Mississippi legal challenge: beginning 1 September, we will need to geoblock Mississippi IPs
Aug. 26th, 2025 12:24 am![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png){kind=small}
denise posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_newsI'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.
speaking of ocd
May. 24th, 2025 12:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
finchHere’s the post about scrupulosity!
OCD is best known for germaphobia and hoarding and religious scrupulosity, all of which I’ve dealt with in varying degrees, but I think it’s less well-known that religious scrupulosity is basically a form of moral scrupulosity, and that it can take other shapes as well.
Sidebar: scrupulosity as a word just means an obsessive, overwhelming anxiety/fear of being bad, for whatever bad means to you. You can probably guess why it often hijacks religious beliefs, and why it loves to square dance with intrusive thoughts.
In practice, this means constantly feeling like I’m not doing enough: for new people, for friends, for mutuals, for the fandom as a whole. I want to be welcoming and encouraging. I want to read and chat with new writers so they write more! I want to keep up with my friends’ fics! I want to read other fics just because they look interesting! And of course if I’m reading, I want to be commenting and live reacting and reccing on tumblr! I want to gift drabbles and fanart and reaction fics to people so they know how awesome they and their work are!
(also I want to write my own fics and draw my own art, and I’m really not good at pushing my own work because I’m always fighting the idea that it’s selfish to want people to read my work.)
There’s a reason Mr Rogers is so prominent on my ancestor altar, y'all, and it’s because I want to be a good person so fucking bad. It’s because in my heart and soul there’s a part of me that’s constantly certain that I’m a fucked up, horrible monster and if people like me it’s only because I’m fooling them.
I know I maybe over-identify with Xaden, okay? He knows he’s going to be the bad guy for a lot of people no matter what he does, and he still does everything he can, and he gets shit on for it. I think about his comments in Samara, about how people are fuckheads to him but he doesn’t mind because they go easier on Garrick.
One of the things that’s come up when I write Xaden more than once is projecting my own insecurities onto him. The certainty that he can never do enough. The fear that he really is the monster people see when they look at him, and no amount of… well, no amount of anything is going to fix that.
There’s a reason he’s fascinated by Violet telling him he’s a good person.
I really, really struggle when people talk about how Xaden is a terrible person and an awful friend and everyone else would be better off without him because I feel like that’s true of me too.
Disclaimer: I know that’s not the same thing, and people are entitled to their interpretations of the characters! This is just me talking about what goes on in my head. The ways my brain lies to me ultimately have nothing to do with the way people write fic. If it doesn’t latch on to this, it would (and does) latch onto something else.
I still don’t have a point. I’m just finding it helpful to write this stuff out and work through it, and some people seem to have found the first post helpful to read so! Let’s be vulnerable.
just a little meltdown
Aug. 12th, 2025 03:35 amfinchI'm maybe having a slow-motion meltdown.
I've left two-thirds of my discord servers, deleted my writing server, and tonight I'm clearing out my tumblr follows.
I'm ostensibly getting the condo ready to show so we can put it on the market but it feels like an utterly sisyphean task. Mostly because every time I turn around my kid is making a new mess, and it's summer so all of Moth's spoons and then some are going to managing the kid and her camps and stuff.
When I get anxiety flairs I want to declutter everything. Like, everything. This is not practical for a number of reasons, including the fact that I live with two other people. But in this particular case, it means I'm trying to actually declutter/pack/clean the house to show it whilst at the same time not get rid of anything I'll actually regret getting rid of, or do anything that will give my kid Hoarding Trauma, or... well, you get the idea.
Basically I'm trying to declutter but only a reasonable amount while my brain wants to declutter everything. I keep having nightmares where I discover I've thrown out Bug's stuff or Moth's stuff and I'm sure they'll hate me, or I'm supposed to be going abroad to live or study or something but I can't find my passport and I realize I'm going to be leaving my family and I can't remember why I thought I wanted to do this.
So I focus on what I can control. I clear out my files, or I leave most of my discord servers and mute the rest, or... well you get the idea. And I try not to have a full-on meltdown.
I hate it.
worse than the end
Jun. 2nd, 2025 11:33 pmfinchI have nightmares about the world ending periodically.
It's different every time, but they tend not to be the kind of world-ending situations that you see in books or movies. They're about reality failing, the laws of... well, the laws of everything ceasing to work.
The one I still remember most vividly even years later, it was one I couldn't stop, and everything was just... slowly falling apart. I remember when words just stopped working and I lost the ability to read and the panic and sadness I felt were so raw that it stuck with me.
Last night's dream was one where I kept repeating it when I "failed" and the situation became more complicated every time. At first I thought I was just trying to fix one bad situation, where I got shot, and when I managed to make everything go smoothly so no one got killed, it just... kept rolling forward to a more complicated situation, and eventually it was about understanding different kinds of magic, and the songs that kept the universe from falling apart (the only ones I remember were on the Bat Out of Hell II album by Meatloaf), and I had to solve riddles but every time I went through of course I could remember the answers from the previous times and it got so weirdly boring.
Boring apocalypses suck.
As I was going through I was also constantly worried about where my spouse was, where my kid was, were they okay, if they weren't with me, where had they gone, over and over. Finally my spouse and I got in to some side dimension and were able to stabilize everything and it was safe, yay, etc, but when we came out it turned out time had been different in there and we'd been gone two and a half years. We were able to be reunited with our kid almost immediately and she seemed fine? She'd missed us but she had been with a foster family that was apparently really nice.
And then she said something about Jesus and I just... recoiled in horror, in the dream. It was like my kid had been replaced with a pod person and I didn't know what to do.
That was when I woke up.
Memory
May. 23rd, 2025 11:32 pmfinchWhat triggers a memory is super weird, when you think about it. We went out to the coast last weekend and stayed in a little beach house that was built in the 40s, probably from a kit and all. The place we stayed in had ceiling tiles in a style that I haven't thought about in ages, even while dreaming about redoing the ceiling in our condo because it's fucking popcorn. But the tiles looked exactly like the ceiling tiles in my Yaya's house did, and if you'd asked me what they looked like before this weekend I wouldn't have been able to tell you, but as soon as I laid on the bed and looked up at them I remembered.
I ate a bite of taffy and somehow the taste of it reminded me of the smell of the pizza place where my mom used to stop and pick up pizza on Friday on our way home. The dark wood, the vinyl seats, the smell of the onions and the spices and the cheese. How a dill-flavored taffy managed that, I'm not sure, but it was incredibly specific and clear.
I've been thinking about descriptions in fiction lately because I follow a couple of fanfic writers who write incredibly lush, vivid descriptions of places and it makes me want to do that more thoroughly when I'm writing.
Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria
May. 22nd, 2025 11:29 pmfinch(Reposting from my Tumblr because this is more personal than I usually get over there.)
I'm not putting this on my fandom blog because ultimately it's not fandom specific... but since we're talking about mental health as fic writers and fandom people, I asked myself, should I insert myself into this conversation?
Because if I'm not on Tumblr, I would not have an excuse to avoid doing my accounting homework and while I do find figuring depreciation to be calming I don't want to do it before today. ( Read more... )
I built that city...
Mar. 11th, 2025 11:27 pmfinchWell, I half-built that city, by which I mean leusana.city, but renewal for it is $18 dollars and I haven't even finished building it out. Which sounds kind of wild when I say it like that, it's been almost a year, and somehow $18 feels like so much more money than the $11 I pay for other domains.
Nobody reads this weblog but I'm just kind of writing this out here so I can think it through. There's something to be said for not having an audience.
Like, I currently own 11 domains. One I'm already planning to let expire, plus leusana, and then one's for my building's HOA (and I should really get them to reimburse me for that just on principal). Three are for small business stuff, three are for fandom stuff, and then there's skyhold and the domain name that I mostly just have for family email.
I don't need that many, lol.
No matter what I do my internet presence seems to end up really fragmented anyway. Every time I want to simplify I swear I somehow end up making it more complicated.
blog
Aug. 23rd, 2025 11:12 pmfinchI don't understand why I'm so bad at existing in more than one space at a time.
I haven't been here in ages, and that's because I've been on tumblr. I'm on tumblr (and also IG) because that's where my fandom friends are. I'd love to have them here but... no luck.
And it's hard to convince them when I'm not posting, so I guess it's a catch-22, isn't it?
I occasionally make long serious posts over on tumblr, because it's there and people read it. It's rare, but let's be honest, any posts are rare here so... idk.
I periodically think about having a "real" blog and I even set one up on weblog.lol but then I feel like I'm posting into the void because there's no way to even know if someone's reading it really.
And I guess it's like realizing you used to go to this one coffee shop all the time but suddenly you realize you haven't been for ages and ages, because your schedule changed or something else shifted and there was just enough friction that it didn't happen.
What I really need is automated crossposting, probably. The best way for me to make sure something happens is to automate it. But I don't think I have a good way to do that right now in either direction. (If you have a good one, let me know.)
We've been dealing with a dollop of stressful stuff offline this year- there were major changes at work, Bug graduated fifth grade and is starting middle school in a few weeks (how!?), we've been thinking about selling the condo if we can find a place with a yard that's in our budget.
I'm going to move over the couple of posts and backdate them, probably. At this point, between this dw account and the locked one where we backed up our LJ, dreamwidth has by far the longest share of my life history.
No point, not really. Just rambling.