The only way any other social site we fans migrate to is going to work is for it to be fully, entirely funded through donations from us, the users. Like AO3, which does not and will never sell out to a megacorp, which does not and will not fund itself through advertising, which does not have investors to placate, which has an entire team of lawyers in place to protect our rights as artists and creators, and which runs its donation plea once a year for this specific reason. This is why. This exact thing that happened this week is why they ask us all to spare a few bucks if we can.
I dunno about all of you, but I’m going to have some questions for Pillowfort when they come back online. I want to know if they have a plan already in place for inevitable bot activity, for people who post hate speech and nazi propaganda, and if they are going to have a team in place whose sole job is to keep this shit from poisoning their site like it does every single other site we fans try to take refuge on as a safe space.
I’ve been through literally all of LJ’s bullshit, and now it’s the same thing here. It’s going to be the same anywhere we go, unless we, the fans, are the sole investors in whichever website we use. This shit ain’t free.
I’ve been looking at the options and having the exact same thoughts. I don’t at all mind paying a few bucks a year for this service… It’s a lot less than what I pay for Netflix and I use it a lot more. That said, the main reason social media is, well, social, is that there’s a critical mass of people with the same interests. At this point, I have two or three fandoms I really care about, and one of those is already small and shrinking and fragmenting. So I’ll be balancing the need to go where we own our own content and contribute to the platform with seeing where others in my community go. Not sure where I’ll end up, but Pillowfort is on the short list.
“Per registry regulations, no .io domain may be used, directly or
indirectly, for any purpose that is sexual or pornographic in nature, or
violates the statutory laws of any nation.“Pillowfort is registered on .io
Explain this to me like I’m dumb though. Does this mean it won’t allow the bots (hopefully), it won’t allow sex workers to do their thing (probably), and/or it won’t allow fan writers and artists to do our thing (??????), or all of it? How are they going to regulate that when privacy/friends-only settings exist on the platform?
“No .IO domain may be used, directly or indirectly, for any purpose that
is sexual or pornographic or that is against the statutory laws of any
Nation. In the event of the Registry being advised by any party that a
specific site breaches this condition then the Registry reserves the
right to immediately deactivate the offending registration.”I’m no internet scholar, but it seems to me all it’ll take is the registry getting wind of any of these breaches of contract and terminating Pillowfort’s domain registration, or Pillowfort themselves getting nervous about being in breach of contract and terminating user accounts or putting restrictions on usage of the site. With the way this is worded that breach could include anything from child pornography to written erotica.
Historically, this means a site will ignore sexual or pornographic materials right up until they get into trouble for it, and then they crack down. As far as privacy locks go, I don’t know. The prohibited data is still associated with the domain, but I don’t know what kind of access to it they’d have, or if Pillowfort differentiates between public and private posts. They haven’t made their TOS easily available.
Thanks Punk… this is going to require more research. There was at least one other option on my shortlist… when I find the post that mentioned it I’ll share here so we can all be aware.
FWIW, @suedescripture, Pillowfort’s Terms of Service explicitly forbids hate speech/hate group recruiting, as well as harassment, doxxing, call out posts, and other “anti”-type activity that’s poisoned tumblr. They also don’t plan to ever use advertising and instead by funded by offering a paid option to users (similar to Livejournal’s paid option that had some extra features).
But the domain thing is concerning. I wonder why they chose to go with a .IO domain in that case.
Hmmmmmm.
So, I think I’m considering Pillowfort, Dreamwidth, and WordPress as my top options for transferring this blog (not sure that’s a thing yet at Pillowfort) before any of it gets purged. I’ve already had some things get flagged, though to be fair. I got pissy yesterday and posted more nudes (tasteful, B&W, showing the shape of an arse) than normal just to see what would flag.
So I’m curious what everyone knows about the pros and cons of those options. I’m on twitter, but mostly for a previous fandom. And the character limit drives me crazy. I’ll always pop in there, but this blog and that platform don’t really seem to fit.




