Dan's Den

The Supreme Court just issues a ruling allowing Ohio and other states to purge voters from their election registration rolls due to their failure to cast a ballot in previous elections.

This is a major victory for the Trump administration and the GOP, and a direct consequence of the Supreme Court being stacked with more conservative judges (the votes were 5-4). This is also a huge part of what Trump/the GOP were counting on to save them in the 2018 midterm elections, which is where Democrats have been hoping to take back a majority in the House, giving them more power to combat Trump’s abuses of power and Republican legislation.

What this means is YOU CAN NOT ASSUME THAT YOU ARE REGISTERED for the 2018 elections, just because you SHOULD be. Thanks to this decision, red states can purge voters’ registration based on their not having cast a ballot in even just previous federal elections, NOT just the national Presidential elections. Effectively, if you haven’t voted in previous senate races or for congressional representatives in the past few years, that’s all they need now to say you’re no longer registered and need to register again.

They’re deliberately counting on people assuming they’re still registered and so not checking until after registration deadlines have passed, or showing up to vote this November and only then finding out they’re no longer registered, when its too late to do a damn thing about it.

And this is absolutely targeted at marginalized communities, low income voters, disabled voters, and basically anyone who simply can’t always AFFORD to keep on top of every federal election and show up to vote in every senate race, etc. Which not so coincidentally happen to be all the communities and voters who have the most to gain from Democratic victories in the 2018 midterms and are the least likely to cast votes for GOP candidates at this point.

This was absolutely a calculated effort aimed specifically at keeping the GOP in power with a majority control of the government come November, and unfortunately, it has a DAMN good chance of accomplishing just that if it goes by unacknowledged. I’m not looking to alarm or panic anyone, simply to say:

So what has happened so far … the Commission has drafted up a long overdue copyright reform. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/procedure/EN/2016_280 It contains a lot of good, and some bad: mainly Article 11 and 13.

This was put forward as a whole to the European Parlament, where it was voted down on the 5th of July 2018

This meant, this will not go through the fast way, and will be subject to scrutiny and change. 

The Commission made some alterations https://eur-lex.europa.eu/procedure/EN/2016_280 and put it forward again. If Parlament would have voted it down again, it probably would have meant back to the drawing board, but most people (including me) agree that Europe does need copyright reform, so on the second vote it passed the first step:

So what happens now? 

This will now go into what is called the Trilogue, where Commission, Parlament and representatives of all national governments will sit together to make alterations until everybody is happy implementing the regulation.

This means we can now influence this via our MEPs and our National Government!

In countries that are red your government is likely to support Article 13.

What to do now?

There are a lot of organisations that organise actions against article 13. Check out their websites and get in touch with your MEP or local government and let them know you are unhappy about this.

https://www.saveyourinternet.eu/ 

https://epicenter.works/

https://www.changecopyright.org/

https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/

… and many many more, just google to find one in your country.

Also, as @asthesea-breezehitsmylungs pointed out, a lot of people are not aware of this going on. So make them aware! Share the memes and point them to the petitions. And don’t just complain how shit this is, get in touch with your politicians!

Yo, everyone, EU or not, please at least signal boost this shit. I’ve said it before and I will say it again: those two articles will suck majorly for all of us.

Like dude, how much time do you spend enjoying various things that relate to, Idk, your favourite show or book series. It’ll probs be gone. Funny memes and shit? Nah our generation doesn’t fucking need to laugh, it’s not like half of us are already depressed or anything. And so many other things that are cool about the internet, I’m not even gonna mention how some big, cool places like YouTube and Tumblr will be fucked by this.

So seriously, there’s only so much a small bunch of people can do. We need some noise on this. As much as I hate to admit it, some things require some fat numbres to be paid attention to. So even if you’re not planning on taking any action yourself, the best thing to do would be to spread this to everyone you trust to either get involved or pay it forward like you did.

share your own holiday pictures if there’s a monument in the background

share any kind of picture that includes a logo or a brand (think cute selfie with a random Subway or McDonald’s in the background)

share a WhatsApp video of those beautiful fireworks, that funny bird or your kid doing cute shit with your friends and family because the Eiffel Tower is in the background

upload a profile pic of you wearing your SPN t-shirt

make gifs 

make crack such as [TV show] + textposts / Onion headlines / tweets

add screencaps to your metas or reviews

share the cover of that fantastic book you just read

share images of any painting, statue, or monument

share gifs, videos or pics of any sport event 

create or share memes

make videogame-related tutorials featuring reviews, walkthroughs and whatever else

make fanvids

sing or play your own covers of other artists (alive or dead)

see (or contribute to) wikia sites for your favourite shows and movies

watch stuff like the Pop Culture Detective’s videos

share fanfiction and drabbles on FFN and tumblr 

share fanart or original art on DeviantArt

Find the names you recognize who voted for this, so you can vote them out. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML%2BPV%2B20180912%2BRES-RCV%2BDOC%2BPDF%2BV0//EN&language=EN

For my italian fellows, this is the list of the people from our country that voted for this. Remember them for the next year.

So, it seems the worst happened today. EU parliament approved Censorship Law, which will require sites to monitor copyrighted material. In a worst case scenario, this means EU countries will be cut off from sites, which host copyrighted material, like Tumblr, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram - and possibly, Patreon and Webtoons. I will keep my eyes open and if cutting happens, I’ll be using VPN/Tunnelbear as much as possible to see if I can avoid this. Everything is still a hassle and no one knows what happens.

In the very, very, very worst case scenario, Demon Sanctuary stops running in 2019, because I lose access to pages where I can host Demon Sanctuary. If that would happen, so that Tunnelbear can’t help either, I hope to make a mailing list where I can share the comic.

Thank you for your support! I’m sad things went this way in EU. I will keep each and everyone of you updated!

- Niu EDIT: Got more info:  The last voting / accepting regarding Article 13 will happen in January 2019 so until then we still have time to fight and demand internet to stay free! Here’s some little parts what I picked from online about Article 13: “Before existing copyright laws can be updated, however, the approved copyright law bill will now pass for approval to the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, and the leaders of the EU’s 28-member states.” “What’s clear is that if the Copyright Directive receives final approval by the European Parliament in January, it will have a huge, disruptive impact on the internet, both in the European Union and around the world.” “Today’s vote is not the end of the story, though: every amendment approved today will have to undergo another round of behind-closed-doors negotiations between EU politicos and EU member states, before going again through a vote in January 2019. The meme war is far from over.”

Something that i’ve seen happening in my notifications this week is a new kind of porn blog interacting with my posts, and i want to explain WHY its so important to block them.

In the past all that would happen if a porn blog would follow you is just that, they’d follow you. It was all to do with google algorithyms where if a porn blog was shown as ‘linked’ or following a legitimate site/blog then it increased the place they came in the google searches. Great if you are one of those scam websites that gets people to click on links that either plant malware or are just shady as fuck.  Porn blogs were also sometimes shut down without warning so all the scammers hard work was over and gone. Good for us, not good for them. Most of these blogs were just stolen gifs/videos from other porn blogs anyway. If you thought gif stealing was bad/rife in the geek/nerd fandoms, just have a peep at the porn blogs.

Well a lot of the search engines etc caught onto this and built controls into their software, so they found a new way of getting (or at least trying to get) people to click on links to take them off of the tumblr site. This is by finding a random post from a legitimate blogger, which could be about anything, and either deleting the entire content of the post and adding in some ridiculous comment like ‘For more fun follow this link’ with a hyperlink off of tumblr, or if its a photo that in any way is either fun/a meme/or a little nsfw, they keep that in place and just add their link like above. Scroll down their blog and literally every single post will be a reblog and have exactly the same comment on, getting you to click and take you off site.

What does this matter i hear you ask? Well, when it comes to reporting a post, it helps to confuse the tumblr bots/staff as to what’s being reported… the comment or the original post? This means that when a bunch of posts are reported, they are all coming from different originators, this will make tumblr staff’s life even harder, and legitimate blogs are at risk of someone hitting ‘deactivate blog’ in the admin settings, meaning YOU COULD LOOSE YOUR ENTIRE BLOG BECAUSE SOME ASSHOLE PORN BOT REBLOGGED FROM YOU.

Then flag for spam and block:

You can do it on mobile, either clicking the pic of the note, or going to the reblog and reporting the blog itself.

i know tumblr doesn’t give a SHIT when things happen in countries outside the “most popular ones” (such as the usa & england). it’s true, don’t lie to me. y’all don’t give A FUCK. not every issue and problem in said countries gets the appropriate exposure but in general shit shows up on the news WORLD FREAKING  WIDE. you set up donations, you help out, your spread the word, you say “pray for x”……

southern europe is burning. 

my country is burning.

people are dying - at home, on the road, trying to run away, in their cars.

yesterday my country had 300 active fires.

people are losing EVERYTHING they own.

i have a friend that is on a train right now passing through places that have been burnt to the ground and she says the smoke is so intense it’s getting inside the train and she can barely breathe.

and yet, even though several people (myself included) have been trying to bring awareness to what has been happening in southern europe… what we get from most of you, those not part of the countries suffering, is silence. we don’t ask for money, we don’t ask for shit other than a reblog to spread awareness… something you can delete in 24/48hrs if you wish. 

i don’t know what to tell you. i’m angry. i’m frustrated. i’m disappointed. i feel like i’m screaming into the void. “a reblog does nothing” - you know that’s a damn lie, you know exposure always helps, you know people start paying attention when posts on social media become popular. my country in particular is a small one, we get ZERO exposure. y’all are only starting to figure out we even fucking exist bc of the shit we’ve been winning lately. 

but hell, if the EU doesn’t give a shit, why should some user on tumblr dot com?

again, i don’t know what to tell you so i’ll let the images speak for themselves: 

An image captured by a Nasa satellite shows a thick plume of smoke blowing southward from the Greek island of Chios over the island of Crete

Torneros de Jamuz, Spain

Duca, Croatia

A helicopter from Italy’s civil protection service drops water on a fire near the railway between Venice and Trieste

Residents take refuge on the beach as a wildfire burns on the mountain next to the village of Lithi, on the Greek island of Chios

Men gather cattle during a forest fire in Vieira de Leiria, Marinha Grande, Portugal.

Charred trees are seen on the hills above the Cloister of Thivaidas on Mount Athos, a World Heritage Site in Greece

Portugal

Thanks to a tree hitting my house back in April I’ve been living with a giant hole in my roof theres signs of deterioration, so theres a good chance that when the inspector next comes, I may be homeless. So in the case of that I want to build a bit of a cushion to live off of. This is what my roof currently looks like

SwiftRickGear keep on selling my art without permission. I thought it was over because we somehow managed to get their site down but here they are again! I reported a billion times. They keep on deleting my comments of course and they are ignoring my emails. It’s a nightmare.

UPDATE: they keep on changing the link source, so if it’s not working just search in the shop.

LINK TO THE PRODUCT THEY ARE SELLING WITH MY STOLEN ART  https://schwiftrickgear.com/collections/best-sellers/products/morty-viva-la-revolution DO NOT BUY IT I DO NOT GAVE ANY PERMISSION

As of July 4th 2018, the Internet as we know it might be dead for good. 

The European Parliament is passing a new Copyright Directive.  Article 13 #CensorshipMachine will impose widespread censorship of all the content we share online. Art, fanfiction, parodies, remixes, mashups, memes, etc.. Anything that you do not hold the rights over will be taken down. 

Article 13 would force all online platforms to police and prevent the uploading of copyrighted content, or make people seek the correct licenses to post that content. Internet platforms hosting large amounts of user-uploaded content must monitor user behaviour and filter their contributions to identify and prevent copyright infringement. 

Such filters will be mandatory for platforms including YouTube, Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit and Instagram, but also much smaller websites. 

On June, 20th the JURI of European Parliament approved of the articles 11 and 13 of the new Copyright Law. These articles are also known as the “Link Tax” and the “Censorship Machines” articles.

Articles 13 in particular forces every internet platform to filter all the contents we upload online, ending once and for all the fandom culture. Which means you won’t be able to upload any type of fandom works like fan arts, fan fictions, gif sets from your favourite films and series, edits, because it’s all copyrighted material. And you won’t also be able to share, enjoy or download other’s contents, because the use of links will be completely restricted.

But not everything’s lost yet. There’s another round of voting scheduled for the early days of July.

What you can do now to save our internet, is to share these informations with all of your family members and friends, and to ask to your MEP (the members of the European Parliament from your country) to vote NO at the next round, to vote against articles 11 and 13.

Here you can find more news and all the details to contact your MEP:

https://saveyourinternet.eu

Also, sign and share this petition:

https://www.change.org/p/european-parliament-stop-the-censorship-machinery-save-the-internet?recruiter=50668942&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial

We have just a couple of weeks to stop this complete madness, don’t let them dictating the way we enjoy our internet.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52016PC0593

https://creativecommons.org/2018/06/20/european-parliaments-legal-affairs-committee-gives-green-light-to-harmful-link-tax-and-pervasive-platform-censorship/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitterfacebook&utm_content=JURI-vote-june-20

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/article-13-european-parliament-internet-censorship-copyright-a8408531.html?amp&__twitter_impression=true

https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/20/eu-votes-for-copyright-law-that-would-make-internet-a-tool-for-control?__twitter_impression=true

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/eu-meme-war-article-13-regulation

Also ao3 has spoken out about this

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/10637

A thing like this will economically destroy EVERYTHING, since all “copyrighted content” (fan art, fan fics, et cetera) works as free advertisement for companies. Without these, they are going downhill because no one will know that a product exists because there’s no fan art, nor sharing of small bits of content. In other words, no one will spread the word.

Not counting that no filtering algorithm that actually works efficiently currently exists, causing other websites to be destroyed even further.

Sources: http://ow.ly/HsGP10168R5

Sign the Petition: https://saveyourinternet.eu/

Tumblr’s at it again, thanks to the new European Privacy Laws. There’s probably nobody who will read this, but it pissed me off so much that I decided to make a post about it. (Ignore the weird language mish-mash, depending on your country the language might differ.)

OK, so many of us get this screen when we try to access our dash:

Realise how the ‘OK’ button is a nice, attention-grabbing blue? If you’re like me, you’re not exactly into reading a 100 pages document and tend to just click it.

My tip? DONT. Instead click on ‘Manage Options’ right next to it:

Now you’ll see this page:

Still pretty harmless, right? That ‘Accept’ button is looking really attractive right now. Instead, click on Verwalten (Probably something like ‘Manage Options’ or something in english) and you’ll get to this page:

Now that’s not too bad, right? I just switched all the buttons to ‘off’, because I’m jealously guarding my personal information and don’t want Tumblr to go off and do who knows what with it. Looks like we’re done! But wait: There’s a SHOW option.

When we click on that one, what we will get is this:

A HUGE list with OVER 300 ENTRIES of companies that can use your data by default if you’d just clicked ‘OK’ on that very first page. Coincidence that this list is hidden that much? Me thinks not. They’re all switched on by default, but I am still a petty bitch that doesn’t want to give out her data, so I switched them all off. All 300+ of them. There is no option to switch them all off at once, and even if you disable all the options above, the companies are still switched on.

Okay, here we go:

1.This seems to be an European thing. I don’t know if the same options have been implemented for folks from other areas, but comments suggest not. I recommend to still check your privacy settings and the ‘Labs’ section to make sure Tumblr didn’t secretly introduce and switch on any options you’re uncomfortable with. (Here’s a couple of links, I havent read them all myself so quality might be questionable X the law itself X )

2. A problem many people (including myself) have run into is that the whole changing settings isn’t working as it should - the options switch themselves back on, as soon as you leave the screen. Even when you’ve clicked the nice ‘Done’ button at the bottom. NOT COOL TUMBLR.

3. Privacy add-ons are always a good idea. I use Ghostery to block trackers, but unfortunately, those have their limits as well. Corporations are money-grabbing and greedy.

4. The whole ‘U want something for free you need to give ur data’ thing - I am aware that Tumblr needs to pay its bills somehow. But the sheer amount of companies the user data is sold to is ridiculous and completely out of proportion, holy shit!

5. Tumblr is apparently still changing things and switching the location of the settings menu for this around, so this might not work forever.

If you accidentally agreed beforehand, want to disable the bazillion options and don’t mind that Tumblr might switch them back on, here’s how you can do that:

Go to Settings -> Privacy Settings -> Disable Cookie Consent

Cookie Consent is mandatory to use Tumblr, but if you switch it off, you should be transfered to the privacy settings page mentioned above.

The Cookie Consent will switch itself back on automatically.

( It’s in German, but it should look pretty similar in other languages!)

While you’re at it, check the Labs section, sometimes Tumblr introduces experimental functions that are pretty shitty concerning privacy as well.

There’s also a great youtube video by @buckysaur how to speed up the process with a little script:

so I started reading and…

…………….

They LITERALLY tell us,, you cannot use the site unless you consent that you give your cookies over. there is no actual option for us to uncheck those boxes.

THAT whole page where you can uncheck stuff is a LIE. It does nothing it saves no change you make on it.

By using the site you -consent- to giving the data away.

The whole uncheck business is just a play, a game, a TRICK to make you think you have any kind of control over your data!

What the fuck tumblr?!?!!? Then don’t give us the option to uncheck the boxes.

Just tell us fair and square that our only option to stop you from giving our data away, is NOT using your platform AT ALL.

(And yes I tried to uncheck a few, to see what happens, but nope. ALL of em is checked again. there is no choice here. You have NO CHOICE.)

> Update There is a chance, however, that the options re-enable themselves ONLY when you revoke the consent and have to re-accept it.

But this raises another problem: you can’t check if this is true or not.

Heard some important information on Twitter today, and thought I’d post it here for anyone who may not have heard it. This is actually a thing, devised by human rights organisation called Karma Nirvana.