Loftwings and Demons

Did some tag pruning in my Dreamwidth account since there's a maximum number of tags allowed here. I want to work on gradually restructuring to use fewer tags that are extremely specific but to have tags at different levels of specificity to make it easier to find things. I think I should try to reserve extremely specific tags for topics I discuss frequently.

So, just an FYI to others that if you ban someone you used to give access to from commenting on your account here on Dreamwidth, it's probably a good idea to uncheck 'gives access' before doing so AND MAKE SURE TO PRESS THE 'save changes' button. Then double-triple-quadruple check this in multiple ways by navigating out and back to the page and clicking 'show banned users?' and seeing who you have checked 'gives access' to. Even in the best case scenario (which I have not been able to confirm), should you somehow unintentionally unban the person, they would immediately regain access to your access-list only posts. In the worst-case situation, this means they can still read your access-list only posts even when they're banned, they just can't comment on them. I always lean more towards assuming the worst-case situation, but if anyone can confirm that banning is also intended to prevent users from seeing access list only posts even if that's checked, or confirm that it's not intended to do that, I would find that information useful.

Today I just noticed a former friend I unfortunately had a falling-out with a while back and so banned here on Dreamwidth was still listed as on the access list to my blog when I clicked 'show banned users' in my circle. Of course I unchecked that box instantly and chose 'save changes'. I thought I had done that earlier but I guess not.

It's certainly not ideal for me but in my case, I'm not going to have too much emotional turmoil over that by itself. I limit what I put on social media, regardless of restriction level. Still, other people might want to be aware that regardless of whether banned users can still view access-only posts if you don't uncheck the 'gives access' box, that ban =/= block.

'Gives access' will always be imo better than 'followers only' or 'mutuals only' choices, but I think ban being different from the current conception of blocking can cause some problems when it interacts with these settings, especially given the expectations set by blocking. My understanding is that ban is more a 'read only' setting than the more 'restraining order' approach attempted by blocking. I think blocking is the better approach, even if it sometimes grants people a false sense of security, because it increases barriers for troublemakers.

Since I seem to recall unchecking those boxes way back when I did the original ban, my guess is that I didn't select the 'Save Changes' button before banning.

I feel like I have maximum freedom to be weird and unpalatable on this site, and that's one of my favorite things about posting here tbh.

One of the things I like about smaller social media like Pillowfort and Dreamwidth is that they encourage me to be less passive on social media. I mean, I've always been fairly active in the sense that I would talk about topics of interest to me, but on Tumblr it's easier to just endlessly scroll and not interact with anyone. There's so much on a site like that it encourages less interaction. Whereas on a smaller social media site, the environment encourages a more active and, well, social approach instead of just treating it like television.

One thing I've accepted is that if I want to have the freedom to avoid some of some of the worst social media issues, I need to be willing to make some sacrifices, because otherwise that's never going to be realistic.  There are advantages to the big social media sites that it's just not feasible for smaller sites to emulate.  But there are also advantages to smaller social media spaces that you will never have on the large social media sites. 

Dreamwidth and Pillowfort and Mastodon can't be Tumblr or Facebook or Twitter, but just as surely, Tumblr and Facebook and Twitter cannot be Dreamwidth or Pillowfort or Mastodon.  The big mega-corp run sites are all on a race to the bottom in how they treat their customers.  While they've pivoted to more of an emphasis on charging those customers money, this hasn't been to improve their experience or empower them. 

I thought for a brief time that perhaps Tumblr having paid options might improve it, but on further reflection it was obvious to me that this by itself would never lead to true change.  Because the underlying principles and purpose of the service (to the people running it) hasn't changed.  Tumblr started out with no ads and with a very generous nsfw policy.  But look at it now.  How bad will it have to be before people leave?  The answer, as evidenced by Twitter, is either completely unuseable or totally nonexistent.  It's like the whole being boiled slowly metaphor.  You accept it and you accept it and you accept it until you are simply too weak to leap out. 

This is why I have to consider whether I should even keep my account on Tumblr, or whether I need to cut the cord for my own sake.  I will miss many people on Tumblr, but I will not miss Tumblr in any capacity.  What it once was is gone.  What it once was was also an illusion, a venture capitalistic dream, built on nothing but empty promises and privilege.  It could never have been sustainable in the environment in which it was produced.

So I recall back in 2018 when a whole bunch of people left Tumblr due to the NSFW ban.  Now some of those people came here or to other small sites like Pillowfort (which is another site I'm on).  But some of them went to Twitter.  And now that Twitter is being massively defaced by Musk people on Twitter are coming back to Tumblr. 

Personally, I'm beginning to think that these large venture-capital funded sites are not any more stable or reliable than smaller ones.  And since their business model is ultimately one of inherent exploitation of their users, I'm not coming back to Tumblr.  As long as any users have to be fed ads to pay for the site, it is reliant on advertiser revenue and thus the content is dictated by the advertisers.  I'll consider returning to Tumblr if they're someday no longer beholden to any advertisers or external companies like Apple to determine the content policies of their site, and they change their content policies to serve their users. 

As for Twitter, I've never liked that site and in fact think it is intrinsically bad.  But though it doesn't affect me personally, I feel bad for all the employees who were laid off, and all the destruction Musk has and will cause to the knowledge and networks people built up on that site.  I know far too many people relied on a site that is now wholly under the control of a man who is essentially a glorified scam artist.

I think one thing that makes Dreamwidth a lot more peaceful than a lot of other social media is that it really doesn't show you anything external to your own blog unless you actively choose to see it.  Default page is just any comments on your page or notes you are sent.  And you can ban people from sending those if you feel the need to.  If you choose to, you can go to your reading page and look at posts from people and sources you actively chose to view, but even that's not visible until you click on it.  So the default is just more...self contained to your own domain until you choose to visit elsewhere.  I kind of like that about Dreamwidth.  Maybe that's just a temperament thing for me.

Well, I noticed today that my attempt to change some settings for my Sith community were applied to this blog instead so I had to fix that (Specifically the title/subtitle stuff).  Was sure I had checked that the account was set to the comm before trying to change that.  Maybe that setting doesn't apply to communities so it just set it back to my blog?  Hmmm.

Since I'm planning on phasing out ffnet for my fic at some point (though I want to post one more chapter of each fic and then discuss the phase-out in the author's note, so it's sort of a long-term plan haha), I've been thinking about where to put an alternative copy of my fic from AO3.  I love AO3 for fic, but I don't ever want to be stuck with only one cloud copy of my stories so I need them to have at least one more online location.  Given the reasons I'm leaving ffnet, that somewhat limits my options.  But I think Dreamwidth or Pillowfort are two possibilities.

I was originally reluctant to use any kind of general-purpose social media site, but I realized that if I made a blog or community for each of my long fic, I could still organize them chapter-by-chapter in the way I wanted.  And the short fic I could just add to my main blog here and link in my profile or something.  And as an added bonus, I could add chapter-specific tags, which is a concept I really like because I love enabling more search functionality.  Like sometimes I will skim or search through a longfic looking for particular parts of interest to me, and that would really enable that capability to a much greater degree for my fic.

So, that's probably what I'll do.

The reason I go out of my way to title my posts here on Dreamwidth, is it makes it easier for me to find posts later on, and because Dreamwidth lists posts by title in the page summary.  Also I always have this immense desire to categorize and organize anything I've written, lol.