While I wrote this a day after I wrote last week’s post, this one got to marinate for a week before it went up and while I didn’t change much beyond my usual editing (grammar, spelling, word choice: the basics), writing this without the sense of urgency inherent to last week’s post means I spent more time thinking and less time reacting. There’s a time and a place for reacting, of course. We should respond with outrage when something awful happens and the corresponding urgency should drive us to act when we otherwise might not. That said, that initial reaction or series of actions doesn’t mean that we’re done with it. We can’t blow up and then move on because that will let companies like Automattic get away with bullshit like creating an opt-out system for actively selling the media created and shared by their customers and userbase because they’ll know they can just ride out the first reaction and do whatever they wanted to do when everyone has moved on. After all, it would be incredibly easy to take more than they want and pretend to be magnanimous and caring when they dial it back down to what their actual goal was. It’s basic negotiating strategy, to aim high and then slowly work your way down to what you actually wanted. So I’m going to keep this particular topic fresh in my mind so long as I continue to use a service I paid for that is now trying to wring extra money out of me by doing whatever they can to benefit from the exploitative and extractive actions of Venture Capital funded plagiarism algorithms.

As I said last week, the part that rankles the most is the one-two combo of Automattic trying to slip this shit into WordPress and Tumblr without anyone noticing by creating an opt-out system rather than doing the marginally more ethical or moral thing by setting this up as an opt-in system. It would be better if they didn’t do it at all, and I swear to every deity ever worshipped that I’m never giving them another cent unless they back out of this shit before it comes time to renew my domain or support plan. Even then, that might not be enough. Whatever little trust I still had for them (since most of that evaporated when they integrated the “AI Assistant” feature into WordPress’ blog editor with no way to disable or remove it) has vanished and I do not intend to stop looking into self-hosting options until I find one that I can trust to not try to sell my data and media (which probably means finding a company based in the EU given that they’re the only ones regulating this shit so far) or Automattic somehow makes material amends for the stunt they’re trying to pull. Which will probably never happen since that’s not how anything in the US or in capitalism in general has ever worked.

Until I figure out my self-hosting situation and start transferring my website to that, I’m going to keep posting here, just without sharing any more fiction or poetry. For one thing, writing is incredibly beneficial for me and the entire practice of blogging that I’ve built is a part of that these days (the pacing of my writing, the editing, the sharing, and so on). I don’t want to lose something that is beneficial to me just yet, especially when you consider that every LLM has already scraped the entire internet and is mostly negotiating these deals now so they can pretend they did it legally. They’re 100% trying to cover up the fact that they stole everything they could get their hands on and are headed for a massive legal problem the instant copyright law gets reasserted. Well, if copyright law ever gets reasserted. It would very much be in the nature of modern capitalism to decide that only corporations can hold intellectual property rights and that these LLMs are fine because they’re not reproducing, word-for-word, the work of individuals or corporations. It’s a grim and shitty outlook, but unless I’m going to stop putting my writing on the internet where it can be seen for free, then there’s not much I can do to stop my writing from being scraped.

There is a part of me that wants to consider the idea that staying on WordPress (.com) is still a decent idea, since at least they’re going to try to stop other LLMs from accessing my creations now that they’re trying to charge them for access, but the fact that there was absolutely no mention of compensating the people whose work they’re selling makes it all a moot point. I’ve stopped paying money to other corporations for less than this outright theft and shady dealing. I am very careful about where my money goes and am so completely diametrically opposed to this kind of theft that I’ve never pirated music or watched a show on an unlicensed streaming site. Hell, I already feel guilty enough watching most of these shows on most streaming platforms given how terribly said streamers treat the people who make the shows and movies that bring people to their platforms, but there’s fewer and fewer alternatives so I don’t really have much of a choice when supporting them at least a little bit is better than letting them go unremarked into the void with every other show or movie destroyed for dubious tax purposes. I’m absolutely not going to do anything to support any company that would so callously abuse their users and customers.

At this point, it’s only my need to keep writing and the inertia I’ve built up over the last two and a half years that is keeping me going. I’m constantly exhausted by the unending nature of this shit and if I didn’t have a decently viable option, I’d probably have just given up. Not that running my own website is an entirely viable option. There’s a reason I picked WordPress way back when and most of that reason is I do not have all the required skills, the time, or the energy to maintain an entire website on my own, even if I can use the WordPress (.org) software to do a lot of the work for me. I’m not sure how easy it will be to make the change, but, by the time you’re reading this, I’ve already spent at least one weekend looking into it with all the time and energy I had to spare. Which wasn’t a lot (since a lot of stuff happened on the Friday leading into that weekend, wiping me completely out), all things considered, but I can’t exactly just let this go. After all, unlike job hunting, making this change is entirely within my power and the only thing stopping me from making good on this decision is the amount of time, effort, and money I’m willing to direct towards it.