mistressofmuses (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mistressofmuses) wrote2023-06-11 09:39 pm
mistressofmuses) wrote2023-06-11 09:39 pm
Entry tags:
Enshittification...
As usual, here I am facing the gap between good intentions and zero energy to follow through with them, lol. (The rush of "hooray, I'm off of work and now have my whole weekend ahead of me!" is very quickly overwhelmed by "ugh, I am SO tired, I want to do NOTHING.")
I've been thinking about finding additional places (other than solely on AO3) to post fic... not because I think AO3 is imminently doomed or anything, and I have no plans to *stop* posting there, but I do feel like internet stuff as a whole winds up being too "all eggs in one basket", so having some alternatives seems reasonable.
So far, I'm figuring probably Squidgeworld (which seems pretty quiet and low on engagement, but is very longstanding and uses AO3's base code, so it seems fairly simple if you're used to AO3), and probably here on Dreamwidth. I was thinking about creating a separate journal... and then someone on my flist mentioned they were doing the same thing by creating a comm that only they have posting access to. That... seems a lot easier than having to manage a separate login, lol.
I also recall that I have a Pillowfort that I've literally never used, and maybe that would be worth dusting off the login for.
I've been thinking a lot recently about the "enshittification" of the internet, and how a LOT of spaces seem to be gearing up to do that right the fuck now.
-There's the dumpster fire that is Twitter of course, but...
-Tumblr has pushed some really crappy UI changes and some pretty shit content moderation choices very recently, in addition to the general crap post porn-ban, with increased ads and "tumblr live" and such.
-Reddit has plans to fuck with basically all the APIs that have long been relied on by a lot of users.
-Facebook ("Meta") has been firmly enshittified for a long time, but now is pushing their paid verification plans, including the ability to get actual support being basically paywalled.
-Discord is doing their forced rename thing, which is already screwing with useability for some people (since there's now allegedly a big namecamping and impersonation problem.)
-Imgur going through and deleting all old anonymous uploads as well as a broad adult content ban.
-Even niche websites, like evidently Furaffinity, are having fucking meltdowns.
So basically... there's very little space that doesn't feel actively hostile to its own userbase. Plenty of the above are sites I've never used or extremely rarely do... but others I use more, and it still just feels like a sort of omnipresent background stress that you can't escape from. It's not that any of that is new - it definitely isn't - but it's just a lot right now.
It makes me grateful for DW being here, as usual both because of and in spite of how quiet it is. Which isn't completely related to the fic posting thing (AO3 has problems, but they aren't the enshittification kind), but it's a tangent that doesn't feel unrelated, either.
All the places I'm thinking about, whether here, AO3, Squidgeworld, Pillowfort (if I ever do try to figure it out), etc. are places that are in opposition to the sort of pervasive hostility elsewhere. (AO3 and Squidgeworld are noteably NOT social media sites, so it's a bit apples to oranges, but still.)
I don't have the desire (yet) or the willingness to utterly abandon every popular site out there (I still get a lot of enjoyment out of tumblr, there are people I can't contact outside of facebook, the youtube algorithm infuriates me but there are creators I still want to see videos from, etc.) but there is a part of me that feels like I don't want to devote a lot of my time and energy to places that are actively trying to be worse for me in order to extract "value."
I've been thinking about finding additional places (other than solely on AO3) to post fic... not because I think AO3 is imminently doomed or anything, and I have no plans to *stop* posting there, but I do feel like internet stuff as a whole winds up being too "all eggs in one basket", so having some alternatives seems reasonable.
So far, I'm figuring probably Squidgeworld (which seems pretty quiet and low on engagement, but is very longstanding and uses AO3's base code, so it seems fairly simple if you're used to AO3), and probably here on Dreamwidth. I was thinking about creating a separate journal... and then someone on my flist mentioned they were doing the same thing by creating a comm that only they have posting access to. That... seems a lot easier than having to manage a separate login, lol.
I also recall that I have a Pillowfort that I've literally never used, and maybe that would be worth dusting off the login for.
I've been thinking a lot recently about the "enshittification" of the internet, and how a LOT of spaces seem to be gearing up to do that right the fuck now.
-There's the dumpster fire that is Twitter of course, but...
-Tumblr has pushed some really crappy UI changes and some pretty shit content moderation choices very recently, in addition to the general crap post porn-ban, with increased ads and "tumblr live" and such.
-Reddit has plans to fuck with basically all the APIs that have long been relied on by a lot of users.
-Facebook ("Meta") has been firmly enshittified for a long time, but now is pushing their paid verification plans, including the ability to get actual support being basically paywalled.
-Discord is doing their forced rename thing, which is already screwing with useability for some people (since there's now allegedly a big namecamping and impersonation problem.)
-Imgur going through and deleting all old anonymous uploads as well as a broad adult content ban.
-Even niche websites, like evidently Furaffinity, are having fucking meltdowns.
So basically... there's very little space that doesn't feel actively hostile to its own userbase. Plenty of the above are sites I've never used or extremely rarely do... but others I use more, and it still just feels like a sort of omnipresent background stress that you can't escape from. It's not that any of that is new - it definitely isn't - but it's just a lot right now.
It makes me grateful for DW being here, as usual both because of and in spite of how quiet it is. Which isn't completely related to the fic posting thing (AO3 has problems, but they aren't the enshittification kind), but it's a tangent that doesn't feel unrelated, either.
All the places I'm thinking about, whether here, AO3, Squidgeworld, Pillowfort (if I ever do try to figure it out), etc. are places that are in opposition to the sort of pervasive hostility elsewhere. (AO3 and Squidgeworld are noteably NOT social media sites, so it's a bit apples to oranges, but still.)
I don't have the desire (yet) or the willingness to utterly abandon every popular site out there (I still get a lot of enjoyment out of tumblr, there are people I can't contact outside of facebook, the youtube algorithm infuriates me but there are creators I still want to see videos from, etc.) but there is a part of me that feels like I don't want to devote a lot of my time and energy to places that are actively trying to be worse for me in order to extract "value."
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I think that not having all the eggs in one basket is good. I like AO3 [I want it to fix its shit but I don't hate AO3], but yes, fandom becoming less decentralized would not be a bad thing.
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There's been so much centralization on the internet as a whole. AO3 isn't a *bad* central hub (yes, there are things that I really want them to improve), but it's not profit-driven, it's not whim to a single person who could disappear or die or decide that they just don't want to keep it going anymore, and I have a hard time even imagining a crisis that would cause it to suddenly go dark without warning.
But I think some of the issues it does have are very much related to people wanting it to be everything. No space can function as everything perfect for every person. Having more options and spaces would be a good thing.
I'm not sure what a good blueprint is for decentralizing. Back in the day, the internet was a lot less centralized than it is now, but it seems a lot harder to go back to that now than it was to leave it behind for wherever wound up with critical mass of users.
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And people wont use the alternatives because you can't go viral. You don't have that 'every post is a possible lottery ticket' feeling
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That is a large part of it, I think. The alternatives can't manage to get off the ground, or can't maintain enough of a userbase to really *work*, because so many people look at social media as a popularity game and as their future-big-break. A site that functions without that push of virality is a healthier space... but isn't what a lot of people think they're looking for.
(And yeah, I get that sounds kind of condescending, like I'm saying that I know better than other people what they want... but I don't think the endless quest for virality and "influencer" status is a healthy one. It's not that a surge of popularity can't ever be a lasting good for someone - small businesses and artists come to mind - but that's a pretty small percent of the "viral content" out there. It's also pretty well-known I think that algorithms prize certain types of content over others, so it certainly isn't a level playing field. And a site that actively tries to push certain people's posts at me to service those virality goals is always going to feel at least somewhat hostile to me.)
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Also, unless you are already well established, everyone except you will profit from a viral post, image, tiktok or twitch moment. Some of the main people making money off of twitch are clip channels on youtube. The 'react meta' means that Asmondgold and Moistcr1tikal are eating everyone's lunches when it comes to viral moments. No one goes to the original post, they watch one of two rich white boys with long hair react to it on their channels. Asmondgold goes gaming specifically, but Moistcr1tikal takes anything viral from every platform and serves it up to his 13million subs for easy money. If you win the lottery someone more established is going to go *chomp*
And yeah, super not level. White boys have massive advantages. YT pushing local content over worldwide people that people in either rich or dense areas are going to get different viewerships. That's why some people livestream outside from rich areas, to exploit that.
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No kidding. So many repost account! The clip type ones are the worst, and they do that with EVERYTHING. And even the ones who "do it right" by providing links to the original videos... most people aren't going to click through, but the react video gets all the hits and engagement.
White boys, affluent white girls that are the right kind of pretty, etc. The specific types of aspirational living. The geography lock type stuff (promoting specific areas more heavily) is fucking WILD, honestly.
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There is a lot of 'group watching' of tiktoks on twitch. People are curating tiktok content as a full time job and the people aren't even getting views.
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Yup. There is SO MUCH reposting of content, for reactions or for clip anthologies, etc. And a lot of the time it's those that gain the traction, those that go viral... not the actual creator.
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Buuuut that doesn't mean that I don't think it's worthwhile to have alternatives. Backups are basically always a good thing.
Plus just in general, I think it would be healthier for fandom as a whole to have more, smaller spaces. That would allow more curation of those individual spots, and the ability to create stronger community norms, and hopefully connection. Having everything on just a few large sites means that you're sharing space with a lot of people you don't actually share community with, and differences in priorities and interests can be part of what causes problems within those larger sites.
I feel like tumblr just... isn't good for fic. People aren't on there for long stuff most of the time, and it's just not set up well for that. I know some people do put their fic there (and twitter! How and WHY would you write long fic on a site with a character limit and terrible threading like twitter!?) but it's just never seemed that well suited. Plus yes, there's always the risk of tumblr stuff "breaking containment" and people starting shit outside of your control. I basically never share anything personal over there.
Squidgeworld has existed since the 90s, spinning off from old X-files slash fandom, apparently. So it at least has some staying power, and is as far as I know the only place that's taken AO3's open source code to create as separate archive. It is fairly small (when I checked a couple weeks ago, there was zero fic for my primary fandom!), but that's not necessarily bad. It does mean there's less likely to be a lot of engagement.
The engagement thing is the biggest downside to sharing it here as well, I think. I likely still will - just as an alternative space where the fic is hosted, so I'm not concerned about it vanishing at some point - but I wouldn't expect anyone to really read it here.
I don't think Pillowfort ever really took off much. I remember a lot of interest when it first started, but that fizzled out pretty quickly. Still, I feel like it's worth looking into. It's theoretically the kind of space I'd like, but as always, it's hard to make it work without enough of a userbase.
I refuse to even touch ff.net. (I have an old account there, but don't know if I could get logged into it.) But their various content bans are 1000% purity culture bullshit, and I feel genuine moral outrage at the way they run ads on and within fic. I've been told it's a space that would maybe have higher engagement for the fandom I mostly write for... but I think I'd rather just not share my fic at all than put it there, lol. Which is a bit sad, because that IS where I discovered fanfiction as a *thing*, and I have a lot of nostalgia for the many long hours spent browsing it when I was a teen!
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(The old Ad Astra is partly broken and going to read-only mode this year, since the new one's up and running! The new one should also be at the main domain soon, I think...)
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I HAD heard that using AO3's base code is pretty rough - the guy who runs Squidgeworld mentioned the same and offered to help anyone else who wanted to know what he had to do to get it working. That's part of why AO3 remains in beta, if I recall: that their base code, while intended to be open source, is not nearly as useable and easy to utilize as hoped.
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There seem to be some people using Pillowfort, especially for posting up full-out uncensored naughty art, but then they tend to post hints of it over at Tumblr with a link to their Pillowfort. Same with the ones who post their uncensored naughties over at Twitter.
ff.net just always seemed like such a shitshow. I read my friend's KH fics there (the friend you met me through via LJ) and I think I read one or two other things there, but it was just such a shitty format and took forever on all my computers to load up. I was just as glad when AO3 started to exist because I have way fewer issues posting fics there. It would be nice if they addressed their issues - the racism, whatever that all entails - and to come up with a better solution than locking down comments to keep anon hate from happening. Though again, if my friend's favorite stalker hits up my fics with the ship they hate, I'm just going to report them as spam. Maybe that's more work for the people at AO3, but then maybe they'll figure out a better solution for that thing. I don't think a lot of people leave signed-in hate at this point.
And AO3 doesn't have purity ban shit going on, so that's nice. Not that I personally write stuff that would get banned on other sites, but still.
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I think Pillowfort does have some traction for its much more permissive "adult content" policy, which is another reason I sort of pre-emptively like it. Not even because I look at a lot of NSFW stuff, but because I think that banning adult content in order to maximize ad revenue is shitty, so I like sites that don't do that.
Same. I read a fair amount of KH fic there, and it's where I posted my terrible teenage YuYuHakusho fic and such, lol, but I don't think the site design was *ever* very good, and it's gotten a lot worse since.
Plus, they do ban ALL explicit content, though I know some people still post it and hope it doesn't get deleted. And at least back in the day it was one of the worst sites in terms of "inflating" ratings for queer (especially m/m) content. PG chaste kissing would get told to bump up to Teen of it was gay. PG-13 things would be told to mark as R if it was gay. So in practice, you could have "R" rated het fic, but nothing more than PG-13 queer fic, since anything higher than that would be flagged as "too explicit". Maybe that attitude has improved?
AO3 has absolutely amazing design, imo, and the tagging system is just fantastic. There *are* problems with it, largely due to growth... sort of turning it into a victim of its own success. It's objectively better than most alternatives, so everyone wants to use it, which makes it a lot harder to successfully run when it's all volunteer work. Plus a lot of the people who jump ship from elsewhere don't feel like they should have to follow the (fairly minimal) rules, which causes even more frustration and friction.
Reporting things that aren't spam as spam is the sort of thing that might make it harder to deal with harassment reports in a timely manner, since it goes to the same already-overworked and burned out team, and is in itself technically spamming the report feature, but do what you have to do. It's still the kind of thing that should be addressed. (Though again, the power to stop those comments entirely is in the author's hands! It doesn't help if authors refuse to actually use the tools they're given.)
If you read OTW's most recent update post, they do mention they're looking at ways to "further limit how guest users can interact with you on the archive" so that may be some of what you want.
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I also hope they're trying to figure out how to keep AI from sweeping in, though what I think might be more egregious is that I saw a thing on Tumblr where someone had said they took an "abandoned fic" (it wasn't abandoned - it just wasn't being updated fast enough for their entitled little tastes) and plugged it into an AI generator to finish it. Like. Fuck that.
That was Pillowfort's whole thing while Tumblr was going through the porn purge and ban. They would allow uncensored naughty art and other porn. I made a profile over there, and I try to wander over when I remember it's there, but I don't think a lot of people do a whole lot there. I think that Tumblr is just too comfortable for people other than it doesn't allow for the naughty fanart (and I will not rant again about how much I hate Patreon for existing because as much as I want to support artists, I can't afford to pay for every little fanart sexpot art I want to see in full, and I still have that huge grudge that fanartists can get paid where fanfic writers aren't supposed to - and rightly so, we're not supposed to, this is a hobby, and we shouldn't make money, but in the same light, artists shouldn't be making money for fanart either but they do bitch bitch bitch).
Yeah, that's all the stuff I was hearing about ff.net - that they were getting bitchier about the slashfic, which sucks as much as assholes being assholes about hetfic (or I mean, my characters are pretty much always bi at least, and some just happen to wind up in relationships with the opposite sex, but that of course, upsets people just as much as saying hetfic because bisexuals are supposed to PROVE they're queer by only dating same sex characters. You know...because that's what bisexual is. *eyeroll*). It just sounds like ff.net should finally disappear like it kept saying it was.
I LOVE the tagging system at AO3, and I've gotten better about looking at the tags before I start into a fic so that I can avoid it if I don't feel like dealing with my squicks at that moment. I love that people I read are generally really good about tagging their stuff so that I can make the decision on whether or not to read something. Tagging is so important. I read something on Tumblr that talked about the "Tiktokification of fandom," and I can't say that I disagree with its view. That newer readers especially are the younger people who started out on Tiktok where they can just keep scrolling endlessly through what entertains them where they don't have to leave any kind of appreciative response. So they do the same at AO3 - they read everything they want but they don't leave kudos/positive comments. I've even seen these people wanting AO3 and Tumblr to operate on an algorhithm so that the two sites give them ONLY what they specifically want to see without them doing the work for it. Yikes.
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Power to people who post their fic to tumblr, but I'm with you. I suppose I should have stuck with "short excerpt, link to rest on AO3" posts, but it just didn't feel worth it to even post that sort of thing, heh. Tumblr's comparative lack of privacy controls (though they did recently add the ability to disable reblogs for a given post) definitely makes it feel a bit less... "safe" for fic. I wouldn't want something to "escape containment" and wind up in more hostile spaces. Like, yes, anyone can access it on AO3 (if not archive-locked), but few people who dislike fic as a whole are going to be there. On tumblr, you could wind up with people who actively hate fandom or fic seeing your fic, and I don't want that!
And yes - you can block users, which prevents them from interacting with you at all. They can't comment on your works, or reply to your comments elsewhere. (It doesn't automatically delete any previous comments they left on your work, but they can't go back to edit those comments after you block them.)
Muting blocks a user's works, bookmarks, and comments from showing up to you, so you don't see them.
I wish more authors would archive-lock just so it wouldn't feel like a penalty. I've said before, I feel like "joining the queue for an invite, and making an account" is a pretty low barrier to entry, but is enough of one to make people better community members, since it requires that minimum effort AND means they're attaching a name to what they say and do.
Moderating comments is probably wise to deal with the dedicated assholes. It's a bit gratifying to know that no one gets to see the shit they spew... though it sucks that they're there at all. I DO hope they address the problem of people using the guest feature to be douchebags... I understand why they don't track guests, but the assholes wreck things for everyone, and it winds up hurting authors.
I really hope they address the AI stuff. I'm discouraged by their response so far. Their policy is "we archive fanwork, and if this is a way in which fanwork is being produced, then we will archive it". But like I've said before, I disagree that AI-generated text counts as a fanwork, because a chatbot is not a "fan." And a fan prompting an AI is not actually producing the resulting text, the bot is. Posting work you yourself did not create has always been against the TOS, and I don't think this is any different. The bot may not fight for credit, but it's still ultimately posting work that you didn't create. I think that things do need to be human-created in order to count, and I think it's a mistake to allow (and therefore encourage) AI.
That's another reason I like Squidgeworld as a secondary host - the guy who runs it pretty quickly put out a statement saying that AI is *not* welcome on his archive.
But ooooh, I saw that post about having AI "finish" an unfinished fic. FUCKING INFURIATING. What an entitled, asshole attitude to have.
And yes, Pillowfort seems to be much more adult content-friendly. I've got a profile, but I've still never used the site! I need to do that at some point... I really do want to find spaces that feel better to spend time in, and I agree with the ethos of the site, at least... though much like DW, having a fairly small userbase is a bit of a blessing and a curse. It's pleasantly quiet... but also sometimes UNpleasantly quiet, ha.
(Argh, Patreon. I love it for some things, and have a handful of creators I subscribe to. Buuuuut yeah, I mostly follow people for their original work, and there are a ton more fanartists that I can't afford to subscribe to, and fundamentally object to the idea of paying for fanworks. [I will sometimes buy unofficial merch and artist alley stuff at cons or the like, or zines sometimes, but that's paying for a *product*, not just to view the art itself.] I put a lot of time and energy into writing fic. It's not popular, but I share it for the handful of people who enjoy it, because I do fundamentally believe that fandom thrives as a gift economy... not a side-hustle.)
And yeah, AO3 is a bit of an anomaly that people get snottier about hetfic. Most of the rest of the internet is still more on the "ew, boys kissing, yuck" side. Including ff.net. Ff.net has had a couple big content purges that I remember, and it feels like one could always happen again. I was also extremely angry when I realized they insert advertising into fics. (Sometimes so frequently that you wind up with only a sentence or two in between banner ads, according to some screenshots I've seen! I run an adblocker, but it still makes me angry!) I know ff.net is still popular for a lot of things, and I don't want anyone to lose a community they rely on... but yeah, for all the times ff.net has been on the brink of crashing and burning and disappearing... part of me wishes they just would. (Except I know a lot of work would be lost, and that is a shame.)
AO3's tagging system is really amazing. I appreciate people who tag well - I love to know what I'm getting and I love being able to filter out what I don't want.
I think that's a very real thing. Complaints about a lack of engagement have been a thing forever, but... tiktok especially, but also other social media like insta or fb or even tumblr tend to encourage a very passive and disposable experience. Too many people treat fandom the same way, wanting an endless stream of algorithmically-chosen "content" that they don't have to work for. BIG yikes. Algorithms are the fucking devil, lol.
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I think I didn't realize how much it was until I ditched Twitter for good like a year ago and massively decreased my use of Tumble and then it was like "oh, it's... quiet".
(I really like it!)
And good luck on backing up your fics on DW! It can be time consuming, LOL, but so far I think it's worth it.
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And yeah, it feels weird to say that about AO3, because it is so emphatically not a social media site, but there IS a lot of noise and constant *doing* there as well as tumblr or the like. Things move fast, and something you share can get buried in a matter of hours.
Thank you! I think I'll do what you'd mentioned about setting up a community that I can post fic to, rather than a separate journal. (Keeps me from having to sort out logins and such!) It will be time consuming, but I'll be glad to have everything hosted in a backup spot.