Code deploy happening shortly

Aug. 31st, 2025 07:37 pm
mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Per the [site community profile] dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

poppyseedheart: Light installation art piece. A lightbulb on a string, pink against a dark purple background. (Default)
[personal profile] poppyseedheart
Recently [personal profile] hwarium  posted a wonderful thoughtful journal entry on plagiarism and the practice of writing (which I highly recommend you read!), and in the comments I was musing a bit on how life has been since I got medicated for adhd. the connection there was the discussion of work ethic — notably, doing hard things for the sake of doing them — and the ways meds have removed barriers for me. This is going to a post expanding on that, but also talking about meds in general, and, per the title, thinking about how medication and therapy and diagnosis have made me a significantly more honest and forthright person in the last few years.

let's get into it babesSome background: I started suspecting I had adhd maybe 4 years ago, which was also when I started giving adhd evaluations as part of my job. I'd had vague thoughts before that but kept landing in the "no I'd know if I had adhd" camp instead of pursuing it further. Only when I realized some people actually don't have all of these symptoms did I recognize that I did. Even then, though, I remained under-educated, assuming that my only medication option was stimulants. My body can't really tolerate caffeine, so I did not want to know what adderal would do to it, and I didn't talk to a doctor about it until much later. A bunch of things happened in my life: career progression, finishing grad school, getting into a relationship, and finally moving in with my partner, which triggered my "I need to deal with this so my girlfriend doesn't kill me for leaving things all over the place for all of eternity" instincts. Lo and behold, there are multiple non-stimulant options, and my body tolerates one of them quite well. Wahoo.

Being medicated has meant I can look at a glass in the sink and wash it without thinking all that hard about it. I can sit down to work for an hour and get an hour's worth of work done. I'm not crying for an hour before I throw my overdue laundry in the washer. I only walk out the door without my keys a couple times a month. As gf likes to put it, "now you're just making the same mistakes as anyone else, because you're human."

There's an odd kind of grief that has come with things getting easier. Which is not to say that I miss literally anything about my unmedicated experience. What I'm trying to get at is that maybe it didn't have to be so hard for multiple decades. Maybe I didn't need to teach myself this awful cloying shame. And if none of it was necessary, then I have to spend the time to make meaning out of it beyond "I was doing my best" — or, at least, get to a place where that feels like it counts for anything.

My entire life was the friction of a broken executive dysfunction machine followed by periods of frictionlessly obsessing about all of the wrong things. This is where I found myself intersecting with and diverting from hwa's original post; I can relate to the idea that there's dignity in embracing the boring/mundane/difficult/annoying steps of daily living, and also I'd been using my struggles at those very things against myself like a weapon for years, convincing myself that my challenges were a result of some inherent brokenness or laziness. I've learned that this experience of internalized ableism is so common as to be cliche, but it's been my reality all the same.

And I've been thinking lately about the fuzzy line between accommodating my brain and leaning into the culture of instant gratification and prioritization of comfort that leads people to ask ChatGPT for a template to use to text their friends instead of coming up with the words themselves. How easy do I get to have it? How easy do I want to have it? But how hard does it have to be before I'm satisfied I've atoned for the privileges that allow me the option of those comforts in the first place?

One way I used to "manage" my adhd was by circumventing its consequences with compulsive fabrications. It would look something like.... Procrastinate on 10-page paper > feel immense guilt and shame for procrastinating > hyperfocus on fandom things instead of writing paper > panic as deadline approaches > hyperfocus more while having an anxiety attack in the background > try to start, cry > invent a stomach flu/family emergency/broken computer/etc and get an extension > write the whole thing through tears in a self-hating 24-hour haze > bon appetit. I articulated myself well enough in class most days that some teachers or professors, assuming I was just as on top of assignments and homework as I was the class discussions, though I had already turned in something I was trying to figure out a way to get out of doing, and gave me a high mark after assuming the missing document was their own error and not mine.

(This wasn't just a merit thing. I was a a young white girl with a sweet face who was quick to tears, and that allowed me to get away with all of it.)

It's hard to explain to people who only met me in the last few years just how good I was at this. I lied to teachers, coaches, administrators, my parents, friends, lab partners, etc. My life for a long time felt like a precarious house of cards, lies stacked on lies and swaying in the wind. I hated the few people who saw through me — couldn't they see that if I felt like I had any other option, I'd take it?

Related to all of this, I had incredible practice hiding things because of my anorexia, which gave me the obsessive edge I needed to make sure no one truly saw everything I was experiencing or feeling, ever. A perfect storm!

As it turns out, not only did meds help me get things done, they also helped me be more honest. I've been in a sort of remission from all of this fibbing for years, but a lot of those moments of honesty felt like leading myself to the gallows. I assumed I didn't really have the emotional dysregulation symptoms of adhd until I took medication and realized oh, wow, if someone is mad at me I don't actually have to go die about it.

Don't get me wrong, I still find this incredibly difficult, and that's not just adhd, but I've gotten so much better at owning my reality, my mistakes, my errors in judgment, my difficulties. Lying is less impulsive. Honesty is easier. I've typed and deleted three iterations of a sentence here about how ironic it is that it was only when I got better at this that some strangers decided I was a liar and a terrible person, but I think the sentence wasn't working because it isn't actually ironic at all. The scary thing about sitting in the truth that you are a small imperfect person who can only ever try their best is that when people hate you for it, there's no gotcha to hide behind. I am who I am. I know myself and my character, and that's all I can speak to if I don't want to return to my house of cards.

And I don't. I'm less ~interesting~ online than I have been since I was 15 years old, and one theory is that I just don't have anything to prove anymore. Another equally if not more valid theory is that a bunch of structures I relied on for my fandoming fell apart and I haven't bothered fully reconstructing them. Also, I'm not using the internet to avoid my responsibilities as much. And okay, one more for the road: now that I live with my partner I can just whisper my weird thoughts to her in bed instead of posting them, and even if they're very very weird she still kisses me before we fall asleep.

Like I said, I wouldn't go back. It's a new normal, and I've only been on a truly effective dose of meds for a handful of months, but I'm getting to know this new version of myself. It's really strange to trust that I don't have to "fix" myself anymore. I'm not pressing my back against the door to a room of lies and guilt that keeps threatening to burst open and expose me as a fraud. I can exist as I am, and that's pretty good.

Still don't know how or whether offloading grocery shopping onto my partner or delivery services because I hate it factors into that self-concept, but maybe I don't have to cast any judgment quite yet. Maybe it's okay, for now, to feel into it and see what's true for me. And then, if I'm very brave, I can act on that truth in whatever way feels authentic.

How embarrassing, to admit that honesty is still scary for me. And how freeing, to let myself say it at all.


denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

I'll start with the tl;dr summary to make sure everyone sees it and then explain further: As of September 1, we will temporarily be forced to block access to Dreamwidth from all IP addresses that geolocate to Mississippi for legal reasons. This block will need to continue until we either win the legal case entirely, or the district court issues another injunction preventing Mississippi from enforcing their social media age verification and parental consent law against us.

Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this, but the legal fight we and Netchoice have been fighting for you had a temporary setback last week. We genuinely and honestly believe that we're going to win it in the end, but the Fifth Circuit appellate court said that the district judge was wrong to issue the preliminary injunction back in June that would have maintained the status quo and prevented the state from enforcing the law requiring any social media website (which is very broadly defined, and which we definitely qualify as) to deanonymize and age-verify all users and obtain parental permission from the parent of anyone under 18 who wants to open an account.

Netchoice took that appellate ruling up to the Supreme Court, who declined to overrule the Fifth Circuit with no explanation -- except for Justice Kavanaugh agreeing that we are likely to win the fight in the end, but saying that it's no big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime.

Needless to say, it's a big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime. The Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account. It also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)

Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity. You can read the sworn declaration I provided to the court for some examples of how unworkable these requirements are in practice. (That isn't even everything! The lawyers gave me a page limit!)

Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with. Mississippi has been itching to issue those fines for a while, and while normally we wouldn't worry much because we're a small and obscure site, the fact that we've been yelling at them in court about the law being unconstitutional means the chance of them lumping us in with the big social media giants and trying to fine us is just too high for us to want to risk it. (The excellent lawyers we've been working with are Netchoice's lawyers, not ours!)

All of this means we've made the extremely painful decision that our only possible option for the time being is to block Mississippi IP addresses from accessing Dreamwidth, until we win the case. (And I repeat: I am absolutely incredibly confident we'll win the case. And apparently Justice Kavanaugh agrees!) I repeat: I am so, so sorry. This is the last thing we wanted to do, and I've been fighting my ass off for the last three years to prevent it. But, as everyone who follows the legal system knows, the Fifth Circuit is gonna do what it's gonna do, whether or not what they want to do has any relationship to the actual law.

We don't collect geolocation information ourselves, and we have no idea which of our users are residents of Mississippi. (We also don't want to know that, unless you choose to tell us.) Because of that, and because access to highly accurate geolocation databases is extremely expensive, our only option is to use our network provider's geolocation-based blocking to prevent connections from IP addresses they identify as being from Mississippi from even reaching Dreamwidth in the first place. I have no idea how accurate their geolocation is, and it's possible that some people not in Mississippi might also be affected by this block. (The inaccuracy of geolocation is only, like, the 27th most important reason on the list of "why this law is practically impossible for any site to comply with, much less a tiny site like us".)

If your IP address is identified as coming from Mississippi, beginning on September 1, you'll see a shorter, simpler version of this message and be unable to proceed to the site itself. If you would otherwise be affected, but you have a VPN or proxy service that masks your IP address and changes where your connection appears to come from, you won't get the block message, and you can keep using Dreamwidth the way you usually would.

On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? They also have a free tier available that, although limited to one device, has no ads or data caps and doesn't log your activity, unlike most of the free VPN services out there. VPNs are an excellent privacy and security tool that every user of the internet should be familiar with! We aren't affiliated with Proton and we don't get any kickbacks if you sign up with them, but I'm a satisfied customer and I wanted to take this chance to let you know that.

Again, we're so incredibly sorry to have to make this announcement, and I personally promise you that I will continue to fight this law, and all of the others like it that various states are passing, with every inch of the New Jersey-bred stubborn fightiness you've come to know and love over the last 16 years. The instant we think it's less legally risky for us to allow connections from Mississippi IP addresses, we'll undo the block and let you know.

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