How proprietary social-medias are shaping the future of Pepper&Carrot
TL:DR; Proprietary social media are imposing more and more rules and I, as a webcomic artist, am planning changes to adapt.
Intro
Here is a longer than usual blog-post to share with you what I have in mind since the start 2022 and what I have been working on. All started after I have realized that many part of Pepper&Carrot were still designed for Internet as it was when I started the project in 2014 and forgot to evolve and embrace the new rules of the Internet as set by the giant proprietary social-medias of 2022. I'll try to explain at first my diagnosis, and then explain how I plan to adapt and changes I'll put into action.
Diagnosis: a world of boost for adv and deboost
I had an issue in December 2021: the latest Pepper&Carrot episode 36 : The Surprise Attack hasn't received a lot of audience. I can see this metric with multiple tools and indicators. I was very surprised about that and maybe the first time I saw a curve going down in my always growing statistics on Pepper&Carrot. Weird.
Screenshot of Episode 36 post on Facebook
This post on social media −but also in general all my recent episode of 2021− felt like deboosted. Was it the thumbnail detected to have a large amount of darkness in it? Was it the expression of the fierce dragon and surprised Pepper? Or the title with the words "The Surprise Attack"? It might be also because the episode was bad too, or 'too long, didn't read'. Anyway, I started to search about the "deboost" thing, and it sounds like it has been normal for proprietary social media to start deboosting posts. Here are the rules as user @hangul observed and shared:
Description: @hangul on Twitter explaining the observed rules of "deboost".
But social media will not hesitate to also do the reverse and boost what they have been designed for: ads. For that, they'll use the post already made by poeple like you and me most of the time: fan-arts of the latest big AAA video games and Disney series or movies to invade your timeline. Someone you know 'liked' it? You'll see it. You like art and an artist made a fan-art about it? You'll see it. This way they'll make you believe that everyone is now interested into these cultural goods (protected by paywall) and will put a social pressure on your shoulder to pay to see them. Because "You haven't seen it yet? you are not on the same page than other!" is a powerful motivator.
Why I'm able to see that? Because I can compare with my timeline on Mastodon, a free/libre social network without this type of algorithm that deboost/boost adv. No one over there on Mastodon tried to sell me Loki on Disney+, Elden Ring or Turning Red, and the interactions with my blog post about the release of the book 4 or the latest episode were consistent with the one before...
All in all, I find that very unfair.
But how?
How to comply with rules always changing and without any possibility to know them in advance?
And what if a proprietary painting software suddently ask to pay for deboosting #krita hashtag? This is just pure 'what if' and no accusation, but it eventuality become possible when the rules are hidden... right?... I dislike that a lot.
The algorithm is totally opaque code and some some social media already limits your posts to a part of your subscribers and even not hide that: you have to pay for reaching ... your subscribers .
Facebook: pay to reach your subscribers (very Meta, if you accept the pun) montage of screenshot done in 2020 in French.
Adaptation: the comic strip experimentation
After that diagnosis, I decided to do an experiment in January, a small comic strips about the childhood of Pepper, the Todo-list and Imagination. It was a format more compatible and friendly with the diagnosis I had. I was able with that format to seduce the proprietary social-medias platforms:
- Media posted directly on the social media with readability adapted for small device (smartphone).
- Quick time to read it, something that doesn't interrupt scrolling too much (and so, opportunity to be exposed to adv).
- Almost no text, no link and world that works for mulitple region of the globe (Todo list, Imagination).
These two short experiments were done in a production time of less than 48h each and they received twice or more attention than the main episodes. I'm speaking here about Episode who took me 4 months full time at 14h/day without week-end...
I learned a valuable lesson here, but how to continue Pepper&Carrot episode in this new context?
Description: Comparing two post on Twitter.
The legal problem of Creative Commons on social media
To that, came another layer of issue: the legal one. I didn't wanted so far to post the full episodes of Pepper&Carrot on any social media because I always thought the license wasn't compatible with them legally. If you look closely: I only post a thumbnail plus link, I made that for blog post too.
Proprietary social media requires in their TOS a full co-ownership of the media you post. It makes sens to run the service; to keep your medias on their machine and not be arrested because having an illegal copy of it. But that's also where it conflict with Creative Commons license.
If a proprietary social media has a contract with a newspaper, or a TV informative show; they can authorize to display the post thanks to their co-ownership; and also give it to the said TV show or newspaper. This one can crop it, do color correction about it, print on news paper and bypass the attribution? The TOS never says: "if a license exist on the media, please respect the license"... That's why I always considered Creative Commons and proprietary social media were not compatible (except CC0) but...
BUT.. all of that was until I read this solution in January on a article on Creative Commons website:
"CC Legal Counsel Sarah Pearson explained that CC licenses don’t allow sub-licensing so uploaders are not granting the platform any rights directly to content that isn’t theirs under copyright. Most social media terms of service require that a user either a) owns the copyright to their posted content or b) has the right to use that content. When that’s the case, openly licensed content is appropriate to share on the social media platform as long as the license requirements are followed by the uploader."
A sample of Sharing Openly Licensed Content on Social Media: A Conversation with GLAM , by Victoria Heath , June 15, 2020 , CC-By.
So, it's not crystal clear but it sounds like a workaround. To be fair, this rule sounds debatable in court. But I'm just an artist, and if CC Legal Counsel tells it, it mean I have been wrong the whole time in my understanding of CC-By on this topic.
So, good news in a way, I'll be able to post comic directly on proprietary social media, but also Tapas, Webtoons and other platforms that also became central to webcomic despite their TOS that I thought non compatible with CC...
Conclusion and changes
I first went to a radical change in reaction: continue the mini comic strip and stop the longer episodes. I was planning to switch the "patronage support per episode" method to a "monthly support" because I was planning to post a comic strip per week, directly on social media, in English, without translation/transcript system, but still under CC-By.
But... making super short comic strip of three or four panel were at the end not my cup of tea. So, I abandoned the idea. Same about switching to "monthly donation/patronage" as my main model: I abandoned this idea too. I tested to draw storyboards for more single picture and small comic strip, I tried to enjoy it, but I missed the Pepper&Carrot longuer episode format where I could make AND a comic strip joke AND an adventure. Working on the printed book four also made me re-appreciate the work done on the previous episodes format.
Fortunately, doing comic-strip wasn't the only option, as I could find many successful comic author posting directly full multipages stories on social media:
Post of artist @weremagnus successfully sharing comic pages directly on social media and using (1/3) thread
So, my main decision is just stop the super long episode of 9, 10, 14 pages. Also, being absent during 4 month to prepare them is harmful to the project. I'll try to reduce to less than 2 month, every month being my ultimate and utopic goal.
I'm planning to write now only short format: between 5 to 7 pages; similar to what I did when I started the series. It will have hopefully more release and less production time.
The layout of the panels will focus on readibility for smartphone but the series was already optimised for that: the panels are not much complex to read at smaller size, and text of the font was in most case big enough. I'll just make sure it is now a priority.
As you already understood, I'll also post all the pages directly on the social media, including the credits. The social media with not a lot of picture (limited to 4) have a workaround with 'threads':
A diagram showing what I plan to do for 5 to 7 pages episodes and wrap it to two posts
Translations and post on the website will be linked on a different post to avoid "deboost for external link"; but except that nothing will change on this aspect: RSS, website, translations, transcript. Hosting sources, print resolutions, all the services continues.
News about Episode 37 production:
Screenshot: Work in progress, Beeref, my favorite reference tool on left and Krita, on Kubuntu.
I'm reaching now my "pre-color step" (as you can see on the screenshot illustrating this blog post). "Pre-color" is −in my own words and process− a rough colored painting pass on the webcomic that I paint under the drawing turned at low opacity. The main purpose of this pass is to follow the cinematography I have in mind and keep a consistent continuation of ambiance and colors from panels to panels. It's really my favorite part of the process.
But at this step, it is still less than half of the full work done on the webcomic episode: polishing, corrections, painting accent are coming later in the process and are the real time consumers. The episode is short (6 pages): so, this polishing shouldn't take more than 2 weeks full time, but don't count too much on a mid-April release.
In fact, the text (in French right now) still require to be submitted to the proofreaders for dialog and lines enhancement, then to enter into string freeze and then get to the English translation before opening to all other languages. It's often a 3 weeks process at its best, and the episode is still not fully 'pre-colored' to enter this process. Because of that, I have in mind a realistic estimated time delivery for end April.
Anyway, I'm really happy to post 'soon' a new episode and experiment all I wrote here.
Constructions studies for Pepper, preparatory work for episode 37.
Conclusion
Whenever I like it or not, hidden deboost/boost rules of algorithm are really shaping the future of Pepper&Carrot. It cost me to admit that, because I thought I made the most independent structure ever with the self-hosted website of Pepper&Carrot and the blog, but it is not enough. Proprietary social medias are manipulating timeline and use your posts and mine to better place their adv in between (or better, to use them as adv). That's why I have to be an in-situ entertainer and not someone trying to attract you on a external link.
That's all, I want to thank your generous support on the latest episode, I could use it to manage the production of the printed book four and do my experimentations and some refactoring here and there (the transcript dictionary system of names migrated from a table using LibreOffice calc to PO/Gettext files and the documentation of translation system was rewritten and simplified). I also could catch up with all the personal todo-list I had to postpone when I had the four month production for episode 36.
Thank you for reading!
To the commenters: This article is not a call here for you to debate in the comment why RSS, self-hosting or Mastodon and free/libre social medias are superior and the "good" while why proprietary social medias are evil and I should quit them. I understand that, we are on the same page. But if I want to expand my audience as an artist and continue to survive for making a living of my art, I don't think I can skip having a presence on them in 2022. Also many example are specific about Twitter here, because this is the social media with the most limitation (4 picture max, text limitation, agressive algorythm for boost/deboost). Once a format adapt for Twitter, it will adapt on every other social medias.
Typo and proofreading special thank to: Dreeg Ocedam and Theremin.
42 comments
I think this is the sad truth.
If I would put my written novel on social media almost nobody would read it. but when I post some funny phrases I get more audience for sure.
I determine this phenomena even on authors forums where people likes to read. When I post a small scene (300-800 words) I got about 4 times more responses than when I post a bigger scene (1500+ words).
As a Rss-Feed Consumer, I thank you very much that you keep your website and RSS-Feed online.
Kind Regards
You need to do whatever you need to do in order to keep this precious work of yours afloat. The web (now with its surrounding ecosystem of proprietary apps) have changed a lot of the things since the early days of the Web 2.0. Creations under CC, GPL and other similar licenses have seen brighter days. By the way I found your comic a few days ago thanks OpenComic, since it came with the first two episodes, and it was love at first sight.
Congratulations on your article, David! It's really well explained, and it's something that it made total sense to me when I read it, before I only had suspicions about how social media works. It feels sad how they work, but I complete understand your point of view.
Hope you can find a working formula to reach more audiences.
What is tht in Pepper's chest in the screenshot under News about Episode 37 production:? Did she she an illness or a curse? I hope she is okay.
Couldn't you set up a series of smaller releases on social media that lead people to this site, where they can find the larger posts? I can see the value in making each type exclusive to its media -- and then use your shop to sell both in their full glory.
I've found that having weekly content has provided me with a sensible cadence. Although I'm not trying to complete a story, just make Inkscape better and can report whatever I managed to get done in that time. It does seem important to some of my supporters to have that regular relationship.
Hello David,
Thank you for sharing your experience and thoughts. It is very instructive for me.
A big fan of Pepper & Carrot
thank you for this post.. i'm big fan too
Oh yes, I have friend writters who experimented a lot on social media. The parallal between a full work on a novel (that require an external link to read) and a single funny sentence directly on the social media is really similar to my example with the full 14 pages of episode 36 and the 4 panel comic strip in a single picture Imagination.
Thank you about the RSS, I like them a lot too. I just wish RSS had a 'number of follower for this feed' indicator; something public that can't be cheated. A feature like this sounds controversial , I guess, and not really free/libre in spirit; but in my opinion this type of metric (I have no idea how possible it could be implemented technically) could totally make the marketing/industry/commercial come back to RSS big time. A sort of necessary evil bit , imo. (well, random thought here).
Oh thank you for your feedback about the recent discovery on OpenComic!
> "Creations under CC, GPL and other similar licenses have seen brighter days"
Oh yes 👍
Thank you, and if I find a good one after the next experiments, I'll share it!
(oops, I thought the mini preview on the Overview docker was too little to be read)
It's part of episode 37 story I don't want to spoil now, but you are very close 😉 , thank you for looking at details!
That's indeed a good idea: quicker strips to maintain presence with comics (maybe black and white?). I'll certainly open a thread on https://framagit.org/peppercarrot/scenarios soon to brainstorm about mini strips. It might be a similar strategy than what the Youtubers already do: working on main episodes polished in background while releasing vlog/quick format/stream to maintain presence and satisfy the algorithm.
Btw, good job on the Youtube channel ( https://www.youtube.com/c/MartinOwens/videos , for other curious about it); it really helps me to see what come soon in Inkscape, I enjoy following it. 👍
Thanks!
😍
Merci pour cet article qui nous présente la face cachée de la vie des artistes à l’heure des réseaux sociaux. On ne se rend pas d’assez compte de la difficulté et des choix à faire pour continuer dans le temps à présenter vos œuvres.
Courage pour la suite, c’est toujours un réel plaisir de retrouver Pepper et Carrot. Et de livre vos posts sur le blog.
That's some lovely insight and honestly really interesting. I've found this myself as an artist, but you've put the feelings into actual words, and into something I can point at.
I personally already try to post on all the social media's, but the biggest problem for me are: Twitters ratio for sizes of images, and the stark contrast to Instagram's pure square. Sometimes it's just upsetting trying to make it fit into the frames that I don't even want to have to.
I'll be honest in that I only recently changed to using RSS feeds. I have assumed most sites didnt allow them, but to my surprise 99% of my followed webcomics actually do continue to use them. I'm glad you are one of them too, for I never saw this blog or insight before and I do genuinely enjoy seeing your thoughts, inspirations and process, I appreciate these blog posts take time, and thank you for taking that time to share them!
Maybe this can help you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_tracking
Look at Method 1 (When you publish a comic, you don't have to embed an invisible image, you can look how many times your comic pages is accessed)
you can track how many times your blog images are downloaded
or use an open source to analyze your website traffic (eg: https://matomo.org/free-software/)
Do you know if puting half of the comic and a link to the rest as a first comment would get a deboost ? Maybe it is worth a try.
These are some tough decisions to make ! Courage to you !
To be honest I understand too little about this whole social media industry but it seems pretty nasty beneath the surface. I will continue to enjoy your art on your website and in print and I'll continue to support it through Patreon, but I also understand that for both artists as well as for athletes it has become near impossible to make a living without it. So I admire your perseverance though I also hope that you can continue to invest the majority of your time in that what gives you energy. The future could go either way. More power could go to the major tech companies yet at the same time they're also getting less appreciation than a decade ago. I understand that for instance the European Union is working on a plan to make major communication channels like Whatsapp open (similar to regular calls and SMS text) so that people are no longer tied to a certain provider. Maybe if something like this could be realized with other social media as well, it might make things easier and probably a FOSS client will develop too. I don't know what this should be like exactly but anything that can free people from any proprietary platform without losing what they've build up would be a great thing!
Merci!
Thank you very much for the feedback about the blog! Oh yes, the compression of images on social media is also another set of opaque 'hardcoded' decision that can affect the control on the post. (and same for videos, I follow many blender 3D artist dealing with that). I still have no idea if I should just post the higher resolution and let the social media handle compression; or pre-compress and optimise before sending it.
No one really know, and if a rule exist, it might be unvalid a week after.
But, from what I understood; external link can be part of replies or for ending the thread (eg. (3/3) post for only links and external things).
Thanks for the encouragements!
Yes, interoperability of social media and chat protocol is something that would be so big and revolutionary. I also read here and there article about it being studied more and more seriously at a political level in EU. I wish a lot for this to exists!
Hi David!
Honestly, when I have read this, I thought this is a joke for April Fool's Day. ^__^
After releasing the most genius episode of all series (episode 36), you let proprietary system dictate how to shape your creative process... I've got a feeling there is some piece is missing here.
I think it's worth to think what is your main goal after all?
1. to reach wider audience?
2. to have your followers notified about new episodes?
3. to get more funding?
Those goals are different and in my experience there are different tools to solve each of them.
At the same time, social media is not a solution that covers each of them completely.
1. For wider audience reach it worth to reach other communities and find common goals or matter for collaboration. In my practice I've used that strategy for past year and keeping it as it gives good results. Entering some other (but well-established) community, which intersects with your project in some aspect is also giving new new contacts, new contributors, followers and (maybe most importantly) new knowledge.
2. For keeping people notified about new episodes there are much better tools than social media. For example, Email Lists (we can provide a service for you for free if you will decide to go with that). Today's common solution is to have a separate Telegram channel, where you publish only notifications about new episodes.
3. For funding it is more complicated, but in my opinion it worth to investigate blockshain-based technologies like NFT and maybe Ton.place.
This is just some pieces of my own investigation, which I am also doing right now in parallel with you.
The solution for situation I have made for myself is: I don't rely on social media as single solution for above tasks. I am just treating it as "mini production log", to show that there are some activity in the project, that we are not dead. For other aspects I rely on other tools.
I will be happy to share more if there are any interest in that.
Thank you for your nice words about episode 36.
My main goal with this adaptation is to reach more eyes, so I guess "visibility" in general. A webcomic exists only when it is read, imo. More frequent release is also another clear goal; because the health of the project is related to that. All in all, I don't need a astonishing expansion: I just need that my stats to stabilize or keep growing (even slightly) as it was since 2014. I hope this subtle changes will get that done.
About funding, it's in my opinion just the result of many individual decisions. The decisions to support are often very various and happens for multiple reasons. So, it's a very chaotic set of variables that do not prefer to monitor or attribute directly to my actions.
Blockchain and NFT aren't options for me; I think both are very problematic for multiple reasons and I'm really deeply opposed to their usage as they are right now. I'm surprised you advise them. Same about advising a crypto social network like ton.place with exclusive content model. That's not the spirit of Pepper&Carrot or compatible with my philosophy... I thought you knew it.
I am quite excited to see the new stuff
All the time on places like tumblr and twiter they post 4 pages per part, ive seen comics on there that go past 12 parts, so im sure you could still do longer parts if you want
Oh yeah you could also try webtoon if you haven't already
Yeah I think it shouldn't be too hard to realize if people (and companies) really cooperate. I recall there was aMSN as an open source client for MSN chat, you have open source Telegram clients. They could just as well agree on a single protocol and all work with it. Then again I can imagine Telegram might have higher security standards which may be restrictive to other platforms, so we'll see how that will work out. But for social media like Facebook etc, I don't think one really is more safe than they other so they could just as well cooperate there.
That said, I really dislike all that social media stuff and I'm happy that I don't really need it. Just the amount of energy that is being burned by their engines digging through all the data, hoping to find something that's marketable seems just insane.
I am not sure if you have already checked, but have you ever heard of a site called Top Web Comics? You can get a link up on there to lead people to your comic site and visitors can vote on whether they like it, which will take you up the ranks for more visibility. And have you thought of diversifying your video access to Odysee, Rumble, and Bitchute? All three, but especially Odysee, are up and coming alternate options to YouTube. It's also my understanding that Odysee was also constructed using free, open sourced software. I also know of a social media site called Gab. It's similar in format to Twitter, but they might not be as user biased. I also know of Spiderforest Comics and Hiveworks Comics. They are both hosting sites for comics.
Thank you for Top Web Comics, first time I met the name; I'll investigate (same for the two other ref).
About the social media you link, I checked on Wikipedia:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitChute
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumble_(website)
- https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odysee
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gab_(social_network)
And all have reputation for being nest to hate speech and conspirationism content (and, according to the article, it mean even more than on Youtube...so) Some like Gab are directly attributed to "far-right" by the Wikipedia description. I'm sure they also host can host good content and poeple, but I don't want to associate Pepper&Carrot to this type of reputations.
Hi David! Thank you for taking your time to respond!
> My main goal with this adaptation is to reach more eyes, so I guess "visibility" in general.
Instead of changing shape of your main content, it might worth to think how to shape your content for social media in some creative way. For example, if you can't publish multiple pages, then you can try to create a slideshow, which is showing comic panels with a nice music, convert it into video and publish as video (i.e. on Instagram's IGTV). This can be just a simple slideshow, not the fully animated frames as we do. So it shouldn't take much time and you can ask for help from community to do that experiment for you.
BTW, I hope after we finally release a few animated episodes of Pepper&Carrot, I hope this will bring more attention to your project too. In fact, I need to solve the same problem of improving the audience outreach. So we actually have a common goal here. ^__^
> I just need that my stats to stabilize or keep growing (even slightly) as it was since 2014
By the way, did you considered other factors that possibly have influenced the popularity of the episode?
For example, it has "Shojo Ai" theme (I mean kissing scene). Personally, I have nothing against Shoujo Ai, but I know many places where this topic is not considered as family-friendly. ;)
Also, the political events of March also might influence the stats, as this captures attention of people "en mass".
For example, in Synfig we had our stats boosted almost twice during pandemia of 2021 and for March of 2022 our stats has dropped. Just because everyone is paying attention to the conflict. ^__^
> About funding, it's in my opinion just the result of many individual decisions.
Agree. I also think that it is heavily depend on the size of your audience and even made my own formula for it:
funding = audience_size * audience_quality * your_own_reputation
> Same about advising a crypto social network like ton.place with exclusive content model. That's not the spirit of Pepper&Carrot or compatible with my philosophy...
Please don't get me wrong. The Ton.place is just a tool and it is just a matter how you use it. For example, you are using Patreon, which is also based on exclusive content model, but this is not puts your project behind a paywall (because you use that differently). ~__^
So, in Morevna Project I would like to make an experiment and use Ton.place as follows: we will publish exactly the same content as we publish on Mastodon or Twitter.
The advantage here is that we will get paid for every like or comment. Audience at Ton.place knows that any comment or like is a way to support the project, so they will use that opportunity to help. The advantage here is that Ton.place has specific audience, who used to value creator's work and they used to pay for that. Reaching that audience can be a good benefit.
> Blockchain and NFT aren't options for me; I think both are very problematic for multiple reasons and I'm really deeply opposed to their usage as they are right now. I'm surprised you advise them.
To be honest, I would be surprised myself, if I would suggest you to use them 2 weeks ago. XD
Yes, this topic requires careful research and thoughtful approach. I accidentally hit some situation, which has forced me to dig into that and do my research. Now I have some conclusions.
Yes, there are problematic aspects in that sphere, but (again) I can see this as a tool (a very powerful tool) for artists (and especially for ones who endorses creative-commons philosophy, like myself).
Here it might worth to put parallel with regular (fiat) money. Money is just a tool, they might be used for good or bad things - it's just a matter of choice for person who uses them. But I don't met a single person who said "I am refusing to use money, because someone use them to buy weapons (or do any other bad things).
I can see this tool (technology) has a lot of potential and I plan to experiment with it.
One of the main problems is that many people who deal this technology do not really understand it and mechanics behind it. People mostly go after hype or greed. And that feels sick indeed.
Considering that this tool can be put into right use, I plan to experiment with it and I hope my experiments will help people to see the principles and good perspectives.
This might be related to some risks regarding community opinion, but I believe that this can lead to a good and constructive discussions at least.
Hi, David. Thanks as always for laying out your thoughts so clearly.
I'm sure you've heard by now that Elon Musk plans to buy Twitter in totality; do you think this will affect your plans vis-a-vis proprietary social networks?
Je pense que tu fais fausse route sur le côté légal du problème. L'article du site officiel de Creative Commons que tu cites concerne le partage des œuvres d'autrui sur les réseaux sociaux, pas le partage par l'auteur lui-même.
J'ai jeté un coup d'œil aux conditions d'utilisation de Twitter. Ils demandent en effet énormément de droits, y compris ceux « d'adapter » et « modifier » le contenu et de le « distribuer » sur « tout support et selon toute méthode de distribution actuellement connus ou développés dans le futur ». Le contrat précise aussi que l'utilisateur qui poste un contenu « déclare » et « garantit » qu'il a le droit ou l'autorisation d'accorder tous ces droits à Twitter.
Concrètement, une œuvre publiée sous CC-By ne peut donc pas être partagée sur Twitter, sauf évidemment par son auteur ou avec l'autorisation de celui-ci. Si l'auteur poste lui-même son œuvre sur Twitter, alors c'est dans le cadre des conditions d'utilisation de Twitter, pas de la CC-By, et donc Twitter obtient bien le droit d'en faire ce qu'ils veulent, y compris la republier sans mentionner l'auteur.
Autrement dit, si tu veux publier tes œuvres sur Twitter, tu n'as pas d'autre choix que d'accepter qu'il y a un risque que Twitter les réutilise sans te créditer.
Hi Clarc,
About tracking RSS, the issue is not with the statistic I can get (I already know how many RSS client reads daily the rss file because the server log register this, as on any server). The issue is with providing that as a "public statistic" that can't be cheated by owner. It's impossible for a commercial partner, or a sponsor to access to how many RSS follower I have except by asking directly to me (and then, it can be cheated, it rellies on honnesty of providing the right number only).
I think this flaw is partially a reason why RSS will never replace social network: they miss this feature where a third party on the network can assure the role to report to all party an audience/engagement metric. Without that, how to differenciate for an industry a content that is followed by 5 RSS readers than one followed by 100K? I think this is an additional reason of why we had to wait for Youtube/Twitter/Instagram generation of social media to come before seeing the commercial industry founding and creating partnership with internet content creators.
And just to clarify; I'm not saying competition of numbers or recognition threw audience metric is a good thing. I'm not saying commercial industry founding and creating partnership is sustainable either. But it helps in 2022 to gain visibility and not disapear. That's simply a fact: capitalists who own an entertainement market needs metrics before investing. They need to know in a mathematical way what is bankable and what's not, it's for shareholder, for investment, for injecting money as producer or publisher. RSS doesn't provide them this information, therefore, a content with a big success via RSS is not known because this number is not public and even if the metric is provided by the author; it's not reliable.
Ha right about Blockchain/crypto money. If it's the only way to keep afloat the donations for the Morevna projects due to recent restriction, then keeping income + food + roof for your crew is a priority. I totally understand that.
Yes, I'll try it. I still have on my todo to evaluate their ToS a bit deeper.
Thanks! Yes, I understand how this communication from Elon Musk can symbolicly affect users; they suddently realise Twitter is not a public space and have a potential owner: one they can identify as a person now he speaks about it. For me, nothing new: I always knew it was proprietary, it's 10 years I tell that. I know that my data are owned by this company, and I doubt the actual boss of Twitter (+shareholder) has more ethic and personal values than Elon Musk. So, I don't think it might change the situation. It changed only how many users perceived the situation, imo.
I already have my Mastodon account, and it is my main social network: it's where I'm engaged the most in replying, interacting, creating connections with other users because I feel safer on it and surrounded by not only Pepper&Carrot, but by the core Free/Libre community. If users of Twitters wants to leave Twitter; they can follow me via @davidrevoy@framapiaf.org . They'll follow the same content, I repost manually (no bot/redirection or link). So, I feel I'm doing my part of the job as a content creator and can republish on as many proprietary network around. As long as I keep the kernel on Mastodon + blog and RSS, then I always propose a sane alternative to my audience and force no one to follow me on a bad social media.
Of course, if the ToS of Twitter changes for something I totally disagree with, for Musk or for any future change: I'll leave the platform. But I think it is unlikely to happen. Twitter might be bought by Amazon, or Meta, or Alphabet, or the reverse. Big fish will continue to eat big fishes... As an artist, I'll have to continue to go on the platform where the audience is in any way to attempt to expose my work to new eyes.
Salut Changaco,
Merci pour ton travail sur Liberapay et pour le commentaire ici.
Alors Pepper&Carrot (les épisodes), même fait presque en totalité par moi, contiennent quand même toujours une part collective sous CC-By: les correcteurs de fautes, les aides pour fluidifier certains dialogues, les traductions. C'est pour ça que je n'avais jamais republié sur Twitter de travaux collaboratifs en CC jusque là car j'avais la même interprétation que tu écris ici. Je postais seulement des dessins ou composition fait par moi à 100%; une base que j'était sure de pouvoir céder les droits.
Mais pour l'article que je partage ( https://creativecommons.org/2020/06/15/sharing-openly-licensed-content-on-social-media/ ); il dit qu'a partir du moment ou l'auteur mentionne explicitement que le contenu c'est du Creative Commons (et du By, Sa, Nd, Nc) c'est inalienable par la plateforme et donc, ça surpasse le ToS de celle ci. D'ailleurs, l'article se vente même de l'example https://twitter.com/creativecommons/status/1271072384951484417 ; une oeuvre en CC-By-Nc-Nd republié sur Twitter avec le compte officiel de la Creative Commons, ou l'attribution et license fait partie de la balise Alt... (ce que je trouve un poil obscure, mais c'est pourtant l'example).
Si cette pratique de reposte de CC sur Twitter ou autre reseaux sociaux était illegale: alors il faudrait punir tous les comptes de Wikipedia, Wikimedia, Creative Commons et bien d'autre ( et pas que des reseaux sociaux: même une utilisation de CC sur un article de Medium serait interdite avec les ToS de Medium, blogger, tumblr, bref... partout sauf du self hosted sans ToS...).
Le paragraphe de CC Legal Counsel Sarah Pearson est claire: la close d'attribution de BY, SA, NC ou de ND doit être respecté par la plateforme (eg. Twitter). Bon, après, je ne suis pas dûpe: gros LoL pour voir ça un jour mis en application dans un procès et faire cas d'école; mais comme je l'écris dans l'article interpretation pour interpretation: je vais tacher pour une fois de prendre celle ou je ne me tire pas une balle dans le pied, surtout quand c'est celle conseillé et mis en pratique par Creative Commons; Twitter inclus.
I stumbled onto your blog about transcripts while looking for a way to sort My Little Pony characters dialogue into individual character so I could analyze Starlight and Trixie so I can write better fanfiction and ended up here and yeah, capitalism and the pressures it puts upon artistry fucking suck. Your webcomic looks pretty cool and I'll probably take a while to check it out but I will check it out at some point
One thing I will say is that comic dubs on YouTube can get a lot of views, so you might consider hiring some voice actors or just finding some volunteers and making some of those for YouTube. Although I give the disclaimer that I only have familiarity with My Little Pony comic dubs and audio books and even then those aren't really my wheelhouse or ken
Hi I'm studying how systems work to try to help make the world a better place and you seem like someone to stay in touch with
(See my other comment for how I got here in the first place)
Here are the systems study notes by the way although my problem is I'm super rambly and it takes a lot of time and energy to condense stuff so people actually read it because that's not what I'm good at I'm good at the ideas and the connections https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SvdkPwlmFp6FLGE9Mm1J26r897xQQPOSm3tuwFWJ3k0/edit?usp=drivesdk
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