#Ways to Protect Data | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

yourozness · 11 months

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So I know a lot of you have seen Ms.demeanor’s post about passwords and how you should have a password manager. And you 100% should. But let’s say you can’t have one for some reason, or you’re trying to help someone who can’t have one. I have developed hmmm a method that allows you to use fewer passwords while also keeping everything safe.

Sorting

So you need to sort all your apps, accounts, etc into at least 3 different categories based on how screwed you'd be if a hacker got into that account.

Level 1

These are low threat level accounts and generally accounts where you were forced to make an account for a one time thing. Like for example you wanted to download a knitting pattern but they forced you to make an account. These accounts do not matter. If a hacker gets in it should have the same impact as someone picking up a penny found on the ground near your house. You could put streaming sites in this category if you wish. Maybe also your wifi password.

Level 2

These accounts are ones that you use often but that won't ruin you financially if someone gets into them. This should contain stuff like social media, maybe streaming, and maybe your phone bill if you're feeling spicy. It is very important that social media passwords be different from the highest level of security passwords. Social media passwords are more likely to be shared with people or could be stolen like the fb data scrape from years ago.

This is also where you'd probably include anything school related if you're still in school: blackboard, quizlet, grade book, etc. Or work related: email, slack, etc. You could also make a separate level just for school/work related accounts.

Level 3

This is the oh-i'm-absolutely-fucked level if someone got into your account. This is like if someone found the code for a safe in your bedroom. This is anything that contains sensitive info: medical, SSN, etc. Or deals with money. This is the level for bank accounts, taxes, government websites, paypal/cashapp, loans, etc.

I go back and forth about whether or not I would include email in this level. Especially if you're using gmail which is just sooooo great at not stealing your data. But in the end, with access to your email account, someone can reset passwords on all your shit (which is why you should have multiple emails as well).

Creating Passwords

Now you need to create a password for each level, which you can do using an anchor point. Luckily for you, you are on the shipping-AU-fandom website so it'll be easier. I'm gonna use supernatural as an anchor point. You can of course use different fandoms/ships for each level (I recommend this)

Level 1

This should be a simple easy to type, easy to remember password. It should contain at least numbers and letters with maybe an exclamation mark. This can contain words from the dictionary. Since this is a basic password, use something you think is basic and then the year it was invented or the year you really noticed it. It should be two words so you can get at least two capital letters.

For example, I think spn fans are pretty basic (i'm allowed to say this, I used to be one) and I think they started becoming A Thing in 2012 so for this level the password would be SPNGirlie2012

Level 2

This is where we get more tricky and want to add in words that aren't in the dictionary. We want to include numbers AND symbols.

Let's go with the beloathed ship of this website - Destiel - which is not a word in the dictionary. And then an AU you have seen that then stuck in your brain. Then the year you saw it or got into it or it was created.

For example, the idea of destiel being news anchors saying the news in the i love you meme is hilarious to me. So we have Anchor!Destiel2023 but that's still a bit too comprehensible soooo Anch0r!De$tiel and changing the number to a different year than the current one so 08 to represent when that angel first arrived and later doomed this website to being incomprehensible :)

Level 3

This should not contain recognizable words. If someone reads it they should be SO confused. This is where you use very niche AUs that get their own names. You use quotes that crushed you or lyrics from that one AMV that is stuck in your head at the moment. Very important, it should make people cry if they were told to type it in on a tv screen with a remote.

If you go the AU route it should be something like oh Sam was being too bitchy so he got cursed into a cabbage and has to learn how to become nice so it's called the Cabitch AU. Then we spice it up with some numbers and symbols. (@B1tch!$am!@U5 (CaBitch!Sam!AU5) and a number at the end maybe signifying how many of you even know about this au in the first place.

Or you can go the quote/lyrics route. Which follows recommendation of another tumblr post (also ms.demeanor?) Let's use the infamous destiel meeting quote "I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition."

so you take the first letter of each word = ITOWGYTARYFP make 'the' 'and' 'from' lowercase = ItOWGYTaRYfP substitute letters = |t0WGY7aRYfP Add in a significant number (page, episode, timestamp, etc) = |t0WGY7aRYfP_4.01

And tada you have a password that saw would use in a saw trap with an apple tv remote.

And there you have it, how to sort and make your account passwords safe in technically 6 easy steps. I know there are a lot of you who use the same password for everything or bemoan your difficulties with remembering passwords. But like data protection is SO important, y'all don't realize just how much can be dug up with the simplest of information. I leave you with this horror story that made me make this post.

So my friend was getting harassed over text message by an unknown number. She thought it was her shitty ex bf so she decided to do some digging. First she went on her fb to see if he had his phone number public, but because she blocked him she couldn't see it. But you see dear reader, he gave her his fb password while they were dating. Friends, they broke up over FIVE YEARS AGO. For shits and giggles she tried to log in and WHOOPS IT WORKED! She couldn't find his phone number and that was going to be the end of it, but she got more texts for yet another number so she investigated more.

She was able to log into his email attached to his FB, where she was able to you know, actually read his emails. Turns out one of his doctors was NOT practicing proper patient confidentiality because he wrote an email with the guy's MENTAL ILLNESS DIAGNOSIS! Which my friend was able to see! She also found his SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER!

If you aren't American, that means she could take out a loan in his name no questions asked. She could have ruined his credit score. Oh what's that? That's right! He used the same email and password for his BANK ACCOUNT! and turns out his credit was already bad. She could have transferred all his MONEY to her!!!! She dated him for a while, if there were security questions, she probably would have known them.

So because this guy gave an 18 year old his fb password, 7 years ago, his ex (who hates him btw) found out his SSN, his diagnoses, his phone number, AND his bank account info. Thankfully she's not a shitty person and doesn't hate him enough to ruin his life 5 years after they broke up, but like she could have! She could have left his life in ruins!!!!!!!

Which is why I made this post.

don't use the same password for everything

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT KEEP THE SAME PASSWORDS AFTER YOU HAVE A MESSY BREAK UP?!?!??!?!?!?!

The end, hope this helps, change your passwords.

#passwords #data protection #password security #what not to do after a messy break up #what TO do to protect yourself online #internet safety #why your tumblr password should not be the same as your bank password #unfortunately schools today do NOT teach internet safety and if they do they do a truly awful job of it #also you should switch things up from what I wrote #i tried to show the different areas of flexibility #It is so important that you treat passwords like a key to a locked door #if you have a bad break up change your fucking locks #I will admit I haven't historically used the best passwords cuz again you don't get taught this #Oh i also recommend changing your passwords after each like big change? Like if you finish with school or a job #it's just an easy way to schedule maintenance on your passwords and purge old accounts #same with changing emails!#mine

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asaxophony · 3 months

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Legitimately confusing to still see artists and ppl recommending glaze/nightshade and acting like it's the end all be all when how effective both are is still kind of eeeeeh?

Glaze also tends to chew up and compress your images to the point ppl have to go back in and put filters over it. There also seems to be a really large misunderstanding on how Glaze functions, especially on this site.

Glaze changes a specific range of the art ran through it to be read by diffusion as a different style. Generally it's changing pixels and code within the image so ultimately it does end up changing the image, often adding visual noise in the form of swirls or giving it a crunchy compressed look. Depending on how far you run the art through Glaze it can come out looking like a badly compressed jpeg. Glaze does this using the same sort of AI tech. The end result occasionally needs to be run through filters to get it too not look shit. The ultimate goal of Glaze is if someone is training directly from your art, and it's all been ran through Glaze the person won't be able to get a solid style from it, so the images trained off of it will be off from your specific style and not able to replicate it believably. It does not prevent img2img.

Generally Glaze's adversal noise is now robust enough to not be easily edited or taken out by the ai bros, this definitely was not the case on its release. So definitely use it but just keep in mind how it functions and weigh the pros and cons of like it crunching art, and any art posted on the web has a chance of being scraped.

I've seen some arguments basically being like well its the equivalent of crunching you art down into shitty jpegs, no one is going to train off of something that looks like shit which is I think definitely like yeah art has the downside of ot having to be visually vlear and good looking g for it to function so you can ultimately only change it so much before it deviates too much from the artists original intent and vision.

#sorry i just like sometimes trawling aroind the ai bros twitter and reddit stuff is useful #sorry i guess i should be more specific. glaze works but like ehhhhhh theres definitely methods the ai bros have to mitigate it #acting as if it the end all be all is just not how we should be using it #besides tje fact it prevents EXACT style replication ive seen examples of artists training glaze vs non glaze and tbh i didnt reallt think #the difference was high enough to actually discourage use of a data set trained by it #everytime an artist on reddit is like look!!! it makes a huge difference between sets im like well to an actuallt eye trained artsit maybe #but i think the average ai idiot would still be like this looks good #idk it still makes passable images which yeah it doesnt prevent image copying its suppoze to prevent style replication which it does to an #EXTENT which is still some protection but glaze also does weird stuff to the art u put thru it #idk im just not super sold on it and i really dislike how the art community is acting like its their savior its def a step in tje right #direction sure but i think legislation (which isnt going to happen lol) is the only surefire way to fight the ai stealing #i personally dont use it just bc i dont post a huge amount of art anyway and like eh #i think its ultimately more useful to ppl with a large gallery of a distinct and visually appealing style #in which someone might legitimately train a set over

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wrenfea · 7 months

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The burden of keeping training data free of copyrighted data-poisoned works should be on the company using it, not on the people just trying to protect their works.

#wrenfea.exe #i hate ai bros who cry that people should put warnings on their work that its poisoned #no YOU shouldntve have stolen their fucking creation #the warning is that you didn't get permission in the first place #you cant go into someones house steal a pie and then cry that it was full of shit #i mentioned this in my official public comment in a more...politically friendly way #i also said that peoples right to protect their work HAS to be protected #people cannot get sued for their work causing someones data to be fucked up #if they never explicitly agreed for their work to be used for that in the first place #and clicking yes on the terms of use doesnt count btw #if you want to scrape top results off of pixiv you shouldnt be surprised when your data gets fucked up #its your fault for not scrutinizing your dataset in the first place #ai #ai discourse #artifical intelligence #fuck ai #ai art #dall e ai #i studied ethics for computer scientists so im not just pulling this out of my ass

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striffyisme · 10 months

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okay i promise this is not an ad, and this is probably old news by now, but just in case there's other people like me who didn't know, there's this great tool called Relay made by our favourite web browser Firefox

basically it uses a masked email when you sign up for websites so companies don't have access to your real email, but you still get the notifications you want to receive. it stops businesses from buying your contact info too, as they only have the spoof email address provided by Relay

and best of all, you can use it totally free! you can have up to five email masks, use the Relay browser extension, and it removes email trackers too

or if you want you can pay $0.99 a month/$11.88 a year to get unlimited masks, a unique Relay email domain, and the ability to reply to emails anonymously

i believe they're also rolling out phone number protection, but i'm not sure when that's happening or if it's out already

anyway, please make use of this amazing tool to keep your data safe and private, and stop companies profiting off of you just a little bit more.

#i swear i am not being paid to say this im just autistic about firefox #firefox #firefox relay #web browsers #data privacy #data protection #fr i have only just discovered this exists even tho it came out like 3 years ago #and i thought it might be good to share it on the 'we love firefox' site #unless y'all have been lying about using firefox 🤨#either way this is a very good thing that more people should know about + use #mine #my post

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nemesis-is-my-middle-name · 1 year

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idk why id ever write more stuff for the pla dhau. i'm never gonna top "what the fuck are we supposed to do with this kid, what the fuck, we're already so busy, this is no business for a teenager" "i'm gonna give him a gun"

#the nemesis speaks #pla dhau #i do think its rei this time #and is like... idk how old he is or how much of his pre galaxy team life he remembers #either way he's down to overthrow the government in exchange for a bed and hot meals #he's got no standards. none whatsoever.#this also leads to ingo having Conflicted Feelings once the team contacts/recruits him #which he's sorta like :/ abt what they're doing with rei bc like. he barely remembers the whalers but he still Does Not Like Them #maybe if they didn't [DATA LOST] he would have a normal life! what was that normal life? he doesn't know!#but nooo they had to [???] and train him in assassin shit and now he has no idea how to be A Person and not A Shadow #to be clear *I* know what goes in the brackets. and so do yall if you read the au. but ingo has entirely forgotten #so watching rei undergo similar training feels Questionable #but the galaxy team aren't the whalers! they seem to have good motives...? and at least they're feeding him properly #he is still kinda protective tho. which is why they end up doing missions together #alright mdone

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essektheylyss · 2 years

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#double protecting this one but #man sometimes i formulate an idea over time of a more insidious way that biphobia manifests in this fandom #and I lay it out and it sounds both 'am i a conspiracy theorist' and also 'well yeah obviously.'#but also to actually describe it on the dash in a way that wouldn't SO instantly go 'um you're reading too much into things!'#I'd have to compile evidence for a year and then write a fucking dissertation #anyway. I'm fucking tired and I've got data entry to get done so i can get back to writing instead

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miles-edward-obrien · 2 years

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I love cyber security so much it's like good luck ever tracking me mother fucker the only device i own with a brain is my laptop and ive lobotomized it to hell

#literally nothing is wireless bc thats a security risk. all my internet traffic is bounced around 4 different aervers across the world #before it gets where its going and it goes through 3 layers of encryption on the way #the drive is encrypted bc a simple password protection is a joke #i literally have better security protocols set up on it than the DOD allows #the only thing i cant do is mod the router since i dont own it #also just the obvious step of using tor so any data someone can access is generic as fuck and cant identify me

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nyancrimew · 3 months

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personally speaking i dont think committing several severe data protection law violations while harassing a former user of my million dollar service on another website is a particularly great way to make yourself look good

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fullhalalalchemist · 1 year

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URGENT: 🚨🚨EARN IT ACT IS BACK IN THE SENATE 🚨🚨 TUMBLR’S NSFW BAN HITTING THE ENTIRE INTERNET THIS SUMMER 2023

April 28, 2023

I’m so sorry for the long post but please please please pay attention and spread this

What is the EARN IT Act?

The EARN IT Act (s. 1207) has been roundly condemned by nearly every major LGBTQ+ advocacy and human rights organization in the country.

This is the third time the Senate has been trying to force this through, and I talked about it last year. It is a bill that claims "protects children and victims against CSAM" by creating an unelected and politically appointed national commission of law enforcement specialists to dictate "best practices" that websites all across the nation will be forced to follow. (Keep in mind, most websites in the world are created in the US, so this has global ramifications). These "best practices" would include killing encryption so that any law enforcement can scan and see every single message, dm, photo, cloud storage, data, and any website you have every so much as glanced at. Contrary to popular belief, no they actually can't already do that. These "best practices" also create new laws for "removing CSAM" online, leading to mass censorship of non-CSAM content like what happened to tumblr. Keep in mind that groups like NCOSE, an anti-LGBT hate group, will be allowed on this commission. If websites don't follow these best practices, they lose their Section 230 protections, leading to mass censorship either way.

Section 230 is foundational to modern online communications. It's the entire reason social media exists. It grants legal protection to users and websites, and says that websites aren't responsible for what users upload online unless it's criminal. Without Section 230, websites are at the mercy of whatever bullshit regulatory laws any and every US state passes. Imagine if Texas and Florida were allowed to say what you can and can't publish and access online. That is what will happen if EARN IT passes. (For context, Trump wanted to get rid of Section 230 because he knew it would lead to mass govt surveillance and censorship of minorities online.)

This is really not a drill. Anyone who makes or consume anything “adult” and LGBT online has to be prepared to fight Sen. Blumenthal’s EARN IT Act, brought back from the grave by a bipartisan consensus to destroy Section 230. If this bill passes, we’re going to see most, if not all, adult content and accounts removed from mainstream platforms. This will include anything related to LGBT content, including SFW fanfiction, for example. Youtube, Twitter, Reddit, Tiktok, Tumblr, all of them will be completely gutted of anything related to LGBT content, abortion healthcare, resources for victims of any type of abuse, etc. It is a right-wing fascists wet dream, which is why NCOSE is behind this bill and why another name for this bill is named in reference to NCOSE.

NCOSE used to be named Morality in Media, and has rebranded into an "anti-trafficking" organization. They are a hate group that has made millions off of being "against trafficking" while helping almost no victims and pushing for homophobic laws globally. They have successfully pushing the idea that any form of sexual expression, including talking about HEALTH, leads to sex trafficking. That's how SESTA passed. Their goal is to eliminate all sex, anything gay, and everything that goes against their idea of ‘God’ from the internet and hyper disney-fy and sanitize it. This is a highly coordinated attack on multiple fronts.

The EARN IT Act will lead to mass online censorship and surveillance. Platforms will be forced to scan their users’ communications and censor all sex-related content, including sex education, literally anything lgbt, transgender or non-binary education and support systems, aything related to abortion, and sex worker communication according to the ACLU. All this in the name of “protecting kids” and “fighting CSAM”, both of which the bill does nothing of the sort. In fact it makes fighting CSEM even harder.

EARN IT will open the way for politicians to define the category of “pornography" as they — or the lobbies that fund them — please. The same way that right-wing groups have successfully banned books about race and LGBT, are banning trans people from existing, all under the guise of protecting children from "grooming and exploitation", is how they will successfully censor the internet.

As long as state legislatures can tie in "fighting CSAM" to their bullshit laws, they can use EARN IT to censor and surveill whatever they want.

This is already a nightmare enough. But the bill also DESTROYS ENCRYPTION, you know, the thing protecting literally anyone or any govt entity from going into your private messages and emails and anything on your devices and spying on you.

This bill is going to finish what FOSTA/SESTA started. And that should terrify you.

Senator Blumenthal (Same guy who said ‘Facebook should ban finsta’) pushed this bill all of 2020, literally every activist (There were more than half a million signatures on this site opposing this act!) pushed hard to stop this bill. Now he brings it back, doesn’t show the text of the bill until hours later, and it’s WORSE. Instead of fixing literally anything in the bill that might actually protect kids online, Bluemnthal is hoping to fast track this and shove it through, hoping to get little media attention other than propaganda of “protecting kids” to support this shitty legislation that will harm kids. Blumental doesn't care about protecting anyone, and only wants his name in headlines.

It will make CSAM much much worse.

One of the many reasons this bill is so dangerous: It totally misunderstands how Section 230 works, and in doing so (as with FOSTA) it is likely to make the very real problem of CSAM worse, not better. Section 230 gives companies the flexibility to try different approaches to dealing with various content moderation challenges. It allows for greater and greater experimentation and adjustments as they learn what works – without fear of liability for any “failure.” Removing Section 230 protections does the opposite. It says if you do anything, you may face crippling legal liability. This actually makes companies less willing to do anything that involves trying to seek out, take down, and report CSAM because of the greatly increased liability that comes with admitting that there is CSAM on your platform to search for and deal with. This liability would allow anyone for any reason to sue any platform they want, suing smaller ones out of existence. Look at what is happening right now with book bans across the nation with far right groups. This is going to happen to the internet if this bill passes.

(Remember, the state department released a report in December 2021 recommending that the government crack down on “obscenity” as hard the Reagan Administration did. If this bill passes, it could easily go way beyond shit red states are currently trying. It is a goldmine for the fascist right that is currently in the middle of banning every book that talks about race and sexuality across the US.)

The reason these bills keep showing up is because there is this false lie spread by organizations like NCOSE that platforms do nothing about CSEM online. However, platforms are already liable for child sexual exploitation under federal law. Tech companies sent more than 45 million+ instances of CSAM to the DOJ in 2019 alone, most of which they declined to investigate. This shows that platforms are actually doing everything in their power already to stop CSEM by following already existing laws. The Earn It Act includes zero resources for proven investigation or prevention programs. If Senator Bluementhal actually cared about protecting youth, why wouldn’t he include anything to actually protect them in his shitty horrible bill? EARN IT is actually likely to make prosecuting child molesters more difficult since evidence collected this way likely violates the Fourth Amendment and would be inadmissible in court.

I don’t know why so many Senators are eager to cosponsor the “make child pornography worse” bill, but here we are.

HOW TO FIGHT BACK

EARN IT Act was introduced just two weeks ago and is already being fast-tracked. It will be marked up the week of May 1st and head to the Senate floor immediately after. If there is no loud and consistent opposition, it will be law by JUNE! Most bills never go to markup, so this means they are putting pressure to move this through. There are already 20 co-sponsors, a fifth of the entire Senate. This is an uphill battle and it is very much all hands on deck.

CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES.

This website takes you to your Senator / House members contact info. EMAIL, MESSAGE, SEND LETTERS, CALL CALL CALL CALL CALL. Calling is the BEST way to get a message through. Get your family and friends to send calls too. This is literally the end of free speech online.

(202) 224-3121 connects you to the congressional hotline. Here is a call script if you don't know what to say. Call them every day. Even on the weekends, leaving voicemails are fine.

2. Sign these petitions!

Link to Petition 1

Link to Petition 2

3. SPREAD THE WORD ONLINE

If you have any social media, spread this online. One of the best ways we fought back against this last year was MASSIVE spread online. Tiktok, reddit, twitter, discord, whatever means you have at least mention it. We could see most social media die out by this fall if we don't fight back.

Here is a linktree with more information on this bill including a masterpost of articles, the links to petitions, and the call script.

DISCORD LINK IF YOU WANT TO HELP FIGHT IT

TLDR: The EARN IT Act will lead to online censorship of any and all adult & lgbt content across the entire internet, open the floodgates to mass surveillance the likes which we haven’t seen before, lead to much more CSEM being distributed online, and destroy encryption. Call 202-224-3121 to connect to your house and senate representative and tell them to VOTE NO on this bill that does not protect anyone and harms everyone.

#earn it act #internet censorship #restrict act #us politics #net neutrality

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ms-demeanor · 2 months

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Friends, I think we need to talk about Covid.

I want to get a few caveats out there before I start:

I am aware that there are people who need to exercise extreme caution about Covid; I live with someone who has two solid organ transplants and who is at the most immune compromised level of immune compromised. *I* have to be extremely cautious about covid.

Masking does prevent a certain level of transmission, and people who think they may have covid should mask and people who are concerned that they may be at high risk for covid should mask.

You should be vaccinated and boosted with the most recent vaccines that are available to you; covid is highly transmissible and very serious, you do not want to get covid and if you do get covid you don't want it to be severe and if you do get covid you don't want to give someone else covid and up-to-date vaccinations are the best way to reduce transmission and help to prevent severe cases of Covid.

We should be testing before going to any gatherings, and informing people if we test positive after gatherings, and testing if we suspect we have been exposed.

It is bullshit that there aren't good protections for workers who have covid; you should not be expected to go to work when you are testing positive

It is bullshit that people who are testing positive are not isolating for other reasons; if you have Covid you should not be going out and exposing other people to it even if you are experiencing mild symptoms or no symptoms.

We do need better ventilation systems for many kinds of spaces. Schools need better ventilation, restaurants need better ventilation, doctor's offices and hospitals and office buildings need better ventilation and better ventilation can reduce covid transmission.

I want to make it clear that Covid is real and there are real steps that individuals and systems can take to prevent transmission, and that there are systems that are exerting pressures that needlessly expose people to covid (the fact that you can lose your job if you don't come in when you're testing positive, mainly; also the fact that covid rapid tests should be ubiquitous and cheap/free and are not).

All of that being said: I'm seeing some posts circulating about how we're at an extremely high level of transmission and the REAL pandemic is being hidden from us and, friends, I'm pretty sure that is just incorrect and we're spreading misinformation.

I'm thinking of this video in particular, in which the claim is made that "your mystery illness is covid" in spite of negative tests. The guy in the video says that there's nothing else that millions of people could be getting a day, and that he predicted this because a wastewater spike in December meant that there was a huge spike in cases.

I've also seen people saying that deaths are where they were in 2021-2022, and that we're still at "a 9/11 a week" of excess deaths and friends, I'm not seeing great evidence for any of these claims.

I know that we (in the US, which is where the numbers I'm going to be citing are from) feel abandoned by the CDC and the fact that tracking cut off in May of 2023. But that only cut off for the federal tracking.

I live in LA county and LA county sure as shit is still tracking Covid.

If you want a clearer picture, you can see the daily case count over time compared to the daily death count:

Okay, you might say, but that's just LA.

Alright, so here's Detroit:

Right, but maybe that's CDC data and you don't trust the CDC at this point.

Okay, here's fatalities in New York tracked through New York's state data collection:

It's harder to toggle around the site for South Dakota, but you can compare their cases and hospitalizations and deaths for early 2022

To cases and hospitalizations and deaths from early 2024

And see that there's really no comparison.

Okay, you might say, but people are testing less. If they're testing less of course we're not seeing spikes, and they're testing less because fewer tests are available.

Alright, people are definitely testing less than they were in 2021 and 2022. Hospitalization for Covid is probably the most clear metric because you know those people have covid for sure, the couldn't not test for it.

Here are hospitalizations over time for LA:

Here are hospitalizations over time for New York:

As vaccination rates have gone up, cases, deaths, and hospitalizations have gone down. It IS clear that there are case spikes in the winter, when it is cold and people are indoors in poorly ventilated spaces and people are more susceptible to respiratory infections as a result of cold air weakening the protection offered by our mucous membranes, and that is something that we will have to take precautions about for the forseeable future, just as we should have always been taking similar precautions during flu season.

So I want to go point-by-point through some of the arguments made in that video because I'm seeing a bunch of people talking about how "THEY" don't want you to know about the virus surge and buds that is just straight up conspiracism.

So okay, first off, most of what that video is based on is spikes in wastewater data, not spikes in cases. This is because people don't trust CDC data on cases, but I'd say to maybe check out your regional data on cases. I don't actually trust the CDC that much, but I know people who do tracking of hospitalizations in LA county, I trust them a lot more. Wastewater data does correlate with increases in cases, but this "second largest spike of the entire pandemic" thing is misleading; wastewater reporting is pretty highly variable and you can't just accept that a large spike in covid in wastewater means that we're in just as bad a place in the pandemic as we were in 2022. We simply have not seen the surge of hospitalizations and deaths that we would expect to see in the weeks following that spike in wastewater data if wastewater data was reflective of community transmission.

The next claim is that "there is nothing else that is infecting millions of people a day" and covid isn't doing that either. The highest daily case rates were in January of 2021 and they were in the 865k a day range, which is ridiculously high but isn't millions of cases a day.

But what we can see is that when people are tested by their doctors for Covid, RSV, and the Flu, more tests are coming back positive for the Flu. Covid causes more hospitalizations than the other two illnesses, but to be honest what the people in the video are describing - lightheadedness, dizziness, exhaustion - just sound like pretty standard symptoms of everything from covid to the cold to allergies. There are lots of things your mystery illness could be.

The video goes on to talk about the fact that people aren't testing, and why their tests may be coming back negative and I'd like to point out that the same things are all true of Flu or RSV tests. People might be getting tested too early or too late; getting a negative test for the flu isn't a good reason to assume you've got covid, getting a negative test for covid isn't a good reason to assume you've got the flu, and testing for viruses as a whole is imperfect. There are hundreds of viruses that could be the common cold; there are multiple viruses that can cause bronchitis; there are multiple viruses that can cause pneumonia, and you're not going to test for all of these things the moment you start feeling sick.

He then recommends testing for multiple days if you have symptoms and haven't had a positive test (fine) and talks about the location of the tests (less fine). Don't use your rapid tests to swab your throat or cheek unless it specifically says that they are designed to do so. Test based on the instructions in the packet.

He points out that the tests probably still pick up on the virus because they're not testing for the spike protein, they're testing for the RNA (good info!)

The video then discusses something that I think is really key to this paranoia about the "mystery illnesses" - he talks about how covid changes and weakens your immune system (a statement that should come with many caveats about severity and vulnerability and that we are still researching that) and then says that it makes you more susceptible to strep or mono and that "things that used to clear in a day or two now hit you really hard."

And that's where I think this anxiety is coming from.

Strep throat lasts anywhere from three days to a week. A cold takes about a week to clear. The flu lasts about a week and can knock you on your ass with exhaustion for weeks depending on how bad you get it. Did you get a cough with your cold? Expect that to take anywhere from three to eight weeks to clear up.

I think that people are thinking "i got a bad virus and felt really sick for a week and haven't gotten my energy back" but that just sounds like a bad cold. That sounds like a potent allergy attack. That doesn't even sound like a bad flu (I got a bad flu in 2009 and thought i was going to straight-up die I had a fever of 103+ for three days and felt like shit for three days on either side of that and took six weeks to feel more like myself again).

Getting sick sucks. It really, really sucks. But if you're getting sick and you're testing for covid and it's coming back negative after you tested a few times, it's almost certainly not covid.

The video then says "until someone provides evidence that it's not covid, it should be assumed to be covid because we have record levels of covid it's that simple" but that's not simple. We don't have record levels of covid and he hasn't proved it. We have record high levels of wastewater reports of covid, which correlates with covid cases but the spike in wastewater noted in december didn't see a spike with a corresponding magnitude of cases in terms of either hospitalizations or deaths, which is what we'd have seen if we had actual record numbers of covid.

He says that if you want to ignore this, you'll get sick with covid, and that about 30-40% of the US just got sick with covid in the last four months (which is a RIDICULOUSLY unevidenced claim).

He says that we need to create a new normal that takes covid into account, which means masking more often and testing more often and making choices about risk-avoidant behaviors.

Now, I don't disagree with that last statement, but he prefaces the statement with "it doesn't necessarily mean lockdown" and that's where I think the alarmism and paranoia is really visible here. We are so, so far away from "lockdown" type levels that it's absurd to discuss lockdown here.

What I'm seeing right now is people who are chronically ill, people who are immune compromised, and people who are experiencing long covid (which may not be distinct from other post-viral syndromes from severe cases of flu, etc, but which may be more severe or more notable because of the prevalence of covid) are talking about feeling abandoned and attacked and left behind by society because covid is still out there, and still at extremely high levels.

I am seeing people who feel abandoned and attacked because the lgbtq+ events they are attending don't require masking. I am seeing people who are claiming that it is eugenicist that their schools don't have a negative test policy anymore.

And this comes together into two really disconcerting trends that I've been observing online for a while.

The claim that the pandemic is still as bad as it's ever been and in fact may be worse but we can't know that because "they" (the CDC, the government, capitalist institutions that want you back in the office, the university industrial complex that wants your dorm room dollars) are covering up the numbers and

Significant grievance at the fact that people are acting like number one is not true and are putting you at risk either out of thoughtlessness (because they don't realize they're putting you at risk) or malice (because they don't care if the sick die).

And those things are a recipe for disaster.

I think I've pretty robustly addressed point one; I don't think that there's good evidence that there's a secretly awful surge of covid that nobody is talking about. I think that there are some people who are being alarmist about covid who are basing all of their concern on wastewater numbers that have not held up as the harbinger of a massive wave of infections.

So let's talk about point number two and JK Rowling.

Barnes and Noble is not attacking you when it puts up a Hogwarts Castle display in the lobby. Your favorite youtuber isn't trying to hurt you when they offhandedly mention Harry Potter.

If you let every mention of Harry Potter or every person who enjoys that media franchise wound you, you are going to spend a lot of your time wounded.

People are not liking Harry Potter at you.

Okay.

People are also not not wearing masks at you.

You may be part of a minority group that experiences the potential for outsized harm as a result of majority groups engaging in perfectly reasonable behaviors.

There are kind, well-meaning, sensible people who go out every day and do something that may cause you harm and it's not because they want to hurt you or they don't care about whether you live or die, it is because they are making their own risk assessments based on their own lives and making the very reasonable assumption that people who are more concerned about covid than they are will take precautions to keep themselves safe.

We are not at a place in the pandemic where it is sensible to expect people with no symptoms of illness to mask in public as a matter of course or to present evidence of a recent negative test when entering a public building in their day-to-day life.

I think now is a really good time to sit down and ask yourself how you expect things to be with covid as an endemic part of our viral ecosystem. I think now is a good time to ask yourself what risk realistically looks like for you and for people who are unlike you. I think now is a good time to consider what would feel "safe" for you and how you could accomplish feeling safe as you navigate the world.

I'm probably going to continue masking in most indoor spaces for years. Maybe forever. There are accommodations that SHOULD be afforded to people who have to take more precautions than others (remote learning, remote visits, remote work, etc.), and we should demand those kinds of accommodations.

But it is going to poison you from the inside out if you are perpetually angry that people who don't have the same medical limitations as you are happy that they get to go shopping with their faces uncovered.

So now I want to talk to you about my father in law.

My father in law had a bone marrow transplant in 2015. That's the most immune compromised you can get without having your organs swapped out.

The care sheet for him after the transplant was a little overwhelming. The list of foods he couldn't eat was intimidating and the limitations on where he could go was depressing. It cautioned against going to large events, it recommended outdoor gatherings where possible but only if he could avoid sunlight and was somewhere with no history of valley fever. It said that he should wear masks indoors any time he was someplace with poor ventilation and that he should avoid contact with anyone who had an illness of any kind, taking special note to avoid children and anyone recently vaccinated for measles.

It was, in short, pretty much what someone immune compromised would need to do to try to avoid a viral infection. Sensible. Reasonable. Wash your hands and social distance; wear masks in sensitive contexts and don't spend time in enclosed places with people who have a communicable illness.

This is what life was always going to be like for people who are severely immune compromised, and it was always going to be incumbent upon the person with the illness to figure out how to operate in a society that is not built with them in mind.

It is not the job of every parent I encounter to tell me whether their child has been vaccinated against measles or chicken pox in the last three months. That isn't something that people need to do as part of their everyday life. However it IS my responsibility to check with the parents I'm hanging out with whether their children have been vaccinated against measles or chicken pox in the last three months so I know if it's safe for my immune compromised spouse to be around them.

If you want an environment in which you feel safe from covid, at this point in the pandemic (when the virus is endemic and not spreading rapidly as far as we can see from case counts) it is your responsibility to take the steps necessary to make you feel safe. Some of those steps will involve advocating for safety improvements in public spaces (again, indoor ventilation needs to be better and I'm personally pretty extreme about vaccination requirements; these are things we should be discussing in our school board meetings and at our workplaces), some of those steps will involve advocating for worker protections, guaranteed sick time, and the right to healthcare. But some of the things you're going to need to do to feel safe are going to come down to you.

If you are concerned about communicable diseases you have to be realistic about the fact that our society doesn't go out of its way to prevent communicable diseases - norovirus among food service workers pre-pandemic is pretty clear evidence of that. You are going to have to be proactive about your safety rather than expecting the world to act like Covid is at 2021-2022 levels when it is measurably not.

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bisexualbaker · 7 months

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Why do people keep recommending Dreamwidth as a Tumblr alternative, when Dreamwidth and Tumblr are so different?

To be flat-out honest, it's because Dreamwidth has so many things that Tumblr users say they want, even if it's also lacking a lot of features that Tumblr users have come to love:

Dreamwidth has incredibly lax content hosting rules. I'd say that it's slightly more restrictive than AO3, but only just slightly, and only because AO3's abuse team has been so overwhelmed and over-worked. Otherwise, the hosting policies are pretty similar. You want to go nuts, show nuts? You can do that on Dreamwidth.

In fact, Dreamwidth is so serious about "go nuts, show nuts", it gave up the ability to accept transactions through PayPal in 2009 to protect our ability to do that. (It's also one reason why Dreamwidth doesn't have an app: Dreamwidth will never be beholden to Apple's content rules this way.)

Dreamwidth cares about your privacy; it doesn't sell your data, and barely collects any to begin with. As far as I'm aware, it only collects what it needs to run the site. The owners have also spoken out on behalf of internet privacy many times, and are prepared to put their money where their mouth is.

No ads. Ever. Period. They mean it. Dreamwidth is entirely user funded.

Posts viewed in reverse chronological order; no algorithm, opt-in or otherwise. No algorithm at all. No "For You" or "Suggested" page. You still entirely create and curate your own experience.

The ability to make posts that only your "mutuals", or even only a specific subset of your "mutuals", can see. Want to make a post that's only open to Bonnie, Clyde, Butch, and Cassidy? You can do that! Want to make a post that's only open to Bonnie and Butch, but Clyde and Cassidy can't see shit? You can do that, too!

The owners have forsworn NFTs and the blockchain in general. Not as big a worry now as it was even a year ago, but still good to know!

We are explicitly the customers of Dreamwidth. Dreamwidth wants to make us happy, so any changes they make (and they do make changes) are made with us in mind, and after exploring as many possibilities as they can.

Dreamwidth is very transparent about their policies and changes. If you want to know why they're making a specific change, or keeping or getting rid of a feature, they will tell you. You don't have to find out ten months later that they're locked into a contract to keep it for a year (cough cough Tumblr Live cough cough).

So those are some things that Tumblr users would probably love about Dreamwidth.

Another reason Dreamwidth keeps being recommended is that a significant portion of the Age 30+ crowd spent a lot of earlier fandom years on a site known as LiveJournal. Dreamwidth may not be much like Tumblr, but it it started out as a code fork of LiveJournal, so it will be very familiar to anyone who spent any time there. Except better.

Finally, we're recommending Dreamwidth because some of the things that Tumblr users want are just... not going to happen on the web as it is now. Image hosting is the big one for this. Maybe in the future, the price of data will be much cheaper, and Dreamwidth will be able to host as much as we all want for a pittance that a fraction of the userbase will happily pay for everyone, but right now that's just not possible.

Everywhere you want to go that hosts a lot of images will either be running lots of ads, selling your data, or both.

Dreamwidth knows how much it costs to host your data, and has budgeted for that. They are hosting within their means, within our means.

Dreamwidth is the closest thing we may ever get to AO3 as a social media platform. One of the co-owners is from, and still in, fandom; she knows our values, because they are also her values. It may as well be the Blogsite Of Our Own.

#giving this its own post #let me tell you about #dreamwidth #let me tell you about dreamwidth #tumblr alternatives #blogsite of our own #fandom history

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