Dragon

Looks like scam bots have switched to a new tactic and are trying to pass themselves off as a Tumblr security system. At least for me, this is something new.

But a fresh blog post that tells me to “verify my information” via some suspicious link... yeah, riiiiight 🙄

Like of fucking course Hiccup is talking to dragons in their own language, of course they flock towards him without anybody's input when he needs help, of course he jumps off cliffs and has no sense of danger from height, of course altitude sickness is not even a thing to him, of course he'll hiss at you like a disgruntled terror when he's too sleepy and cranky and of course he'll eat the raw fish without noticing when the twins try to prank him with it, of course the one proper weapon he made is on fire, of course he finds eels repulsive, of course he has no problem scaling cliffs or slinking through rough rocky terrain, of course he feels cranky and cooped up when he hadn't gone flying for a while, of course he growls when he's too angry. Next thing you'll know, the kid is allergic to blue oleanders and dragon root

anyway if you get a comment like this, chances are that they are bot and their goal is to do whatever it takes to get you to delete your work, most certainly (from what I’ve heard) it’s because they want to “safely” steal your work, use it to train their ai without you being able to rightfully claim ownership of your work since “there’s no proof that the work was stolen/was posted elsewhere first by you” because the original source has already been deleted.

THEY ARE ALL BOTS. at first it was “ao3 is deleting fics and your entire account will be affected unless you delete the fics yourself” then it was “this work contains contents that are illegal and they have already reported you and your fic to the police” (yes, that’s how desperate these bots are), and now it’s this.

report their comments to ao3 for spam—in this case, specifically, I think you may be able to report them for harassment too—and don’t pay attention to them, most importantly don’t delete your works, don’t feel discouraged by their comments. remember that they are bots and they mass comment something like this on people’s works at random to get people to delete their works. (or even if they’re not bot, they are still pathetic bullies who don’t deserve your time or attention.)

JUST BECAUSE YOU SEE SOMEONE USE A ‘EM-DASH’ IN THEIR WRITING DOESNT MEAN THEY USED AI.

JUST BECAUSE YOU SEE SOMEONE USE A ‘EM-DASH’ IN THEIR WRITING DOESNT MEAN THEY USED AI.

JUST BECAUSE YOU SEE SOMEONE USE A ‘EM-DASH’ IN THEIR WRITING DOESNT MEAN THEY USED AI.

we as a community are seemingly so traumatized by ai that, if we see ANYTHING in writing at ai would provide, we immediately hop to “OMG AI”. - STOP.

>First, we’ve discovered that about a quarter of all the internet connection in or out of the house were ad related. In a few hours, that’s about 10,000 out of 40,000 processed.

>We also discovered that every link on Twitter was blocked. This was solved by whitelisting the https://t.co domain.

>Once out browsing the Web, everything is loading pretty much instantly. It turns out most of that Page Loading malarkey we’ve been accustomed to is related to sites running auctions to sell Ad space to show you before the page loads. All gone now.

>We then found that the Samsung TV (which I really like) is very fond of yapping all about itself to Samsung HQ. All stopped now. No sign of any breakages in its function, so I’m happy enough with that.

>The primary source of distress came from the habitual Lemmings player in the house, who found they could no longer watch ads to build up their in-app gold. A workaround is being considered for this.

>The next ambition is to advance the Ad blocking so that it seamlessly removed YouTube Ads. This is the subject of ongoing research, and tinkering continues. All in all, a very successful experiment.

>Certainly this exceeds my equivalent childhood project of disassembling and assembling our rotary dial telephone. A project whose only utility was finding out how to make the phone ring when nobody was calling.

>Update: All4 on the telly appears not to have any ads any more. Goodbye Arnold Clarke!

>Lemmings problem now solved.

>Can confirm, after small tests, that RTÉ Player ads are now gone and the player on the phone is now just delivering swift, ad free streams at first click.

>Some queries along the lines of “Are you not stealing the internet?” Firstly, this is my network, so I may set it up as I please (or, you know, my son can do it and I can give him a stupid thumbs up in response). But there is a wider question, based on the ads=internet model.

>I’m afraid I passed the You Wouldn’t Download A Car point back when I first installed ad-blocking plug-ins on a browser. But consider my chatty TV. Individual consumer choice is not the method of addressing pervasive commercial surveillance.

>Should I feel morally obliged not to mute the TV when the ads come on? No, this is a standing tension- a clash of interests. But I think my interest in my family not being under intrusive or covert surveillance at home is superior to the ad company’s wish to profile them.

>Aside: 24 hours of Pi Hole stats suggests that Samsung TVs are very chatty. 14,170 chats a day.

>YouTube blocking seems difficult, as the ads usually come from the same domain as the videos. Haven’t tried it, but all of the content can also be delivered from a no-cookies version of the YouTube domain, which doesn’t have the ads. I have asked my son to poke at that idea.