After The Auction: Please Wait For Our Email!

After the auction: Please wait for our email!

We know how exciting it is to get to 8pm and realize you've won the auction! However, in all this excitement, please don't jump the gun.

We will email all high bidders within 24 hours of auctions closing with a full list of the auctions you've won and instructions for how to submit your donation proof. Please do not contact us with your donation proof until you get this email.

What's more, we've changed the process this year, so even if you're an FTH pro please be sure to read this email carefully! You will need the link in this email to submit your donation proof.

We know it's annoying to have to wait possibly an entire day before being able to proceed, but we need to make sure we've accounted for all the auctions, checked for late bids that need to be removed, etc etc before we can start processing your donations.

If you believe you were the high bidder on an auction and you have not received an email from us within 24 hours (so by 8pm EST Sunday), please let us know.

Hello hello and welcome to this week’s six sentence story, based on the word NAIL. I know this one is late, and I am sorry for that, just couldn’t seem to finish writing it. This follows our narrator discussing the end of her marriage, and why it’s never just one thing. On an ENTIRELY unrelated note, both WordPress and Tumblr have made changes to their privacy policies this week, and unless you…

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Re: tumblr selling our data to AI companies.

I don't know if it's overly cynical to say, but it's nothing that all the other social media haven't done already, with more or less publicity. I see people being like, "I'm going away from Tumblr, I'll be on Instagram instead" and. Do you really think Facebook and co aren't selling all of your stuff already. They are.

The AI companies are buying a shitload of data now, I'm guessing mostly so they can say they have "legally acquired" content when the laws and lawsuits start rolling in, but they were scrapping tumblr before that. They were and are scrapping AO3 and whatever other website you use. It's disturbingly easy to get ChatGPT to write shitty omegaverse. If you ask the image AIs to give you Maedhros from the Silmarillion, they'll spit out red-haired guys - that's not because it's canon (it's not even in the Silm) but because it's been trained on our fanart.

This is undoubtedly a shitty move on Tumblr's part, I hate it, etc. This is sure as hell not a defence of them. Do toggle the toggle to "opt-out" for whatever good it's going to do. Do Glaze your art if you can, Nightshade if you can (remember that Nightshade doesn't protect shit though), I don't think either of those are the panacea I've seen them described as but it's better than nothing. But ultimately, all of our stuff online (not just art, and not just public things) has been scrapped and will be scrapped. It doesn't matter if it's on your personal website or on shitty social media.

The internet's core concept is sharing, and that involves a certain amount of goodwill on all sides of the transaction. And that goodwill, when it comes to those big companies, just isn't there. The only way to protect your art from being scrapped is to not share it anywhere.

I don't have a solution. Those models are probably going to burn themselves out eventually, but the next thing will be as bad or worse. The big companies have considered themselves above the law for years and legal frameworks are unlikely to do much. The choice is between not sharing anything and giving up on the communities that bring me joy, or accepting that my art will be stolen whatever I do. Personally I'm going to keep sharing my art on here with the people who enjoy it, and try to remember even in the worst moments of imposter syndrome that it will always be a thousand times better than whatever shitty things the AIs are sprouting by stealing it.

This isn't the solution (or even compromise) I wish I could have. I'm writing this because all the posts I'm seeing are panicking and guilt-tripping, and I've caught myself feeling guilty for still wanting to share my art even though it's going to feed the Machines(TM) and. Can we please stop that. Can we not make the artists somehow responsible for being stolen from.

PACING IS ABOUT LOAD BEARING WALLS.

*staples violently to my own forehead*

Wait, so you’re telling me today’s the 4th? What’s next, the 5th? The minor fall? The major lift?

You know, this is a really good litmus test. Like do you want to get seriously involved with someone and then one day discover they believe that birds aren't real or that the earth is flat?