[UPDATE] The New Aff App + My issue with it.

Long time no see. (Long time no see~)

 

When I logged on this evening, I was greeted with this notification. 

 

I was excited. Hooray! I had spend like, $10 years ago because the ads annoyed me that much. So I followed the link and it took me here.

 

 

 

I downloaded the app and had a great experience with it. It's just like the website, easy to use. Now there'll be notifications to your phone without logging in! (You can customize which ones you want.) Hooray. Until I noticed an extra little something at the bottom on the Play store.

 

"To save the entire story......." Yes, you read that correctly. 

Now, on the website, it's by chapter. According to the FAQ's:

Q: How do I read stories offline?

A: To read stories without an Internet connection, go to the chapter you'd like to save for offline reading and click on the "Save Offline" button. To view the chapters you've saved, search for the Offline link at the top navigation bar and go to the offline section of the site. Ensure that you bookmark this section for future reference and simply visit the offline url to read your saved chapters whenever you have a limited Internet connection.

 

Which I was never WILD about, but okay. This app feature works on unlocked stories, not ones that are subscriber only or have trigger warnings. And it does appear that you can't copy and paste directly. That's  . . nice? I guess? I don't know. I just can't get excited about someone being able to rip my work in one click.

 

I see more instances on plagiarism in the future due to this, and I hope aff is prepared to take it more seriously than they have been. I can think of quite a few writers that quit because their work was stolen and there were no consequences. I don't know. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I'm uncomfortable with this. 

 

And there are ads in the app. :-(  Bleh. 

 

Tell me what you think. 

 

 

[UPDATE]

 

I wasn't expecting much of a response when I decided to blog about this last night, but the coolest thing happened right before I went to bed. The creator of our beloved website reached out to me to address my concerns(the entire exchange is below in the comments, feel free to read it). After a little back and forth, he(I think his name is Jason?) has agreed to allow authors the option to turn off the 'save offline' feature entirely. In the future, he's going to work on a way that the 'save offline' feature will be for friends only. 

 

I feel so, so, so much better about this whole situation now. I was very concerned about someone being able to subscribe, essentially download my whole story, then unsubscribe again and then disappear into the ether. That won't be an issue going forward and I am very okay about it. So thank you!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back to Top ↑

Comments

You must be logged in to comment
Owlrose #1
Oh gosh! Yes! I am so happy. Cannot wait!
Nichiren #2
Hi guys, just to let you know, authors can now disable the Save Offline feature in their stories (both in the app and on the web). Just look for the "Disable" link next to the Save Offline icon. I'll also be working on a friends-only option in case some of you are interested in that.
stardrop #3
Hello! Good to see you again!

It's probably going to be tough for a few people because there are some trolls out there who will repeatedly do this just to piss you off.

Giving the author the option to deactivate the offline saving would be good, another idea would be that instead of saving the entire text files on the mobile device, the app could just store the chapters in the app for a certain period of time, without actually saving it on the phone so if people really want to plagiarize it they have to go over the "screencap and write it down" way.

I didn't know that the direct plagiarism is such a huge issue ;/ I've seen only 2 instances where a fic has been directly plagiarised and in both cases it was taken down immediately. What happens a lot in our community though is somebody rewriting a fic just in their own words, which is no 'official' plagiarism but still a blatant copy of an existing work and the worst thing about it is that those things are NOT being taken down.

The owner of AFF is super nice, when I had the problems with all the harrassment 2 years ago he was super helpful and tried his best to improve the situation for us even though we are just such a little part of the whole community. I think if you PMed him with your concerns he will give you an open ear and find a way to make you feel comfortable with this
oceansofxo #4
I love your TOP reference.
oceansofxo #5
They need to get that together. There is no point in having an app if everyone can just read your story all at once. You can do it on the PC now. This is giving too much leeway for plagiarism.
Creepingmonster #6
Hello guys. Is the AFF app stable? I also read an article which says not to download it.
Nichiren #7
I haven't thought of that. Save offline is the top most requested feature and I get hounded year after year over giving a proper offline reading experience like everyone else's app does so I figured I'd do it this year. As for plagiarism, we've received a ton of plagiarism reports since AFF started and a significant number of them are from published paperbacks where the plagiarizer took the time to copy it word for word. I figured if someone's willing to go through those lengths, nothing's really stopping them short of them getting blind all of a sudden. The app also makes it hard to do copy and pastes which is why I gave the app that functionality instead of the browser. That said, our moderators this year are really great at staying on top of the reports to take down plagiarizers but only as long as they're actually reported by the community. I do get where you're coming from though. What I can do is provide an option for the author to prevent the save offline feature on their stories. Will that work for you? I honestly don't know how the other sites would prevent it either. If someone can read a story, then they can copy it so it's a catch-22. If they're actually doing something pretty cool that I don't know about, let me know and I'll see what I can do!

As for the ads, that's actually the only bit left that's keeping the app from full production. The mobile devs I hired couldn't figure out how to get that one banner ad out on a per (gold) user or per section basis so I compromised with them and asked them to at least get rid of it when the keyboard goes up. At this point, I'm just waiting on them. The $20K wasn't actually enough to pay for the app and I matched it with my own finances so unfortunately, the ads are there to cover the shortfall. Wish I could do it differently (if everyone bought gold, I could!) but it is what it is for now.
coal3sc3 #8
Honestly, I've never been a fan of the 'Save Offline' thing. While it is great that you can actually read your favorite fic offline, still, I feel like it contributes more to the plagiarizing issue. Not saying that everyone who saves it offline will plagiarize it, but there's someone out there who probably will. There's always a probability in that. And the fact that the app allows users to save the entire story kinda makes me scared not only for myself but also for my favorite authors. I appreciate AFF for trying to be more user-friendly, but I guess, well, personally I think the 'Save Offline' option is not really wise? Yes it's beneficial to the readers, but what about the authors? I mean, a number of my favorite authors have taken down their stories and went as far as deactivating their accounts because of plagiarism. Maybe I miss out on how it can benefit the authors, but I don't know, I don't like it.
Back to Top ↑