I'm Curious About This. Reblogging For A Larger Sample Size Is Appreciated.

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

I am on my knees begging you to reblog this post and to stop reblogging the original ones I sent out yesterday. This is the complete account with all the most recent info; the other one is just sending people down senselessly panicked avenues that no longer lead anywhere.

IN SHORT

Cliff Weitzman, CEO of Speechify and (aspiring?) voice actor, used AI to scrape thousands of popular, finished works off AO3 to list them on his own for-profit website and in his attached app. He did this without getting any kind of permission from the authors of said work or informing AO3. Obviously.

When fandom at large was made aware of his theft and started pushing back, Weitzman issued a non-apology on the original social media posts—using 

his dyslexia; 

his intent to implement a tip-system for the plagiarized authors; and 

a sudden willingness to take down the work of every author who saw my original social media posts and emailed him individually with a ‘valid’ claim,

as reasons we should allow him to continue monetizing fanwork for his own financial gain.

When we less-than-kindly refused, he took down his ‘apologies’ as well as his website (allegedly—it’s possible that our complaints to his web host, the deluge of emails he received or the unanticipated traffic brought it down, since there wasn’t any sort of official statement made about it), and when it came back up several hours later, all of the work formerly listed in the fan fiction category was no longer there. 

THE TAKEAWAYS

1. Cliff Weitzman (aka Ofek Weitzman) is a scumbag with no qualms about taking fanwork without permission, feeding it to AI and monetizing it for his own financial gain; 

2. Fandom can really get things done when it wants to, and 

3. Our fanworks appear to be hidden, but they’re NOT DELETED from Weitzman’s servers, and independently published, original works are still listed without the authors' permission. We need to hold this man responsible for his theft, keep an eye on both his current and future endeavors, and take action immediately when he crosses the line again. 

THE TIMELINE, THE DETAILS, THE SCREENSHOTS (behind the cut)

Sunday night, December 22nd 2024, I noticed an influx in visitors to my fic You & Me & Holiday Wine. When I searched the title online, hoping to find out where they came from, a new listing popped up (third one down, no less):

This listing is still up today, by the way, though now when you follow the link to word-stream, it just brings you to the main site. (Also, to be clear, this was not the cause for the influx of traffic to my fic; word-stream did not link back to the original work anywhere.)

I followed the link to word-stream, where to my horror Y&M&HW was listed in its entirety—though, beyond the first half of the first chapter, behind a paywall—along with a link promising to take me—through an app downloadable on the Apple Store—to an AI-narrated audiobook version. When I searched word-stream itself for my ao3 handle I found both of my multi-chapter fics were listed this way:

Because the tags on my fics (which included genres* and characters, but never the original IPs**) weren’t working, I put ‘Kara Danvers’ into the search bar and discovered that many more supercorp fics (Supergirl TV fandom, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor pairing) were listed.

I went looking online for any mention of word-stream and AI plagiarism (the covers—as well as the ridiculously inflated number of reviews and ratings—made it immediately obvious that AI fuckery was involved), but found almost nothing: only one single Reddit post had been made, and it received (at that time) only a handful of upvotes and no advice. 

I decided to make a tumblr post to bring the supercorp fandom up to speed about the theft. I draw as well as write for fandom and I’ve only ever had to deal with art theft—which has a clear set of steps to take depending on where said art was reposted—and I was at a loss regarding where to start in this situation.

After my post went up I remembered Project Copy Knight, which is worth commending for the work they’ve done to get fic stolen from AO3 taken down from monetized AI 'audiobook’ YouTube accounts. I reached out to @echoekhi, asking if they’d heard of this site and whether they could advise me on how to get our works taken down.

While waiting for a reply I looked into Copy Knight’s methods and decided to contact OTW’s legal department:

And then I went to bed.

By morning, tumblr friends @makicarn and @fazedlight as well as a very helpful tumblr anon had seen my post and done some very productive sleuthing:

@echoekhi had also gotten back to me, advising me, as expected, to contact the OTW. So I decided to sit tight until I got a response from them.

That response came only an hour or so later: 

Which was 100% understandable, but still disappointing—I doubted a handful of individual takedown requests would accomplish much, and I wasn’t eager to share my given name and personal information with Cliff Weitzman himself, which is unavoidable if you want to file a DMCA.

I decided to take it to Reddit, hoping it would gain traction in the wider fanfic community, considering so many fandoms were affected. My Reddit posts (with the updates at the bottom as they were emerging) can be found here and here.

A helpful Reddit user posted a guide on how users could go about filing a DMCA against word-stream here (to wobbly-at-best results)

A different helpful Reddit user signed up to access insight into word-streams pricing. Comment is here.

Smells unbelievably scammy, right? In addition to those audacious prices—though in all fairness any amount of money would be audacious considering every work listed is accessible elsewhere for free—my dyscalculia is screaming silently at the sight of that completely unnecessary amount of intentionally obscured numbers.

Speaking of which! As soon as the post on r/AO3—and, as a result, my original tumblr post—began taking off properly, sometime around 1 pm, jumpscare! A notification that a tumblr account named @cliffweitzman had commented on my post, and I got a bit mad about the gist of his message :

Fortunately he caught plenty of flack in the comments from other users (truly you should check out the comment section, it is extremely gratifying and people are making tremendously good points), in response to which, of course, he first tried to both reiterate and renegotiate his point in a second, longer comment (which I didn’t screenshot in time so I’m sorry for the crappy notification email formatting):

which he then proceeded to also post to Reddit (this is another Reddit user’s screenshot, I didn’t see it at all, the notifications were moving too fast for me to follow by then)

... where he got a roughly equal amount of righteously furious replies. (Check downthread, they're still there, all the way at the bottom.)

After which Cliff went ahead & deleted his messages altogether. 

It’s not entirely clear whether his account was suspended by Reddit soon after or whether he deleted it himself, but considering his tumblr account is still intact, I assume it’s the former. He made a handful of sock puppet accounts to play around with for a while, both on Reddit and Tumblr, only one of which I have a screenshot of, but since they all say roughly the same thing, you’re not missing much:

And then word-stream started throwing a DNS error.

That lasted for a good number of hours, which was unfortunately right around the time that a lot of authors first heard about the situation and started asking me individually how to find out whether their work was stolen too. I do not have that information and I am unclear on the perimeters Weitzman set for his AI scraper, so this is all conjecture: it LOOKS like the fics that were lifted had three things in common:

They were completed works;

They had over several thousand kudos on AO3; and

They were written by authors who had actively posted or updated work over the past year.

If anyone knows more about these perimeters or has info that counters my observation, please let me know!

I finally thought to check/alert evil Twitter during this time, and found out that the news was doing the rounds there already. I made a quick thread summarizing everything that had happened just in case. You can find it here.

I went to Bluesky too, where fandom was doing all the heavy lifting for me already, so I just reskeeted, as you do, and carried on.

Sometime in the very early evening, word-stream went back up—but the fan fiction category was nowhere to be seen. Tentative joy and celebration!***

That’s when several users—the ones who had signed up for accounts to gain intel and had accessed their own fics that way—reported that their work could still be accessed through their history. Relevant Reddit post here.

Sooo—

We’re obviously not done. The fanwork that was stolen by Weitzman may be inaccessible through his website right now, but they aren’t actually gone. And the fact that Weitzman wasn’t willing to get rid of them altogether means he still has plans for them. 

This was my final edit on my Reddit post before turning off notifications, and it's pretty much where my head will be at for at least the foreseeable future:

Please feel free to add info in the comments, make your own posts, take whatever action you want to take to protect your work. I only beg you—seriously, I’m on my knees here—to not give up like I saw a handful of people express the urge to do. Keep sharing your creative work and remain vigilant and stay active to make sure we can continue to do so freely. Visit your favorite fics, and the ones you’ve kept in your ‘marked for later’ lists but never made time to read, and leave kudos, leave comments, support your fandom creatives, celebrate podficcers and support AO3. We created this place and it’s our responsibility to keep it alive and thriving for as long as we possibly can.

Also FUCK generative AI. It has NO place in fandom spaces.

THE 'SMALL' PRINT (some of it in all caps):

*Weitzman knew what he was doing and can NOT claim ignorance. One, it’s pretty basic kindergarten stuff that you don’t steal some other kid’s art project and present it as your own only to act surprised when they protest and then tell the victim that they should have told you sooner that they didn’t want their project stolen. And two, he was very careful never to list the IPs these fanworks were based on, so it’s clear he was at least familiar enough with the legalities to not get himself in hot water with corporate lawyers. Fucking over fans, though, he figured he could get away with that. 

**A note about the AI that Weitzman used to steal our work: it’s even greasier than it looks at first glance. It’s not just the method he used to lift works off AO3 and then regurgitate onto his own website and app. Looking beyond the untold horrors of his AI-generated cover ‘art’, in many cases these covers attempt to depict something from the fics in question that can’t be gleaned from their summaries alone. In addition, my fics (and I assume the others, as well) were listed with generated genres; tags that did not appear anywhere in or on my fic on AO3 and were sometimes scarily accurate and sometimes way off the mark. I remember You & Me & Holiday Wine had ‘found family’ (100% correct, but not tagged by me as such) and I believe The Shape of Soup was listed as, among others, ‘enemies to friends to lovers’ and ‘love triangle’ (both wildly inaccurate). Even worse, not all the fic listed (as authors on Reddit pointed out) came with their original summaries at all. Often the entire summary was AI-generated. All of these things make it very clear that it was an all-encompassing scrape—not only were our fics stolen, they were also fed word-for-word into the AI Weitzman used and then analyzed to suit Weitzman’s needs. This means our work was literally fed to this AI to basically do with whatever its other users want, including (one assumes) text generation. 

***Fan fiction appears to have been made (largely) inaccessible on word-stream at this time, but I’m hearing from several authors that their original, independently published work, which is listed at places like Kindle Unlimited, DOES still appear in word-stream’s search engine. This obviously hurts writers, especially independent ones, who depend on these works for income and, as a rule, don’t have a huge budget or a legal team with oceans of time to fight these battles for them. If you consider yourself an author in the broader sense, beyond merely existing online as a fandom author, beyond concerns that your own work is immediately at risk, DO NOT STOP MAKING NOISE ABOUT THIS.

Again, please, please PLEASE reblog this post instead of the one I sent originally. All the information is here, and it's driving me nuts to see the old ones are still passed around, sending people on wild goose chases.

Thank you all so much.

just found out that there is a sudanfunds website! like gazafunds, it is a compilation of funds for people facing genocide

Hello my friends,

🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸❤🤍💚🖤

I am Mohammed Ayyad from Gaza Al-Shuja'iyya

,

I have sought refuge with you because of the devastating war that caused me to lose my home and my mother and we were displaced from one place to another and lost my children's future and there is a severe shortage of basic materials,

I have sought refuge with you so that I can provide a decent and safe life for me and my family consisting of my wife and my children Yasser, Omar, Maryam, Jana and Sarah, each of them has dreams but unfortunately they have lost hope and despair is controlling them,

I hope that you will stand by us either by donating if possible or sharing widely,

Thank you very much

🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸❤🤍💚🖤

noting that my son Omar has a Tumblr account under the name @m430235341 and it was checked and I had an account under the name @mohammadayyad and it was also checked but I was surprised today that it was banned so today I created a new account under the name @mohammadyaser1980, please check it and thank you 5, @mohammadayyad’s fundraiser. As of posting they’ve been able to raise €12,143 of their €35,000 goal.This fundraiser has been vetted by @/inthefaceofada

https://gofund.me/e7c7528a

Hello my friends,

https://gofund.me/e7c7528a

🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸❤🤍💚🖤

I am Mohammed Ayyad from Gaza Al-Shuja'iyya

,

I have sought refuge with you because of the devastating war that caused me to lose my home and my mother and we were displaced from one place to another and lost my children's future and there is a severe shortage of basic materials,

I have sought refuge with you so that I can provide a decent and safe life for me and my family consisting of my wife and my children Yasser, Omar, Maryam, Jana and Sarah, each of them has dreams but unfortunately they have lost hope and despair is controlling them,

I hope that you will stand by us either by donating if possible or sharing widely,

Thank you very much

🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸❤🤍💚🖤

noting that my son Omar has a Tumblr account under the name @m430235341 and it was checked and I had an account under the name @mohammadayyad and it was also checked but I was surprised today that it was banned so today I created a new account under the name @mohammadyaser1980, please check it and thank you 5, @mohammadayyad’s fundraiser. As of posting they’ve been able to raise €12,143 of their €35,000 goal.This fundraiser has been vetted by @/inthefaceofada

https://gofund.me/e7c7528a

Smile

Kind of awesome being raised under a rock because I hear about a movie and go yeah I’ll check that out. Never heard of it before. Watch it. Get my DICK blown off. And then am like. Wow…… has anyone else heard about this critically acclaimed film with a 96% on rotten tomatoes that great filmmakers cite an inspiration for THEIR critically acclaimed films……..

AKIBARA HIIIII !!!!

The Curious Absence of Masculine Pride and Competition : Diagnosing Why Male Characters Sometimes Feel OOC in Fics

For all the mockery that's been leveled at male writers fixating on the sexiness of female characters with lines like, "she titted boobily down the stairs," (deriding how male authors have POV female characters thinking about their own boobs an absurd amount) I think it's worth noting that female* writers often do the same for male characters, just not for physical traits, but rather for emotional openness, humility, and vulnerability.

(*There's going to be a lot of sweeping generalizations in this essay, but the gender nomenclature is being used as shorthand and is intended inclusively. Likewise, any mention of "cultural norms" is from a US/Anglosphere perspective and not intended or expected to speak to all experiences.)

Men in female-written fanworks often cry a lot more than their canon counterparts. They're emotionally available and vulnerable a lot more often, especially with their romantic partner. They're more permissive about letting another person tell them what to do or letting someone else see them in an emotionally or physically vulnerable state.

This is not a criticism of works that do this. Oftentimes, what fic is specifically addressing is a desire to see something that isn't in canon, or isn't in canon as much as the writer would like, and that often includes a character opening up in an emotionally vulnerable way, especially to their lover.

But, if you've ever wondered why a male character in fic sometimes don't feel quite right, please feel free to read on. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, mostly to address OOCness in my own works, and I wanted to share my thoughts with those who might have puzzled over this question as a reader or as a writer.

(Some fandoms mentioned below the cut: Our Flag Means Death, Captain America, and Punisher.)

Let's start with a common scene: a male character has gone through an incredibly difficult time, fighting bad guys, losing loved ones, or going through a stressful experience. Maybe they're falling in love with another character but don't know if that love is reciprocated. Everything would be so much easier if they would just talk about their internal conflict!

Then the man gets drunk. Finally, while inebriated and crying into his cups, he admits he's in pain, or that he's in love, or that he's scared. This is an emotionally powerful moment that reveals a lot about the character and fandoms tend to eat that stuff up. Yet, when fanworks include this character, they include facts we learned from that time they were drunk, but they don't get the character drunk. The character just says the same things.

The vulnerability of that male character's confession has been included in the fanwork but the obstacles to him being vulnerable and the build-up of what it took for him to reach a point where he could be vulnerable have been largely removed.

I can give a few examples, like Steve in Captain America 1 going to get drunk to deal with the loss of Bucky, only to find he can't which means he's struggling to open up even with Peggy about what Bucky meant to him. Or the often derided need for war movies to put men into extreme scenarios just so they can hold their buddy as he dies. Women sometimes tease the emotional constipation of the need for a man to get drunk or be in an extreme situation before he can hug his male friends, but men I've spoken to like my partner find those moments more true and resonant than scenes common in fic, where male characters start weeping about their feelings the moment they're asked. That's because there are a lot of social restrictions around showing vulnerability to other people, especially other men. And as cathartic as those moments might be on screen, they're also rare. This adds to the power of the scene when an emotionally closed-off or intimidating action hero kind of guy suddenly opens up about the pain he's in, but it's not just a deliberate use of scarcity to make the moment resonate.

The thing is, you'd never know how rare it is for a male character to cry or open up about his feelings based on how often they do so in fic. To go back to Steve Rogers in the MCU as a character, I think the man gets maybe one scene per movie where he has a short, stilted dialogue with someone very close to him about the pain he feels or the fears he has? Those moments are heightened because they're rare but they're also kind of realistically rare. A lot of guys just don't go "bleeding" all over the place. It's kind of a huge problem societally, actually.

To go to another example, I've seen a lot of fics for Our Flag Means Death predicting Season 2 and a lot of them have Ed as an emotionally shattered mess because of Stede's perceived abandonment. Now, OFMD is a very unique story in how often it does allow its male characters to be vulnerable. Fic writers can point to moments on screen of the characters crying and being vulnerable with each other, not the case with every fandom source material. But, I think what's being overlooked is that in Ed's "blanket fort" scene and in the final shot of him sobbing in Stede's bed, he is alone. He has hidden himself rather than be seen crying in public. When he does come out of the cabin to sing about his feelings, he specifically notes how scary it is to be emotionally open like that and Izzy as the voice of Masculine Restrictions shuts him down because of it, showing that there was a reason in Ed's mind that was confirmed by the narrative for why he might want to hide those feelings and that vulnerability from the world. It's not right, it's not fair, it's not the way things should be but that's not the point. The reason Ed opening up was powerful and a singular moment was because it was in spite of those societal restrictions and norms.

Men in general aren't being constipated with their emotions and their emotional truth because they're being deliberately difficult. They do it largely because there is a lot of cultural pressure put on the need to do so and a lot of social punishment leveled at those who cry in public or admit something hurt their feelings. This is where masculine pride comes in to, the need to be seen as strong is a huge social imperative thrown at men. The need to be the best at what you do, to not show weakness, and to show constant strength and mastery are enormous burdens they're expected to uphold.

On the one hand, it's why moments where those restrictions shatter are such catnip to fic writers, but on the other, I think it should be noted that they're catnip scenes because they're very rare. Works written created by men spend a lot of time building up to those moments and earning them, not letting a guy cry until his buddy dies in his arms, not letting him say what's going on or that he feels weak unless he's impaired with alcohol or in some other extreme situation like locked up in an elevator with another character until they finally admit what's going on inside them.

Now, let's get into the craft of writing for a second. One thing writers, especially newbie writers, struggle with is obstacles. Obstacles are what stand between your character and their goals. They can be emotional or physical or mental or symbolic. How a character deals with obstacles is what makes us get to know them and get to like them, it's how we learn about who they are as people. Stede and Ed from OFMD, or Captain America, or any other character you can think of would all approach a locked door in a different way. That locked door is an obstacle to what they want: what's on the other side of the door. How a character approaches the locked door tells us who they are. Do they shoot the doorknob? Bash through it with their shield? Test the knob and sigh comically when it's locked? Pick the lock? Do they go around back and look for another way in? When the character gets through the obstacle, the audience experiences a certain amount of catharsis and pleasure, if the creator has done their job right.

Now, masculine pride and social restrictions are an obstacle to the characters getting what they want. A really delicious and tantalizing one for many, especially if you're writing romance: what will it take to get this guy to admit he's in love? Some fic writers though want to skip cracking open the hard outer shell and just go straight to the juicy vulnerable center. And that's ok! Maybe you don't want to write an entire novel about Frank Castle, the Punisher, or any other macho tough-guy character getting worn down to the point he breaks down crying about the pain he's in. Maybe you just want to write the scene where he sobs in the arms of his best friend about it, just go straight for the catharsis.

But, if you're writing a longer work and you can't put your finger on why the Punisher feels out of character, well, it's because a tough guy character like that usually doesn't want to open up. It's gonna take some intricate rituals for him to be allowed to touch the skin of another man or a woman for that matter. These obstacles to him opening up tell us more about the character and they also serve as the meat on the story for the audience, who wants it to feel special when this guy finally does open up. If he was bleeding his innermost feelings and emotions all over the place, those moments wouldn't feel as special, or realistic, or important. Fic writers who just want more of that moment understandably write fics that just go straight for the pay-off, but the wait and the rarity of that moment is what makes the character, especially a male character, feel in character and plays to the traits like being the strong, silent, stoic type that attracted people to that character in the first place. Therefore, keeping or including or simply being mindful of those obstacles to a male character being emotionally vulnerable also plays to why people liked those characters in the first place and will make your story feel more authentic.

Aside from emotional vulnerability as something men avoid showing, there's also male pride as a motivator. A guy who sets out to be the very best at something probably has a fair amount of masculine-typical pride motivating him or as a trait the creator of that character keeps in mind while writing him.

Stede from Our Flag Means Death is a fairly effeminate man and that's actually a pretty big plot point. It's a plot point in how it makes him lash out at those like Nigel Badminton who don't take him seriously enough, and his wrestling with what it means to be a man is a huge part of his emotional journey in the show. If he just wanted to go to sea, he could have run off and joined someone's crew, but instead, he built a ship and styled himself as a captain, and worked as best as he could to be worthy of the title of "Fearsome Pirate Captain", often to hilarious results, but again those obstacles to him being what he wants to endear him to us. But make no mistake, he wants to be those things. He wants to be his own version of the masculine ideal of a powerful leader, killing with kindness instead of weapons, but he still wants to be one.

Conversely, Ed in the show wants to be soft but it's a jealously guarded secret for him, because he has succeeded in the masculine ideal of being a fearsome pirate captain, and felt incredible pressure to hide that he wanted softness in his life. Even as he was trying to overcome those masculine restrictions he was intensely aware of them.

If one were to write these characters without them being aware of masculine desire to be a fearsome pirate captain and masculine fears around being seen as wanting softness in their life, that makes them behave a certain way to hide this about themselves, they'd be missing a huge chunk of what makes these characters tick.

Again, I don't want to tell people how to write fic. But for those this resonated for with an eye towards their own writing, keep in mind the qualities of masculine pride and competition when writing male characters, as something they're at least aware of even if they're not concerned about it within your particular story. These societal imperatives and obstacles are minefields in the lives of many men and are built-in as expectations for many male characters, especially those by male creators. To ignore these qualities and expectations will make the character somewhat OOC, it might make them behave differently in your story than they might in canon, if canon-realism is what you're going for.

Consider talking to a man in your life about how another man would react to a certain situation, what it would take for them to be vulnerable, or how they'd react if another man saw them in a vulnerable situation. Cis male writers aren't the only ones who get other genders wrong and while it doesn't have to be a consideration your fiction takes, it can help one write more realistic male characters to ask these questions and include these common emotional and societal barriers to vulnerability in your work.

I am mohammed Ayyad, I am 17 years old, high school student, I have 7 brothers, including 4 girls and 3 boys and my mother.

‏Since the beginning of the war, my family and I have been displaced 4 times, each time more severe than the other.

‏The first is from Gaza City to Khan Yunis, and the second is from Khan Yunis to the shores of Bahr Khan Yunis, then to the city of Rafah, and then to an area called Al Qarara .

‏My house was completely destroyed , everything is under the rubble my childhood, my memories, my books, and my ambition and Many relatives and friends were killed and life was completely destroyed.

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gofundme.com

Donate to I want to buy water and medicine for my young children becau, organized by MAHMOUD B SHAKHSA

‏I am mohammed Ayyad, I am 17 years old, high sch… MAHMOUD B SHAKHSA needs your support for I want to buy water and medicine fo

Quick drawing for Hinata's birthday, nothing too special or high effort. Happy birthday, Hajime and Izuru.