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Jun. 15th, 2023 09:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Okay, folks, I don't know what to make of this latest regarding Ao3's open source code vulnerabilities.
https://twitter.com/rahaeli/status/1669350441971494914
"If you are now, or ever have been at any point in the last 14 years have been, an #ao3/#otw volunteer under your wallet name, you should IMMEDIATELY AND WITHOUT ANY DELAY call your police non-emergency number and arrange anti-SWAT precautions."
https://archiveofourown.org/comments/660613498
"In today's "horrifying discoveries about how badly AO3 is diverging from basic, fundamental Trust and Safety best practices" discoveries: suspending an account doesn't make that account's content invisible, PAC has to review *every individual piece of it*. https://archiveofourown.org/comments/660613498"
"At this point I will say it plainly: OTW's Legal committee is fundamentally and egregiously unqualified to be setting policy and process for Trust and Safety work, and their doing so while remaining actively ignorant of best practices is an existential threat to the organization."
" I think there's a bit of confusion in terminology. PAC absolutely did immediately and permanently suspend users we caught attempting to distribute or solicit CSEM. I can't imagine that has changed. Permanently suspended users are not able to upload content to the site, and may not make a new account to evade their suspension*.
What we didn't do, when I was on PAC, was just nuke the account's contents. Any content they had uploaded that didn't violate the TOS could stay, which is why we had to review all of the content they had created for violations - we couldn't just nuke everything. This was ... unpleasant, to say the least. And I'm concerned about the liability it might open up the org to; I'm not a legal expert at all, but this really strikes me as a better safe than sorry situation. It makes sense to selectively remove only violations when someone has been suspended for, say, constantly posting find-a-fic spam, but not when they were attempting a felony. This really seems like an area where "maximum inclusiveness of content" should bend. Not for taste or morals, but for safety.
* The tools for preventing suspended users from rejoining could be better. On the other hand, ban evasion is something every site with user-generated content has to deal with, and it's not an easy problem to solve. As a webdev, you can probably speak to this better than I can.
There were also some holes in what suspension prevented users from doing. I don't know if those holes have been plugged, and I don't want to be more specific because I don't want to encourage exploits."
She's wrong about this. I was able to cut and past content from a briefly suspended account to another site, and my content was visible to others. (My content was movie reviews, and episode recaps, it wasn't traumatizing content that would give folks nightmares.)
But this oddly validates my complaints to Ao3 in 2022 when they told me to take down content that was film and episode reviews and analysis. I told them that it wasn't racist, child pornography, traumatizing, it wasn't illegal, and they couldn't prove it wasn't transformative (which is subjective at best). While there was content on their site that would fall under that - and they should be more concerned about.
Now all this is coming out, and I'm wondering about Ao3. Also, apparently Squidgeworld uses the same source code which is equally problematic.
Do I stay on Ao3 (removing anything that is a film review or episode recap) or stay on SquidgeWorld?
2. Listening to the Sleepy Hollow chapter in Maureen Ryan's book and it's a convoluted mess - that I can barely makes heads or tails of. Apparently neither lead wanted to be a long term lead of a television series. There was a falling out among the show-runners (isn't there always?) and apparently NB who was the female lead (Abby) was considered "difficult" while the male lead (Icabod) was given privileges. They clashed. He didn't want the show built around him either. They both got ill at the same time - he was allowed to go back to England and recover, she was forced to film an episode by herself, as the lead. The show-runner in charge - didn't understand the horror genre, Kurtzman got fed up and left, Wiseman hated how NB was being treated and the direction it was going and left. Orlando Jones was happy he got killed off. NB also wanted out. Ryan explains it thusly - NB had just graduated with honors from Julliard, had been in a play, done amazingly well, and this was her first role - and it was a lead on a network television series. The process is pilot, maybe it gets picked up (rarely - there's a million of them), if it does, maybe six episodes, maybe a year...the actors sign contracts for five to seven. Sleepy Hollow took off like gangbusters, and it got a bit claustrophobic - to be confined to a seven year contract. (I have troubles understanding this - because I've worked for the same company for 16 years, and hate hunting for jobs, but I'm not an actor for a reason - the nomadic life is not for me.) Of course none of this excused how she was treated.
My god, what a mess.
Be happy you don't work in Hollywood folks.
3. On Twitter...
I was reminded of why I hated the Angel episode "I will always remember you". It's weird because my niece, who is an otherwise intelligent individual who will go far in her life, loved that episode and missed the point entirely. To her it was romantic. To me, who saw it in my early 30s, not at 14 (it may have resonated differently for me at 14), it was anything but romantic. It made me angry.
When I initially saw IWARY, I was a huge Bangle shipper, and into Angel finding his redemption and being reunited with Buffy - this was when it first aired on the WB. That episode killed the ship dead for me. After I watched that episode, I thought, dammit, writers, I'm onto you now - there is no way in hell Buffy and Angel will ever be together, Angel is never being redeemed, and this show is not going to a happy place.
I quit the show in a pique.
Voy fanboard members talked me into revisiting it. But this round, I revisited it not as a shipper, I knew going in that Angel was being written as a classic noir hero by David Greenwalt and company. I'd seen enough similar series to pick up on the pattern. Also they'd written Angel as an anti-hero character, who would always choose himself (whether it was his ego, his son, or his pride) over anything else. Anyone who associated themselves with him was doomed.
Once I accepted that as fact - I enjoyed the series. And I just laughed at the folks who couldn't see it and were going to be disappointed.
In regards to Buffy? I shifted to Spuffy or Spike/Buffy, and I was right they ended up together. Pre-Season 7 Buffy, the playbook was Bangle for all commercial properties or tie-ins, now, post Season 7 Buffy, and the Angel and Buffy comics, along with (weirdly) Whedon - the playbook is Spuffy. She ends up with Spike in all commercial properties and tie-ins.
I was right - I foresaw it with that episode IWARY, which kind of laid out all the reasons why Buffy and Angel didn't work. Not only that - they drove it home with all the episodes surrounding it. It's really obvious once you see it, and the writers got so annoyed with people not seeing it - that they made fun of them, and mocked them in various episodes, then did it again in the comics.
4. Taking tomorrow off, and we have Juneteenth (Monday off) as a Federal and State holiday.
Goal is to make into the city and either visit the highline or Natural History Museum. Other goal - maybe go to a beach. And set up doctor's appointments.
https://twitter.com/rahaeli/status/1669350441971494914
"If you are now, or ever have been at any point in the last 14 years have been, an #ao3/#otw volunteer under your wallet name, you should IMMEDIATELY AND WITHOUT ANY DELAY call your police non-emergency number and arrange anti-SWAT precautions."
https://archiveofourown.org/comments/660613498
"In today's "horrifying discoveries about how badly AO3 is diverging from basic, fundamental Trust and Safety best practices" discoveries: suspending an account doesn't make that account's content invisible, PAC has to review *every individual piece of it*. https://archiveofourown.org/comments/660613498"
"At this point I will say it plainly: OTW's Legal committee is fundamentally and egregiously unqualified to be setting policy and process for Trust and Safety work, and their doing so while remaining actively ignorant of best practices is an existential threat to the organization."
" I think there's a bit of confusion in terminology. PAC absolutely did immediately and permanently suspend users we caught attempting to distribute or solicit CSEM. I can't imagine that has changed. Permanently suspended users are not able to upload content to the site, and may not make a new account to evade their suspension*.
What we didn't do, when I was on PAC, was just nuke the account's contents. Any content they had uploaded that didn't violate the TOS could stay, which is why we had to review all of the content they had created for violations - we couldn't just nuke everything. This was ... unpleasant, to say the least. And I'm concerned about the liability it might open up the org to; I'm not a legal expert at all, but this really strikes me as a better safe than sorry situation. It makes sense to selectively remove only violations when someone has been suspended for, say, constantly posting find-a-fic spam, but not when they were attempting a felony. This really seems like an area where "maximum inclusiveness of content" should bend. Not for taste or morals, but for safety.
* The tools for preventing suspended users from rejoining could be better. On the other hand, ban evasion is something every site with user-generated content has to deal with, and it's not an easy problem to solve. As a webdev, you can probably speak to this better than I can.
There were also some holes in what suspension prevented users from doing. I don't know if those holes have been plugged, and I don't want to be more specific because I don't want to encourage exploits."
She's wrong about this. I was able to cut and past content from a briefly suspended account to another site, and my content was visible to others. (My content was movie reviews, and episode recaps, it wasn't traumatizing content that would give folks nightmares.)
But this oddly validates my complaints to Ao3 in 2022 when they told me to take down content that was film and episode reviews and analysis. I told them that it wasn't racist, child pornography, traumatizing, it wasn't illegal, and they couldn't prove it wasn't transformative (which is subjective at best). While there was content on their site that would fall under that - and they should be more concerned about.
Now all this is coming out, and I'm wondering about Ao3. Also, apparently Squidgeworld uses the same source code which is equally problematic.
Do I stay on Ao3 (removing anything that is a film review or episode recap) or stay on SquidgeWorld?
2. Listening to the Sleepy Hollow chapter in Maureen Ryan's book and it's a convoluted mess - that I can barely makes heads or tails of. Apparently neither lead wanted to be a long term lead of a television series. There was a falling out among the show-runners (isn't there always?) and apparently NB who was the female lead (Abby) was considered "difficult" while the male lead (Icabod) was given privileges. They clashed. He didn't want the show built around him either. They both got ill at the same time - he was allowed to go back to England and recover, she was forced to film an episode by herself, as the lead. The show-runner in charge - didn't understand the horror genre, Kurtzman got fed up and left, Wiseman hated how NB was being treated and the direction it was going and left. Orlando Jones was happy he got killed off. NB also wanted out. Ryan explains it thusly - NB had just graduated with honors from Julliard, had been in a play, done amazingly well, and this was her first role - and it was a lead on a network television series. The process is pilot, maybe it gets picked up (rarely - there's a million of them), if it does, maybe six episodes, maybe a year...the actors sign contracts for five to seven. Sleepy Hollow took off like gangbusters, and it got a bit claustrophobic - to be confined to a seven year contract. (I have troubles understanding this - because I've worked for the same company for 16 years, and hate hunting for jobs, but I'm not an actor for a reason - the nomadic life is not for me.) Of course none of this excused how she was treated.
My god, what a mess.
Be happy you don't work in Hollywood folks.
3. On Twitter...
I was reminded of why I hated the Angel episode "I will always remember you". It's weird because my niece, who is an otherwise intelligent individual who will go far in her life, loved that episode and missed the point entirely. To her it was romantic. To me, who saw it in my early 30s, not at 14 (it may have resonated differently for me at 14), it was anything but romantic. It made me angry.
When I initially saw IWARY, I was a huge Bangle shipper, and into Angel finding his redemption and being reunited with Buffy - this was when it first aired on the WB. That episode killed the ship dead for me. After I watched that episode, I thought, dammit, writers, I'm onto you now - there is no way in hell Buffy and Angel will ever be together, Angel is never being redeemed, and this show is not going to a happy place.
I quit the show in a pique.
Voy fanboard members talked me into revisiting it. But this round, I revisited it not as a shipper, I knew going in that Angel was being written as a classic noir hero by David Greenwalt and company. I'd seen enough similar series to pick up on the pattern. Also they'd written Angel as an anti-hero character, who would always choose himself (whether it was his ego, his son, or his pride) over anything else. Anyone who associated themselves with him was doomed.
Once I accepted that as fact - I enjoyed the series. And I just laughed at the folks who couldn't see it and were going to be disappointed.
In regards to Buffy? I shifted to Spuffy or Spike/Buffy, and I was right they ended up together. Pre-Season 7 Buffy, the playbook was Bangle for all commercial properties or tie-ins, now, post Season 7 Buffy, and the Angel and Buffy comics, along with (weirdly) Whedon - the playbook is Spuffy. She ends up with Spike in all commercial properties and tie-ins.
I was right - I foresaw it with that episode IWARY, which kind of laid out all the reasons why Buffy and Angel didn't work. Not only that - they drove it home with all the episodes surrounding it. It's really obvious once you see it, and the writers got so annoyed with people not seeing it - that they made fun of them, and mocked them in various episodes, then did it again in the comics.
4. Taking tomorrow off, and we have Juneteenth (Monday off) as a Federal and State holiday.
Goal is to make into the city and either visit the highline or Natural History Museum. Other goal - maybe go to a beach. And set up doctor's appointments.
no subject
Date: 2023-06-16 05:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-06-16 08:24 pm (UTC)So while these folks are bothering contacting us about film reviews, and episode recaps, they are allowing child porn and racist propaganda to be posted and not removing it quickly, nor putting in safe guards.
The Swatting was only towards volunteers at OTW.
Their legal representation hasn't resolved the Orphan Works issue that is embedded in the code. Apparently this is an issue with the coding?
Sounds like they need to hire a good IT security firm - not a legal firm to deal with that. But that's just me.