Online Shifts

I was gonna post this as a thread on twitter, but then I remembered the reasons I don't really share my thoughts on social media platforms. I don't want any more incentive to check notifications, I don't want to deal with uncharitable interpretations of my personal thoughts, I don't want to have to think about who I'm replying to- I just don't want the stress.

Then I also remembered, I can share thoughts here!

So, I noticed, by chance of posting about an inPRNT sale, that (and I haven't looked that deeply into it) twitter's built in AI tool will be changing policies and removing the option to opt out of posts being scraped. Or something like that. As a result, lots of artists I follow are understandably jumping ship. And of course I'm aware that this is one of many reasons factoring into people losing patience with twitter, especially now.

EDIT: This twitter post seems to indicate the above as a rumour, and there is still currently a (checked until just now, for me) box to opt out of Grok training on your posts. But who knows. Look into everything yourself!

My gut response to the AI thing specifically is... at this point, my art is online and in enough places that there is a very small chance it hasn't already been scraped by AI, if it wants it. There's so little legislation in place right now, and there's been so many cases of companies flagrantly breaking copyright laws, that I doubt me checking a box in a platform's settings does much of anything.

I've come to terms with it. That's not to sound hopeless or excuse what's happening. I don't think it's ok to steal from artists. And I do hold the belief that this is unsustainable- legally, economically, environmentally- in the long run. But for the time being, in order to be comfortable sharing my work online, I have to be okay with my art being scraped without my permission. I still get so much out of creating artwork, and people value my artwork and the fact that it's made by me. That's motivation enough.

If I've learned anything from being online for all these years, it's to spread your net wide and not trust any one platform to last forever, or for their owners to act rationally. After back-posting art on Bluesky (I've been going back through all my art files and retitling them to begin with YYYY-MM-DD to make this easier), I might bail on twitter. Not sure yet. It would be more because of how I feel about its owner than anything else. Bluesky seems nice enough for now too.

Additionally, if I've learned anything from the birth and death of Cohost, it's that I can take matters into my own hands. Cohost was ultimately not sustainable,but I still think it was great they tried, and I hope people keep trying to make the internet better. Being on Cohost prompted me to be more independent, to be more aware of dark/deceptive design patterns, and to use social media as a tool that I shouldn't invest my emotional energy into. My emotional energy is for my creative work.