20 Comments
User's avatar
Redhed's avatar

Daisy this is horrendous. I felt sickened and horrified just reading this so for you to be on the receiving end of this very real Kafkaesque nightmare doesn’t bear thinking about. It all feels so grubby. A class action is so very much needed. Of course Zuckerberg wont admit to doing any wrong. All he ever does is lie and take take take from us but somehow we must find the strength and courage to protect what is rightfully ours - and protect our values. Im so very sorry this has happened to you and others.

Expand full comment
Daisy Buchanan's avatar

Thank you, that's such a heartfelt and heartening response. X

Expand full comment
sam baker's avatar

Yes! mine too. All five novels in four languages. Jon has had 19 novels used in about 12 different languages. we need to start a class action.

Expand full comment
Daisy Buchanan's avatar

I’m SO SORRY, it is so soul scrapingly grim. XXXXX

Expand full comment
sam baker's avatar

Soul scraping is right. Talking about it over on bluesky. Everything Rowan Coleman has written over 20 years. 28 of Jane Casey’s books including short stories that were sent exclusively to people who preordered and never published!

Expand full comment
River West's avatar

You are so on point here that I had to subscribe just to say so. Massive round of applause to everything you wrote in this piece.

Expand full comment
Daisy Buchanan's avatar

Thank you so so much, and welcome! X

Expand full comment
Dawn Cooper's avatar

This is very upsetting. I was very moved by your newsletter this morning, Daisy. I'm an illustrator and the future looks bleak for us too!

Expand full comment
Daisy Buchanan's avatar

I’m so sorry, it affects all of us. Sending much love and solidarity. X

Expand full comment
Thank you, Judy's avatar

I'm absolutely raging for you. I'm so sorry this is happening to you, Daisy (and others). Wonderfully articulated rage about it but this remains a substack you shouldn't have needed to write x

Expand full comment
Daisy Buchanan's avatar

Thank you. It’s SO horribly widespread, and i really wish I didn’t have to write it. X

Expand full comment
David Arthur's avatar

This must feel such a violation! The whole wretched business reminds me of that passage in Nineteen Eighty-Four, about how Julia works on the 'fiction engines' to produce garbage novels for the common people. Of course these glorified autocomplete algorithms haven't risen to even that level (their output just makes my eyes glaze over).

>To all staff: The theft of several boxes of paperclips is being investigated. We will determine the culprit by solving the cryptex. They will not be allowed to go horse riding. Meanwhile a list of your sexual neuroses will be pinned to the noticeboard.

😀

Expand full comment
Laura Pashby's avatar

Ugh, ugh, ugh. Mine too. Your piece is so beautifully — and humanly — written, Daisy.

Expand full comment
Bonnie Radcliffe's avatar

I’m so so sorry this has happened. It is genuinely terrifying and rage inducing and where can the rage be usefully directed? It is the sense of raging at a wall, a machine, something inhuman. And yet here in your response I see so much hope still, so much passion and story and creation and all of the things that make us human and make our work unique and messy and wonderful and surprising. That is not nothing.

Expand full comment
Claire Videau's avatar

I'm so sorry Daisy. Sending you love xxx

Expand full comment
Emma Gannon's avatar

:-(

Expand full comment
FFS's avatar

Infuriating indeed. I am so sorry, for you and for everyone else. And SO true how much Meta has just taken from all of us over the years. Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Expand full comment
Gabrielle Treanor's avatar

It’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong. I’m fuming on your behalf, I’m fuming for every writer, for every person who feels like they’ve been stolen from in, frankly, the myriad digital ways that are possible. What can never be taken from you is your brain, your heart, your soul, your imagination, your creativity, your talent, your skill, your humour, your you-ness. But, bloody hell!

Expand full comment
Geraldine's avatar

I’m so sorry. This is horrible.

Expand full comment
Julie Owen Moylan's avatar

Oh and all mine too. Absolute soulless scum bags and thieves of human endeavour. Boiling mad too Xx

Expand full comment