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vanquishedvaliant · 2 years

Note

If the gayness can be denied it can just as easily be called queerbaiting. Text (and subtext) is less impactful and meaningful than action, even in the right direction. I think if gay people say it's not good enough isn't that an indication that it isn't good enough or enough for them to feel represented?

No.

There’s been a concept in social media activism that the primary perceived value of queer content in media is how loudly it demonstrates inclusion of a particular identity, and a lot of popular media gets judged solely on this aspect, like it’s checking off a tickbox for binary approval.

A kiss has been chosen by many of these circles to be the most concrete binary proof you can have for a character’s queer sexuality, but putting aside the fact that many identities don’t benefit from that at all; (theoretically a bi person would have to kiss 2 different genders to ‘prove’ themselves this way, why would a trans person kissing anyone prove anything, asexual or aromantic obviously inapplicable, etc) w

It’s simply incorrect that text is less impactful than “action”, given that media is Text. The Text is what comprises its “action” and what it’s statement of intent is. A kiss is not action, a kiss is Text. A gay character that does kiss or meets whatever satisfaction the audience deems for “representation” is still a creation of Text as much as a gay character that never kisses anyone. There’s no separation there. This wholesale disregard of theme and meaning of text and subtext in fiction and instead only approving media-friendly headline screenshots is one of the greatest tragedies of modern popular culture.

Treating the ‘undeniable’ existence of a queer character as “action” and “representation’ and not examining the actual context of their inclusion and what the story says about their identity, their lives, and their experiences is how you get Disney’s First Gay Character popping up in the news twice a year- it’s become more important for the headlines to State that you have one than for them to actually be important or meaningfully written, or for the story to have anything to say about the character or their lives. At this point of popular social media understanding, Queerbaiting simply does not mean what people have begun to use it to describe. Queerbaiting was intended to refers to deliberate marketing attempts to accrue viewership by over-promising the presence or importance of queer content to Bait in queer viewers hoping to be included. The key part of Queerbaiting is the intentional misdirection here, and because of that there is a very important distinction between queer subtext that is created to build intentional undertones and that which is included specifically to tease and entice viewers with the promise of more.

Many anime shows that people accuse of queerbaiting are doing exactly the opposite; in the case of Flip Flappers the overwhelming Text of the story is largely and centrally focused on the burgeoning sexuality of a young girl as she grows up and realizes that what her heart desires may conflict with expectations set by herself, her family, and society at large. That remains true through to the end of the story where she makes a breakthrough in her understanding of herself and her place in life and her sexuality is a major part of that.

A kiss is not at all required for this, but because there isn’t one people somehow become convinced that the story is “baiting” them desptie the actual meat of the story itself being fundamentally about being queer. Now, there’s definitely room for subjective differences in appreciation here, especially taking more Yuri works as a whole (particular Slice of Life), in which many of them do place their queer undertones as a less central tenet that aren’t deeply explored. I’m not saying that you as an individual can’t feel that you’re not satisfied without a more substantial story; but it doesn’t mean these stories have Failed in their role of Representation; they still have value and purpose whether they meet that shallow criteria or not. And it doesn’t mean that they aren’t Real and these characters aren’t quite obviously gay to anyone paying even the slightest attention.

What I’m actually hearing most of the time is that people consider the capital r Representation buzzword to tick off a box of “HAS LESBIAN” to be more important to them than actually reading a Story about gay people that has something meaningful to say; Add further to this deeper disqualifying factors restricting death, tragedy, “unhealthy” relationships, etc. And you quickly begin to cut down the number of stories you accept to only those which portray a superficial, consumer-friendly veneer of queerness.

This is in itself a sanitization of Queer identity that doesn’t celebrate or represent anyone; it’s selling an idea of Queerness that is clean, palatable, easily accessed.

That’s simply not enough to satisfy me, and it shouldn’t be for you either.

#vivi original #i have more to say but im tired of writing this

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undercoverpena · 1 year

Text

a hundred thoughts

john 'soap' mactavish x f!reader (squid!reader)

an: angst, idiots in love, love declarations (to Gaz) and pining | for the anon who wanted to hurt, you’re welcome. wc: 2k summary: “i think i’m in love with my best friend”. and now you’ve said it, that the secret had touched the air, it has allowed it to run more rampant through your veins. It throbs in your bones and thumps in your saddened heart. Because you miss him—

john soap mactavish masterlist

Each time he leaves, you hope he leaves a noticeable mark.

Something to cling to. A bruise from the hug being too tight, a pinch from you winding him up, or even a finger mark burned into your skin, from how searingly important he is.

But, he never does—never did.

All you're left with is the lasting image of him walking backwards from you, smirking, eyes twinkling as he points at you saying:

“Don’t get into trouble without m’, Mari. I’ll be back in a few hours and then, we go to tha’ pub and get bladdered.”

It was the last thing—last tickbox.

Price had said it would be quick, in and out. The last loose end that had made its way out of the blistering heat, from where you’d all just been.

It didn’t make a difference that you knew he’d be back before it got dark. From the moment the wheels took off with him, till he would come back, you held your breath.

You longed, chest tight—nerves frayed, frazzled. You had suspected why for a long time, but this time…

It hit you. Knocked you from your axis.

Not like a wave. It doesn’t wash over you, drench you and make you go cold. It both creeps and slams into you all at once. Similar to those small paper cuts you get, the ones you only notice when sanitiser or alcohol touches them, and then it’s all you can think of. Hurting so much the corners of your eyes go a little white and you blank everything out as you hiss from it all.

It’s that thought that threads itself into your mind. It creates pretty, complicated bows that you’re sure only he can undo.

“You alright?”

You look up from your untouched plate.

The scent of ketchup singeing your nose. It mixes with spilled vinegar and the fading scent of Soap��s body wash. The latter being the only smell you really wish to cling to, but it’s the one which dwindles the quickest.

Gaz shouldn’t look concerned—the expression doesn’t suit him. He suits smiling and grinning, half-laughing as you sing a song badly in his face when you’re both five drinks deep.

And yet, you’ve made him look concerned more often as of late. A part of you wondering if it’s why he’s here instead of with Price—to keep an eye on you, to watch you.

Something he’s doing well, irrespective of it being an order. He purposefully keeps meeting your gaze, finding him watching, staring with concern written into his brows, face twisting ever so slightly.

The two of you take it in turns—swapping the expression. Being the rock the other can cling to when the current tries to sweep the other a way.

Parting your lips, the words clunk and stick to the inside of your throat. Unwilling to shift, to be spoken.

Because no, you’re not okay. Not even a little bit.

Those words blow across your mind—almost through it. The rest, the real explanation—the one you’ve kept so close to you—is a tangled mess you’re not sure how to begin unravelling, never mind speaking.

It’s a secret which appears in the night, hovering at the end of whatever bed you’re in. A thing which sits and erodes a hole into your chest. One which both makes you feel heavy and weightless all at once; one which fills you both with happiness, fluttering wings and nervous bubbling, and sadness which dulls everything in its path.

A complete contradiction.

“Oi,” Gaz says, poking you with his stupidly long finger, a brow raised. “Do I need to worry about you?”

Maybe. But, maybe it’s too late.

You sigh, swallowing, chewing the words which are starting to taste bitter and wrong. Having sat there far too long—brewing, festering—

“Mari, c’mon. I don’t see you—“

“I think I’m in love with my best friend.”

Gaz stares, blinking.

And it takes a second, even two before you can even understand why he’s staring. Why he’s dumbfounded and silent. In another situation, you think you’d smile, grin—laugh, even.

“Not you, obviously… Soap.”

And then slowly, you watch the most annoying smirk grow and bleed over his features. “Y’fucking think?”

“Excuse me?”

His hand steals a chip from your plate, brow raising. “We will come back to me not being your best friend, but Mari—I’m sorry, but it’s bloody obvious.”

“It is…?”

He grins.

Not horribly. A grin you rarely see on him when you’re both here. One that is usually reserved for being back home, his head turned on your sofa, staring at him as you make a comment about something on the TV.

“Yeah. It is. Not just because you’re always together or that you seek him out when you’re sad—which I know you do. It’s not because I know you share a bed with him, but because as your real best friend, you can’t keep your eyes off the bloke.”

It should calm you. Ease your tired muscles and broken soul. You should find comfort in sharing this secret, the pain and pressure of carrying it halved.

But, it instead opens the barely held-together parts of you. The marks you’ve left on yourself through determined resolve so you weren’t so easily read, bristles and gnaws.

And then, it strikes you. A bolt which sends shivers through your spine and toes, almost winding you and covering you in bruises.

Because maybe he knows too. Which means he doesn’t feel the same. And, and—

You swallow, pushing the plate closer to Gaz. Feeling a slight twinge as you watch his smile fade, the edges of it drooping and wilting, but not enough to ask him why.

Your mind is too busy to care. Gripping the edges of the seat beside your thighs, hating that you’re on the wrong side of realisation—that now you’ve said it, that the secret has touched the air, it has allowed it to run more rampant through your veins.

It throbs in your bones and thumps in your saddened heart.

Because you miss him—

And, he’s only just gone.

“Shit.”

“Why shit?”

“Because,” you say, swirling your hand as you try to find the words.

Not sure if you can say that it’s consuming—loving him. That wanting him, missing Johnny… it’s taking so much from you.

And, it’s only truly begun.

Before it was held under a perfectly layered tarp with hidden emotions weighing it down. Now, it’s free, rising like a helium balloon, blowing in the space between the two of you. Him and you. You and him…

“Mari.”

You blink, feeling the sting of a tear which hovers between falling and not. “If you can tell, Kyle… then he can too. And he obviously doesn’t feel… he doesn’t feel the same.”

Gaz dips his head, staring at you—almost forcing you to hold his gaze without as much as asking you to. And it hurts to. Because it’s full of pity.

A harder look to swallow, to ignore in his brown eyes.

“Mar, he fucking loves you too.”

“No–”

“Yes. Trust me, alright. As your actual best friend—which, by the way, I’m still fuckin’ insulted you put him above me—but, that man is in love with you. More than Price loves cigars—and he ripped a new arsehole in that recruit the other week because he made him drop one.”

You snort. Force it out.

You hope it’ll pacify him, tell him he has nothing to worry about. But it doesn’t work.

He sees through you, raising both brows to inform you of so as your teeth dig further into the inside of your cheeks—leaving marks the tip of your tongue will feel for weeks. Each word of his landing with no comfort.

Even when he doesn’t say another thing. Even when he lets you excuse yourself—nodding in understanding when you say you’re going to sleep.

Not that you do.

You let time tick on. And it’s hours.

Long, painful hours that feel like they’re spreading and bleeding into eternity. It’s apparent, as the day drags on, how you miss him a little louder. It’s all a little more obvious when he’s not on base.

As though the knowledge that he can't turn a corner and call you lass or pull you into the crook of his shoulder—a place you crave now—makes the longing worse.

You’d suspected it all long before now. Had turned it over in your mind when you’d listened to his heartbeat under your ear. You’d acknowledge it—accepted it—that Soap had become the best part of your day, that you don’t didn’t deserve him and couldn’t let him go all at once.

You hadn’t gone to your room when you left Gaz, you went to Soap’s. Allowing yourself a moment to be with your thoughts and be surrounded by his scent. Then it became too much. It made your eyes sting, your heart heavy and your fingers cramp from clinging to the sheets he’d been laying in hours before.

I’ll be back in a few hours…

But, there have already been a few gone.

The realisation and knot of worry dragging its long claws up your throat as the loneliness peels your flesh back, as the threads around your heart tighten, and tighten.

You miss him.

Miss the way he pulls your neck into the crook of his shoulder, that he calls you lass—that his eyes linger that fraction longer with you, than they do with anyone else.

It’s that which eases you as darkness ebbs in the corners of your eyes. Your eyelids closing, tears awaiting at the edges as you curl further into his pillow—the one the two of you have so often shared.

If you sleep, you can miss him quieter, and love him a little easier—or so you hope. Feeling your legs grow heavy, sleep sliding up your body pulling you under its dreamy depths as you let his scent fill you.

Because at least here, there’s a part of him everywhere—enough to trick you into letting yourself believe he’s beside you. It’s that which relaxes you over the last hurdle, your body weightless as sleep embalms your skin and quiets your brain.

Just for a second.

The briefest relief from it all.

It’s why you suspect you don’t hear him enter. Lost in a world between the sleep and those who are awake—teetering in a wasteland devised only by yourself.

But you feel him.

It’s that which makes your eyes open—those knuckles. His knuckles. The ones covered in scars and healing cuts. The ones which often drag themselves up and down your cheek—running along it just the same right now.

It’s dark in his room—the night having crept in and smothered the day.

But, even without light, you see him all the same.

Your eyes accustomed to seeking him—your beacon, your fucking sun. You have practice at it, staring through a scope to watch him, observe him—protect him.

It’s different here. No danger, no reason—just a need to see him, spot him, drink him all in.

Especially when he’s like this, smiling, almost grinning—and very much alive.

The grin he gives is one he does more when it’s the two of you. One which almost tugs at your lips until they mirror his. Almost makes you spill all your secrets to him, like the one brewing and bubbling at the forefront of your mind:

Kiss me. Kiss me, Johnny, and… just—

“Y’doin’ ‘ere, lass?”

You blink it away. Force it back and stuff it away. Both begging the tears to retreat back and the brutal thoughts which pepper your mind.

You can’t reply, too afraid it’ll all come out.

Instead, you lift your hand from the sheets to his hand on your cheek. Staring, hoping your eyes are capable of burning the words into his mind that won’t stop rolling around yours.

Because you’re tired of fighting it—fighting him.

I love you. I love you, Johnny. I love you, I love you, I love you.

His palm spreads flat over your cheek, head tilting as your fingers slide between his—fitting so perfectly, as if you’re both pieces of the same puzzle.

You keep him there, letting the silence wrap around the two of you as his warmth spreads against the coolness of your skin. Your breaths grow deep, heavy, half-laced with beckoning sleep and still present worry.

“Y’missed me or something?”

He’s not smiling.

Nor laughing.

The air shifting, changing—bubbles of it bouncing more intently around the two of you. The claw back in your throat, your flesh peeling, your heart being suffocated by the threads of ifs and buts and maybes—

It would be easier to say yes. To tell him the darn truth.

Instead, you smirk playfully. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

It would have brought comfort to say yes, to not hide anymore. To then freely wallow at home in sitcoms, chocolate and tissues if he told you he didn’t feel the same. But, you’re too afraid…

Of losing him. This. A friendship and whatever else the two of you have built.

He shakes his head, dragging his thumb back and forward on your cheek—refusing to let go.

Not that you want him to.

You never want him to.

“Yer’ a right one, you. C’mon, the plane is callin’, lass. Need a scotch in me.”

read them not being idiots any more > 'yours to keep'

#soap mactavish x reader #soap x squid #john soap mactavish x reader #cod soap x reader #johnny soap mactavish x reader #Johnny soap mactavish

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mcytrecursive · 4 months

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How DO I sign up for this?

We have had to squeeze the sign-up form until it screams to make this work, so buckle in. Here is an example of how to sign up on Ao3 for the recursive exchange, step by step.

I have an idea for a side story for Etho and Iskall in This Is About A Stuffed Bird, by bee_4. So, to start with— that's a hermitcraft fic.

So I select Hermitcraft on the Fandoms part of the sign-up. Note that as we add more fandoms to the list, potentially this will become a drop-down menu instead of checklists. You still select the fandom you want in the same way.

Next is Gift Style. We're using the "characters" tab for that one.

I'm good with my gift being an art, a fic, or a web weave, so I can select all three of these! If I only wanted a fic, or an art, I would only select one.

Next is the Relationship tab, which we're using for characters (told you that we were having to squeeze the signup form until it screamed).

This is a drop-down menu, and I select the characters I want— in this case, Iskall and Ethoslab. Note that possibly I will only match on one character, as we couldn't do relationship matching this time, so I try to keep that in mind when it comes to my requests!

Next is Additional Tags, which is where I select the fic that I'm actually asking for a gift about! In the future, as more fics are added, this will be a dropdown menu, but right now it's tickboxes.

Next is categories. This is our shipping on-off switch.

I've decided that I am good with shipping or not with this one, so I've selected BOTH Gen and M/M. But now that I'm on the page I'm like "I wouldn't mind it if they were lesbians either" so I have selected F/F as well.

Next is rating, which is the NSFW on-off switch. I'm good with smut or no smut, so I've selected both options.

If I wanted no smut whatsoever I could do just Gen (which could also lead to a Mature or Teen work, but excludes E-rated work), and if I definitely wanted there to be dicks out I could select only Explicit.

Then we get to the major archive warnings. This is where you opt-in to archive warnings— it doesn't mean I will necessarily get them, but I'm okay with them! The matching says you might get any one of the things you select here.

Given the source material, I'm opting into Violence and Death as options, and I'm also selecting no warnings apply to show that I'm also good with no major archive warnings!

Now on to the actual request!

There's a space where I could link a letter if I wanted to go into detail with my request, but I think I can fit it in the text box today! I had to put my DNW on the Ao3, and because I said I was open to smut I included a NSFW DNW.

Okay, on to request two.

As you can see, for request two I'm doing a DSMP fic this time, and I specifically want art or web weaves! I selected emerald duo, and the fic I want. And I just want this one to be no shipping, so I only selected Gen for the type of relationship.

I opted out of explicit for this one, and I did say graphic violence was okay OR no archive warnings apply.

On to request three!

This is much like request two, except I only want fic for this one! But it's Dream SMP, Fic requested, the characters I want (techbur twins), the fic I want (catbag), I want it to be Gen and no shipping, no NSFW, I'm okay with graphic depictions of violence, and my prompt!

Now on to my offers.

I'm gonna start with Stuffed Bird again.

So it's a Hermitcraft fic, I am only able to make fic for it, but you know what, I'll write literally anybody in this world. Hit me. I selected any relationship (which in this case means any CHARACTER). And I selected any TYPE of relationship too— yes I'll write any type of shipping or non-shipping. I can't write smut though, so I only selected General for the rating, and I will absolutely do violence but I am not good with MCD or noncon, so I didn't select those.

For my second request, I opened up catbag.

That's a Dream SMP fic, but this time I only wanted to do specific characters. I set it up so that I'd write any combination of SBI, Beeduo, and Quackity. No shipping for me with this one, and no smut, but yes I'll do graphic violence.

And then on to odaigahara's fic!

That's a Dream SMP fic, and I think I could make a web weave for that one, so I selected both fic and web weave. I only want to write Emerald Duo for it, so I just selected them. No shipping, only Gen for this one, and no smut, only gen as well. I don't feel like doing graphic depictions of violence for thisone, so I just selected no archive warnings apply!

For my final one, I really want to make sure that I'm matchable on femslash, so I did a bit of a basket offer.

I selected both Hermitcraft and 3rd life, and selected that I would be making fic. I selected all the ladies (+iskall, for stresskall), and when it came time to select an additional tag, which is what fic I'm saying I'll match on, I selected any. With that and the F/F tag selected, it means that I'll be matchable to any Hermit-Traffic femslash request, no matter which story or art it's attached to. Cause I figure I can read the source material and make something in the creation time period!

So that is 3 requests and 4 offers done, and I have a full sign-up! I'm ready to go! That is how you sign up! Over the course of the sign-up period I might keep an eye on other people's sign-ups (available at the Ao3 automagic app) and tweak my sign-ups so that I'm matchable with someone (or several someones), but for right now, I'm good to go!

#faq #Sign-up

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ask-whitepearl-and-steven · 1 year

Note

Tickbox is an alternate universe comic creator who is focusing on the antics of the Yellow and Blue Diamond courts.

canon.

#chekhov answers

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genshingorlsrevengeance · 25 days

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(Source: Dork Dragoon on YT)

RUB-A-DUB-A-DUB YEAH YEAH, DO IT MY BABY, OH HALLELUJAH

This is like the fifth character where upon first impression I was like "you seem neat" until looking at their lore/personality and realize they check off literally every single one of my tickboxes for me to immediately ask for marriage.

Elphelt my beloved pink creature. My friends also hate it when I play as her due to the amount of gunfire I spam.

#not an ask #chris does a dumb #chris does a simping #extras is also my new favorite guilty gear track of all time

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do-you-have-a-flag · 20 days

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the hosts of taskmaster will literally be like [searches for fanfiction about themselves] [clicks accept on ao3's adult content warning tickbox] [starts to read a fanfic with clearly labled kinks in the tags] "ohhhh a pervert is writing about us on the internet!"

sirs, you could have discerned that without reading any of it, why are you in our house rummaging through a box labled smut you freaks?

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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EU to Facebook: 'Drop Dead'

A leak from the European Data Protection Board reveals that the EU’s top privacy regulator is about to overrule the Irish Data Protection Commission and declare Facebook’s business model illegal, banning surveillance-based ads without explicit consent:

https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-win-personalized-ads-facebook-instagram-and-whatsapp-declared-illegal

In some ways, this is unsurprising. Since the GDPR’s beginning, it’s been crystal clear that the intention of the landmark privacy regulation was to extinguish commercial surveillance and ring down the curtain on “consent theater” — the fiction that you “agree” to be spied on by clicking “I agree” or just by landing on a web-page that has a link to some fine-print.

Under the GDPR, the default for data-collection is meaningful consent, meaning that a company that wants to spy on you and then sell or use the data it gathers has to ask you about each piece of data they plan to capture and each use they plan to make of it.

These uses have to be individually enumerated, and the user has to actively opt into giving up each piece of data and into each use of that data. That means that if you’re planning to steal 700 pieces of information from me and then use it in 700 ways, you need to ask me 1,400 questions and get a “Yes” to each of them.

What’s more, I have to be given a single tickbox at the start of this process that says, “No to all,” and then I have to be given access to all the features of the site or service.

The point of this exercise is to reveal consent theater for the sham it is. For all that apologists for commercial surveillance insist that “people like ads, so long as they’re well-targeted” and “the fact that people use high-surveillance services like Facebook shows a ‘revealed preference’ for being spied on,” we all know that no one likes surveillance.

There’s empirical proof of this! When Apple added one-click tracker opt-out on its Ios platform, 96% of users opted out, costing Facebook more than $10b in the first year (talk about a ‘revealed preference!’) (of course, Apple only opted those users out of tracking by its rivals, and secretly continued highly invasive, nonconsenual tracking of its customers):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Properly enforced, the GDPR would have upended the order of the digital world: any argument about surveillance between product managers at a digital firm would have been settled in favor of privacy, because the pro-privacy side could argue that no one would give consent, and the very act of asking would scare off lots of users.

But the GDPR wasn’t properly enforced, thanks to structural problems with European federalism itself. The first line of GDPR enforcement came from privacy regulators in whatever country a privacy-violator called home. That meant that when Big Tech companies violated the GDPR, they’d have to account for themselves to the privacy regulator in Ireland.

For multinational corporations, Ireland is what old-time con-artists used to call a “made town,” where the cop on the beat is in on the side of the criminals. Ireland’s decision to transform itself into a tax haven means that it can’t afford to upset the corporations that fly Irish flags of convenience and maintain the pretense that all their profits are floating in a state of untaxable grace in the Irish Sea.

That’s because there are plenty of other EU countries that compete with Ireland in the international race to the bottom on corporate governance: Malta, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Cyprus, etc (and of course, there’s post-Brexit UK, where the plan is to create an unregulated haven for the worst, wealthiest companies in the world).

All this means that seeking Irish justice from a corporation that wronged you is like asking a court in Moscow to punish an oligarch’s commercial empire on your behalf. Irish regulators are either “dingo babysitters” (guards in league with the guarded) or resource-starved into ineffectual torpor.

That’s how Facebook got away with violating the GDPR for so many years. The company hid behind the laughable fairy-tale that it didn’t need our consent to spy on us because it had a “legitimate purpose” for its surveillance, namely, that it was contractually obliged to spy on us thanks to the “agreement” we clicked on when we signed up for the service.

That is, you and Facebook had entered into a contract whereby Facebook promised you that it would spy on you, and if it didn’t spy on you, it would be violating that promise.

Har.

But while the GDPR has a structural weakness — allowing corporations to choose to be regulated in countries that can’t afford to piss them off — it also has a key strength: the private right of action, that is, the right of individuals to sue companies that violate the law, rather than having to convince a public prosecutor to take up their case.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/you-should-have-right-sue-companies-violate-your-privacy

The private right of action is vital to any privacy regulation, which is why companies fight it so hard. Whenever a privacy bill with a private right of action comes up, they tell scare-stories about “ambulance chasers” who’ll “clog up the system,” trotting out urban legends like the McDonald’s Hot Coffee story:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/12/hot-coffee/#mcgeico

But here we are, in the last days of 2022, and the private right of action is about to do what the Irish regulators wouldn’t do: force Facebook to obey the law. For that, we can thank Max Schrems and the nonprofit he founded, noyb.

Schrems, you may recall, is the Austrian activist, who, as a Stanford law student, realized that EU law barred American tech companies from sending their surveillance data on Europeans to US data-centers, which the NSA and other spy agencies treated as an arm of their own surveillance projects:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/16/text-adventures-resurgent/#nein

Schrems brought a case against the Irish regulator to the EU’s top privacy authority, arguing that it had failed its duty by ruling that Facebook’s “contractual obligation” excuse held water. According to the leaked report, Schrems has succeeded, which means, once again, Facebook’s business model is illegal.

Facebook will doubtless appeal, but the writing is on the wall here: it’s the end of the line for surveillance advertising in Europe, an affluent territory with 500m+ residents. This decision will doubtless give a tailwind to other important privacy cases in the EU, like Johnny Ryan’s case against the ad-tech consortium IAB over its “audience taxonomy” codes:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/16/inside-the-clock-tower/#inference

It’s also likely good news for Schrems’ other ongoing cases, like the one he’s brought against Google:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/15/out-here-everything-hurts/#noyb

Facebook has repeatedly threatened to leave the EU if it is required to stop breaking the law:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/22/uncivvl/#fb-v-eu

This is a pretty implausible threat, growing less plausible by the day. The company keeps delivering bad news to investors, who are not mollified by Mark Zuckerberg’s promise to rescue the company by convincing all of humanity to spend the rest of their lives as highly surveilled, legless, sexless, low-polygon cartoon characters:

https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/12/06/why-meta-platforms-stock-dove-today/

Zuckerberg and his entire senior team have seen their net worth plummet with Meta’s share price, and that means the company needs to pay engineers with actual dollars, rather than promises of shares, which kills the massive wage-bill discount the company has enjoyed. This is not a company that can afford to walk away from Europe!

Between Apple’s mobile (third-party) tracker-blocking and the EU calling time on surveillance ads, things are looking grim for Facebook. You love to see it! But things could get even worse, and soon, thanks to the double-edged sword of “network effects.”

Facebook is a network effects business: people join the service to socialize with the people who are already there — then more people join to socialize with them. But what network effects give, they can also take away: a service that gets more valuable when a new user signs up loses value when that user leaves.

This is beautifully explained in danah boyd’s “What if failure is the plan?” which recounts boyd’s experiences watching MySpace unravel as key nodes in its social graph disappeared when users quit: “Failure of social media sites tends to be slow then fast”:

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2022/12/05/what-if-failure-is-the-plan.html

Facebook long understood this, which is why it spent years creating artificial “switching costs” — penalties it could impose on users who quit, such as the loss of their family photos:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

This is why Facebook and other tech giants are so scared of interoperability, and why they are so furious about the new EU Digital Markets Act (DMA), which will force them to allow new services to connect to their platforms, so that users who quit Big Tech won’t have to lose their friends or data:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/04/eu-digital-markets-acts-interoperability-rule-addresses-important-need-raises

An interoperable Facebook would make it easy to leave social media by removing the penalties Facebook imposes on its disloyal users, and the EU’s privacy framework means that when they flee to a smaller safe haven, they won’t have to worry about commercial surveillance:

https://www.eff.org/interoperablefacebook

But what about advertising-supported media? Sure, being spied on sucks, but a subscription-first media landscape is a world where “the truth is paywalled, but the lies are free”:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/08/the-truth-is-paywalled-but-the-lies-are-free/

Ironically, killing surveillance ads is good news for ad-driven media. Surveillance-based ad-targeting is nowhere near as effective as Google, Facebook and the other ad-tech companies claim (these companies are compulsive liars, it would be amazing if the only time they told the truth is when they were boasting about their products!):

https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

And consent-theater or no, targeted ads reach fewer users every day, thanks to ad- blockers, AKA, “the biggest boycott in world history”:

https://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2015/09/28/beyond-ad-blocking-the-biggest-boycott-in-human-history/

And when a publisher does manage to display a targeted ad, they get screwed. The Googbook dupololy is a crooked affair, with the two tech companies illegally colluding (via the Jedi Blue conspiracy) to divert money from publishers to their own pockets:

https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/11/google-meta-jedi-blue-eu-uk-antitrust-probes/

Targeted ads are a cesspit of ad-fraud. 15% of all ad revenues are just unaccounted for:

https://twitter.com/swodinsky/status/1511172472762163202

The remaining funds aren’t any more trustworthy. Ad-tech is a bezzle (“the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it”):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/

As Tim Hwang foretold in his essential Subprime Attention Crisis, the pretense that targeted ads are wildly effective has been slowly but surely losing ground to the wider awareness of the fraud behind the system, and a reckoning is at hand:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#wannamakers-ghost

Experiments with contextual ads (ads based on the content of the page you’re looking at, not on your behavior and demographics) have found them to about as effective in generated clicks and sales as surveillance ads.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/29/taken-in-context/#creep-me-not

But this is misleading. Contextual ads don’t require consent opt-in (because they’re not based on your data) and they don’t drive users to install blockers the way creepy surveillance ads do, so lots more people will see a contextual ad than a surveillance one. Thus, even if contextual ads generate slightly less money per reader or viewer, they generate far more money overall, because they are aren’t blocked.

Even better for publishers: contextual ads don’t erode their own rate cards. Today, when you visit a high-quality publisher like the Washington Post, many ad brokers bid to show you an ad, but only one wins the auction. However, all the others have tagged you as a “Washington Post reader,” and they can sell that to bottom-feeder junk sites. That is, they can collude with Tabooleh or its rivals to offer advertisers a chance to advertise to Post readers at a fraction of what the Post charges. Lather, rinse, repeat, and the Post’s own ad revenues are drained.

This doesn’t apply with contextual ads. Indeed, none of the tech giants’ much-vaunted “data advantage” — the largely overstated value of knowing what you did online 10 or 20 years ago, the belief in which keeps new companies out of the market — applies to context ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/11/halflife/#minatory-legend

The transformative power of banning surveillance advertising goes beyond merely protecting our privacy. It also largely answers the case for “link taxes” (pseudo-copyright systems that let giant media companies decide who can link to them and charge for the privilege).

The underlying case for link taxes, snippet taxes, etc, is that Big Tech is stealing the news media’s content (by letting their users talk about and quote the news), when the reality is that Big Tech is stealing their money (through ad-fraud):

https://doctorow.medium.com/big-tech-isnt-stealing-news-publishers-content-a97306884a6b

Unrigging the ad-tech market is a much better policy than establishing a link-tax, like the Democrats are poised to do with their Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA):

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-influence/2022/12/06/jcpa-opponents-spring-into-action-to-block-ndaa-inclusion-00072602

It’s easy to understand why the monopoly/private-equity-dominated news industry wants JCPA, rather than a clean ad market. The JCPA just imposes a tax on the crooked ad-tech giants that is paid to the largest media companies, while a fair ad market would reward the media outlets that invested most in news (and thus in expensive, unionized news-gathering reporters).

Indeed, the JCPA only works if the ad-tech market remains corrupt: the excess Big Tech rents that Big News wants to claim here are the product of a rigged system. Unrig the system and there won’t be any money to pay the link tax with.

Image: Anthony Quintano (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_Zuckerberg_F8_2018_Keynote_%2841118883004%29.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[Image ID: A theater proscenium. Over the proscenium, in script, are the words 'Consent Theatre.' On the screen is an image of Mark Zuckerberg standing in front of the words 'Data Privacy.' He is gesturing expansively. A targeting reticle is centered on his face. The reticle is made of the stars from the EU flag.]

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