mx. tozka presents

NSFW Server Designation – Discord

Our Community Guidelines require that all adult content posted to Discord be kept behind an NSFW gate. Server owners can designate specific channels as being 18+ by adding an NSFW gate. Entire communities can now be classified as 18+ through the use of an NSFW server designation. No users between the ages of 13 and 17 will be able to join or view the content in NSFW servers.

Discord server owners must still apply NSFW gates to channels with mature content. Having NSFW channels does not automatically mean, however, that an entire server should be designated NSFW. Servers must be classified as NSFW if the community is organized around NSFW themes or if the majority of the server’s content is 18+. Discord will mark servers meeting these criteria as NSFW if they are not appropriately designated.

Additionally, all users on the iOS platform (including those aged 18+) will be blocked from joining and accessing NSFW servers. iOS users aged 18+ will still be able to join and access NSFW communities on the desktop and web versions of Discord.

h/t Watdraws

So basically if you use an iPhone to access Discord, you won't be allowed to access NSFW channels or servers, even if you're over 18 and have already clicked on the "I acknowledge this server(/channel) is NSFW" thing. Honestly this smells like the same stink that led to Tumblr's porn ban in 2018.

Thing to note: a lot of fandom servers are 18+ not because they're full of porn, but because they want to be designated as adults-only spaces. If users can't easily access their fandom servers now, are they going to move somewhere else or will they just muddle through?

Update: This article on TheVerge.com basically has the same info, but the comments have a link to this article from Discord which talks about their Apple App Store age rating changing to 17+:

Q: Why did Discord update its age rating from 12+ to 17+?

A: Discord updated its age rating to 17+ at Apple’s request. We work hard to create robust controls and policies to help ensure minors are not exposed to content inappropriate for them.

Discord itself is 13+, as far as I know. Verge commenters seem to think this NSFW server thing is Discord trying to bring their age rating back down.

2nd update: Discord, a Platform Rife With Violent Extremist Content, Cracks Down on [Checks Notes] Erotic Furry Art:

As was the case with Tumblr, Discord’s policy shift was intended “to comply with Apple’s policies,” as the spokesperson told Rolling Stone, referring to notoriously stringent restrictions on nudity and adult content (it’s also worth noting that Discord is currently in talks with the similarly NSFW-shy Microsoft over a sale that could be worth more than $10 billion). Though the Discord spokesperson said the policy would be rolled out over the next few days, at least one popular server devoted to erotic furry art, the Discord server for the subreddit r/yiff, has been blocked on the iOS platform, according to a screengrab provided to Rolling Stone. (“Yiff” is a term used to describe sexual content in the fandom; many within the subculture do not sexualize it.)

In addition to furries, other stigmatized groups use Discord as a platform for NSFW content. “This is a huge blow to many marginalized communities, particularly queer, trans, sex worker, and kink/adult play spaces that rely on Discord for community and communication,” says writer Ana Valens, who has reported on Discord’s previous efforts to curb NSFW content. NSFW artist A. Szabla agrees, saying, “With bans on NSFW I often see a lot of queer art, and queer folks who are trying to view or create this work in order to better connect with their own genders and identities, getting hit the hardest and losing business and income because of these overreaching decisions by tech companies.”

Slightly misleading headline, but it does cover the potential communities impacted by this decision.

Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th (THIS YEAR), and it's bringing up a lot of discussion about archiving, fandom spaces, and how much Yahoo sucks. Here's a good thread by KaylaAncrum which talks a bit about her troubles finding early 2000s Star Trek sites after the death (murder) of Geocities.

I Miss My Cafe is another background noise generator focused on the sounds of American coffee shops. It's been blowing up on TikTok so the servers might be a bit hammered at the moment.

Collapse OS:

Winter is coming and Collapse OS aims to soften the blow. It is a Forth (why Forth?) operating system and a collection of tools and documentation with a single purpose: preserve the ability to program microcontrollers through civilizational collapse. It is designed to:

Run on minimal and improvised machines.
Interface through improvised means (serial, keyboard, display).
Edit text and binary contents.
Compile assembler source for a wide range of MCUs and CPUs.
Read and write from a wide range of storage devices.
Assemble itself and deploy to another machine.

The guy who did the Animorphs book covers sells prints of said covers on Etsy! Signed and NUMBERED prints!

Scramoutcha vs the Community: a niche P2P community's troubles with one specific user get turned into an experimental zine.

Here is a Duck:

(I actually wrote a draft of this in October and then forgot to finish it, so here's the final version with recent additional thoughts:)

I decided to buy flannel menstrual pads (reusable ones!) back when the pandemic first hit and it seemed possible that I wouldn't be able to find any. Better to be prepared than not, right?

Mine came from this shop on Etsy, which was reasonably priced and kinda cute-- I bought two regular and two heavy, in random pattern selections because it was cheaper. They took a while to get to me, I assume because many other people were ordering their own pads (and the store is in Florida while I'm in California...and the mail is slow).

It's been almost a year since I started using them, and here's my thoughts: ( If you click this then you gotta be okay with me talking about period blood. )

Final verdict: Though I enjoy my flannel pads, they 100% only work for me because I've been home for a year. They would NOT be practical in a regular working-outside-the-home situation. They're too prone to shifting around and I'd be thinking about adjusting them way too much. Also I HATE the idea of carrying multiple used pads around.

However, I do find them useful and comfortable at home, and it's nice to be able to brag about being ~earth-friendly and thrifty. When these ones finally wear out (or if I lose another one), I'll probably try making my own!

I keep trying to think of things to write about but everything is either a) too small (e.g. I made dinner) or b) too big (one year COVID-lockdown retrospective*) so instead I'm just gonna post about miscellaneous thoughts from the last few weeks.

1. Bought a new 12TB HDD and transferred my Jellyfin server stuff onto it, which should make it easier to organize and maintain. And now I have extra space for backups!

2. OneTab, a Firefox extension that's supposed to send your overflow tabs to a separate page, totally crashed and stopped working. I downloaded a previous version, which fixed it-- except all my tabs were gone and were no longer retrievable. I could just start over and make sure to export back-ups every week, but that's way too much effort when I already have a Pinboard I can save things to. However, I have a bad habit of just saving things without properly tagging them, and now I have 100+ links with no tags and no desire to actually tag them.

Sort of good alternative: I found out I can send groups of tabs to my bookmarks folder! I'd gotten out of the habit of bookmarking things, since I mostly just visit the same ten sites anyway, but I'm liking the idea of getting back into using them. I have folders and subfolders with topics already listed, and I can just add the bookmark directly into that folder. It's a little faster than the Pinboard-tag-save-etc. routine, which is nice.

3. Spent too much on fast food and video games last month, so I'm doing another "no buy" month in March. So far it's been good! And I don't feel bad about not buying new games because I'm so absorbed in Breath of the Wild (currently over 100 hours into it and still digging it a lot).

4. Uploaded two half-finished pages to my website, partly to motivate myself to get back to adding stuff to it and maybe finally updating the layout. HTML is fun but also VERY time consuming, and I obsess over colors and fonts too much. Getting the stuff up on the website and updating from there is better than waiting until it's "finished" or "perfect."

*I do still want to do this, but it'll just be something like "wtf how has it been a year" over and over.

yourlibrarian posted (in meta_warehouse): The March Meta Matters Challenge Reopens for Year 2

For anyone who has ever created any meta, the marchmetamatterschallenge community will be running again to help keep you going (or get started!) on archiving your meta works on AO3.

While creators have often used multiple sites to host their works, one type of work has generally been left out of fans' efforts at archiving and preserving fanworks -- meta. In many cases, meta posts have not been copied anywhere else other than the location where they were first posted, leaving them hard to find and particularly vulnerable to loss.

So what if we can make a small dent in getting it saved? The March Meta Matters Challenge is focused on not just new meta, but making sure older meta gets a chance to be read and remain a part of fandom history. While new meta is also encouraged, the priority for Meta Matters is to make sure meta doesn't vanish with sites or personal accounts when those get closed or moved.

This is a month long event that kicks off on March 1. There are no signups and anyone can participate, whether here at Dreamwidth or elsewhere.

If you have any questions about MMM, look over how the challenge works, or visit our FAQ or leave a comment!

Also, if you enjoy meta? Check out the over 250 works archived in 2020.