someone in my writing group was found that the website peliplat.com was offering a free contest with a money prize at their school. cool! we want this, they're obviously the best at everything they write and we love and cheerlead them for that! and the competition looked easy enough but then the writing group took a look at it and boy howdy, it was the sketchiest shit imaginable.
the business model is like if you had a content mill but all the writers competed for contest winnings. big ick. and writers have to give up all their IP claims globally, forever (normal for some contexts, definitely should not for this one). plus all their writing can be used in peliplat's ads, and "Participants agree not to exercise or attempt to exercise any rights (including moral rights) in a way that would prevent or restrict the exploitation of the proprietary rights granted to the Organizer." no moral rights, you writerly fucks!
they also only announce the winners within two weeks of the contest end, at which point the winner must contact them, and if they don't then sucks to suck because peliplat gets to keep the money. good on them though i guess bc it means they've figured out how to get a full content roster of non-ai content for under 10k a month.
anyway the moral is get a writing group who will love you and also comb through the terms and conditions of any fuckers that will attempt to take advantage of you
