#web accessibility lawsuit

[adasitecompliance]

How To Avoid a Website Accessibility Lawsuit

Every day, thousands of people are unable to use and interact with websites because of web accessibility issues. This can lead to a website accessibility lawsuit for you or your company. Over the past few years, certain regulations and guidelines to prevent this have emerged – more specifically, the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA).

The Act was carried as a civil rights legislation, which passed in the US to protect the rights of people with disabilities, as well as prohibit any discrimination against them. As per the ADA website rules, all people with disabilities have to have equal opportunities to participate in programs, receive services, seek knowledge, and express themselves freely.

Why Is Web Accessibility Important?

Website accessibility refers to the ability of people with a wide range of physical and mental disabilities to access websites, products, systems, services, and facilities featured on a website. For instance, web accessibility means that visually impaired or blind people can purchase tickets, use apps, recharge transportation cards, and use other services offered online.

Web content should be accessible to people, even ones using screen readers and other assistive technologies and automated tools. In times when around 1 in 5 people in the U.S. lives with one or more disabling conditions, statistics show that there are more than 50 million people in the United States and around 1.3 billion around the world who have a certain form of disability.

At the same time, improved digital accessibility benefits everyone. The features that would be designed for 20% of the population can also be used by the other 80% – we all know that anyone can be affected by a disability, which is why equal access matters. Adhere to these new standards for the disabled or you are likely to face a website accessibility lawsuit soon.

Digital Accessibility Features That Can Benefit Everyone

Some of the most important digital accessibility features that can benefit everyone include the following:

Text-to-Speech and Voice Recognition features, help people access online services on a mobile device when driving, or when their hands are full.

Features that enable captions on media content, can help when you are in a noisy environment or in situations when you don’t want to distract others.

An option to easily magnify text by screen magnifiers, which can help disabled and people with vision impairments and difficulties, but also people who suffer from temporary eye injuries.

Besides regular business compliance, an ADA site can improve the overall marketing of the company, especially when using the right tools that are known as popular in this manner. These can assist you in avoiding a website accessibility lawsuit.

About ADA & The Web Accessibility Guidelines

Web accessibility guidelines have existed for two decades. They aim to bring usability and user experience design together, removing barriers for people with disabilities and enabling more users to complete tasks online.

Generally speaking, these guidelines are designed to provide a sufficient level of detail for any person interacting on the web. Some guidelines involve discrete and identifiable criteria (for example, embedding images and link areas with appropriate text) while others require greater amounts of professional discretion (the use of code to improve navigability, predictability, compatibility with certain software, etc.).

Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)

Establishing a legal framework around digital accessibility ensures that companies give equal access to content to disabled users, and make their services accessible to a large audience. Over the past decade, companies have been rushing to embrace accessibility in order to strengthen their financial and ethical benefits. The legal requirement came into effect in 2010, known as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

This legal framework outlines all the digital accessibility requirements for every company profile in the United States. Basically, ADA compliance ensures that a set of laws is put in place to prevent any discrimination against people with disabilities. It is applicable in all areas of public life including work, school, education, and transportation services. Established by the Department of Justice, ADA compliance requires websites to enable people to use the Internet as well as online services.

Who Needs To Follow The ADA Requirements?

There are three main titles within ADA, where Title I applies to all businesses with at least 15 full-time employees. Title II of the ADA applies to state and local government compliance. Lastly, ADA Title III refers to most businesses as well as non-profit business entities in the “accommodation” and “public spaces” categories.

Online services and digital information are also considered public accommodations and require ADA compliance. Below is a summarized list of companies, businesses, and organizations that are required to comply and are at risk of ADA lawsuits in case of violations:

State and local government offices

Private business entities employing 15 or more people

Corporations that operate for the benefit of the public

Banking Institutions

Hotels and travel/tour agencies or businesses

Hospitals and healthcare institutes

Schools, universities, and educational institutions.

WCAG

A document known as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is what has been the globally accepted standard defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The regulations spread through three levels of accessibility for both online and digital services, including:

Level A is the minimum level of accessibility that is required for individuals to make digital content accessible to people with disabilities.

Level AA is the medium level of accessibility that is required for individuals to access and interact with digital content, navigating it without any barriers.

Level AAA is the maximum level of accessibility that is required for individuals, where digital content needs to be accessed but also has an additional interface layer, providing the most convenient experience.

Many types of web content are unable to reach Level AAA. On the other hand, Level AA compliance is the minimum required level in order to make a website accessible.

Why Are WCAG 2.0 And 2.1 Created?

The WCAG 2.0 and WCAG 2.1 guidelines have been created to provide a clear methodology and a unique standard for digital accessibility that meets the needs of all individuals, companies, and governments. The standard applies to a broad range of web technologies, implemented by a set of web development and web design techniques, as well as tested by a range of automated tools.

In times when many businesses or website owners don’t understand how people interact with their websites or mobile apps, having an ADA website that conforms to the regulations can help you prevent accessibility lawsuits.

Moreover, a website designed as per the latest website usability and accessibility reviews is a good way to expand your reach to a broader target audience, improve your marketing efforts, and ensure that every user has equal access to your information, products, or services.

Here, it is important to prepare the digital content including text, audio, video, graphics, and illustrations with alternatives, as well as use formats that are supported by the users’ assistive technologies.

Still, the remaining challenges include the lack of skilled developers that are trained in accessibility, as well as the lack of awareness about ADA compliance and how to build an ADA-compliant website or mobile app and avoid a website accessibility lawsuit.

U.S. Rehabilitation Act

The U.S. Rehabilitation Act is a federal law that prohibits any discrimination on the basis of disability in programs conducted by federal agencies. The rule applies to programs receiving federal financial support and includes the following two sections designed for website accessibility compliance:

Section 504 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act, protects children and adults with disabilities from discrimination in schools and workplaces. There are specific accessibility criteria for online educational resources.

Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act, where government bodies and federal services are required to make electronic and information technology (EIT) accessible to all people, including disabled people.

ADA Lawsuits Are On The Rise: Is Your Website At Risk?

While many still don’t understand what accessibility is and why it is important, advocates are everywhere writing guides and helping website owners understand and implement these digital accessibility rules. However, website accessibility lawsuits are on the rise and make the news nearly every day in the United States. This happens mostly because there are still no enforceable regulations for website accessibility.

The set of regulations is under Section 508 by law, where federal websites in the U.S. are required to check and meet these standards. In order to prevent ADA lawsuits, most simply follow Section 508 or the WCAG 2.0 and 2.1 AAA guidelines.

Accessibility laws are changing and are different in many countries. Besides the U.S., the UK and Canada are also starting to enforce accessibility. However, we will stick to the site accessibility lawsuits and how to prevent them by complying with the law while making your website accessible.

Popular Website Compliance Lawsuits & Settlements

Statistics from Seyfarth show that in 2018 alone, there were a total of 2258 website accessibility lawsuits to the federal court, which was a 177% jump from the previous year. In 2019, the number of cases also increased, most of which were in the retail, food service, entertainment and leisure, travel/hospitality, self-service, and real estate industries.

One of the first federal court lawsuits filed against a big name occurred in 2006, when the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) as the plaintiff sued Target, a U.S. supermarket chain, for its inability to comply with ADA rules.

In the hospitality industry, Domino’s Pizza was one of the companies which received a lawsuit filed in federal court. In 2016, a visually impaired man sued the popular chain because his screen reader was incompatible with their mobile app, so the device could not read aloud its contents.

In 2012, the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) filed a lawsuit against Netflix, for not providing closed captions in its online TV and movie streaming services. The plaintiff has taken legal action against the popular streaming service and the case quickly arrived at federal court.

Education facilities have not been exempt from lawsuits, too. Two federal class-action lawsuits were filed against Harvard and MIT by the National Institute of the Deaf (NAD) for not providing captions in their online content and courses. After four years of legal action on federal court grounds, Harvard was made liable to pay $1.5 million in litigation and attorney fees.

In most of these cases, big names could have saved themselves from litigation costs and bad publicity by simply adding some accessibility features to their website to reduce the risk of such lawsuits.

Recent posts show that even today, the number of lawsuits filed against companies in federal court actions is increasing. Many small to medium-sized businesses are on the radar, too. Among all states, New York, California, and Florida seem to be hotbeds for legal ADA-related lawsuits.

How to Comply With The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

If you want to prevent an ADA lawsuit, the only route is to plan for, design, as well as build an accessible website. This form of inclusive design should optimize content and help the visually impaired, as well as people with other disabilities, to use and interact with your website.

In fact, every business with a website, mobile app, or internet software application should hire an accessibility specialist to go over the site and ensure full ADA compliance. In order to have an ADA-compliant business website optimized for people with disabilities, you will need to hire these experts who know what needs to be changed and how to ensure compliance.

For instance, if you apply ARIA with HTML5 or your image alt tags are not written properly, you could be facing a lawsuit. However, the source of most ADA lawsuits is the actual inability to access web pages or mobile apps, especially for visually impaired or blind people who use assistive technologies.

There are some builders that are integrated within content management systems and help website owners make the site ADA-compliant. Elementor, a popular WordPress theme-building, and page design plugin are one of them. The plugin helps incorporate parallax, dynamic content, and animations that comply with the accessibility guidelines. There is also the creation of new themes, headings, and footers with full developer control.

What Can You Do To Create An Effective ADA Website And Comply With WCAG: Checklist

The WCAG guidelines outline a set of principles and techniques that make web content “perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.” In other words, users should be able to access content, use interactive elements, navigate through web pages and apps, and use the content on their device of choice.

There are three vital ways to achieve the goals for website accessibility:

Correct use of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

Organization of content properly and logically, so that both humans and assistive tools can interpret its layout, including the use of text alternatives for visual content (YouTube is a good example of this – the platform was designed to automatically add captions to videos uploaded on the network).

Extra attributes are added to HTML and other code so that assistive devices can be used effectively, complying with the existing web accessibility standards.

From Braille readers used for hearing and reading text or images to screen readers and magnifiers for blind or visually impaired users and keyboard/joystick navigators for people who can’t use a mouse or other input controls, all of these ways ensure compliance.

How Do You Test Web Accessibility Across Different Devices?

There are two main ways to test how content shows on a website or mobile app.

The first is automated testing, which involves running a test against the latest WCAG principles. With this method, you can identify 20% to 30% of the compliance issues. That is why developers use it as a starting point when familiarizing themselves with the WCAG requirements set by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Second is manual testing, which is obviously more detailed and complex and will deliver the BEST RESULTS. Here, the testing should identify areas of partial compliance with regulations. Common tests use keyboard-only testing schemes to identify where certain issues occur for people who cannot use mouse or touch interfaces. We specialize in manual testing and correcting all errors.

Within manual testing, there is also the practice of testing pages and case scenarios with a screen reader or an emulator that shows how a webpage will respond to a user who wants to access content with text-to-speech technology.

Run a FREE SITE SCAN with us today to test the accessibility of your website.

Facing An ADA Lawsuit? Here Are 4 Steps To Make Your Site Accessible

As we mentioned above, the purpose of the ADA is to ensure that any disabled person has the same opportunity and rights as others in ensuring that digital content is accessible. Violating ADA can land you a lawsuit and some serious fines (up to $20,000 or more), and the best way to avoid potential litigation for a violation is through the four steps below.

Identify Your Barriers – Examining your business site and any of its features that could be a barrier to people with disabilities is usually the best place to start. Know that having more text is never a bad idea, as more people use assistive technologies nowadays. Put yourself in the shoes of an impaired person and try to understand whether your site is designed so you can freely navigate through its pages.

Understand The Requirements – Understanding the ADA requirements is equally important for everyone. New websites are already being designed with web accessibility in mind, and seeing what these rules require can only help you visualize and plan for new content in a better way.

Train Your Staff To Assist – If you work with a web design specialist, make sure that person is familiar with WCAG and able to align your content and marketing tools to support the ADA laws.

Hire A Professional – If you have multiple websites, or find it difficult to optimize your company website to comply with web accessibility laws, you can always seek our professional assistance to prevent an ADA lawsuit.

Hiring expert ADA consultants to audit the level of your website’s accessibility, provide guidance on remediation, and maintain accessible design is recommended if you want to lower the risk of a potential lawsuit.

Final Words

The bottom line of complying with web accessibility is that it offers a number of ways to build a reputation but also targets a broader audience. Users deserve to have equal access to content online, and many of their common tasks have been identified by regulators as essential for modern living. Therefore, it is vital to take advantage of these services and opportunities, and doing that would also prevent accessibility lawsuits.

Every organization, whether large or small, should ensure that they are aware of their accessibility obligations. In doing so, they will mitigate any risks of facing an accessibility lawsuit, but also maximize their revenue potential. In the end, wider accessibility equals a better online experience for everyone.

How good is your web accessibility? If you need help making your company website or mobile app accessible and complying with U.S. Federal regulations, contact us today. We will carry out a full audit and suggest the best ways to help your business site ensure full ADA compliance and prevent lawsuits.

[theoutcastrogue]

A copyright lawsuit filed by several major publishers puts the future of the Internet Archive's scan-and-lend library at risk. In a recent appeal, the non-profit organization argued that its solution is protected fair use and critical to preserving digital books. This position is shared by copyright scholars, the Authors Alliance, and other supporters now backing IA in court.

The Internet Archive (IA) is a non-profit organization that aims to preserve digital history for generations to come. The digital library is a staunch supporter of a free and open Internet and began meticulously archiving the web over a quarter century ago.

In addition to archiving the web, IA also operates a library that offers a broad collection of digital media, including books. Staying true to the centuries-old library concept, IA patrons can also borrow books that are scanned and digitized in-house.

Publishers vs. Internet Archive

The self-scanning service is different from the licensing deals other libraries enter into. Not all publishers are happy with IA’s approach which triggered a massive legal battle two years ago.

Publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, John Wiley, and Penguin Random House filed a lawsuit, equating IA’s controlled digital lending (CDL) operation to copyright infringement. Earlier this year a New York Federal court concluded that the library is indeed liable for copyright infringement.

The Court’s decision effectively put an end to IA’s self-scanning library, at least for books from the publishers in suit. However, IA is not letting this go without a fight and last week the non-profit filed its opening brief at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, hoping to reverse the judgment.

Support from Authors Alliance

IA doesn’t stand alone in this legal battle. As the week progressed, several parties submitted amicus curiae briefs to the court supporting IA’s library. This includes the Authors Alliance.

The Authors Alliance represents thousands of members, including two Nobel Laureates, a Poet Laureate of the United States, and three MacArthur Fellows. All benefit from making their work available to a broad public.

If IA’s lending operation is outlawed, the authors fear that their books would become less accessible, allowing the major publishers to increase their power and control. The Alliance argues that the federal court failed to take the position of authors into account, focusing heavily on the publishers instead. However, the interests of these groups are not always aligned.

“Many authors strongly oppose the actions of the publishers in bringing this suit because they support libraries and their ability to innovate. Authors rely on libraries to reach readers and many are proud to have their works preserved and made available through libraries in service of the public.

“Because these publishers have such concentrated market power […], authors that want to reach wide audiences rarely have the negotiating power to retain sufficient control from publishers to independently authorize public access like that at issue here,” the Alliance adds.

This critique from the authors is not new. Hundreds of writers came out in support of IA’s digital book library at an earlier stage of this lawsuit, urging the publishers to drop their case. [...]

Copyright Scholars Back IA

In a separate amicus brief, several prominent legal and copyright scholars, many of whom hold professor titles, raise similar arguments. They believe that IA’s lending system is not that different from the physical libraries that are an integral part of culture.

“Libraries have always been free under copyright law to lend materials they own as they see fit. This is a feature of copyright law, not a bug,” the brief reads.

What is new here, is that publishers now assert full control over how their digital books are treated. Instead of allowing libraries to own copies, they have to license them, which makes it impossible to add them to the permanent archive.

“The major publishers refuse to sell digital books to libraries, forcing them to settle for restrictive licenses of digital content rather than genuine ownership. Moreover, publishers insist they can prevent libraries from scanning their lawfully purchased physical books and lending the resulting digital copies.” [...]

[sweetcardamom]

Petition to keep digital library

Archive.org, which is a free online library. is being sued by publishers. In addition to archiving web pages, there are millions of books you can borrow (generally an hour at a time) to read. Publishers think this is causing them to lose money, so they want it stopped. The archive owns a physical copy for every copyrighted book it loans. The publishers are not losing money due to archive.org any more than they are due to physical libraries.

And the archive is also much more accessible than a regular library for a lot people: people who are house-bound, people who live too far from a library, people whose local libraries or library systems are small, etc.

The petition is to the publishers, to reconsider their lawsuit.

Sign at: https://chng.it/C7BscT4gbs

(Personally, I'm more likely to buy a book if I've gotten to peruse it first, particularly non-fiction. I've bought more than one book because I've partly read it on archive.org)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Daniel Villarreal at LGBTQ Nation:

The Senate has passed the Kid’s Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children’s and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) in 91-3 votes. While the bipartisan bills seek to reduce the harmful impact of social media on young people, advocates worry that KOSA in particular will enable Republicans to block queer youth from seeing age-appropriate LGBTQ+ content online.

Only three senators voted against the bills: Ron Wyden (D-OR), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Rand Paul (R-KY) — all three made statements explaining why. The bill will soon head to the House for a vote. Some advocates hope the House will amend or block the bill to reduce the likelihood of Republicans abusing it. The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), authored by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), mandates that social media companies take measures to prevent recommending any content that promotes mental health disorders (like eating disorders, drug use, self-harm, sexual abuse, and bullying) unless minors specifically search for such content. KOSA also requires platforms to limit features that result in compulsive usage — like autoplay and infinite scroll — or features that allow adults to contact young users or track their location. The bill says platforms must notify parents if their kids are exposed to potentially hazardous materials or interactions.

COPPA 2.0, crafted by Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), aims to establish robust online privacy protections for minors under 17. Among its provisions, the legislation would prohibit targeted advertising directed at children and teenagers and introduce an “eraser button,” enabling parents and kids to delete personal information from company databases.

KOSA is supported by groups like Common Sense Media, Fairplay, Design It For Us, Accountable Tech, Eating Disorders Coalition, American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Many other groups oppose the bill, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, the LGBT Technology Partnership, Fight for the Future, as well as LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations in six states. Because KOSA makes social media platforms legally liable for suggesting content that may harm kids’ mental health, the aforementioned opposition groups worry that Republican attorneys general who see LGBTQ+ identities as harmful forms of mental illness will use KOSA to censor queer web content and prosecute platforms that provide access it. To avoid lawsuits, social media platforms may just censor such content altogether.

[...] Supporters of KOSA point out that the legislation explicitly states that social media companies must only suppress content that encourages suicidal behaviors, eating disorders, substance use, sexual exploitation, and ads for tobacco and alcohol. The legislation allows social users of all ages to access any material that they deliberately search for, and the legislation excludes many organizational websites from possible lawsuits, including government platforms, libraries, and non-profits.

The Senate passed the highly controversial KOSA and COPPA 2.0 91-3, with Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Mike Lee (R-UT) voted against.

KOSA has some alarming provisions that could be used to censor age-appropriate LGBTQ+ content.

[ao3cassandraic]

I'm a little confused, what trouble did the Internet Archive get into exactly?

By this I mean, is it going down? Or is it just dealing with politics behind the scenes?

(I occasionally find the Internet Archive to be useful, so I hope it doesn't disappear)

Okay, so, it helps to have context here. First, IA.

IA has its fingers in several pies:

the Wayback Machine (and allied services such as Archive-It) for website preservation

software (including game) preservation

print digitization, which started (I think) as an add-on to software preservation (because manuals matter!) and expanded to pretty much whatever print IA could get its hands on

a lending system for the above digitized collection, known as the "Open Library"

lately, machine-learning tools intended to operate over its digitized-print collections (it's still building this out, I've seen some of the grant applications) -- nothing generative-AI-like yet that I know of, however

A lot of this work is only dubiously and uncertainly within the scope of US copyright. (N.b. IANAL, IANYL, I am certainly not Internet Archive's lawyer, TINLA.) IA takes refuge largely in audacity, and in the centrality of the Wayback Machine to web preservation generally. So they have been known to pull the "if we lose this legal case totally unrelated to web preservation and have to pay gonzo fines, Wayback is in peril!" ripcord.

Is this true? Hell if I know, I don't audit IA's books. I doubt it, though.

What they're in trouble for -- what an appeals court shot them all the way down for yesterday -- is what they did with their Open Library of digitized print books, many of them in-copyright, during COVID lockdown. And to understand all that, we have to untangle some things about US copyright. Ugh, somebody hand me a read-more link.

Why can libraries lend print books, vinyl, cassettes, CDs, and DVDs in the US? Because of a legal doctrine called "the first sale right," which goes like this: if you have a legally-produced physical object containing copyrighted material, you can do whatever the fuck you want with that physical object with zero copyright implications --other than reproduce/copy or perform it (which does have copyright implications, complex ones).

You can (yes) burn it. You can lend it to a friend, or an enemy, or a random stranger. You can give it away. You can throw it away. You can resell it. You can hang it on your wall or in your window. You can make an art installation with it. And the copyright owner cannot win a copyright-based lawsuit over any of this, even if they hate what you're doing! Even if it competes with them selling new copies (as the resale market absolutely does, and as some jerkfaced copyright owners -- usually corporations, not authors! -- love to complain that libraries do)!

Here's the thing, though, and it's an important thing so I'm gonna big-type it:

The right of first sale does not apply to anything digital ever.

Not ebooks (digitized or born-digital, doesn't matter). Not streaming anything. Not paywalled online news or research.

When libraries offer these to patrons, it's through contracts with publishers or aggregators. Long story short, a lot of these contracts are ridiculously restrictive (not to mention expensive) to the point of cartoonish evil, but it's what we have to work with.

The idea behind Controlled Digital Lending is "if libraries purchased a physical item legally, we should get to lend the item to one person at a time as we always have, and it shouldn't actually matter whether what we lend is the physical item or a digital version of it, as long as only one or the other is out to a patron at a given time."

Which is an untested legal theory! I can't tell you whether it's legal! Nobody can! The case law doesn't exist! Yeah yeah, there's relevant past cases in both directions having to do with accessibility or Google Books or whatever, but a specific precedential ruling on CDL is not a thing that presently exists.

No, not even now. Because what IA did with its Open Library during lockdown, and got slapped down for by the court, is not CDL as defined above. IA didn't hold to one-person-at-a-time-per-book. They tried to make a fair-use argument for what they actually did (that is, not for actual CDL), and the court was not having it.

The thing is, IA's stumblebummed legal fuckup means that actual CDL, as actual libraries (n.b. the IA is not an actual library or an actual archives, I will happily die on this hill, I loathe IA like poison and do not want to admit them to my profession, IA people have dissed me and my work TO MY ACTUAL PHYSICAL FACE and they only love libraries or librarians when trying to hide behind us) were trying to design and implement it, now faces additional legal hurdles. Any court looking at an actual CDL program has to take into account IA getting slapped down. And that's if we can even find a library or library consortium with deep enough pockets and hardcore enough legal representation to even defend such a case.

The thing also is, IA just issued Big Publishing a gilt-edged invitation to use this precedent to sue actual libraries, especially academic libraries, over other things we do. (I'm gonna pass over exactly what in silence because I do not want to give those fuckers ideas, but... there have been past lawsuits, look 'em up.) THANKS, BREWSTER. THANKS EVER SO. Asshole.

For a calmer take than mine, check out Library Futures, which to their credit has not given up all hope for CDL.

This IS the short version of all this nonsense, believe me. I used to teach a whole entire three-credit graduate-level course in the long version. (Which IA would doubtless diss to my face if they knew about it.)

[blazehedgehog]

Will Twitter shortly remove the limit on reading feeds?

Google apparently handles hosting duties for Twitter, and the running theory I've heard is that Google finally asked Twitter to pay up. This rate limit stuff came up on the same day as what is normally Google's billing date, and Elon has straight up stopped paying many of Twitter's bills (most Twitter offices have closed because they stopped paying rent. There's even lawsuits about it).

The other reason seems to be that in the wake of tech like ChatGPT, the driving thought behind Twitter and Reddit locking down and enforcing paid access is because they're trying to sell that text data rather than allowing it to be downloaded for free.

When Elon Musk talks about twitter's "bot problem," he's probably not talking about spam bots (which are worse than ever since he took over, and getting worse by the day). He's talking about web-crawling, data-harvesting bots plugging our conversations in to ChatGPT. He's sitting on one of the largest repositories of conversational text on the planet and is basically telling tech companies that, for the right price, they can train their chat bots on 15 years of user messages.

In that light, a limit of "accessing 800 posts a day" makes perfect sense if you're trying to stop something automated from gobbling up too much data. The more data it has, the more easily something like ChatGPT can copy the nuance of human writing. Musk is trying to put a price tag on that.

Do not expect those limits to go away any time soon. We are livestock.

[netherworldpost]

AI art predictions with a laundry list

This is a very long post, so as an advertisement to entice you to read it, let’s start off with my proof points. It ends with advice on what to do if you make things and/or want to make things and are concerned.

I remember when royalty-free microstock ($1/photo) began. It fundamentally changed stock photography, ending a significant number of careers, creating a significantly larger number of photographers -- as well as graphic designers AND illustrators who now had floods of reference photos they could not access before.

I remember when boilerplate WordPress starter themes began. They largely are a “paint by numbers” kit of parts. A lot of web developers rallied against it, claiming they would go out of business. Some did, most did not, a great number went into business using them as tools.

Hell, I remember when WordPress started. Similar story to above.

I remember when Adobe created built-in color palette tools. These are, essentially, color wheels. There were a lot of designers and illustrators who claimed this would give the public and/or low skill designers too much power.

I remember when free logo generators started. See above notes.

I remember when ultra cheap graphic design freelance services began. Fiverr and Upwork, etc. See above notes.

Hell I remember when digital printers started gaining a neck grip on small scale commercial printing. Bad time to be a 1 and 2 color press shop.

Tech bros and their priests will continue to throw money and other resources at it from about mid 2022 until early 2024

A combination of boredom, other opportunities (good, bad, and neutral), lawsuits, and the inescapable physics of what is required to create new AI art will taper off interest around early to mid 2024

The arc of interest will diminish far sooner but will occasionally be spiked back up by a combination of:

^- click-bait news articles and new breakthroughs in tech

^- click-bait news articles that claim there is a new breakthrough because the reporter/outlet is just catching on to existing things

^- tech bros claiming a new breakthrough (that isn’t new) because they have reinvented existing tech and/or are outright stealing from existing tech

Some levels of AI will continue forever with varying degrees of aesthetic attraction

On some level, the continuation will be because some tech bros and their priests are interested in pursuing the tech and are uninterested in the benefits/costs

On another level, it will continue as a weapon against artists (at large) because all tech invented is utilized as a weapon by bad actors against specific groups people

On yet another level, it will continue as a weapon against specific artists because all tech invented is utilized as a weapon by bad actors against specific people

Some (a moderate sample size) artists will lose everything for a little while but ultimately adapt, a smaller sample size everything permanently and leave the art profession

The public at large will begin in earnest interest as a “we can create stuff too!” but then lose interest over time because quality (as measured by uniqueness) and accessibility (as measured as “free vs. paid”) will steadily decrease

The decrease of interest will spike tech bros desperate to reclaim their throne into accelerating outright theft and abuse because at the nature these specific tech bros are parasites and have nothing positive to offer either the tech or art ecosystems

Corporate interests will both utilize AI art for their own interests while suing to stop their own direct properties from being used. These lawsuits will generate attention-grabbing headlines but almost exclusively be settled out of court and/or the AI companies will simply be bought to bring the tech/people into the fold/shut down

Artists (at large) will engage in the various platforms. There will be generalized outrage for 1 - 5 years as a combination of acceptance, resignation, and useful labor-saving tools are built

^- schisms will enter the art community. Some points will be made as legitimate discourse, most will be stated as individual artists use this as the point-of-the-day to prove themselves better than everyone else.

Ultimately:

Tech will continue building what they can, scraping every resources available at the lowest cost possible and often through piracy, until it becomes untenable via cost and boredom

Artists will continue to create, adapt, and evolve. Some unfortunately will legitimately lose everything and drop out of the career for a period of years, some forever.

There will be a convergence point then the two will separate out slowly. The path will be painful for artists. The public will vastly be ignorant, those who know mostly won’t care, some will passionately rally for artists.

Advice for people who make things:

Keep making things. Despair is an automated weapon that targets you, the more you feed it, the stronger it grows.

Do not personalized despair. It is easy to give into the thought of a conspiracy theory against you, or your industry. I view the accuracy more as “people/institutions who do not know, or care, about your existence are building their own empire. Sometimes you’re a tree line of border protection against wind, sometimes you’re lumber. Either way you’re not considered in any instance except when you’re useful, and never as an individual.”

Protect yourself as possible (file copyright takedown notices, keep an eye on prices to keep yourself in business, do not actively participate in contests that scrape AI, block people onsite who advocate for AI art if you yourself do not)

Protect your business funds as possible (multiple streams of income where possible, keep an eye on costs -- is fancy packaging actually necessary, from a business perspective, or are you making it fancy because you’re an artist)

Build a community as you can, everywhere you can. There is an absolute effort-to-cost ratio that must be watched -- you can, as of writing, literally sign up for a MySpace if you want. I wouldn’t recommend trying to build a network there.

And to repeat: keep making things. There are tools you used to get started, there are tools you USE RIGHT NOW, I promise you, that were once heralded as “the thing that will kill art.” It didn’t, except where it did, and in both instances everything evolved to whatever our current state is.

[enchi-elm]

My favourite thing about my field is that I can claim reading this paper as "work research".

You can read it too! It's FREE access.

Also, can we just gave a "wahoo" for Donna Yates' approachable language? This is how you communicate science!

[Image ID:

A screenshot of a scientific paper published online by Cambridge University Press. It is entitled "T Rex is fierce, T rex is charismatic, T rex is litigious. Disruptive Objects in affective desirescapes. The authors are Donna Yates and Emily Peacock and it was published May 09 2024.

The abstract reads as follows:

In this paper we present T. rex fossils as disruptive objects that can drastically influence the actions and reactions of humans that encounter them. We present a vision of the T. rex as being a key node within a web of human and object associations that ultimately produces, first, extreme desire in humans, and then a breakdown in human relationships resulting in disagreements, disputes, lawsuits, and the committing of crime. From there we bring these T. rex fossils into the concept of desirescape which sees a network of object/object and object/human reactions provoking irresistible desire in humans. We argue that this desire can push humans to violate law or social norms or, in several T. rex cases, sue each other. How then should we humans approach T. rex and other disruptive objects? Cautiously, and with the knowledge that these objects may be more powerful than we are.

end ID]

[adasitecompliance]

Benefits Of Website Accessibility

Emphasizing the advantages of making a website accessible to a diverse audience, this description covers the positive outcomes for both users and businesses!

[crazysodomite]

when it comes to web design and modern websites i wish there were certain things people acknowledged.

there's certain reasons modern websites changed to look like they do now. there's definitely something to be said about how nowadays the internet looks uniform and several big corporations control how the internet looks because they need more seo engagement and money.

BUT

i often see people shit on responsive and mobile-friendly websites. "i'll never make my site accessible to mobile users/idc about mobile/im proud that my website is not accesible on phones". are you sticking it to corporations or are you sticking it to people who can't afford their own computer/don't have space for it/etc... you don't HAVE to make your site responsive or mobile friendly. but what is there to be proud of? how is that a 'cool' or welcome thing in the 'indie web'. do whatever you want but i wish people stopped to think about this whole thing.

same with accessibility. there have been lawsuits over corporations not making their sites accessible. modern-day practices of making websites do often take into account accessibility and the uniformity of modern web may be connected to that. now i'm not saying the modern web is especially accessible but it's certainly something we should pay attention to if we critisize the modern web.

it's cool when sites Look Cool. but are people interested in accessibility and responsiveness at all? do people who Need accessibility features and don't have a 1920x1080 computer resolution not deserve to participate in indie web?

[gaykarstaagforever]

City of Columbus, Ohio: Accessing all our police files that got hacked and uploaded to the dark web requires Matrix-level hacking skills behind like 10 firewalls, so anyone who shows the press all the information that got stolen (that we don't want to admit to) is automatically a hacker who MUST be a criminal like the sophisticated hacker ring trying to destroy us!

Electronic Frontier Foundation: ...Anyone can download a Tor browser to their phone and find shit on the dark web. You clearly lack a basic understanding of how the Internet even works, which is why your cybersecurity sucks and you got hacked in the first place.

[welcometotheravenclawcommonroom]

INTERNET ARCHIVE IS IN DANGER

Many of you who are online more than I am have likely/almost certainly heard that in the case of Hatchett v. internet archive, a judge ruled against IA’s “motion for summary judgement” (which you can look at below). They ruled that their controlled digital lending program (CDL) was not fair use and a violation of copyright.

But here’s the thing. IA and their partner libraries only scan and lend those books for which they have physical copies, and they lend only the number of copies a book that they have at one time. They are no different from your average library in this respect. The difference? They don’t require a physical address to have an account (As far as I can remember, correct me if I’m wrong), so homeless people are able to check out books, music, and everything else that IA offers for free.

They offer deleted web pages via the Wayback machine, which are essential for journalists doing research into shady shit that may have been deleted from the regular internet.

AND they’re not limited by the geographical boundaries of local libraries. Everyone, everywhere, has access to the same materials, except for in cases where there are legal restrictions on internet (a VPN can help you there!)

There’s NOTHING illegal about what IA is doing. But if we lose them, we’ll lose SO MUCH knowledge. Greedy publishers with more money they can ever spend are trying to restrict free access to knowledge to make more money they don’t need (when they’ve already made money of IA buying physical copies of the books in the first place!).

IA is appealing, but if publishers win this case, what’s next? Will they come for project Gutenberg? In my opinion it’s likely, because a loss in this case will likely call into question precedents involving copyright laws and public domain.

Which brings me to my next point- THEY WILL COME FOR LIBRARIES!!! IA is essentially an online library, one that has been and should be protected under the law. I’m not a lawyer (disclaimer), but this seems pretty clear to me: If slimy lawyers working for slimy companies and in league with slimy judges win this one, they will have shattered the way the law views existing permissions under copyright law.

And if they come for libraries? Well, the conservative US government already controls education, teaching us a white-washed view of history. The only way to truly learn a global perspective (and one that is written from the account of the oppressed and those lacking power) is to seek it out on one’s own. And systemic inequalities mean that many people could not afford to seek out that knowledge without libraries and free informational exchanges like IA. And 🏴‍☠️ can be hard, especially if you’re not as good with technology.

If oppressed and historically disenfranchised people are kept ignorant, then it is easier to keep them oppressed and to convince them to work against their own interests. College is financially unattainable for many, and free informational exchange is often the only way for people to expand their perspective. This threatens the powerful.

There are a plethora of other reasons that IA and libraries are good (safe and free entertainment, diachronic historical perspectives, a safe haven for the unhoused), but I think I’ve said enough and I have to get to my underpaid, un-unionized job (learn about collective action and unionization at your local library or on IA!!!)

If you can, donate! I’ll put links below for the donation page for IA, and the sources I used.

[chromacryptid]

hey. despite the stupid ai thing, i am so grateful you didnt decided to delete all of your wonderful art. sadly doing this wouldnt have done much good anyway, but i am hoping you are able to protect yourself. every sites sucks now anyway,and tumblr still has that cool community to it,so, i dont blame you for sticking here in the slightest,i am staying as well.

Thank you for the kindness <3. I was feeling a bit nihilistic about the whole thing but every comment and ask like this makes things feel more human. I think that the best way to fight AI is things like this, showing support to artists. I should send out my own asks to some folks...

Read below for technical ramblings on AI lol

As someone studying web technologies in college rn... you are correct, deleting your art does next to nothing. OpenAI scraped tumblr long before this deal. I feel like the popular posts going around about the new OpenAI/Midjourney Tumblr deal are not as informative as they could be and giving people false ideas.

AI developers build their models on data gathered by scraping the web. Copyright laws are a thing, but right now, there's nothing actually stopping web crawlers from using whatever data exists on the open internet. That means if you have posted anything, anywhere, on any major platform, it can become part of a dataset at any time (or it already has).

So why are AI companies paying tumblr if they dont need to? We don't lnow the details of the deal yet, but there are two theories:

A) they are trying to retroactively cover their ass for future lawsuits from Tumblr

B) Tumblr has offered access to internal systems, which would make scraping tumblr easier and more precise

If you've read this far, i hope you feel more informed. Knowledge is power, yknow. I could talk more about this or how to protect your IP if people are interested?