crop-pop

[crop-pop]

hello everyone, i have to make an announcement.

im planning to migrate to my new blog @crop-cop, so if you wanna continue to see me and my drawings go there. I do this because I don't have an "stop ai button" on this version of tumblr, and I can't update this app because by some reason it just tells me that "this app no longer compatible with your phone" or some shit, and it's already been more than half a year since it tells me so.

i no longer have a password for the account i use for this blog, so there no fixing it with access to computer. BUT only on THIS blog, because I made this new blog on a separate account so i can use my computer on it to turn off "training ai" thing without problem.

im not planning to leave tumblr for now but i will try to start looking for alternative social apps, so if push comes to shove i wouldn't lose everything again and you could find me somewhere else.

right now i won't do anything funny with this blog at least until next week, because i will probably try to do something really stupid with my blog so that ai wouldn't have it. I have all my art i ever posted here saved on my phone tho, so if i would eventually delete it here it is not truly lost and you can ask me to repost it.

sorry for all of inconvenience and thank you for attention. I have no idea what else do i do.

listing my mutuals so you for sure would see this @lucamisu @catinflight @synthraptor @leaffiii @rosebud64

[crop-pop]

hello everyone, i have to make an announcement.

im planning to migrate to my new blog @croc-pop, so if you wanna continue to see me and my drawings go there. I do this because I don't have an "stop ai button" on this version of tumblr, and I can't update this app because by some reason it just tells me that "this app no longer compatible with your phone" or some shit, and it's already been more than half a year since it tells me so.

i no longer have a password for the account i use for this blog, so there no fixing it with access to computer. BUT only on THIS blog, because I made this new blog on a separate account so i can use my computer on it to turn off "training ai" thing without problem.

im not planning to leave tumblr for now but i will try to start looking for alternative social apps, so if push comes to shove i wouldn't lose everything again and you could find me somewhere else.

right now i won't do anything funny with this blog at least until next week, because i will probably try to do something really stupid with my blog so that ai wouldn't have it. I have all my art i ever posted here saved on my phone tho, so if i would eventually delete it here it is not truly lost and you can ask me to repost it.

sorry for all of inconvenience and thank you for attention. I have no idea what else do i do.

listing my mutuals so you for sure would see this @lucamisu @catinflight @synthraptor @leaffiii @rosebud64

[crop-pop]

If anyone wants to know why every tech company in the world right now is clamoring for AI like drowned rats scrabbling to board a ship, I decided to make a post to explain what's happening.

(Disclaimer to start: I'm a software engineer who's been employed full time since 2018. I am not a historian nor an overconfident Youtube essayist, so this post is my working knowledge of what I see around me and the logical bridges between pieces.)

Okay anyway. The explanation starts further back than what's going on now. I'm gonna start with the year 2000. The Dot Com Bubble just spectacularly burst. The model of "we get the users first, we learn how to profit off them later" went out in a no-money-having bang (remember this, it will be relevant later). A lot of money was lost. A lot of people ended up out of a job. A lot of startup companies went under. Investors left with a sour taste in their mouth and, in general, investment in the internet stayed pretty cooled for that decade. This was, in my opinion, very good for the internet as it was an era not suffocating under the grip of mega-corporation oligarchs and was, instead, filled with Club Penguin and I Can Haz Cheezburger websites.

Then around the 2010-2012 years, a few things happened. Interest rates got low, and then lower. Facebook got huge. The iPhone took off. And suddenly there was a huge new potential market of internet users and phone-havers, and the cheap money was available to start backing new tech startup companies trying to hop on this opportunity. Companies like Uber, Netflix, and Amazon either started in this time, or hit their ramp-up in these years by shifting focus to the internet and apps.

Now, every start-up tech company dreaming of being the next big thing has one thing in common: they need to start off by getting themselves massively in debt. Because before you can turn a profit you need to first spend money on employees and spend money on equipment and spend money on data centers and spend money on advertising and spend money on scale and and and

But also, everyone wants to be on the ship for The Next Big Thing that takes off to the moon.

So there is a mutual interest between new tech companies, and venture capitalists who are willing to invest $$$ into said new tech companies. Because if the venture capitalists can identify a prize pig and get in early, that money could come back to them 100-fold or 1,000-fold. In fact it hardly matters if they invest in 10 or 20 total bust projects along the way to find that unicorn.

But also, becoming profitable takes time. And that might mean being in debt for a long long time before that rocket ship takes off to make everyone onboard a gazzilionaire.

But luckily, for tech startup bros and venture capitalists, being in debt in the 2010's was cheap, and it only got cheaper between 2010 and 2020. If people could secure loans for ~3% or 4% annual interest, well then a $100,000 loan only really costs $3,000 of interest a year to keep afloat. And if inflation is higher than that or at least similar, you're still beating the system.

So from 2010 through early 2022, times were good for tech companies. Startups could take off with massive growth, showing massive potential for something, and venture capitalists would throw infinite money at them in the hopes of pegging just one winner who will take off. And supporting the struggling investments or the long-haulers remained pretty cheap to keep funding.

You hear constantly about "Such and such app has 10-bazillion users gained over the last 10 years and has never once been profitable", yet the thing keeps chugging along because the investors backing it aren't stressed about the immediate future, and are still banking on that "eventually" when it learns how to really monetize its users and turn that profit.

The pandemic in 2020 took a magnifying-glass-in-the-sun effect to this, as EVERYTHING was forcibly turned online which pumped a ton of money and workers into tech investment. Simultaneously, money got really REALLY cheap, bottoming out with historic lows for interest rates.

Then the tide changed with the massive inflation that struck late 2021. Because this all-gas no-brakes state of things was also contributing to off-the-rails inflation (along with your standard-fare greedflation and price gouging, given the extremely convenient excuses of pandemic hardships and supply chain issues). The federal reserve whipped out interest rate hikes to try to curb this huge inflation, which is like a fire extinguisher dousing and suffocating your really-cool, actively-on-fire party where everyone else is burning but you're in the pool. And then they did this more, and then more. And the financial climate followed suit. And suddenly money was not cheap anymore, and new loans became expensive, because loans that used to compound at 2% a year are now compounding at 7 or 8% which, in the language of compounding, is a HUGE difference. A $100,000 loan at a 2% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, accrues to $121,899. A $100,000 loan at an 8% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, more than doubles to $215,892.

Now it is scary and risky to throw money at "could eventually be profitable" tech companies. Now investors are watching companies burn through their current funding and, when the companies come back asking for more, investors are tightening their coin purses instead. The bill is coming due. The free money is drying up and companies are under compounding pressure to produce a profit for their waiting investors who are now done waiting.

You get enshittification. You get quality going down and price going up. You get "now that you're a captive audience here, we're forcing ads or we're forcing subscriptions on you." Don't get me wrong, the plan was ALWAYS to monetize the users. It's just that it's come earlier than expected, with way more feet-to-the-fire than these companies were expecting. ESPECIALLY with Wall Street as the other factor in funding (public) companies, where Wall Street exhibits roughly the same temperament as a baby screaming crying upset that it's soiled its own diaper (maybe that's too mean a comparison to babies), and now companies are being put through the wringer for anything LESS than infinite growth that Wall Street demands of them.

Internal to the tech industry, you get MASSIVE wide-spread layoffs. You get an industry that used to be easy to land multiple job offers shriveling up and leaving recent graduates in a desperately awful situation where no company is hiring and the market is flooded with laid-off workers trying to get back on their feet.

Because those coin-purse-clutching investors DO love virtue-signaling efforts from companies that say "See! We're not being frivolous with your money! We only spend on the essentials." And this is true even for MASSIVE, PROFITABLE companies, because those companies' value is based on the Rich Person Feeling Graph (their stock) rather than the literal profit money. A company making a genuine gazillion dollars a year still tears through layoffs and freezes hiring and removes the free batteries from the printer room (totally not speaking from experience, surely) because the investors LOVE when you cut costs and take away employee perks. The "beer on tap, ping pong table in the common area" era of tech is drying up. And we're still unionless.

Never mind that last part.

And then in early 2023, AI (more specifically, Chat-GPT which is OpenAI's Large Language Model creation) tears its way into the tech scene with a meteor's amount of momentum. Here's Microsoft's prize pig, which it invested heavily in and is galivanting around the pig-show with, to the desperate jealousy and rapture of every other tech company and investor wishing it had that pig. And for the first time since the interest rate hikes, investors have dollar signs in their eyes, both venture capital and Wall Street alike. They're willing to restart the hose of money (even with the new risk) because this feels big enough for them to take the risk.

Now all these companies, who were in varying stages of sweating as their bill came due, or wringing their hands as their stock prices tanked, see a single glorious gold-plated rocket up out of here, the likes of which haven't been seen since the free money days. It's their ticket to buy time, and buy investors, and say "see THIS is what will wring money forth, finally, we promise, just let us show you."

To be clear, AI is NOT profitable yet. It's a money-sink. Perhaps a money-black-hole. But everyone in the space is so wowed by it that there is a wide-spread and powerful conviction that it will become profitable and earn its keep. (Let's be real, half of that profit "potential" is the promise of automating away jobs of pesky employees who peskily cost money.) It's a tech-space industrial revolution that will automate away skilled jobs, and getting in on the ground floor is the absolute best thing you can do to get your pie slice's worth.

It's the thing that will win investors back. It's the thing that will get the investment money coming in again (or, get it second-hand if the company can be the PROVIDER of something needed for AI, which other companies with venture-back will pay handsomely for). It's the thing companies are terrified of missing out on, lest it leave them utterly irrelevant in a future where not having AI-integration is like not having a mobile phone app for your company or not having a website.

So I guess to reiterate on my earlier point:

Drowned rats. Swimming to the one ship in sight.

[crop-pop]

its official: tumblr is selling our data to Midjourney

we'd been hearing rumors about this for a bit but now its open and out there. some details from this article

it goes without saying, but if @staff goes through with this its going to be an utter shitshow and im all but certain the website will not survive it.

#omfg #this is so bad

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How to turn off AI Training of your content on Web and Mobile:

On a Web Browser:

I had some trouble finding this option. My first instinct was to click the settings button on the left, but that's where it is!

First, you'll click the name of your blog on the left sidebar to bring it up on your browser.

Then click "Blog settings" on the right sidebar once your blog is brought up. That's where they're hiding it.

Click "Prevent Third-Party Sharing" under the Visibility section, and bam! You're done.

On Mobile:

Thankfully it's much easier on mobile. Just click the Gear icon on your blog's page, to go to settings.

Scroll all the way down until you see Visibility, then toggle the Prevent third-party sharing option for your blog!!

If you disable this setting on mobile, it automatically synced it to my web browser settings, too. ...But if you use both Web and Mobile, I would still highly recommend double checking that it actually turned off on both!!

Check that it's turned off on your side blogs too! And check your settings every now and then anyway to ensure that it's staying turned off, because if my memory serves right, some other websites will pull some shenanigans on things like this and opt you back in without telling you!

Leave Feedback on New Features at Tumblr Support Here!! Let Staff know however we can that having our content fed to AI at their whim is unacceptable.

And if you have the option to poison your art with Nightshade or Glaze, keep it up!!

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Click here to directly send feedback to Tumblr Support about the new feature of training AI generators with OUR creations.

@staff turned off replies on their post about AI implementation. They’re dropping this on us, plugging their ears, and looking the other way and we can’t even tell them how we feel. That’s unacceptable.

This is a suggestion box that the Tumblr Staff themselves have set up. Let’s use it.

Tell them exactly how you feel about this new AI generation- its effects on the artist and writer communities, the blatant theft of our hard work and opportunities, the saturation of online feeds with these soulless, misshapen images and unintelligible writing. Express that disappointment, sadness, fear, and anger. They need to know.

And!! I haven’t see anything about using just art and images to train their AI generators. Writing is probably also fair game!! Everyone who posts on this site is affected by this!

Select the category “Feedback” and “New Features” and let the people in charge here know exactly how we feel about being automatically opted in to train AI generators with our creations.

Yes, you are opted into this by default!! If you still need to turn off third party sharing for your blog, Here is a quick guide on how to opt out of training AI with your blog’s creations. It’s just a hidden switch to flip in your Settings menu.

Together, our voices will be loud and clear.

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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:

We already discourage AI crawlers from gathering content from Tumblr and will continue to do so, save for those with which we partner. 

We want to represent all of you on Tumblr and ensure that protections are in place for how your content is used. We are committed to making sure our partners respect those decisions.

To opt out of sharing your public blogs’ content with third parties, visit each of your public blogs’ blog settings via the web interface and toggle on the “Prevent third-party sharing” option. 

For instructions on how to opt out using the latest version of the app, please visit this Help Center doc. 

Please note: If you’ve already chosen to discourage search crawling of your blog in your settings, we’ve automatically enabled the “Prevent third-party sharing” option.

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

#i feel so sick from this

[crop-pop]

That megaman show from 2018 was trashy as fuck, why not make fan stuff about the actually valid mega man series. Disappointing waste of talent to be honest.

So usually I don't give these type of asks the time of day, because I know the people who send them are practically begging for attention, but

I thought this was alarming and figured I'd give you guys a heads up, they sent one last ask right after I switched off anon asks, so I know who they are, but both thier username and pfp where incredibly inappropriate ( had some nasty slurs i dont want on my page and straight up porn on thier pfp) so yeah, pretty instant block and report

Ik this is probably a troll and all, but this is just a heads up to my fellow Uber cool fully charged artists out there 😎😎😎✌️✌️ keep on drawing and don't let lil punks like this guy make you feel bad for enjoying less popular media 🗣🗣🗣❗️

#i rarely get the “trolls asks” but then i do its more on the confusing side of spectrum #it's not even offensive #anyway #here's your crown king 👑 #👏 you 👏 absolutely 👏 slaying 👏 with 👏 your 👏 art 👏

[crop-pop]

Only if i can make em as badly as possible

origin of this here

remembered one of @mmfc-incorrect-quotes quotes and thought that it was in character for Ice man

#but not now its 9 pm for me

[crop-pop]

remembered one of @mmfc-incorrect-quotes quotes and thought that it was in character for Ice man

#i haven't drawn ice man for half a year time to change that #art #mmfc #mega man fully charged #meme #meme pic #aki light #ice man

[crop-pop]

For the art requests: anything with Chaotique.

Here she is, in her day off attire 🖤

#this looks very good! #and her fit is very funky/pos

[crop-pop]

GET KOSA TRENDING.

STOP SCROLLING NOW!

AS OF FEBRUARY 21ST, 2024, WE GOT FIVE DAYS UNTIL THE DAY OF DECISION OF THE KOSA BILL, WHICH WILL CAUSE MASS CENSORSHIP ROUND THE INTERNET IF PASSED. OR DOOMSDAY. WE NEED EVERYONE TO KNOW ABOUT THIS AND CONTRIBUTE. I'M NOT GIVING UP ON YOU ALL.

WE'RE DOWN TO THE WIRE BUT WE CAN'T GIVE UP YET. IF WE GIVE UP, EVERYTHING IS OVER. IF WE DON'T, AT LEAST WE HAVE A CHANCE.

I'M THE ONE WHO SOUNDED THE ALARM, AND I'M NOT GOING TO CURL UP AND DIE YET.

Reblog this post in every LEGAL way you can under the Tumblr guidelines with the appropriate tags. TELL AND TAG EVERYONE YOU KNOW, then add the tags to see below... and more if you can think of any complying.

Visit badinternetbills.com if you want to find a way to defeat KOSA. It WILL NOT take much of your time. Reblog with any other information or sources, too-- but make sure to reblog if you can.

Reblog if you support lgbtq+ content.

Reblog if you support questioning queer youth and/or abused youth getting the information they need.

Reblog if you support Ao3 and/or other sites that wholeheartedly preserve talentedly made media.

Reblog if you're going to repost this on other sites than Tumblr and spread the word across Twitter, Tik Tok, Pinterest, or elsewhere, alongside the link to badinternetbills.com.

Reblog if you think KOSA is unfair and shouldn't be anyone's problem -- including the adults ALL OVER THE DAMN EARTH forced to face the mass censorship it causes because "think of the American Children!".

Reblog if you support internet activism and Palestine.

Reblog if you hate fascism or censorship, and don't want actually serious and helpful conversations censored on the internet.

Reblog if you value the internet in any way at all whatsoever.

We won't let this stand any longer. Let's start a riot and get this trending.

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requests are now no longer open

[crop-pop]

If requests are still open, here's smth cute!

Aki hugging a Veemo! (An Octoling hehe) bro would love em 😭

i hope that by Veemo you mean agent 8, otherwise my drawing won't make sense, but yes he would

#one of male octoling hairstyles looks like Daini hair lol #art #mmfc #mega man fully charged #aki light #splatoon #octoling

[crop-pop]

Pocket monster lizard (specifically the green one)

oh, to be a lax green lizard on a sunny day

#pokemon #art #treecko

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Cursed Mega Man (my Creepypasta) meeting Mega Man?

tbh i don't have any specific scenario for how this would play out so i just made the classic "one second before ether jumpscare or the most awkward prolonged eye contact ever"

Also here's the two months old drawing that i did that i kinda based around your work, simply because it won't see the light of day anywhere otherwise

#im not into your creepypasta tbh but i wanted to try to make a unsettling drawing #art #mmfc #mega man fully charged #aki light

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AI and Tumblr

In the event of any kind of AI Art API is to be trained on this platform I do not give permission for my art to be sampled or used to train AI without financial compensation, artists hold the copyright to our art and any intentional mimicry or sampling of my art by an artificial intelligence is infringing on an artist's rights to their creations.

We as artists will not take this grim proposal between Tumblr and Midjourney laying down, this was the last safe heaven for a lot of us and you are now holding knives to us entirely to solve your financial woes instead of offering meaningful solutions. You are going to bleed your community of all trust and all revenue you still eek out of us. Your ways have changed from one of a community built around passion for fandom and the creative mind to one of greed and exclusion. You have been showing true colors and they are ugly, they are sickening, and they will kill your platform. If this deal goes through, may your platform die slow and painfully, may you watch your most loyal of whales walk away and leave you drying out in the hot pavement that is bankruptcy.