Nell Thompson

Awwwww, no problem! I'm sure I have you on Telegram but if not, then hey I can ask on the other thing and see, eh?

You take good care yourself too, thanks for the kind words. <3

Sure, we do what we can. Congrats on the move too!

I never forgot you, always very happy to hang out with again sometime when you wanna. <3 Thank you for those sweet words, I feel mutual on those stances, just because we haven't spoken in a while does not mean I've felt any less about us as pals.

What's up, Kael?

I didn't get a notification so I never saw it but going by your other response, like...hey fair, sometimes we make small mistakes in processing things, if it was that egregious then at least you caught it before it could've done anything, eh?

*huge hugs* Oh my gosh, I've been meaning to drop by your way again for ages! Still, yeah, thanks for the response and hugs, like...yeah, totally agreed.

I got a good 10 years out of Discord without this being a direct concern but even then I trusted Telegram just a bit more anyway, tbh.

I really, genuinely hope I'm just overthinking like usual.

Please god I hope I'm just overthinking.

...maybe it's time I left more of this me behind. It's growing evermore inconvenient and untrustworthy to get to explore anything beyond the absolute status quo anymore without worrying if the walls have eyes or ears.

I've never used Discord in a Bad way, but who knows what the fascists think.

I can't in good consciousness say I'm comfortable in supposedly private spaces if I have the potential prying eyes of fascists as something to bare in mind that'd breathe down my neck.

I hate that I was lead on for so long in thinking privacy on some things actually mattered. Sick to my stomach.

This isn't something that can be fixed by moving over to another service, they have a decade of my data that they'll use to define me as a person to anonymous corporate overlords who're complicit with tech fascism...if they haven't already done that and have for years.

Discord, what the fuck.

Going to be real, Discord utilising tech that combs over people's messages to guestimate people's ages makes me feel weirdly sick that they do that and only say so now after backlash on global age verification stuff caught them.

...I actually don't know what to do on this.

Oh! I actually just got my Stoat account approved suddenly, hey! :D

Again, not doing a major migrate to that from Discord right now and taking a wait-and-see approach if the migration's necessary but I'm on there now.

If you know me on Discord, message me if you want it~

Also, there's SO MUCH other escapist whizz-bang fantasy junk out there that *isn't* created by and/or funding evil, so hey.

Given my age and locale when this stuff got *really* big, that was a small part of my life too. Even went to the Studio Tour they set up for Harry Potter stuff and had a blast.

Yet, many years have gone by and I don't feel like I miss it all that much. People are more important than pop culture.

Oh, they *mega*-made this game for you, haha.

I've not been able to make an account yet, clearly the servers for the thing are getting rammed atm, but I'll let folks know when I do. =P

OK, I've decided that when I can, I'm making a Stoat account but *not* as a means of vacating Discord immediately as soon as next month comes in.

I'll see how much this stuff affects things on my end and then maybe move some or all of what I do there onto Stoat instead.

...so...seriously, what the hell do we do about Discord?

What are the alternatives?

Discord already was creeping into anti-privacy and anti-safety but this...god...

...this tech facism has to end.

Maybe its been a while since I've seen your art but WOW, you have improved so dang much, this is gorgeous so far!

apples and bnnynnys

Hi everyone , it's Glaz. Thank you all so much for the well wishes , it's been very overwhelming. I'm sorry that I haven't had the time to respond to everyone yet. I am doing a lot better than this morning, that's for sure but it's looking very likely that I'm going to be in the hospital for 48 hrs

RE repost: Glaz is as lovely a guy as he is talented and I hope he recovers as well as he can right now. I encourage everyone to send in your support to the guy while he deals with what's happening.

Hey, critters. Hiro here. I'm Glaz's roommate. Glaz collapsed and temporarily lost consciousness in the apartment early this morning. I attended to him, got paramedics around, and we've taken him to A&E at a local hospital. He's conscious and aware, but in a lot of pain and discomfort, and isn't in a good shape to read/reply to messages. I'm with Glaz as I type, and can relay verbally. Hospital staff are treating him as they work towards a diagnosis. Rest assured he is in good hands. Please send your best wishes to the large lad as he's tended to. 💚 I'll provide any updates here if needed.

Hey, all.

This is @a-dragon-from.space from Glaz's phone. Please see below.

I will provide further updates where I can on Glaz's Telegram channel, linked here.

t.me/GlazArts

Hack of Age Verification Company Shows Privacy Danger of Social Media Laws We’ve said it before: online age verification is incompatible with privacy. Companies responsible for storing or processing sensitive documents like drivers’ licenses are likely to encounter data brea...

My concern is Persona will inevitably get hacked or have some other kind of data leak. These sorts of companies have to operate perfectly forever, which they won't for a host of reasons. Hackers just have to get lucky ONCE and users are boned.

www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

I'm *right here*, y'know, haha. XD

Honestly, as far as I know right now, the fact that he gave this as good a go as he can and people are generally looking at this as at *least* "this is a decent debut" is already quite an achievement, let alone for a movie adapted from a video game on a small budget.

Talk to VRChat about Persona's trust and then maybe a lot of us'll go to your next convention rather than reject them, please. https://bsky.app/profile/twilightzebby.bsky.social/post/3mdu7zpups22f

Doesn't make this stuff as it is any better and it doesn't mean I have to deal with it but rationalising it with a shrug as if it's paying 1 more digit for something as opposed to the very sensitive and serious flaws people are concerned about...yeah, nah.

Wish people weren't so eager to be conned

Respectively, a lot of the responses I had direct from those in charge of Furality (not official opinion, just their own) had that aire of "well, in theory they might already have the rest of our data so eh, what can you do" and like...true or not, I can't subscribe to that kinda defeatism.

"So...yeah, I think l've made up my mind for the moment on the whole Age Verification thing re: Furality and at present...it's not looking like l'm going to be attending this year's convention due to that. I'm 34 and usually always use VRChat outside of Furality stuff to hang out with social groups run by people l'm friends with who happen to be a similar age to me anyway, but while it's certainly a good surface-level Look to announce and start implementing this stuff, like...most people's concerns really are on how this is handled by those responsible in a "serious personal data used maliciously or stolen" way. Furality only said yes to deciding to leverage what VRChat are doing with this, they aren't responsible themselves for the process, so l believe their own intentions are pure and uncomplicated by the problems inherent to this process, but VRChat are still depending on an anonymous techbro startup company who others have discovered have ties and previous interests in selling personal data to other companies. In an intense climate where even in the West, just casually being LGBTQ+ is systematically judged over (look at the wrongs of MasterCard lately for a good example), it doesn't feel right for such a broadly supportive event to depend on anonymously handing your data over to complete, morally-questionable strangers in order to access. Even if Furality don't reconsider, I hope they decide to think harder about all this than maybe they did when they okay'ed this idea for their conventions as the potential hurt of a huge amount of their userbase is too severe to ignore while this process is still handled like it is. As I still want Furality to survive and have their lights kept on, I will continue being a Supporter as there's nothing on Furality's part directly that'd justify me not being that anymore but yeah, I hope something can be figured our where the intended increased safety can be achieved without people's data being at risk from a third-party.

Wrote this in the @furality.online Discord about my stances re: the Age Verification thing. I know I already wrote a thread about it, but I feel it's too important to gloss over.

Furality have been exceptional for not only giving the fandom incredible new options for getting to organically socialise outside of the limits of the real-world but in defining what large-scale social events online can be like.

And the mandatory age verification announcement breaks my heart.