I love this post because the replies are like "for anyone who doesn't know what nestle did, they benefited from [insert human rights violation here]" but nestle has done SO many fucked up things you get a different topic in every comment
Drained water from places suffering from drought for absolute pennies.
Made African mothers dependent on their milk formula, which they gave for free, until their milk dried up. Then they required them to purchase it, mothers could not afford it, mixed in too little to fulfill nutrient needs, and mixed it with polluted water. Children died.
Used slavery to produce their cocoa.
Pushed for water to be considered a “want” not a “need” and is at the forefront of arguments that water is not a human right.
Poisoned Chinese infants with melamine in their milk formula.
Demanded Ethiopia pay a debt owed to Nestle, during a FAMINE.
Price-fixed food items.
Contributed to deforestation for their cocoa farming.
The worst thing is, Nestle owns TONS of other brands, making it difficult to avoid for certain products.
They have an entire page on Wikipedia just for the problems they've caused.
It seems like they know people are trying to boycott them and are trying to avoid advertising a brand is theirs as much as they legally can get away with on the packaging.
update from the discord group courtesy of one of my mutuals;
do not trust that damned survey. change your discord password. utilize 2FA.
I use 2FA on every website I log into, and it didn't ask for any details when I took the survey, but I still don't trust that thing at all. One can never be too safe.
It hasn’t crossed my tumblr dash but it sure is circulating on twitter with 3.5M views, 10K likes, 17K retweets and counting. Normally this would be great! I love data and charts and comparisons!
Except this data is GARBAGE and belongs in the TRASH.
I first noticed something fishy when I realized that Steve/Bucky – the 5th largest ship on AO3 by total fic count – wasn’t on this Top 100 list anywhere. I know Marvel’s popularity has fallen in recent years, but not that much. Especially considering some of the other ships that made it on the list. You mean to tell me a femslash HP ship (Mary MacDonald/Lily Potter) in which one half of the pairing was so minor I had to look up her name because she was only mentioned once in a single flashback scene beat fandom juggernaut Stucky? I call bullshit.
Now obviously jumping to conclusions based on gut instinct alone is horrible practice... but it is a good place to start. So let’s look at the actual numbers and discover why this entire dataset sits on a throne of lies.
Here are the results of filtering the Steve/Bucky tag for all works created between Jan 1, 2023 and Dec 31, 2023:
Not only would that place Steve/Bucky at #23 on this list, if the other counts are correct (hint: they're not), it’s also well above the 1520-new-work cutoff of the #100 spot. So how the fuck is it not on the list? Let’s check out the author’s FAQ to see if there’s some important factor we’re missing.
The first thing you’ll probably notice in the FAQ is that the data is being scraped from publicly available works. That means anything privated and only accessible to logged-in users isn’t counted. This is Sin #1. Already the data is inaccurate because we’re not actually counting all of the published fics, but the bots needed to do data collection on this scale can't easily scrape privated fics so I kinda get it. We’ll roll with this for now and see if it at least makes the numbers make more sense:
Nope. Logging out only reduced the total by a couple hundred. Even if one were to choose the most restrictive possible definition of "new works" and filter out all crossovers and incomplete fics, Steve/Bucky would still have a yearly total of 2,305. Yet the list claims their total is somewhere below 1,500? What the fuck is going on here?
Let’s look at another ship for comparison. This time one that’s very recent and popular enough to make it on the list so we have an actual reference value for comparison: Nick/Charlie (Heartstopper). According to the list, this ship sits at #34 this year with a total of 2630 new works. But what’s AO3 say?
Off by a hundred or so but the values are much closer at least!
If we dig further into the FAQ though we discover Sin #2 (and the most egregious): the counting method. The yearly fic counts are NOT determined by filtering for a certain time period, they’re determined by simply taking a snapshot of the total number of fics in a ship tag at the end of the year and subtracting the previous end-of-year total. For example, if you check a ship tag on Jan 1, 2023 and it has 10,000 fics and check it again on Jan 1, 2024 and it now has 12,000 fics, the difference (2,000) would be the number of "new works" on this chart.
At first glance this subtraction method might seem like a perfectly valid way to count fics, and it’s certainly the easiest way, but it can and did have major consequences to the point of making the entire dataset functionally meaningless. Why? If any older works are deleted or privated, every single one of those will be subtracted from the current year fic count. And to make the problem even worse, beginning at the end of last year there was a big scare about AI scraping fics from AO3, which caused hundreds, if not thousands, of users to lock down their fics or delete them.
The magnitude of this fuck up may not be immediately obvious so let’s look at an example to see how this works in practice.
Say we have two ships. Ship A is more than a decade old with a large fanbase. Ship B is only a couple years old but gaining traction. On Jan 1, 2023, Ship A had a catalog of 50,000 fics and ship B had 5,000. Both ships have 3,000 new works published in 2023. However, 4% of the older works in each fandom were either privated or deleted during that same time (this percentage is was just chosen to make the math easy but it’s close to reality).
Ship A: 50,000 x 4% = 2,000 removed works
Ship B: 5,000 x 4% = 200 removed works
Ship A: 3,000 - 2,000 = 1,000 "new" works
Ship B: 3,000 - 200 = 2,800 "new" works
This gives Ship A a net gain of 1,000 and Ship B a net gain of 2,800 despite both fandoms producing the exact same number of new works that year. And neither one of these reported counts are the actual new works count (3,000). THIS explains the drastic difference in ranking between a ship like Steve/Bucky and Nick/Charlie.
How is this a useful measure of anything? You can't draw any conclusions about the current size and popularity of a fandom based on this data.
With this system, not only is the reported "new works" count incorrect, the older, larger fandom will always be punished and it’s count disproportionately reduced simply for the sin of being an older, larger fandom. This example doesn’t even take into account that people are going to be way more likely to delete an old fic they're no longer proud of in a fandom they no longer care about than a fic that was just written, so the deletion percentage for the older fandom should theoretically be even larger in comparison.
And if that wasn't bad enough, the author of this "study" KNEW the data was tainted and chose to present it as meaningful anyway. You will only find this if you click through to the FAQ and read about the author’s methodology, something 99.99% of people will NOT do (and even those who do may not understand the true significance of this problem):
The author may try to argue their post states that the tags "which had the greatest gain in total public fanworks” are shown on the chart, which makes it not a lie, but a error on the viewer’s part in not interpreting their data correctly. This is bullshit. Their chart CLEARLY titles the fic count column “New Works” which it explicitly is NOT, by their own admission! It should be titled “Net Gain in Works” or something similar.
Even if it were correctly titled though, the general public would not understand the difference, would interpret the numbers as new works anyway (because net gain is functionally meaningless as we've just discovered), and would base conclusions on their incorrect assumptions. There’s no getting around that… other than doing the counts correctly in the first place. This would be a much larger task but I strongly believe you shouldn’t take on a project like this if you can’t do it right.
To sum up, just because someone put a lot of work into gathering data and making a nice color-coded chart, doesn’t mean the data is GOOD or VALUABLE.
Centreoftheselights is back at it again, posting their new 2025 "stats" and continuing to double down on their misleading methodology and presentation. You know what to do.
As an aside, I think it's pretty funny that they've decided to add a new note at the top of their latest post, tone-policing their critics (aka anyone who doesn't worship the ground they walk on) and trying to make the case that it's okay to spread misinformation to millions of people if you do it in your "unpaid free time." I'm one of the people they've blocked (shocking) – despite never once threatening, attacking, or harassing anyone – so I'm unfortunately unable help the poor souls in their comments understand why the data in the pretty color-coded chart doesn't match up with their own fandom experience and the numbers they can see with their own eyes. Anyone wiling to venture into the comments and help spread the word would be much appreciated. Just be… tactful about it. COTL doesn't take kindly to critique, no matter what they say otherwise.
okay, I thought I should make this post since there has been an influx of scammers plaguing AO3 comments section and people are falling victims to them. so here it is;
WHAT THEY ARE
so far, there are three main types of these scam bots
bots that tell you AO3 is deleting works, and that you should delete the works yourself because your entire account will be affected if your works get deleted by AO3
bots that tell you your works are terrible
bots that tell you they want to draw comic panels from your works
ALL OF THESE ARE SCAM WITH MALICE INTENTIONS
bots that tell you AO3 is deleting works, and that you should delete the works yourself because your entire account will be affected if your works get deleted by AO3 are just trying to get you to delete your works, most certainly because they want to steal and/or use your works to train their AI and, once you delete your works, it becomes extremely difficult, almost impossible for you to claim ownership of your works when the original works have been deleted. AO3 IS NOT DELETING ANY WORKS.
bots that tell you your works are terrible are also just trying to get you to delete your works, most certainly because they want to steal and/or use your works to train their AI and, once you delete your works, it becomes extremely difficult, almost impossible for you to claim ownership of your works when the original works have been deleted. (more examples here and here)
bots that tell you they want to draw comic panels from your works are trying to hack your password, personal data and credit card information (they will say they see potentials in your work and are interested in drawing comic panels from it, and then they will ask you to discuss this with them on discord where you will have to pay/commission them for the “comics” you will never get, but you will get your password hacked, personal data and credit card information breached and stolen instead, do not fall for them).
HOW TO SPOT THEM
what all these 3 types of bots have in common is that;
most of them (keyword, most, not all) are guest users or empty accounts that have just been recently created.
their comments are all the same copied and pasted scripts that they mass leave on lots of authors’ works at random.
their comments are all vague, in the sense that there will be no mention of any specific characters’ names, no mention of any specific scenes or events from your works (granted, they need to be vague because they are bots, they never actually read your works, and they have to be able to use the same comments on other writers’ works too).
EDIT: I’ve been told they got “smarter” and are now mentioning characters by names and also specific scenes from the story. Most definitely because they ran your fic through AI and let AI write comments for them. So basically, if a comment, from someone you don’t know, ends in something along the lines of “I’d like to draw a comic panel about this”, “can we chat on discord (or anywhere outside of ao3)” or anything that’d require your email or other personal information, always assume that it’s 90% a scam.
report them for spam then delete their comments when/if you get them.
please spread this if you can. us writers gotta look out for each other. stay safe, everybody ♡
EDIT (Dec 10, 2025): NEW TYPE OF BOTS WHO THREATEN PEOPLE WITH LEGAL ACTIONS
EDIT (Dec 15, 2025): BOTS IMPERSONATING LEGIT USERS, WITH REGISTERED ACCOUNTS, BY USING THESE LEGIT USERS’ AO3 NAMES AS THEIR GUEST-USER NAMES IN THEIR GUEST COMMENTS
EDIT (Dec 22, 2025): BOTS PROMOTING THEIR APP/PROGRAM AND ACTING AS AN AD (WHICH I BELIEVE IS AGAINST AO3’S POLICIES) ON COMMENTS SECTION
Chu wanning is the type of guy to have a drunken hookup with mo ran and then hate himself for it but still agree to regularly fucking him when mo ran offers while constantly thinking "this will the last time we have sex for sure, he's bound to get a boyfriend any day now" and then a year later when mo ran proposes he says "we were dating?" And everyone goes quiet as mo ran storms out
Mo ran: so all the times I made you dinner.... when I told you about my mother and you comforted me and we had tender sex, you thought we were just friends with benefits!?
Chu wanning: I didn't think we were friends *immediately gets door slammed in his face*
I feel compelled to point out that in this supposed “queerbait”, one of the characters is canonically gay. They’re just calling it queerbait because he’s not in a relationship with one of the other boys.
how to send an instagram reel without doxxing yourself
thank you for wanting to send me an instagram reel! I appreciate it. There's some fun stuff on instagram that I never see, and your gesture is so kind. However:
instagram shows your instagram account when you share content. It's fine when it's me - I don't care who you are - but if I reblog that post or answer that ask, it'll show your instagram profile - linked to your tumblr profile - to the public!
There are a couple of ways to avoid this. Let's take a look at an instagram URL.
after "reel", there's a long string of characters that represents the actual reel you want to send me, which I've represented here in pink. that is the address of the reel. That's all we need! You can just send me that.
Next, you'll see the green part. there's a question mark, with "IGSH" (that means instagram share, hopefully triggering your memory) and an equals sign. The stuff after the equals sign is your profile.
When I tap on this link, before showing me the reel, it first tells me exactly who you are. I can't see the video until it makes me click away from your face.
So, since presumably we aren't that close, and you don't want your tumblr to be linked with amysocialsecuritynumber's more public presence, you'll want to sanitise that link! That means removing all the sharing information so it just acts like a normal link.
The easiest thing is to simply remove the part of the URL that I've indicated in green:
But if you're on a mobile device, that isn't always easy, so you can paste it into something like LinkCleaner first:
Link Cleaner
that one's nice, because it gives you the option of seeing what the cleaned link shows to people.
In addition to protecting your identity, especially if I'm careless and just reblog something without checking (I am so careless, honestly) it makes things a bit easier for me.
wish ppl understood the power nowadays in not giving something attention. things today are so focused on attention and reaction and #memes that the best way to shut literally anything down is simply not give it exactly what it wants. like you arent going to own that bigot on twitter youre going to boost their original message whether thats your intent or not and you arent just playing with ai for shits and giggles you are giving it free learning and data. just stop engaging with things that dont deserve it
