability to control this for our blogs (~theoretically~), unlike the secret scraping that LAION was doing.

Unfortunately there is probably no way to delete any data of yours that was already scraped; my understanding is that metadata like which user it was scraped from are generally stripped out of training datasets because they aren’t useful, so there’s no way to identify which data was scraped from which blog etc. Now that tumblr will be sending them the data directly, I’m hopeful that that metadata will be retained so that opt-out requests can be respected in the future. We shall see.

[piss-bong]

just curious why are you anti green brothers? i’ve only heard good things about them and i havent heard much of the other side of things, so i want to try and get the full picture before making any judgements

Short answer is they're capitalists.

Long answer is it's mainly because they're capitalists (seriously, get a load of this shit) who center a large part of their personal brand around a goal to enact positive change in the world while only loosely defining what that change is, and only enacting it by raising money for any of their million different nonprofits and making themselves richer in the process. They're bad for the same reasons Bill Gates is bad despite pledging to give away all his money or whatever. Nonprofits really aren't fucking great to begin with, and they have a lot of them.

There's also the assault allegations that happened on youtube in 2014 and their responses to said allegations, which weren't exactly great and kinda just completely shirked responsibility for their role in what took place. I know that they did take some measures to make vidcon and other irl events safer, but there's a reason vidcon isn't happening anymore.

Also, the way they tend to get really fuckin weird when responding to any sort of criticism.

Plus, John has just,, said and done some shitty things in the past, and most of this I'd be willing to let slide under "they were younger and I'm sure they've grown since then," but it's pretty obvious that his bad opinions definitely bleed into his writing, and it's kind of concerning when his target audience is teenage girls.

Not to mention, they position themselves as science educators when neither of them have degrees in science or education. I know they work with people who do, but sometimes their "educational content" is just fucking capitalist propaganda. (edit: turns out hank actually does have a STEM degree, but that doesn't change the fact that the "education" they're providing is just thinly-veiled propaganda)

Also not to be demeaning but,, it's obvious you're new here bc we have a long history of hating these guys. Here's a reddit post about the time we bullied john off the site.

If you wanna listen to a podcast, Big Soy Naturals has two episodes about them. I pulled some of these sources from there and they definitely cover the topic a lot more in-dept than I can in a tumblr post.

[mel-the-pirate-prompt-reblog]

Not to bring up "old" stuff, such as the OTW May Signal bit that was removed after some backlash, I wanted to see it. I threw the OTW into the Wayback Machine, went back to May 9th, and was able to see just what they pulled from the Signal after the community backlash to see what they regret adding to this month's Signal.

So I copy-pasted it, since I bet others who didn't read it wanted/want to, too. You can also read it directly from the OTW May Signal on the Wayback Machine here.

Quotes and etc are under the cut. All blue text is a link.

This is what they cut out of May 2023's Signal:

For Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week, the OTW’s Legal Chair, Betsy Rosenblatt, was interviewed about AI legal issues*. Betsy pointed out that having AIs learn from works such as fanfiction meant that they weren’t only using old works from the public domain to learn about the world. “That means that machines will learn how to describe and express a much more contemporary, broad, inclusive, and diverse set of ideas.” What’s more…

"I’m also intrigued by some of the expressive possibilities that AI may create. Will DALL·E or ChatGPT become characters in fan fiction? Surely they will. I want to read the fan-created stories where DALL·E and ChatGPT fall in love with each other (or don’t), get into arguments (or don’t), buy a house together (or don’t), team up to solve (or perpetrate!) crimes….

Will fans will take up this challenge?"

Thought it might be worth noting that the OTW did add this about AI and Data Scraping on the Archive on May 13th.

*The interview is still up, but just in case, I'll be pulling the link from the Wayback Machine instead of the actual link.

I will be highlighting a few important points (imo) in case people don't want to read the entire interview. For longer highlights, I will be adding bold/italics/underline to help people keep from jumping around the text and read out of order (I know I do, and that tends to help me).

Because I'm having Thoughts about AI scraping, I might make a Tumblr-esque essay and put my English major to use looking into some of this interview (If I ever do, I might add a link to this post). Highlighting things and reading through this interview makes me want to pull my stuff from AO3, and I've only just started posting there a year ago.

Highlighting phrases and sentences does not mean I agree with them. It means I think they are important to see and consider.

Here's the interview that Signal links to:

...Betsy Rosenblatt is the legal chair for the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), a nonprofit dedicated to preserving fan works.... The interview with Betsy follows.

Katherine: When you think about AI technology, fan works, and copyright, what excites you? And, what keeps you up at night?

Betsy: One of the things that excites me—which is probably a bit off to the side of what most people are talking about with AI and copyright—is that AIs are reading fan fiction now. For a long time, machine learning relied almost exclusively on data sources that were known to be in the copyright public domain, such as works published prior to 1927 and public records. The result of that was that machines were often learning archaic ideas—learning to associate certain professions with certain races and genders, for example. Now, machine learning is turning to broader sources from across the internet, including fan works. That means that machines will learn how to describe and express a much more contemporary, broad, inclusive, and diverse set of ideas.

I’m also intrigued by some of the expressive possibilities that AI may create. Will DALL·E or ChatGPT become characters in fan fiction? Surely they will. I want to read the fan-created stories where DALL·E and ChatGPT fall in love with each other (or don’t), get into arguments (or don’t), buy a house together (or don’t), team up to solve (or perpetrate!) crimes….

As for what keeps me up at night, I remain mostly optimistic. I think it would be a very sad turn of events if some of the newly begun litigation about data crawling and scraping ended up preventing machines from building contemporary, inclusive, broad-based data pools to draw on. I think it would be very sad if people turned to AI-created works instead of finding, exploring, and making fan works of their own. But I don’t think either of those things is very likely to happen. Fans make fan works because they love doing it. They feel compelled to tell the stories they imagine, and they want to share those with communities of other fans. They use fan work creation to build skills and find their own voices. I don’t think that the emergence of new technologies will stop them from doing that.

Katherine: Artists have filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that AI companies violate copyright law when they create databases of copyrighted images to “train” their AI image products. At least one of the companies in the suit, Stability AI, says that this is a fair use: “Anyone that believes that this isn’t fair use does not understand the technology and misunderstands the law.” What questions would you like to see a court ask when analyzing whether ingesting copyrighted works to create AI-training databases is a fair use?

Betsy: I tend to agree with Stability AI’s statement. I would like to see courts consider the “training” process separately from the process of generating works. It is, of course, possible that a machine could generate an infringing work. But the process of training that machine involves something very different—turning expressive works into data and creating relationships based on that data collection. We call it machine “learning” for a reason. A well-trained machine won’t generate an infringing work, but it needs as large a pool of data to work from as possible to do that. The mere fact that an AI can create something infringing doesn’t determine whether the gathering of information is infringement. Consider the classic Sony v. Betamax case: The VCR can be used to infringe, but it has noninfringing (fair) uses, and therefore the VCR does not inherently infringe. I recognize that the analogy isn’t perfect, but I find it persuasive. In general, courts have found that “interim” copying isn’t infringement—that is, copying isn’t infringement when it occurs inside a machine and does not, itself, make copyrighted works perceptible to people—and I think courts should continue to follow that logic.

Katherine: Will the Supreme Court’s 2021 Google v. Oracle decision have any bearing on this case?

Betsy: I hope so. That case highlighted that we shouldn’t be locked into one definition of “transformative” work, and that copying for the purpose of engaging in a different technological use can be transformative copying.

Katherine: What would you say to online creators who might be discouraged by AI technology?

Betsy: You will always make your work better than an AI can. What matters about your work is that it comes from you. That makes your work irreplaceable, and it will always remain so.

[tic-loud-tic-proud]

Hey, do you guys remember Tumblr's weird mental health robot thing from a few months back? The one that would DM you if you used certain words in your posts? Kokobot?

Turns out it was selling your information.