![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kriegorIf I were you, I would be skeptical of:
I would argue the last bit is why we haven't seen much roiling from Twitter yet. I guarantee you it's coming, though.
I put my emphasis on skeptical, not avoidant. It's not to say I wouldn't use them; just that I would use them slathered in the awareness of my own risk. Say, Mastodon -- not every instance is going to have a legally-vetted TOU, nor, I argue, should they -- albeit it does seem awfully like we're getting close to it being functionally mandatory, even for lone administrators who could never afford it, huh?
Huh...
- Websites that don't have weird ALL CAPS BLOCKS in their TOU. While not 100% accurate, and while their presence may be vaguely intimidating, this tends to be a hint that a law professional was not involved, which, at the moment, is a bad thing.
- Websites stating 'being a safe space' in their mission. What is safe for someone else, by design and not mistake, will not be safe for you. In practice, this tends to be a sweetly-worded 'we do what we want' dispensation for administration.
- As an extension of this, websites with TOUs that are casually worded, doubly so if they aren't backed by a 'legalese version'. Yeah, sure, it's less intimidating-- until you actually have to use it...
- Websites that have taken venture funding. This is usually a hint that 1) they are beholden to someone, and 2) they aren't turning the kind of profit that would keep them afloat were this 'someone' to get antsy. To research this, queries like '[website name] funding' can be useful.
- If you'll be using a website for anything even slightly consequential, it's always wise to know where their money comes from, VF or not.
- In light of the volume of users leaving Tumblr, for the next few months I'd avoid websites with a single administrator, as handling a huge, sudden influx of users is both financially and personally stressful and those setups seem most likely to fold under the pressure. (As vital as I believe small, individually-run spaces may be going onward, I challenge you to find a lone, untrained person who can safely handle a firehose.)
- Anything that ends in "-blr", the newer the worse. I've seen quite a few attempts to 'cash in' on the shutdown, some well-meaning, some not-so-much.
- Websites that are a subsidiary of any larger corporation; given what happened with Tumblr leading up to the current TOS change, this probably goes without saying.
I would argue the last bit is why we haven't seen much roiling from Twitter yet. I guarantee you it's coming, though.
I put my emphasis on skeptical, not avoidant. It's not to say I wouldn't use them; just that I would use them slathered in the awareness of my own risk. Say, Mastodon -- not every instance is going to have a legally-vetted TOU, nor, I argue, should they -- albeit it does seem awfully like we're getting close to it being functionally mandatory, even for lone administrators who could never afford it, huh?
Huh...
