I Make Art Sometimes

oh.

Remember when tumblr announced the sale of your posts to openAi?

In the staff post that avoided talking about it by mentioned the new ‘no-ai’ setting they mentioned that if you had your tumblr blog already hidden from search engines, they automatically had turned that setting on for you by default. I remember thinking “well, in this sea of shit, turning it on by default for those who already cared about privacy is at least a decent gesture”.

But. But!

I had just been sniffing around a bit (of course I didn’t want to copy tumblr’s robots.txt to use it in goblin, what are you saying, that’s outrageous!) and I just realized about something. This is tumblr’s robots.txt (the file that tell crawlers what they can access and what not) when you have the ‘discourage external search" on.

Basically, any bot is discouraged from searching any page on your blog. Any bot. Including the AI ones. So if you have the “don’t show up in search engines” box, you already were as protected as tumblr can protect your posts from being read by AI trainers. So yeah, that good gesture was basically smoke and mirrors to distract people from the fact they were already selling their data.

But what happens if you want to allow google & bing & the rest to index your blog, but turn on the ‘no-ai’ setting? Then the robot.txt file of your blog changes:

Yeah, that’s a list of known AI services crawlers you gently request to not read your blog. Can you see something missing?

Oh yeah, it seems they have forgotten to disallow GPTBot, the crawler from OpenAi. You know, the company Automattic signed a deal with to sell Tumblr’s data. So well, even if you turn the infamous “no-ai” setting on tumblr, tumblr won’t block openAi bots from reading your site. They will block all its competitors, but not openAi.

[pic-of-Automattic’s CEO smiling at the camera next to OpenAi’s Sam Altman a few months ago]

Nice, uh? nice.

As a former humanities student, I feel it is my duty to reblog this one.

A tech bro tried to convince me AI was amazing cause "you could make 30,000 screenplays in minutes" not realising that every single one would be shit, you'd have to sift through everything just to find some good bits, time wasted that could've been spent just writing a screenplay.

Technology Brothers know nothing about what goes into creating a work, other than the fact a work has been created to be exploited for cash. They see creativity as an investment opportunity, not a love for humanity.

Matthew Dow Smith: "Just remember: Arts & Humanities are so useless and pointless that Tech Bros were driven to spend billions of dollars to try and get a computer to do something that badly approximates something Arts & Humanities students could do half asleep and wired on coffee the night before the due date."

oh big speckled paws we're really in it now

Wanted to bring attention to the fact that Bisan called for mass protests today (April 1st). It’s okay if you can’t march yourself, but please make it a point to spread this so that those who can march do so—and also take this as your own checkpoint to ask yourself if you’ve been faltering in terms of sharing information about Palestine, doing what you can to fund humanitarian aid in Palestine, and staying informed as to the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Some might say it has been 6 months of this, but to me that’s all the more reason to make noise now more than ever. This is one of very few spaces on the Internet where Palestine has not been abandoned in people’s endless efforts to dehumanize Arabs. Please continue amplifying the dialogue surrounding this genocide. Free Palestine. Free Palestins always.

Adding that today marks the first day of Arab-American heritage month. As an Arab American I feel it’s my duty and responsibility to keep the momentum around this going—but I also feel like it’s everyone’s responsibility as human beings to advocate and agitate, regardless of where they’re from or where they live. Arab or not, it bears being reminded that this boils down not to ethnicity but to humanity. I worry that we have become so desensitized to these soaring numbers of massacres that we have forgotten that what we’re fighting for is the basic right of Palestinians to live—and to do so freely on their own land. Please remind yourself of this any chance you get. Again: shedding light on Palestinian genocide is imperative now more than it has ever been.

since i only ever send rick rolls to ppl i figured id just post one for all my followers for april fools day this year to save myself the effort

happy april fools y’all

how bad could it possibly be

this is it.  this is my favorite tag on this post

it’s time. its been a whole year since i made this post

there are a lot more abjectly harmful and meanspirited april fool's jokes out there but the one i personally find most annoying is when american game devs pretend that they're going to make a visual novel spinoff of their game because they can't imagine making visual novels in earnest

conversely, the sonic team won my everlasting respect by making their april fool's joke an actual complete visual novel without a hint of irony or disdain for the medium because the joke wasn't that it was a vn, it was that they fucking killed sonic

yknow ever since people realized tumblr isnt dead and have decided to flock here from twitter and tiktok ive seen a huge influx of people in fandom spaces who dont reblog anything. at all.

like, i used to have an art blog with 340 followers. not a ton but not a small amount either given how this website works with creators. and in my experience back then even the ones who only left likes still reblogged other things or at least posted their own stuff. literally the only empty blogs were clearly bots.

but on this New art blog, i've had so many people with fandom-specific headers and icons with actual usernames as urls and some kind of title or description, but have. Nothing. no posts. all they do is like things. and it's always public, too. their following list and their likes list.

and honestly all it makes me think is that these people are New and also don't know how tumblr works. how likes don't give exposure. not even in a "oh, i know it doesn't give exposure, but i'm still going to reblog anyways" way, but in a genuine honest to god straight up doesn't realize tumblr likes don't work like twitter's.

PLEASE please if you're from tiktok or twitter or whatever please reblog people's art both fandom and original if you like it!! and maybe actually pad out your blog's content in some way so people won't potentially see you as a bot and block you.

REBLOG ARTIST'S WORK. THIS IS THE ONLY WAY THEY GET ANY ATTENTION ON THIS WEBSITE OH MY GOD. PLEASE. I BEG of you

^^^^^^

Sometimes one person will reblog a fic I posted a while ago and it'll lead to many new people finding my blog and following and also reblogging some fics themselves too

it just is this wonderful cycle of people enjoying my fics, reblogging it and sharing it with more people and thus supporting me at the same time.

-Likes don't do that, reblogs do.

(And please go sicko mode in your tags if the content made you foam at the mouth like a racoon. It gives us a sense of accomplishment)

-So : Reblog your fav fics/art to share them with someone else who might like them and support the author/artist at the same time.

Because reblogs are how people find their fav fics, authors artists and theorists; likes aren't helping the post reach anyone since likes are just heart-shaped bookmarks on tumblr.

it's how the hellsite works lol

Also- leave comments too!! And send asks! You can be anonymous and still support your fav blogs!! Those are what make tumblr special!

THIS IS THE BEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN

I’VE BEEN TRYING TO FIND THIS FOR SEVEN YEARS

DO YOU UNDERSTAND HOW HARD IT IS TO ?????

That last fatal scream tho

THE TERROR IN HIS SCREAM OH GOSH

i’m crying

WAAA-

I will always reblog this on the off chance some other poor soul has been searching for it

IT’S BACK

HOYL SHIT ITS B A CK

IT’S BACK?? ON MY DASH?

re-blogging again xD

what was that we were just saying about still having posts circulating from ridiculous numbers of years ago? 😂

I feel like it’s a duty to reblog such a natural treasure

All those accounts though….

i think of this ProZD video constantly its always so fucking funny

This was a whole thread, here are some of my favourites:

it’s almost that time of the year :)

If you aren't paying attention to the RESTRICT act because it is being Trojan Horsed as the "Tik Tok Ban" I urge you to go look it up right now. The bill itself has NOTHING to do with TikTok. It is a horrible bill that massively impacts freedom of speech, access to information, and the open internet. Even major Republicans are calling it out as too broad and ill conceived.

Please do read why this bill is a huge problem.

Please do contact your Congresscritters and let them know they should vote NO on this bill and kill it completely.

If calling is Not For You (I hear ya), use ResistBot to contact them. It's easy to get started.

You can send the letter I wrote instead of writing your own. Here it is in social media sharable form.

Please also encourage others to contact their electeds.

Congress needs to hear from us on this. We can't let another Patriot Act sail through.

please reblog this i spent way too long on what was supposed to be a quick edit

If any of you ever feel like what you're doing for Palestine isn't helping anything, I'll tell you right now it's helping me. I know it is fortifying all of us who have been in this fight for years to see so many people willing to speak up. It has never been like this before.

The tide has already turned. The fact that #free palestine will have new posts everyday, that helps me. It helps my mental health knowing that Palestinians are less alone now than ever.

Yesterday I read some verses from the Quran talking about how "the blame" is not with those who wish to help but cannot, but with those who CAN help and do not.

Truly I do not care if all you do for Palestine is post in that #free palestine everyday, that is still more than many people with the means to do even more would do.

We see you. We see you standing in solidarity with us and with Palestinians. We love you. Thank you.

I have to keep reminding myself that the point of collective action is that it's collective.

It's terrifying and demoralizing that nothing thus far has stopped or more than briefly paused the genocide.

But that's not a reason to stop trying.

If you can protest in person, do that.

If you can donate, do that.

If you can write your officials, do that.

If you can click once a day, do it here: https://arab.org/click-to-help/palestine/

And if all you can do is share, do that.

Happy plagueiversary