this take is so pretentious that it reads like tech bro satire. Ah yes, customizing my email footer settings will showcase my refined taste and advanced aesthetic sense.
This story is so wild, imagine being this couple and trying to tell the police ebay execs are harassing me because I wrote mean things about them on the internet. This is a widespread thing that's going on in our culture right now, organized bullying and targetted harassment by those in power and it's having devastating consequences on the public discourse. This case is unique because the overconfidence and carelessness of the execs led to them being caught but in most cases people aren't reckless enough to leave easily tracked evidence of their misdeeds.
I can think of multiple examples of agriculture/pharma companies and game publishers engaging in this type of retaliatory harassment, most cases they're not careless enough to get caught.
agreed man, have fond memories of tweaking themes for daily drivers like irc client, winamp foobar2000, compared to like spotify or discord now feels so neutered and limited in terms of customizing appearance.
a dark pattern because while it's not actually required it might as well be, their 'account locked' email conveniently leaves out that you can simply email them and have them re-enable the account without a phone number.
In order to continue safely using Twitter, please follow these steps:
1. Log in to your account on the web or open your Twitter app (iOS or Android).
2. You’ll see a prompt letting you know your account has been locked. Click or tap “Start”.
3. Select your country/region from the drop down menu, and then enter your phone number.
4. Click “Send code” and Twitter will send you a text message with a confirmation code (note that your standard message rates may apply).
5. Enter the code you received in the “Your code” box and click “Submit”.
6. You will see a confirmation message that your account is now unlocked.
Once you confirm your identity, it may take up to a few minutes for your account to be unlocked.
If you’re still experiencing an issue after confirming your identity, please reply to this message and provide us with specific details of the problem you're experiencing. We’ll do our best to help!
Thanks,
Twitter Support
If you reply to this saying you don't have a phone they will re-enable your account but there's no mention of that or "click here to verify account" option.
One contract that was handed to me from an established company even included a clause that any IP created by even up to 5 (FIVE!) years AFTER you're no longer employed belongs to the company. Vaguely defined as anythikng related to the 'core business' (technology). Ridiculous and thankfully at least under CA laws completely unenforceable bully tactics.
FIFA (The governing body for soccer) issues similar fines and bans for any political messages. ie fined they recently fined English/Scotish FA's 100k for players wearing poppies (a flower) which symbolize fallen soldiers from WW1*.
In both cases while on a base human level it FEELS wrong, if you follow the $$ end of the day the broadcast is the product they're selling to advertisers. Adding any sort of political/divisive messaging could be easily kill those deals - makes sense given the finances. You're attacking their primary income stream, of course they're gonna come at you hard.
The player is not owed any platform by participating in this Blizzard event. If they banned him for comments made on his own social media outside of the event it would be a different story.
To be clear I'm not defending Blizzard, just explaining why most broadcast orgs will react similarly.
It is what it is, until the advertising based model of entertainment changes it'll continue to be this way.
Worth noting cloudflare leadership has been fighting this war for years and this is just a small battle.
Can you tell us when @Cloudflare will be holding its next "How to Protect Nazi Extremists" workshop? You guys seem to be the experts.
10:25 AM - 14 Aug 2017
The recent string of violence has forced their hand here.
it's ridiculous it's given this much attention when there's far more nefarious activity and problems caused by big tech that are to date totally under the radar outside of a few researchers and journalists, and they go far beyond privacy violations (controlling global narratives/elections for one, facilitating the indoctrination of populations by optimizing for user engagement).
what I found interesting was how quickly Hn jumped to action (contacting investors, pension funds) relating to NGO on a completely unsubstantiated report. "May have been" was the quote from that article. I can't recall the last time I've ever seen upvoted Hn comments outraged enough to contact investors let alone from an unconfirmed report.
This is fantastic, thanks for writing it and for your testimony!
my favorite bits
"The emergence of this tech oligopoly reflects a profound shift in our society, the migration of every area of commercial, social, and personal life into an online realm where human interactions are mediated by software."
"Consumers will just as rightly point out that they never consented to be the subjects in an uncontrolled social experiment, that the companies engaged in reshaping our world have consistently refused to honestly discuss their business models or data collection practices, and that in a democratic society, profound social change requires consensus and accountability."
FB is the sacrificial lamb, popular scapegoat and effective distraction in this new era of SV policies shaping public opinion, ideas and as a result global politics. It seems misplaced, the amount of vitriol and negative press directed at facebook when from my perspective Google/Twitter/Amazon and even Reddit are far, far worse in terms of aggressively monopolistic behavior and negative effects on society and democracy. The fallout and effects of these platforms unparalleled power and influence is not well-researched yet. The key part that strikes me as disingenuous if these outlets and politicians who fling so much mud towards FB cared so much about privacy violations where were the billion dollar fines and string of hit pieces on Equifax (Who also collect and store your info without your consent)? The answer is there weren't any because they don't, and this is just a distraction from the real shit.
> Reddit is another example a company that has recently scrubbed itself of most controversial content,
I agree with you on most points however reddit takes no action against extremists and fringe groups proliferating on their platform until substantial pressure is applied from either advertisers or journalists. They go as far as shadowbanning users who bring up their lack of action to shine a light on their culpability, presumably to keep it off of mainstream journalists radar, thankfully it's now too late and enough good journalists have picked up the scent. Expect to see many great pieces about this in the near future.
Reddit also scrubs the profiles and post history of mass shooters who were indoctrinated on their platform, one example is Elliot Rodgers the incel and Santa Barbara shooter from several years ago, truly disgusting and frightening behavior that denies researchers and journalists from understanding the reach and impact of the spread of ideologies and hatred on these platforms.
to offer a counter opinion I found wordfence highly obtrusive, annoying and full of dark patterns in an attempt to upsell you to premium. They present in their dashboard ALL attacks within their entire network as if those were attacks on your site in particular which is misleading. If the project permits the best practice is to convert the site into fully static HTML (WP2Static, SimplyStatic) and keep the backend site/database separate and local only.
archive.is is a very important tool in online extremism research and you've taken money from far-right extremists, your explanation for why it's inaccessible seems incomplete.
This is probably where I get banned from Hn but it has to be said - to posture as if you care about end users while in the same breath taking money from extremists and turning over personal identifiable information to far-right outlets like DailyStormer, is disingenuous at best and I can think of other ways to describe it which are less charitable.
