Abigail Berman

Tag: ownership

  • Reddit Blackout: Who owns our discussions?

    I am relatively new to using Reddit. Before I had an actual account, I still sought out Reddit threads because I thought that its users had valuable information that I couldn’t get at other places. As someone who does various fiber arts crafts, I found Reddit to be a wealth of information, with many users explaining different and new techniques. One of my biggest faults is that I’m incredibly impatient, therefore I’d much rather read a reddit comment about how to change colors while crocheting than watch a 3-minute-long video. However, you can only see so much without an actual account.

     So, I bit the bullet and created an account, just before the Reddit Blackout of 2023. I was barely getting used to the site before the subreddits I had become so attached to went dark. As a new user, I had no idea of all the different apps that people were using to be able to access their favorite forums. Reddit had announced that third-party apps would have to pay for their data.

    Why is this an issue?

    It’s an issue because third-party apps are essential for many users to be able to access Reddit. Many disabled users turn to other apps to access the site because they offer better accessibility than Reddit’s app. If third-party apps must pay for data, it would potentially end them or require users to pay for those additional apps, which would severely limit access to disable folk.

    Additionally, moderators use third-party apps to more easily monitor their subreddits. Moderators are volunteers, many of whom would not have the time or ability to moderate without the help of third-party apps. Without them, subreddits would not have the structure that we’ve grown accustomed to.

    And thus, we have the blackout.

    The blackout was an online form of protest, users opted out of posting online to prevent the company from generating income. Unfortunately, it wasn’t entirely successful. Many third-party developers were forced to shut down. Although Reddit did commit to not charging third-party developers for their accessibility tools.

    However, this blackout asks the question: Who owns our conversation?

    I follow subreddits such as r/crochet and r/embroidery, I love seeing all the creativity of the users, sharing the most creative and interesting pieces of art. However, I also follow many subreddits about books. Although this blog is centered around digital media literacy, I’m an English major at ASU with a passion for literature.

    I frequently visit subreddits such as r/52book , r/suggestmeabook, and r/bookclub, but I also search through a many other literature based subreddits. I love discussing books and delving deep into hidden meanings and other things that could have been missed. I also visit them quite frequently when I’m reading a required text for a class. I frequently visit these sites to remind me things that happened in a book, or to find something that I may have missed. Being that my school is online, I find that these discussions simulate those I miss in the classroom.

    But do these discussions belong to the users or the hosting website?

    Theoretically, I don’t believe that anyone can “own” your discussions. Although they may be physical (in a sense that they are written down), they’re still our ideas and thoughts. Discussions are more than just written words, it’s a conversation you have with others. It’s an experience, and nobody can own your experience. Even if a website “owns” your discussions, they don’t own the experience you had and what you learned, nobody can take that away from us.

  • Can I use AI to create embroidery?

    I have recently added embroidery to my repertoire of various fiber arts crafts. With this new skill, I have embroidered my name and some cute designs on my Starbucks aprons. I embroidered some foliage for the fall season and recently just finished some string lights on my red holiday apron. My next project will be to embroider some snowflakes! However, I’ve had a lot of difficulty finding a pattern that fits my vision, but this won’t stop me!

    String of lights embroidered around the Starbucks logo on a red apron.

    Instead of pouring through books and browsing Etsy, I decided to take matters into my own hands and create my own pattern! The first step was to do an image search of snowflakes to get some inspiration for the individual snowflakes. I want a variety of shapes and sizes, and I found some great resources!

    line images of snowflakes

    This image I found on Vecteezy. It’s a great starting point! The snowflakes have great simple lines I can follow, and I can move the different snowflakes around to place them where I’d like them. Some of them are a little more detailed than I’d like, but I can always alter them!

    But my search for inspiration continued! The free images I found online are great, however they will require a lot of manipulating to be able to use them. I’ll have to figure out sizing and replacement. And although these aren’t major issues, it’s a little more effort than I’d like to be putting into this project. As someone who works full time and takes a full load of classes, I don’t have a lot of free time! I’d like to make this process as easy as possible.

    That takes me to my next source: AI! This is the first time I’ve ever used AI to produce an image. I did encounter a few difficulties along the way. I tried to be as specific as possible and found that DALL-E 3 did not want to help me when I mentioned Starbucks. And of course, AI can only do so much! Even with all the details I provided, I still wasn’t getting exactly what I wanted. In fact, the more I prompted it to alter the image the wonkier it became.

    AI generated photo of embroidered snowflakes surroudning a circle.

    Then I decided to simplify my request. I asked for an image of simple snowflakes, and was provided with an image that more closely resembles the free images from Vecteezy. But, since I had previously asked for snowflakes that would be easy to embroider, it gave me snowflakes that were embroidered.

    AI generated photo of 9 embroidered snowflakes

    With all of these resources I’ve gathered, I think I’m prepared to get started on my project. It will definitely take some finessing, but there’s never a project that works up perfectly!