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 on 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 listed.

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.

Tags

fuck this guy

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every single republican told us we were overreacting. trump swore he had nothing to do with project 2025 yet continues implementing details outlined in it. not a single person has the right to tell us we’re being dramatic anymore.

hope the possibility of cheaper eggs and gas was worth it.

Tags

current events us politics i hate it here fuck trump

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callas-shitshow

6 months ago

rocker eddie/actor steve | exes to lovers | fame au p6 (final part)

p1 p2 p3 p4 p5 interlude

Steve thinks about second chances, as he walks along Greenwich Ave. He thinks about them when he tosses the wig in a garbage can that reeks of puke.

And he thinks about them, when Eddie opens the door, eyes catching on the rip in Steve’s jeans, the liner under his eyes. When he lights up & says, “You came.”

Yeah, Steve thinks about second chances.

He offers Eddie a small smile as he walks in, can’t bring himself to acknowledge it all. The world of them. Him going. Eddie playing that song. What that could mean, like, actually mean. Can’t do it yet.

He likes this place better than the mansion in LA. It’s messy and grungy with stupid, corny shit plastered on the walls. Feels more… Eddie.

They walk out to the balcony. It overlooks a tiny little green space, his neighbors’ homes. Eddie lights a cigarette and offers one to Steve. Steve quit years ago. Eddie knows that now. He takes it anyway.

“Last tour I sold out Madison Square Garden and now I sell out Forest Hills.” Eddie’s chuckling, “Like I’m back at the trailer park.”

Eddie’s third album didn’t do the numbers his first two had. So they’d downsized, just a little.

Steve sighs, he didn’t fly all the way out here to coddle his ex, “It was a good show, Eddie.”

“Yeah.” He drags, smiles to himself. “It was a really good show. I’m really glad you saw it, baby.”

Steve cringes, full body shiver. Eddie doesn’t seem to realize what he said, Steve’s sure as hell not gonna clue him in.

“How’d your meeting go?”

Steve tries to play it off. “Good. Pretty good.”

Eddie chuckles again, leans into him that way he always does, like personal space is more of a suggestion than a boundary. A hand brushes his cheek, a light, teasing tap of knuckles, “What’s pretty good, Harrington?”

Steve smiles into it. Can’t help it. “There’s uh… you know that blacklist script I mentioned last month? There’s probably a lead there for me.”

Eddie lights up again, bright and true, “Steve, that’s amazing.”

Steve snorts, “Not jealous?”

“Nah, I’m happy for you ba-” Eddie catches it this time, chokes on his drag, coughs and flounders, “Happy for you, man.”

Steve’s not sure if he can do this, actually. Can’t face this Eddie. The one whose ego isn’t a storm cloud, who’s okay failing, who’s okay seeing him succeed. Who’s honest and sincere and wants the best for him. Eddie who would lose thousands of fans just to sing Steve’s favorite song.

Eddie’s eyes are shiny, “But you’ve been good?”

“Yeah, yeah. Good. Keeping busy. I filmed an Amex commercial. Good money. Made my agents happy.” He’s rambling around it. He squints into the dark, drops it casually as he can muster. “I’m gonna start seeing that country singer, probably. The one with that Kansas song? Our people are setting something up.”

Eddie’s face falls, the sun out with a sentence. “What are we doing here, Harrington?”

Steve’s tone is bleary, sheepish, “What?”

“Been losing my mind this last month. Can’t stand not having you around. But you- you’re dating?”

It’s a shrug, it’s all he's got, “Sure.”

Eddie’s hunched, shoulders tight. He talks small. “You told me you loved me. Before you left.”

Steve huffs a breath. The air is cold. “C’mon. You were like, obliterating my brain with your dick. I say impulsive shit like that all the time.”

He doesn’t. They both know that.

Eddie clicks his teeth, shakes a whisper. “Nah. You don’t.”

Steve falters, trips on his tongue. He finds his voice low and hoarse, he can barely say it, “Please don’t hold me to it.”

Eddie won’t look him in the eye. He blinks up at the sky, “I love you. For the record. I um, I never stopped. Guess I’ve been pretty obvious about it.”

“Eddie, c’mon. Don’t do this. It’s not fair.”

“Date Dorothy.” His laugh is glacial. “I don’t mind. It won’t be real, right? Those things never fucking are.”

“I don’t know– it could be.” The ground’s falling under Steve’s feet. “Down the line, or whatever.”

Something cracks, crumples. “I had you. God fucking damnit. I had you and I–”

Steve’s not expecting the sobs until they happen. Flemmed and shaky and pathetic. Those brown eyes silver-wet like moons.

Eddie pushes his palms into his cheeks. “Sometimes, after you leave, I just stare up at the ceiling and try to invent like, time travel or something. Just to go back and slap the shit outta myself. I was a goddamn coward. Couldn’t face it. Could talk around it, sure. Write it into my songs like that was honest. But, nah, I couldn’t look in the mirror. Definitely couldn’t look at you. I’m facing it now. I need you to know that. It won’t fix all shit I did, won’t fix the stupid fucking way I tried to fix it the first time. It’s there, it’s out, hell, it’s goddamn double platinum.” He sputters it out miserable, “But I am trying. Even if this– if we can’t. Need you to know I’m facing it now. I want to be better.”

Then Eddie looks right at him, looks at Steve like looking is enough to break his heart. “And I don’t wanna be selfish anymore cause it’s poison, Steve. But fuck. I know I don’t deserve it but if you’ll have me, I’ll– I’m there. Whatever way you’ll take me.”

“Eddie.” Steve doesn’t know why he’s here. Why he keeps digging this wound, ripping out stitches.

“Please? Can’t walk away again. Don’t have it in me.”

“Yeah.” Steve laughs. “You only do that when it’s easy.”

Eddie flinches. Shoves a ringed hand into a pocket. “Too late, huh?”

Steve scratches the back of his head and turns on his heel, “We can’t keep doing this.”

He gets as far the kitchen. Eddie quicksteps in front of the counter, blocks his out. But he’s cowering, ducking his head. “Did you um, like the song?”

It swells up all at once, that bone-deep cruelty of it. A gust turned tsunami. “Not really, Ed. Kinda broke my fucking heart.”

“Shit,” Eddie clicks. “Yeah, I, um, I’m not all that good at the grand gesture thing. Probably should have figured that out by now.”

Steve lets it all in. The red that’s been thrumming through his body since this whole thing started. Lets it possess him. He pushes into Eddie’s space, callous and cruel. “You’re really fucking me up, here. Do you know that?”

“I– I’m not trying to.” Eddie blinks. Frustratingly earnest.

“What we’re doing– Whatever this is. It makes me feel pathetic. I’d be the dumbest asshole on the planet if I took you back.” He’s screaming now. The balcony door is still open. He doesn’t care if anyone hears. He wants them to hear.

Eddie’s lip is shaking. “I’m sorry.”

“I hate you.” Steve murmurs. The red’s coming off in whisps, quicker than it ever had, easier than it should.

Eddie’s smile is weak. His face is wet. “I know.”

“You ruined me.” He leans in, finds half a punch in it. Last one he’s got.

Eddie closes his eyes, brow furrowed. “I know.”

“I don’t want anyone else.” He’s tired. Bone tired. Tired of the ache that only ever seems to go away around, well–

Eddie’s guilt is plain. It's all of him. “I’m sorry.”

Steve takes a breath. He thinks about second chances.

“You really want to be with me?”

Eddie looks at him like he’s already burrowed in. Ribs and guts and blood. “Got my priorities way out of whack for a minute there. Jesus, way too many minutes there. But yeah. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. You’re it for me, Stevie.”

Steve groans, taps his forehead lightly against a shelf. Eddie’s hand lands steady at his arm, awkward and cautious and right. “I’m a fucking idiot.”

“No.” Eddie says soft. “You’re not.”

“Yeah, I am.” Steve shakes his head. Waves a finger into Eddie’s chest. “You sang Dave fucking Matthews.”

“Don’t remind me, man. They’re gonna start shattering my CDs.” He pauses, sincere as ever. ‘I, uh, wouldn’t take it back though.”

Steve groans again, presses his head into Eddie’s shoulder. “No, you don’t get it. You sang Dave Matthews and now I’m gonna have to call my team and tell them it’s not gonna happen with the country singer.”

Eddie blubbers, big Saturday morning cartoon recalibration. “You’re– what?”

Steve shrugs, catches his eye. “Now I’m gonna have to talk about my coming out journey with Angie at People and dude, she’s been on my ass about it for years. Total sore winner.”

He’s shaking his head, “Harrington… Steve. Stevie.”

But Steve keeps rattling on, “I’m gonna have to tip off the paparazzi that Dark Pines star Steve Harrington was spotted sneaking into Eddie Munson’s brownstone at midnight for a secret rendezvous. Gonna have to go for a jog around the block first thing tomorrow, with like, more hickeys than a teen who just got their first girlfriend.”

“You’ve really thought about this, huh?”

Eddie’s back pushes into the edge of the kitchen counter. And Steve thinks about that photo that forced them together again, about Eddie’s easy grin, about the soft adoration high on his cheeks, about never being so young. He thinks about fucking up and growing up and growing apart and changing. And he smiles against chapped lips that taste like cigarettes and coming home.

And he says, “Gonna have to find someone to give me the hickeys.”

And Eddie lights up like the sun, “I know a guy.”

And Steve, well, he thinks about second chances.

Tags

eddie munson steve harrington steddie this was fucking incredible

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callas-shitshow

1 year ago

okay hi i need help finding a fic. it was here on tumblr and i think it was recent? and it was steddie and it was about how steve is always perceived as like really dumb and everyone makes jokes and he hates it. and so then one day after he stays at eddies he locks his keys in his car but he doesn’t wanna go get eddie to help him get them out because he’s embarrassed so he walks to work. and i only got like halfway through it so i really wanna finish it but i can’t find it

Tags

please help stranger things eddie munson steve harrington steddie sorry for the word vomit lol

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callas-shitshow

1 year ago

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christmas this is my favorite thing ever hallmark literally my roman empire just dudes being bros

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callas-shitshow

4 months ago

and if you get rid of every depressed scrawny british boy hopelessly in love with his best friend, who's going to be the glue to your fucked up little maze experiments, ava paige?

Tags

the maze runner newt maze runner newt is me i fear

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callas-shitshow

1 year ago

"This is a Joe Alwyn album" "This is a Matty Healy album" shut up shut up SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!! Swifties are so annoying, this is a TAYLOR SWIFT ALBUM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHY IS YOUR FIRST REACTION TO ASSIGN THINGS TO A MAN!!!!!!!!!!!! I HAVE HAD ENOUGH!!!!!

Tags

THIS MOTHERFUCKING THIS

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callas-shitshow

2 years ago

tag yourself i’m nick 💀