#RSS

[smellslikebot]

how to keep following people when a major social platform implodes

(...and you don't want to join 20 new websites)

First, get an RSS reader*-- here are some free options:

Desktop: Feedbro (browser extension), Fraidycat** (browser extension/web), Thunderbird, Dreamwidth (web)

Android: Feeder

iOS/Mac: NetNewsWire

You'll be able to make a custom feed to follow blogs, webcomics, social media feeds, podcasts, news, and other stuff on the web all in one place. To follow something, find its "feed URL"-- often marked by an icon that looks like this ↓-- and paste it into your reader of choice as a new feed.

Some feed URLs for social media/other sites:

Tumblr: Use username.tumblr.com/rss or username.tumblr.com/tagged/my%20art/rss to follow a blog's "my art" tag (as an example)

Cohost: Use username.cohost.org/rss/public

Mastodon: Use instance.url/@­username.rss

Deviantart: Info here

Spacehey: Info here

Youtube: Go to a channel in a web browser, view page source, and use Ctrl-F/Command-F to find a link that starts with "https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id="

Reddit: Info here

Lemmy: At the top of a community's main page, there's a small RSS link next to where you sort posts/comments.

Some additions thanks to @innumerablewounds:

Dreamwidth: https://username.dreamwidth.org/rss (users can opt out of this).

Ao3: Tags have an "RSS Feed" button.

Bluesky: Add /rss to the end of a URL.

Neocities: https://neocities.org/site/username.rss

Sites that won't work all that great:

Twitter: Feedbro and Fraidycat** may be able to use Twitter profile URLs as feed URLs. Otherwise, use nitter.net/username/rss (or other Nitter instance) Public Nitter instances are dead/dying, and Twitter is now very hostile to pretty much anything that makes it easy to generate an RSS feed. For popular accounts, try this workaround using Google News...?

Instagram: Feedbro may be able to use Instagram profile and hashtag URLs as feed URLs. Check Feedbro's "scan interval" setting-- you could be rate limited or temporarily IP banned from Instagram if it makes requests too often!

Facebook: Feedbro may be able to use public Facebook group/page URLs as feed URLs, but see the warnings for Instagram.

Threads: Come on.

Also see how to find the RSS feed URL for almost any site. Try using public RSS-Bridge instances or Happyou Final Scraper to generate feeds for sites that don't have them (Pillowfort, Patreon, etc).

*You can set up your subscriptions in one reader and import them into another by exporting an OPML file. **Fraidycat's intended use is following a lot of people across different sites, so it's well-suited for this post and I'd recommend keeping an eye on it-- but I didn't recommend it initially because I had some issues with it, and it hasn't been updated in a while. The last time I used it, it didn't have a setting to change how often it makes requests to websites, causing me to get IP banned from Twitter and Instagram...

#silly storie #twitter #rss #long post

[jeypawlik]

A Mini Guide to RSS Feeds

With all the talk about Twitter and social media going on, I felt really inspired to do a comic about RSS feeds. This is a really barebones guide but I hope it helps you stay updated with your favourite webcomics, artists and websites. The nice thing about RSS feeds is that almost any kind of site has one, so if you wanted you could add user feeds from tumblr, twitter, mastodon, etc. here’s some helpful guides on how to add those (1) (2) I hope you found this little guide helpful. I’m just a simple guy who’s passionate about RSS feeds, comics and staying updated using both. Go forth and make the feed of your dreams! Topaz Comics | Topaz Comics RSS | Art Blog | Art Blog RSS

#comic #rss #rss feeds #guide #how to #tutorial

[studentofetherium]

genuinely tho, if we're seeing the end of the social media era, getting back into RSS would be a great idea. it lets you gather all manner of different websites to visit and keep track of, but without turning the experience into a facebook/twitter type slog where Engagement is the main focus

#rss

[slicedblackolives]

the author describes my dread v accurately um

#ya like I said. it’s aspirational genocide. #Palestine #Israel #india #hindutva #BJP #rss

[brokenbackmountain]

(ibtimes)

remind me again why he has two movies (one in 2001 and one upcoming) after him. remind me again why the rss is so celebrated here.

#india #antisemitism #“hindutva isn't fascist!” explain why their founder was a hitler fanboy. explain. #vp savarkar #rss #fascism #hindutva #nazism

[wip]

Years ago, I hacked together a crude system for automatically sending out my blog posts as a daily newsletter, by combining Tumblr's RSS feed and Mailchimp's RSS-to-email feature. My newsletter only has about 24 subscribers, but they seem to like it. My problem is that the newsletter is UUUUUUUGLY. I'd love it if Tumblr would implement its own feature that would let me send out updates in a daily email, formatted in a pretty template. Is that something you're planning to do?

Answer: Hey there, @atomicrobotlive!

A slightly complex answer for you here. So, right now, no, we’re not planning on doing this.

But it is a cool idea. We have actually had similar thoughts ourselves during recent team meetups that would be a daily digest not dissimilar to what you are suggesting. It could be an email, it could be something else, but it is something for us to consider. 

Thanks for getting in touch here, and watch this space. Any news will come through the usual channels: here, @changes.

Best,

—Matthew and Cyle

#feature #RSS #email feeds #your suggestions

[mlembug]

hiii, late to the party but do u know how to make your rss feed / reader show tumblr tags ? like, tags under posts. feels a bit empty without them…

@gooseberrily The good news is that Tumblr's RSS includes the tags under the <category> section of each entry so it is definitely possible without jumping through hoops.

The bad news is that I don't know what reader application you use so I can't give specific directions (this is how "being able to use any application of your choice to read RSS" is both an advantage and a disadvantage).

I would recommend using the tech support cheat sheet and find something related to "tags" or "categories" and see if it can make show the tags for you.

(xkcd #627 - Tech Support Cheat Sheet)

#rss

[hadeantaiga]

"Everyone's running to different sites, I don't know where to go!"

I understand - it's pretty scary right now. We've got people fleeing Twitter to all kinds of sites, from Tumblr to Pillowfort to Mastodon - those are the 3 most common, but people are returning to Dreamwidth too, and some are joining Cohost.

With all those sites to choose from, how the hell can you keep track of everyone you love!?

RSS feeds.

Feedbro is the best free option I've found so far. It's a browser extension you can add to firefox and chrome.

What I like about it most is that you can subscribe to folks' social media feeds for free - a lot of RSS websites want you to pay for this - AND you can have a Unified Feed that looks great. It can display everything in line, without previews, all in full context so you don't have to go clicking through just to see the full post.

It's incredibly easy to use too - just install the extension, click on it to open it, and then click the green feed button and copy/paste someone's blog url. That's it. Done.

Feedbro Firefox Extension

Feedbro Chrome Extension

Follow everyone everywhere!

You can add folders too - you can have a Twitter folder and a Tumblr folder and a Web comics folder. Honestly, Feedbro is really awesome.

#tumblr #twitter #twitter migration #mastodon #pillowfort #feedbro #rss #social media #twitter apocalypse

[nickyflowers]

in addition to cohost, i am also on my own website, nickyflowers.com!

im going to be blogging there more frequently about projects i'm working on, various thoughts i have, and whatever i want basically. you can also access my BBS there, for posting! i recommend following the blog with an RSS reader. social media is a terrible way to be online and RSS feeds are way better. imho

nickyflowers.com—the ONLY website in the world

#blog #neocities #rss

[oldwindowsicons]

Internet Explorer 8 - ieframe.dll, icon 31063

#internet explorer #rss #48x48

[lolothesilly]

i think we should bring back RSS feeds. i dunno. i think we should slap silly little RSS feeds on our silly little neocities pages to simulate the feeling of having a dash to scroll without all the corporate baggage and socmed addiction that comes with actually scrolling dashes these days. can we do that?? pls??

#neocities #rss feed #rss #please im begging

[jeypawlik]

(just sending an ask because im ancient tumblr person who can't use replies on custom theme blogs T_T) a feedbro tailored for webcomics guide would be wonderful!! i'm using it rn thanks to your post but i still wonder if there's ways i can elevate my rss feed experience!

Tumblr tip: you can click the little eyeball at the top of any custom themed blog post and be taken to the tumblr layout for replying!

I'm glad there's been some reception for another RSS comic, when I'm a little less busy I'll work on a Feedbro follow-up comic! I'd thumbnailed it a few months ago even.

However, I still use Feedly for webcomics because I like the little browser button that takes me to the webcomic's site. I enjoy viewing the comic page on its own site, the size of the image likely isn't shrunk at all, and if the webcomic has ads then I can give some ad revenue to some folks by viewing their sites!

What I do use Feedbro for is a social media replacement, where tumblr, twitter, mastodon, cohost, etc. posts are all in one big feed instead of viewing them all on separate sites.

I like both Feedly and Feedbro, though I know Feedly has some issues (AI integration and limited amount of feeds you can follow) but it's still exactly how I want my webcomics RSS experience to be.

#ask #reply #jeytalks #jupitershowers #rss #rss feed #feedly #feedbro

[cartoonjessie]

Make Me Feel Alive Again - a Rumbelle Secret Santa 2023 gift for the delightful and talented @kelyon || Rumbelle AU where Rumplestiltskin never let Belle go, and thus canon runs a little... differently... || When Regina meets Belle in the Dark Castle, she harms Belle in a way only Rumplestiltskin can save her... || 14567 words || COMPLETE || Read the story here || Listen to the fanmix here

#rss #rumbelle secret santa #rumbelle art #rumbelle fic #rumbelle secret santa 2023 #mine #ouat #thank you for the wonderful prompt kelyon! #you have a delightful tumblr it was really hard not to click 'follow' the moment I saw it to keep my identity a mystery! #hope you like the gift!

[jonb]

You Know What, Tumblr Is Pretty Great

I have a lot of Tumblr accounts. The oldest one I can find is from this account, where I wrote this in April 2007:

Everyone in the world is talking about Tumbler.  I think this is my second account.

I know I'm preaching to the choir when it comes to die-hard Tumblr folks, but Tumblr is pretty great. Even now. Especially now.

I've been thinking about its place in the history of blogging and online culture, and here's how I experienced it:

In the late 80s, you'd connect with people via BBS, Prodigy, Compuserve, AOL, and so forth.

In the 90s, we got things like Geocities.

During the first big internet boom of the late 90s/early 00s, we got stuff like Blogger and Moveable Type. (I wrote my own blogging software that some people actually used!)

A lot of people talk about the heyday during the 2000s where it seemed like everyone was blogging and reading stuff with RSS Readers. There was also lots of link sharing with del.icio.us and similar services.

And then ... Twitter happened.

Blogging had already been slowing down, but then it really took a nosedive. Same with RSS readers. Same with link-sharing as a mainstream activity you do through del.icio.us.

And yet, through it all, there was this scrappy other site called Tumblr. It was way easier to set up than something like Moveable Type. The quality and depth you could find was better than something like Blogger. The ability to send things out and have them get amplified through the system felt really powerful and good.

I'm really glad Tumblr is still kicking. I'm really glad the plans for it seem to be on more stable ground than in some years past. And sort of like a forest fire having some positive side effects, I'm looking for some new growth to grow in the hellfire that is Twitter's collapse.

And hey, I can help with my own little contributions. Like this post, and like my new project I call Firehose that is an RSS feeder of all the places I do things online. Including this post.

#tumblr #twitter #rss

[kelyon]

Wrapping Up Her Christmas Gift 1/2

My Rumbelle Secret Santa gift for @99goosebumps!

The prompt was: "Rumbelle pegging, both in lingerie"

This is technically a continuation of my fic "Begging on His Bended Knees." You don't need to read that fic to understand this one.

Read on AO3

Chapter two is here

“You like soft things, don’t you, Theo?”

  Belle French slid the fabric over her submissive’s outstretched palm. In the revamped office building that housed Belle’s professional dungeon, Theo Gold knelt in front of her wingback chair. He was blindfolded and stripped to the waist. She rubbed the dark green silk across his bare wrist.

“Yes, Mistress Belle.” His voice had that dazed, breathy quality that came over him whenever he really got into a scene. “I like things that are soft.”

“Soft and smooth,” she sing-songed. “Silky and satiny.” 

Using the fabric, she stroked up his arm and down his naked back. Theo often needed time at the beginning of their sessions to warm up to being touched. He didn’t get a lot of it in his normal life.

“You like fine things,” she told him. “You like quality, and beauty.”

“Yes, Mistress,” he whispered. 

“Do you want to look beautiful, Theo?”

Even through the blindfold, she could see his eyebrows furrow. He swallowed hard before he answered. 

“Yes, Mistress. I want to be beautiful for you.”

Belle tutted. With one finger, she lifted his chin. “No, no, my Theo. This isn’t something we’re doing for me. We’re doing it for you. I’m going to ask again, and I want you to answer correctly this time: Do you want to look beautiful?”

He clenched his jaw. His hands balled into fists. When the words came, they seemed to have been dragged out from the depths of his heart. 

“Yes, Mistress. I want to be beautiful for me.”

“Good.” She cradled his face in her hands, removed the blindfold so he could see her sincerity. “Good boy, Theo.”

With a shaking breath, he accepted her praise. He closed his eyes and leaned into her touch. Belle stroked his hair and murmured how good he was, how proud she was of him. 

She was proud of him. It had been a long road for the fearsome Mr. Gold to admit he needed all the things society told him not to want. A powerful man wasn’t supposed to yearn for weakness. He wasn’t supposed to let himself be vulnerable, to open himself up for pain and ridicule. A real man wasn’t supposed to take joy in softness and beauty. He wasn’t supposed to crave such things, especially not for himself. Theo did. He wanted the frivolous and the decorative, the lovely and the weak. He wanted to be those things. 

Belle never tired of giving him ways to be himself. 

When he was ready, she set him on his knees again and stood up. With the blindfold off, Theo had full freedom to look at her. His dark brown eyes shone as he drank her in. He looked from her high-heeled, thigh-high, red vinyl boots, to her flared red skirt lined with white fake fur, to her red corset, red opera gloves, and jaunty Santa hat. 

It was Christmas Eve, and neither of them had anywhere they’d rather be. 

Belle held up the green silk she’d been rubbing him with, pinching it between her thumbs and forefingers so he could see the shape of the panties. 

“Can you put these on by yourself? Or do you want me to help you?”

Theo licked his lips. “I--I can do it,” he said softly. “Though I may need your help with the corset.”

“Of course.” Belle put the panties in his open hands and sat back down in her chair. It was the perfect place to watch him. “Anything for my sweet Theo.”

****

 Gold gripped the material, crushing it with the force of his need. He was already hard, though just being around Mistress Belle was enough to do that to him. All of his scenes with her were good, but this was a special night. This was the culmination of everything they had done so far, the first step of a new journey.

His cane was on the floor beside him. Mistress was always so good about keeping track of it. He picked it up and used it to get to his feet. He was shirtless, but had kept his shoes on. Whenever possible, he kept his feet covered, so Mistress wouldn’t be troubled by the scars on his bad ankle.  

He sat on the chaise lounge across the room from Mistress’ chair. As he removed his shoes and socks, he kept himself from stealing glances at her. He had to believe what she told him, instead of looking for lies. She wanted him to do this, he told himself. It was safe. She wasn’t going to mock and deride him like any normal person would. She had a plan. He had to trust her.

Trust did not come easily to Gold. Mistress Belle had earned it over months of sessions. Over and over, she had proved her professionalism, her compassion, and her genuine desire to do what was good for him. This would be good for him. She would take care of him, as no one in his life ever had. 

It was easier to take off his boxers than it had been to take off his socks. There was nothing extraordinary about his cock, either towards the good or the bad. Mistress was more than familiar with male anatomy, including his. It didn’t bother her to see his erection; she always said she took it as a compliment. Gold had nothing to be embarrassed about.

Carefully balancing from one leg to the other, he slid his panties over his legs and up to his hips. His first sensation was of tightness. A yielding pressure against his skin, like someone cupping his groin and his buttocks at the same time. 

God. It almost felt like an embrace.

His fingers twitched as he rubbed his hand over his hipbone. The change from warm skin to cool silk and back to skin was intoxicating. The panties had a full back, which covered his arse, but there was an exposed V over the center of his backside that was fronted with lace. Reaching back, Gold touched that area. He savored the texture. He had always liked touching lace on a woman. It was a thrill to feel it on himself. Next time, he would wear something that was all lace.

For now, the silk was smooth and luxurious, completely without flaw. It was enough to have it under his hands, let alone to wear it on his body. Slowly, he dragged his palm over his groin--until Mistress cleared her throat and he snatched his hand away. 

“I know you’re excited,” she said patiently.  “I’m excited too. But you have to follow the rules, even at Christmastime. What is the rule, Theo?”

“I mustn’t touch my cock until you say, Mistress.” The words flew out of him like a lesson learned by rote, a lesson he had long ago memorized and imprinted on his heart.

“Correct,” she said, with a touch of imperiousness. The tone suited her. Mistress Belle deserved to be treated like a great lady. 

“I am sorry, Mistress,” Gold said sincerely. “I didn’t mean to disobey you. I wasn’t trying to touch myself.” He gulped. “Please don’t say I can’t put on the rest of my clothes.”

It was an unlikely punishment for an infraction so minor, but there was something thrilling about begging his Mistress for mercy. It felt cathartic--perhaps because he knew that she would always do what was best for him. Either she would grant him mercy, or the punishment she gave him would be fair and restorative. Mistress Belle  was a benevolent goddess, not a vindictive one. 

She laughed indulgently at his plea. “Don’t be silly, sweet Theo. I’m not going to deny you this experience. Not unless you start acting very naughty.”

“I won’t,” he promised. More than anything in the world, he wanted to be good for his Mistress. 

“I know,” she smiled. Her blue eyes twinkled. Her lips were as red as her holiday costume.  “Why don’t you put on your garter belt next?”

Gold looked down at the coffee table, where all his paraphernalia was laid out. The garter belt was the same shiny forest green as the rest of the set. Since it was mostly straps, it lacked the expanse of smoothness that the panties provided. It wasn’t Gold’s favorite part of the ensemble, but he would need to wear it if he was going to keep his stockings up.

He placed the garter belt across his waist, then reached both hands behind him to fasten it. The hooks were damnably small and hard to feel out. How was anyone supposed to pull this thing together when they couldn’t look at it?

“Do you need help, Theo?” Mistress asked after a moment. From the amusement in her voice, she knew very well that he was out of his depth. The question was a reminder of the core principle of their dynamic: She would give him what he wanted, as long as he asked her for it.

He lowered his arms and looked at the floor when he spoke to her.

“Mistress, will you please help me?”

Only then did she stand, with a bright smile on her face. “Why, Theo! How clever of you to ask! I would be more than happy to help you dress.” 

He kept his eyes lowered as she came behind him and put her hands on his waist. She took the garter belt and moved it around so the fastenings were in front of him. Reaching around him, her gloved hands lined the hooks into the loops so the belt was a complete circle around his abdomen. Then she pulled it around him again so the clasp was on his back where it belonged.

“That’s how you can do it if you’re ever alone,” she said as she smoothed the straps. “When I’m with you, of course you should always ask for help.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

There was the slightest constriction around his stomach when he breathed. He liked it. It was like having Mistress’ arms around him every moment, a constant reminder of who he was and why he was doing this.

“Sit down now,” she ordered. Gold instantly obeyed. “Do you know how to roll on a pair of stockings?”

It felt good to sit. How did she know? He had been standing for too long, putting all his weight on one leg. Mistress took such good care of him. 

“I think I do,” he answered her question. “Will you correct me, if I do it wrong?”

“I will.” She towered over him in her platform boots. Her arms crossed over her chest, which pushed up the pale globes of her breasts. 

Gold swallowed and looked down again. He couldn’t get distracted by her beauty, not now. Not when she had given him a task to complete.

He picked up one of the stockings. They were also green, dark enough to cover up anything unsightly. He gathered the fabric up into a ring and placed one foot into the hole. Slowly, careful not to snag on anything, he lifted his leg to pull the stocking up.

Mistress Belle chuckled. “Are you trying to seduce me?”

Gold stopped what he was doing to look up at her. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” she shook her head. “It’s from a movie. Don’t worry about it. You’re doing very well, Theo.”

He did the same thing with the other stocking, then stood up to fasten the tops to the straps that hung down from the garter belt. With his cane in one hand, he presented himself.

“Did I do well, Mistress?”

She looked him up and down. “You’re not straight.”

Despite himself, Gold let out a laugh. “You know, I have been re-considering that lately.”

She snorted, and waved her hand as if to swat him. “That’s not what I mean, silly Theo. I’m looking at your stockings.”

A bright red line ran up the back of Gold’s stockings. Turning his head, he could see how the line on his bad leg was decidedly slanted. 

“May I touch you, Theo?” Belle asked softly. “May I help make you beautiful?”

Gripping his cane, Gold lifted his bad leg up for her ministrations. “Please,” he whispered. “Please help me, Mistress.”

He had never known her not to be gentle, even when doling out punishments, but she seemed especially careful when she put her hands near his leg. She straightened the line of his stocking and smoothed out the material. Her touch lingered on his ankle, warm and soothing. Could she feel the raised scars through the fabric? Did she want to see them? Was it out of morbid fascination or something more sympathetic? Could Mistress treasure the most grotesque part of his body in the same way she reveled in the perversions of his mind?

Would he ever be brave enough to find out?

She stood up. Neither of them spoke. Mistress Belle picked the corset up off the table and handed it to him. Gold was able to fasten the metal loops over the metal pegs in the front, but it was up to her to finish the lacing. It was an underbust corset, the top edge a flat line just under his nipples. With every pull of the laces, there was a feeling of tightness, but it wasn’t constricting. Gold felt contained in the corset. He felt safe. He was as protected in lingerie as he was in his three-piece suits. 

“Is that tight enough?” Mistress asked. “Is it too tight? Take a deep breath for me, Theo.”

He obeyed. His chest filled the corset. Somehow, it felt like the deepest breath he had ever taken.

“You look so lovely,” she said. “Truly, you do, my Theo.”

Gold’s cheeks burned. He ducked his head. “Thank you, Mistress.”

The last part of his outfit was a pair of elbow-length silk gloves. He had been worried about them. Much of his body could fit in women’s sizes, but his hands were indisputably male. Fortunately, there was a whole subculture of men who wore opera gloves with surprising regularity. Gold didn’t like to think of what he was doing as drag, but he was more than happy to buy from a drag queen supplier. 

The gloves were dark and elegant. His hands glided over his clothes, over his skin. The gloves made everything he touched feel smooth and sleek and lovely. They made him feel lovely, at least to the touch. And Mistress said he was lovely to look at. 

He let out a shuddering sigh, his only way of voicing the yearning that consumed him. His eyes fluttered closed as he touched his own body. It was broken and sagging and old, but somehow it was lovely, lovely, lovely. 

Tears leaked from his closed eyes as he caressed himself. Gold embraced the feeling. The same awe and wonder he normally only expressed for his mistress, now he felt it for himself. He was beautiful, like she said. He loved beauty. He could love himself.

He never thought he could feel this way. For years, he had denied himself even the desire to love himself. Why want something when it would never happen? 

It was happening now. Mistress Belle had made it happen. She allowed him to want again, and she had given him what he wanted. 

When he opened his eyes, she was looking at him. Her expression was soft and misty.

“Thank you,” she whispered. 

“For what?”

She reached out to take his hand. A red glove enveloped green, both of them satiny and beautiful. Mistress Belle came closer still, to kiss a tear away from his cheek.

“Thank you for letting me see your joy, Theo.”

He let out a breath, a hollow laugh. “Thank you for giving it to me.”

Smiling, Mistress shook her head. She picked a final item up off the coffee table. It was a length of green ribbon, with a festive bow at the midpoint. Coming behind him, she tied it loosely around his neck, like a collar. Then she turned him around to face her. She fingered the bow that nestled neatly in the hollow of his throat, underneath his Adam’s apple. 

“You’re my present,” she said softly. It was almost like she was talking to herself. “I don’t need anything else.”

If this was happening outside a scene, Gold would ask her what she meant. If she wasn’t his mistress but just Belle, he would offer to give her anything. He had enough money to buy her whatever she could ask for and her happiness would be worth the price. This woman had saved him. She had soothed the ache in his heart. It destroyed him to think she might suffer an ache as well. What was her true desire? What did she want? He would do anything to help her, but in their present roles, ‘anything’ had a very narrow definition. 

Somehow, she seemed to understand. Meaning passed between them without words. So much between Belle French and Theodore Gold could not be said. It could only be felt. Both of them knew that. Both of them tried to live with it.

Mistress hadn’t taken her hands away from his throat. A red-gloved fingertip brushed his long hair back behind his ear, revealing more of his face. She traced over his forehead, his cheek, his jaw. Her touch trailed down the nape of his neck and over his bare shoulders. She grazed down his arm, to the tips of his own gloved fingers, and then back up to his chest. She tweaked his nipples, felt the new curve the corset brought to his waist. 

Lower and lower, inch by inch, she claimed him with her touch. She fit her finger under the band of his garter belt, stretched out the elastic, then let it snap back on his hip. The pain was sharp and stinging and perfect. She did the same with the upper edge of his panties, though that snap was less intense. Both of her hands slid over the silk that covered his backside. She squeezed his arse like he was a fresh mango.

“Oh look at that.” She smiled broadly when she got to the front of his panties. “Look who’s so hard for me!”

She squeezed the silk over his cock and Gold bit down on his tongue.

“Mistress,” he groaned. “Please!”

‘Please’ what, he wasn’t sure, but he trusted Mistress to take care of him. All he had to do was tell her what was happening and allow her to make a decision. If she wanted him to come in his panties, then she knew it would happen if she kept touching him. If she wanted him to last longer, she would have to ease off on the stimulation. If she wanted to tease him and keep him on the verge of orgasm for minutes or hours, then he would have to submit to her will, no matter how agonizing it might be.

In her mercy, Mistress released her grip on his cock. She gave it a few loving pats as a promise of more attention soon. Then her hands slid down his thighs, over the straps of his garters and down to his stockings.

“Are you ready for me to touch your feet yet, Theo?”

Gold breathed in sharply, something between a gasp and a hiss. His heart was already racing, but now an edge of terror cut into the excitement. He froze. He couldn’t speak. Even if he could, he didn’t know what he wanted to say. 

“Alright,” Mistress nodded. She took his silence as a rejection of her proposal, but she knew very well that it wasn’t a rejection of her. She kept her hands on him, kept touching his shoulders and torso. She wanted to make sure he knew that nothing had changed between them.

She bent his head down so she could kiss him between the eyebrows. “We’ll never do anything you don’t want, Theo. Never.”

He swallowed. The ribbon-collar was tight at his throat. “I’m sorry.”

“Shh,” she petted his hair. “Nothing to be sorry for, little one. Not a single thing.”

He bowed his head. He accepted her touch, her sweet words. Mistress wasn’t angry at him, he knew that. The trouble was keeping from being angry at himself. He wanted to give her every part of his body. Hell, he wanted to give her his heart, mind, and soul. It wasn’t his intention to keep any part of himself away from her. 

Yet the thought of his beautiful mistress seeing the ugliest, weakest, most awful parts of him--it was enough to set him on a panic attack. He knew she would be kind and compassionate about his injury, but he also knew that nothing would be the same once she saw it. He couldn’t bear the thought of things changing, of Mistress losing any regard she might have for him. 

Nor could he bear the thought of his own reaction. Gold knew himself, he knew his own thin skin. If her expression flickered for a microsecond, it would all be over. He would blow it out of proportion, let it be confirmation that every compliment she had ever paid him was a lie, that every loving gesture had been nothing more than doing what he paid her to.

It would be so easy to believe she would never care for him--could never care for him--that she was just as twisted and self-serving as everyone else he had ever trusted. Because he was a monster, of course, so everyone who treated him with any human sympathy must be a liar who wanted to destroy him. Even at his best, he knew he was a difficult man to love. It would be so easy for Gold to convince himself that he was better off as he had been before he met her: alone and unfeeling, the enemy of love. 

He had come too far for that. He couldn’t allow himself to become that person again. More than his physical scars, that inner ugliness was what he wanted to keep Mistress Belle from ever touching. He had to protect her from it. He had to protect himself from his own worst impulses. 

“Are you ready for the next step, my Theo?” 

She was still holding his hand. He had lost track of Mistress at some point, but she made him focus on her now. She nodded toward the door at the back of her room. That was a more private area than the parlor-like front room they were in now. That was where their scenes became more intense. That was where Gold had spent the happiest moments of his life. 

He swallowed. He drew himself up and squared his shoulders. He couldn’t give Mistress every part of himself, not yet, but he damn well could give her the best of him. She deserved so much more, but he could only offer what he had.

“Yes, Mistress,” he told her. “I’m ready.”

#rss #99goosebumps #wrapping up her christmas gift #rumbelle #rumbelle secret santa #rumbelle fic

[mostlysignssomeportents]

End to End

In “End to End,” my new column for Locus Magazine, I propose a policy framework for a better internet: the “End to End” principle (E2E), a bedrock of the original design for the internet, updated for the modern, monopolized web, as a way of disenshittifying it:

https://locusmag.com/2023/03/commentary-cory-doctorow-end-to-end/

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/07/disenshittification/#e2e

The original E2E marked the turning point from telco-based systems where power was gathered at the center, controlled by carriers, to the packet-switched internet, where power moved to the edges. Under the old model, only the network operator could add new features. If you wanted to create, say, Caller ID, you needed to convince the phone company to update its switches to support a new signaling system (and you probably had to rent a Caller ID box from the carrier, too).

But packet-switching made it possible for new services to be created by people at the edges of the network. Once your device was connected to the internet, it could exchange data with any other device on the internet. If someone set up a voice-calling system and you connected to it, they could add Caller ID to it without asking Ma Bell for permission.

End to end was the core ethic of this system: the idea that the telcos that sat beneath these systems should get out of the way of their users, serving only to deliver data from willing senders to willing receivers as quickly, efficiently and reliably as possible.

E2E was a powerful idea, one that truly treated the telcos as utilities — the plumbing that sat beneath the services, obliged to serve its subscribers by doing their bidding to the extent they could. If you chose to use a internet calling service instead of making phone calls, the carrier’s job was to shuttle those packets around, not to slow them down or block them to funnel you into its rival service.

There’s a powerful logic to this: no one rents a phone line because they want to make sure that the carrier’s shareholders are getting the highest possible return on their investment. The reason we buy network connections is to get to the services we value.

We have no duty to arrange our affairs to the benefit of a carrier’s shareholders. If those shareholders are so emotionally fragile that they can’t bear the thought of network users making their own choices on which services to use, they should get into a different line of work.

E2E wasn’t a law, it was a principle. Principles are useful! They can be embedded in laws (for example, the laws that establish most network providers as common carriers often include an E2E rule), but just as importantly, they can give us a vocabulary for critiquing or designing services: “Ugh, I won’t use that service, it’s not end to end,” or “How can we make this work in an end to end way?”

Principles can be integrated into professional codes of ethics, or procurement rules for public bodies (“Our university only buys end to end services”). Tech groups and publications can use principles to rank competing technologies (“Which network providers are end to end?”).

Network Neutrality is a way of operationalizing E2E: the idea of Net Neutrality is that carriers should be obliged to treat all traffic the same. If you request Youtube packets from Comcast, Comcast should deliver those packets as quickly and reliably as it can, even though its parent company, Universal, owns several competing services.

Net Neutrality can be treated as a principle (“This ISP sucks — it violates Net Neutrality”) or as a regulation (“The FCC is fining your ISP because it violated Net Neutrality”). As a regulation, Net Neutrality has a problem: it’s hard to administer, because it’s very difficult to detect Net Neutrality violations. The internet is a “best effort” network, with no service guarantees, so when your Youtube connection starts to jitter, it’s hard to prove that this is because Comcast is screwing with it, as opposed to regular network congestion.

Which brings me to my E2E proposal: end to end for services. Contemporary services have no E2E. If you search for a product on Amazon, Amazon often won’t show you that product until you’ve looked at five screens’ worth of other products that have paid Amazon to interrupt your search:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

If you hoist an email out of Gmail’s spam folder and add the sender to your address book, Gmail will still send that message to spam, or even block its server. It’s incredible that we had a Congressional debate about whether Gmail should mark politicians unsolicited fundraising emails as spam but not whether emails from your reps that you asked to receive should be delivered:

https://doctorow.medium.com/dead-letters-73924aa19f9d

Platform creators are workers whose boss is an algorithm that docks every paycheck to punish them for breaking rules they aren’t allowed to know about, because if the boss told you the rules, you’d learn how to violate them without him being able to punish you for it. Again, it’s wild that we’re arguing about “shadowbanning” (a service choosing not to send your work to people who never asked to see it), while ignoring the fact that platforms won’t deliver your posts to people who explicitly subscribed to your feed:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

Alexander Graham Bell’s first telephone operators were young boys who entertained themselves by deliberately misconnecting calls, putting you in contact with people you never asked to talk to and refusing to connect you with the people you were trying to converse with.

As @brucesterling​ wrote in The Hacker Crackdown:

The boys were openly rude to customers. They talked back to subscribers, saucing off, uttering facetious remarks, and generally giving lip. The rascals took Saint Patrick’s Day off without permission. And worst of all they played clever tricks with the switchboard plugs: disconnecting calls, crossing lines so that customers found themselves talking to strangers, and so forth.

https://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html

Bell fired those kids. Even the original telecoms monopolist understood that the point of a telephone network was to connect willing speakers with willing listeners.

Today’s tech barons are much more interested in charging other people to interrupt your consensual communications with nonconsensual and often irrelevant nonsense and ads. This is part of the enshittification cycle: first, the platforms lock you in by giving you a good deal, including feeds that contain the things you ask to see and search boxes that return the thing you’re looking for.

Then, platforms take away your surplus and give it to business customers. They spy on you and use the data to help target you on behalf of advertisers, whom they charge low rates for ads that are reliably delivered. They insert performers’ and media companies’ posts into your feed, generating traffic funnels that result in clicks to off-platform sites. They offer low fees and even subsidies to platform sellers and creators who produce DRM media, like ebooks and audiobooks.

Users get locked into the platform — by the collective action problem of convincing their friends to leave, by the collapse of local retail that can’t match the investor-funded subsidies of would-be monopolists, by DRM that they are legally prohibited from removing, causing them to lose their investment if they quit the service.

Business customers also get locked to the platform: platform sellers have to sell where the buyers are; publishers and creators have to provide media where the audiences are; advertisers have to run ads on the services they’ve optimized for.

Once everyone is locked in, the platform can fully enshittify, harvesting surpluses from users and business customers for themselves. Platforms can hike fees, charge media companies and creators to reach their own subscribers, block posts with links off-site, insert ads into media (like Audible is doing with paid audiobooks!), and so on.

This is the cycle that E2E seeks to interrupt. E2E for services would dictate that platforms should connect willing speakers and willing listeners. The best match for your search should be at the top of the results — even if someone is willing to pay more to put a worse match there. Emails should be delivered to people you’ve told your provider you want to correspond with — not sent to a spam folder or blocked.

As with the original E2E, there’s lots of ways we can use this principle. It can simply be a term for criticizing platforms (“You aren’t sending my posts to the people who follow me — that’s a violation of the end to end principle!”). It can be a law (“It is a deceptive and unfair practice for ecommerce companies to deliberately return search results that are not the best match they can locate for the users’ query”). It can be a punishment (“The FTC settled with Google today and ordered the company to implement a Gmail feature that permits users to identify senders whose messages will never be blocked or sent to spam”).

Lots of people are pissed off about Big Tech and many have proposed that we could make it better by treating platforms as “utilities.” But I don’t want President DeSantis to run my email provider, or to decide what’s too “woke” for me to see (or post) on social media.

An E2E rule, on the other hand, creates a role for government that doesn’t determine who gets to speak or what they get to say — rather, it ensures that when people speak and to others who want to hear them, the message gets through.

Unlike Net Neutrality, E2E is easy to administer. If I claim that your emails are being sent to spam after I marked you as a sender I want to hear from, we don’t have to do a forensic investigation into Google’s mail servers to determine if I’m right. You just send me an email we observe where it lands.

Likewise for search: if I search Amazon for a specific product or model number, it’s easy to tell whether that product is at the top of the search results or not.

Same goes for delivery to subscribers: if we suspect that Twitter is shadowbanning posters — say, for including their Mastodon addresses in their bios, or linking to posts on Mastodon — we just send some test messages and see whether they are delivered.

Beyond administratability, E2E has another advantage: cheap compliance. Lots of the rules we’ve created or proposed for service providers are incredibly complex and expensive to comply with. Take rules about “lawful but awful” content, which require platforms to somehow determine whether a message constitutes harassment and block it if it does.

These rules require an army of expensive human moderators or a vast, expensive machine learning system, or both — so they guarantee that Big Tech will rule the internet forever, because no one else can afford to launch a new service with better community norms and better practices.

By contrast, E2E is cheap to comply with. Trusted-sender lists for email providers, search engines that put best results first, and content delivery algorithms that show you the things you asked to see in the order that they were posted are all solved problems:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/social-media-algorithms-twitter-meta-rss-reader/673282

This isn’t to say that platforms wouldn’t be allowed to offer algorithmic feeds and results. Think of how Tumblr does it: you can choose between a feed called “Following” (posts from people you follow) or “For You” (posts that Tumblr thinks you’ll enjoy). Forcing platforms to clearly label their recommendations and give you the choice of controlling your own feed is a powerful check against enshittification.

If you know when you’re in charge and when the platform is driving things, and if you can toggle away from platform-determined feeds to ones that you design, the platform has to be better than you at choosing what you see, or you won’t choose its recommendations.

Platform owners have hijacked the idea that “freedom of speech isn’t freedom of reach” to justify the now-ubiquitous practice of overriding users’ decisions about what they want to see:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

The Old Internet had lots to going for it. It wasn’t perfect, though. While it was easy to find the things you knew you liked, it could be hard to find things you didn’t know you liked. Recommendations, whether they come from an algorithm or a human editor, are a source of endless delights. But when a we find something we like through one of those recommendations, we need to know that we can find more from that source if we choose to.

Sometimes it’s nice to scroll an algorithmic feed and get a string of surprises. But we are forced to use those feeds, they will inevitably enshittify, to our detriment, and to the detriment of the people who make the things that please us.

As ever, the important thing about a technology isn’t what it does, it’s who it does it for and who it does it to. When we control our feeds, we can choose to let a recommender system do the driving. If we’re locked into a recommendation system, it drives us.

Today (Mar 7), I’m doing a remote talk for TU Wien.

On Mar 9, you can catch me in person in Austin at the UT School of Design and Creative Technologies, and remotely at U Manitoba’s Ethics of Emerging Tech Lecture.

On Mar 10, Rebecca Giblin and I kick off the SXSW reading series.

Image: Felix Andrews (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elephant_side-view_Kruger.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[Image ID: A room full of telephone operators at a switchboard; their heads have been replaced with hacker-in-a-hoodie heads. On the wall behind them is a poster ad for Facebook with the slogan, 'Find Your Facebook Group.' Atop the switchboard stands a small elephant with a bite taken out of its back.]

#pluralistic #enshittification #disenshittification #e2e #end to end #feeds #algorithmic feeds #search #reverse chrono #rss #amazon #net neutrality