#protect yourself

The more you know 🌠

How to decide whether to report

I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH HOW BAD AN IDEA THAT IS!

As someone who’s not only an IF writer but who has worked in the marketing and publishing industry for 20+ years, NEVER give blanket permission like that! You are basically withdrawing any rights you have to your own work. You will lose in a court of copyright law because someone can point to that and say you gave permission. They can take your work, slap their name on it, and call it their own. They can feed it into an AI engine and diarrhea out their own slop and then get paid for said slop.

I know there are a lot of young writers who think they’re being kind by allowing piracy, but you’re actually being unkind to yourself. Protect yourself and your hard work! Viatica is free out of the goodness of my heart, BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN ITS NOT COPYRIGHTED. It very much is and I do not allow piracy of it in any way. I’ve already fought for two such removals on piracy sites and I will continue to fight for my work every time. You can provide free content and still ban piracy of it. The two are not mutually exclusive.

If, and I stress if, you want to allow liberties with your content, be VERY specific. Outline the express conditions under which someone can take and/or use your work.

If you have an Apple product you need to hear this,

In the latest update Apple has added and insidious Ai to every single one of your apps

You will need to manually turn this off to stop Ai from using your apps as a learning base

First:

Head to settings and find the Apple Intelligence & Siri tab

Second:

if you scroll to the bottom of that tab you should find an option to see your apps and a separate option to see apps clips (these can be done in either order but I’ll explain clips first)

Third:

You should come to this screen with an option of “Learn from Apps Clips”, make sure to turn that off (if it’s green it’s still on)

Fourth:

Head back and click onto the apps section, this should bring you to a screen with all your apps

You’re going to have to click on every single one of your apps and turn it off manually (Apple has deliberately made it as tedious as possible in a way to discourage people doing this)

Fifth:

SHARE THIS INFORMATION!! either via my post or making your own,

Every uninformed person is another source of content for Ai to steal from, don’t let this undermine us

As far as I’m aware that’s everything, but there may be more

This is absolutely unacceptable, and not necessary at all for their app.

As much as I love my Nitro and Boosting Servers, I have cancelled everything, and I recommend everyone else does too. Also post wherever you can and tell them directly that this is why. (They don't ask you why you're canceling, just beg you to stay, show you all the cool stuff you're gonna lose, and ask if you're sure. Then offer you a discount if you resub right away.)

This hurts everyone in the long run, and absolutely hurts the Queer Community; piling on to many other hurts we've been dealing with. Discord also just dealt with a data breach last year, and now they want us to give them government IDs and a facial scan? I refuse. I'm keeping myself as safe as I can.

A reminder: *Biometrics are not legally protected.*

Consider alternatives like LINE, Stout, Teamspeak, Mumble...

...hey, is Ventrilo still around after all this time? I'll have to look into that one.

"For the children" reasoning has never actually been about protecting children. They've shown us this time and time again. Push back where you can and however you can.

Little cracks break big ships.

Listen. To. Your. Instincts!!

Be. Rude!!

Say. No!!