I just wanted to make this post to warn yall about it, I am not a tech genius but I wanted to get a vpn and surfshark was one I knew about so i subscribed to them because it seemed ok, that was where I fucked up.

fast forward a year and now I am trying to cancel my yearly auto-renewing subscription which costs 70 fuckin bucks, didnt find much use in surfshark as it was too laggy when using its vpn services so i go to billing and try to cancel.

there was no cancel button so that was odd, and you cant turn off auto-renew so i figure ill just get rid of my card info so it cant charge me.

i cant or at least i cant figure out how.

I go to help and find the cancellation area after scrolling past why you should keep the subscription and it tells me to contact their live support to cancel, It requires my name and gmail, I know for a fact my gmail is correct but it says its wrong and that my name is wrong no matter how many ways I enter it and I cant find a possible username anywhere on the site i could use. Its for all practical reasons impossible for me to cancel, not just the fact I cant even talk to customer support, but the people on reddit that do, talk to a bot and then the agents take months to actually turn off the subscription so it charges again and there is no refunds.

dont use surfshark VPN

Important!

JK Rowling has used her billionaire legal team to silence a Jewish woman for telling the truth about her contempt for trans victims of the Holocaust.

Scotland’s network of “freedom of speech” organisations, as per usual, have nothing to say about the use of wealth to gag critics of the wealthy.

However fast they race to condemn the LGBT+ community for saying the names of those who harm us. Statements at the ready to insist that transphobes no one wants to work with anymore must be given every possible opportunity to gain from their bigotry.

But it's not the billionaires who are being silenced, as our media breathlessly echo their every hateful proclamation.

It's journalists and activists forced to publicly humiliate themselves under the weight and the threat of billionaire legal teams or be driven into destitution.

We deserve better. Freedom of speech needs to mean something

The Streisand Effect strikes

This will swiftly become one of the primary things JK Rowling is remembered for. Trying to erase crimes of the Holocaust against trans people and then silencing Jewish journalists for calling her out.

With your help we can make sure JK Rowling is known as a Holocaust denier first, author of mediocre children's books second

It kills me how everyday the posts and content about Palestine decrease because of how many people are getting killed everyday.

It also kills me how many stopped boycotting or has never even tried to boycott.

Somethings are so small to do and easy yet people don't even bother when it's a genocide that has been going and going and going not since October 7th but for decades.

I do, in fact, have a cohost I use regularly.

...at least more regularly than anywhere else tbh.

Tumblr's reply to the situation with CEO's transphobia is pathetic and you should not be thanking them for doing the bare minimum of saying he's not speaking for them. They fucking thanked that bitch.

The affected trans women are still banned.

A transphobic manchild offered no proper apology. Or stopped. He is also still in his position.

Tumblr is still factually transphobic. Keep pushing.

Yet another deleted blog, fantastic

They know what they’re doing. They know exactly what they’re doing when they see their users speaking out and nuke them. There is no error or compromise here, this is active malice on staff’s part and they will continue to treat black and trans bloggers like dirt if you just let them.

I do, in fact, have a cohost I use regularly.

...at least more regularly than anywhere else tbh.

Please be aware that the "opt-out" choice is just a way to try to appease people. But Tumblr has not been transparent about when has data been sold and shared with AI companies, and there are sources that confirm that data has already been shared before the toggle was even provided to users.

Also, it seems to include data they should not have been able to give under any circumstance, including that of deactivated blogs, private messages and conversations, stuff from private blogs, and so on.

Do not believe that "AI companies will honor the "opt-out request retroactively". Once they've got their hands on your data (and they have), they won't be "honoring" an opt-out option retroactively. There is no way to confirm or deny what data do they have: The fact they are completely opaque on what do they currently "own" and have, means that they can do whatever they want with it. How can you prove they have your data if they don't give everyone free access to see what they've stolen already?

So, yeah, opt out of data sharing, but be aware that this isn't stopping anyone from taking your data. They already have been taking it, before you were given that option. Go and go to Tumblr's Suppport and leave your Feedback on this (politely, but firmly- not everyone in the company is responsible for this.)

Finally: Opt out is not good under any circumstance. Deactivated people can't opt out. People who have lost their passwords can't opt out. People who can't access internet or computers can't opt out. People who had their content reposted can't opt out. Dead people can't opt out. When DeviantArt released their AI image generator, saying that it wasn't trained on people who didn't consent to it, it was proven it could easily replicate the styles of people who had passed away, as seen here. So, yeah. AI companies cannot be trusted to have any sort of respect for people's data and content, because this entire thing is just a data laundering scheme.

Please do reblog for awareness.

going to be snerfectly honest with you boss the fact that tumblr, a place where i have over a decades worth of art and posts, has just decided it gets to sell all my info for pennies to AI thieves is extremely demotivating for art and extremely motivating for violence

I said it on twitter I'll say it here as well. One of the reasons as to why I'm again AI piss machines is because they're fucking horrendous on energy consumption I don't want to use glaze or nightshade because as far as I understand they are also fucking dogshit for the environment in similar ways to the AI piss machines. I'm not telling anyone what to do but I'm personally not to eager to jump on the bandwagon of someone offering a miracle solution to a problem that should be fixed by legislation.

Hi, Tumblr. It’s Tumblr. We’re working on some things that we want to share with you. 

AI companies are acquiring content across the internet for a variety of purposes in all sorts of ways. There are currently very few regulations giving individuals control over how their content is used by AI platforms. Proposed regulations around the world, like the European Union’s AI Act, would give individuals more control over whether and how their content is utilized by this emerging technology. We support this right regardless of geographic location, so we’re releasing a toggle to opt out of sharing content from your public blogs with third parties, including AI platforms that use this content for model training. We’re also working with partners to ensure you have as much control as possible regarding what content is used.

Here are the important details:

If you have concerns, please read through the Help Center doc linked above and contact us via Support if you still have questions.

Surprisingly, nowhere in this post, does Tumblr explicitly say that they've partnered with OpenAI and Midjourney to let them scrape your content unmitigated unless you opt out.

THE OPTION SHOULD BE TOGGLED OFF BY DEFAULT AND ENABLED BY THE USER. OPT-IN, NOT OPT-OUT.

Forcing within your site's settings that everyone is giving automatic consent until they notice and opt out is fucking unethical. DeviantArt already tried this and got their asses handed to them.

MAKING PEOPLE CONSENT BY DEFAULT AND FORCING THEM TO REVOKE IT IS NOT ETHICAL DATA USAGE.

Scream it from the fucking rooftops until these dumbasses get the picture.

took these screenshots for people like me who would rather just know how to opt out than read several paragraphs on corporate greed

Please note that this has to be done for each sideblog!

Tumblr is doing some stupid AI shit so go to blog settings > Visibility > Prevent third-party sharing.

also use Nightshade and Glaze to protect your artwork and images!!!!

here's a link to Nightshade

here's a link to Glaze

best combination is usin Nightshade then Glaze on your images. Glaze creates a protective layer and Nightshade poisons the A.I. software.

I do, in fact, have a cohost I use regularly.

...at least more regularly than anywhere else tbh.

“We’re selling your Tumblr posts and art to AI services for scraping, you’re opted in by default, and even if you opt out, the only thing ensuring they won’t take it is a conversation worth less than a pinky-promise”

guys I think the website is dead to me

They had a chance last year, they really did. If they had focused on moderation, trimmed excess features, improved site functionality when people came flooding in from Twitter. They could have made this the de-facto site for artists, writers, all of it.

And yet they haven’t just fumbled it, they haven’t just shot themselves in the foot, they’ve taken the whole damn leg, and it took them less than a week to do it.

This company deserves exactly what they’ve earned- every last ounce of scorn they’ve accrued.

bumping this. for reasons. join me <3

sharing this today for No Particular Reason, but i also want to add a few more bullet points, some of which are features added in the time since the original post was made:

in general, these days cohost is the only alternative social media where i actually like being active and posting thoughts and talking to people, where it feels like it's developed its own enjoyable user culture that isn't just "haha wow glad we're not on that OTHER site anymore, am i right guys?" it's not a 1:1 replacement for any of the big sites, nor is it designed to be, but it's a site that i like spending time on

Don't pay a single cent to Tumblr, its merch, or the checkmarks. 4 blogs erased in about 48 hours, fuelled by transmisogyny. If you want to read more about it, look up the usernames of the blogs involved and scroll through the posts. There's no shortage of explanations or perspectives from the transfems on tumblr. And tbh I'm worried that more will be deleted for speaking out.

Me and dozens of other Palestinian bloggers have been on the receiving end of no shortage of harassment, threats, stalking. There are several users who consistently create and recreate accounts that come back to harass us everytime we block them, to spout the most heinous, genocidal, racist drivel that no one else receives on this website, because we're Palestinians and we're outspoken on our right to exist in peace and as sovereign people. This is the least of it.

The knowledge that staff can actually take care of this problem, along with the nazis, the white supremacists, and the TERF epidemic, that I don't have to deal with the shit I do on this website every day - but don't - and instead use their moderation capabilities to delete trans women's blogs arbitrarily?

There are no words.