Tag: technology

The Z-man is the latest to be kicked off Twitter:

My twitter account was suspended for violation of their rules. The specific violations were that I was threatening to post personal information about someone and that I was contemplating suicide. Neither of those things are true, but that does not matter in these issues. What I think happened is some anti-Semites, who support the deranged loon Paul Nehlen, took issue with me saying Nehlen is a nut. Soon after, a lunatic started spamming me on Twitter and then my account was permanently suspended by the twitter police.

I’m not all that upset about it. I have been thinking about cutting out social media from my internet life. I was never into Facebook. I never saw the point of it. I’m not that interesting and neither are my friends. If I need to see cat videos, I have a cat at home. I never really liked twitter all that much, but I figured it was a good way to promote the site. It was mostly just a time waster. The increase in traffic from my activity was pretty much zero. My readers know where to find me, so twitter added nothing and just took away.

I’m still up on Gab, but I’m done posting there. Frankly, I’m tired of “white nationalist” types that have made Gab their home. I probably have muted two times the number of people I follow. It’s a free country and I think those people have a right to speak their mind on-line, but I just don’t want to hear it or see it. I’ve reached my limit on that stuff. It’s like being chained to a lunatic. No matter how hard you try to ignore it, you can’t help but notice the lunatic. The solution is to divorce myself from the whole scene. Goodbye lunatics…

Apparently tcjfs was kicked off too. As for the rest of it, the reality is that very few people are cut out for blogging long term. If it doesn’t come to you naturally, then you’re going to burn out sooner or later.

As for the usual “Alt-Right is over” theme, that’s a uniquely American perspective that confuses political philosophy with political movement, ideas with groups, and understanding with branding. When the White House is denouncing and firing globalists, European nationalists are winning elections, and Big Social is enduring everything from Congressional summons to attacks by SJW gunwomen, and self-styled conservative opinion leaders are increasingly irrelevant, the Alt-Right is the exact opposite of over.

Remember, winning is a process, not a conclusion. And as for me, I’m still not tired.

Facebook’s newfound commitment to data protection and privacy is mostly theoretical:

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that new data privacy laws will only apply “in spirit” to more than three quarters of the company’s users.

Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will force the social network to comply with strict rules about the privacy of its European users. But Mr Zuckerberg failed to commit to rolling out the protections globally.

“We’re still nailing down details on this, but it should directionally be, in spirit, the whole thing,” Mr Zuckerberg said on Tuesday. With only 17 per cent of its 2.2 billion users residing within Europe, the vast majority of Facebook’s users will not benefit from the new rules.

But on the plus side, they’ve already scanned all your messages anyhow:

Facebook Inc. scans the links and images that people send each other on Facebook Messenger, and reads chats when they’re flagged to moderators, making sure the content abides by the company’s rules. If it doesn’t, it gets blocked or taken down.

The company confirmed the practice after an interview published earlier this week with Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg raised questions about Messenger’s practices and privacy. Zuckerberg told Vox’s Ezra Klein a story about receiving a phone call related to ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. Facebook had detected people trying to send sensational messages through the Messenger app, he said.

“In that case, our systems detect what’s going on,” Zuckerberg said. “We stop those messages from going through.”

Of course, it’s not as if Google isn’t doing exactly the same thing with Gmail and Microsoft isn’t doing the same thing with Skype. If it’s on the Internet, someone other than the intended target is reading it. Count on it.

Well, that’s certainly ironic. YouTube’s executives would do well to reconsider their policy of discriminating against the videos they don’t like before another SJW snowflake takes violent exception to losing most of their audience courtesy of YouTube’s biased algorithms.

The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit has confirmed the identity of the shooter who opened fire on YouTube’s campus in San Bruno Tuesday. Nasim Aghdam, 39, lived in Southern California and appears to have had a robust presence on YouTube.

In a video posted in January 2017, she says YouTube “discriminated and filtered” her content. In the video, Aghdam says her channel used to get lots of views but that after being “filtered” by the company, it received far fewer views.

In a video posted in January 2017, Nasim Aghdam says YouTube “discriminated and filtered” her content. In the video Aghdam says her channel used to get lots of views but that after being filtered by the company, it received fewer views.(Published Tuesday, April 3, 2018)

In one online rant, she complained that YouTube censored her content by imposing an age restriction on one of her workout videos because they were too racy.

I still think that building our own platforms is the preferred option. But I’m certainly not going to shed any tears if the SJWs turn on Big Social.

When Big Social picks winners and losers – and it most certainly does so in an arbitrary fashion – not all of the losers are going to take their unfair treatment well.

This strikes me as an astonishingly horrific idea:

The Facebook founder is fighting to wrest back control of the data breach scandal alarming the world, but his ambitions for the social network are nothing short of chilling.

The founder of the world’s most popular social platform outlined his ambitions for Facebook to act as a democratic system, with an independent “Supreme Court”, which people will be able to petition for their content to be restored.

“I think in any kind of good-functioning democratic system, there needs to be a way to appeal,” said the 33-year-old, positioning the social media network almost as its own state, although staff are not elected. “I think we can build that internally as a first step.

“What I’d really like to get to is an independent appeal. So maybe folks at Facebook make the first decision based on the community standards that are outlined, and then people can get a second opinion. You can imagine some sort of structure, almost like a Supreme Court, that is made up of independent folks who don’t work for Facebook, who ultimately make the final judgment call on what should be acceptable speech in a community that reflects the social norms and values of people all around the world.”

Considering that the Zuckerbot has spent years learning Mandarin, one would think that he would be smart enough to do the math and realize that global democracy necessarily means rule by Chinese social norms and values.

And yet, that would be preferable to rule by the Zuckerbot’s bizarre values… which one certainly cannot describe as “norms”.

Fox News notes that the satanists at Google ostentatiously refuse to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

For the 18th year in a row, Google has no doodle to celebrate Easter, and Christians are angry on this holy day.

Paul Joseph Watson, Infowars editor-at-large, tweeted Sunday about Christianity’s most joyful day: ‏”So Google has a doodle for every obscure ‘woke’ person/event imaginable, but nothing for Easter? #EasterSunday”

James Woods retweeted it, saying: “They loathe Christians. Plain and simple.”

A spokesdemon defended the depraved corporation with all the adroitness and honesty of its Father, the Devil.

‘Doodles may appear for some non-religious celebrations that have grown out of religious holidays, such as Valentine’s Day, Holi’s Festival of Colors, Tu B’Av and the December holiday period, but we don’t include religious imagery or symbolism as part of these.’

 Yes, who doesn’t celebrate whatever 2B’@Vz  is supposed to be? You know, there appears to be an observable pattern here….

Well, this project sounds promising. After all, we know all about the terrible atmosphere of harassment at Google, where employees have been known to blacklist and physically threaten other Google employees on the basis of their opinions, right?

About 100 Google U.S. employees concerned about cyber bullying inside the company have organized into a group proposing new policies for conduct at the unit of Alphabet Inc, five people involved in the effort said in recent interviews.

Three current employees and two others helping to organize the group said it formed last fall. They said that among its proposals, which have not previously been reported in detail, are that Google should tighten rules of conduct for internal forums and hire staff to enforce them.

They said they want to stop inflammatory conversations and personal attacks on the forums and see punishment for individuals who regularly derail discussions or leak conversations. The group also wants Google to list rights and responsibilities for accusers, defendants, managers and investigators in human resources cases.

That sounds pretty reasonable, I have to say.

The group also desires greater protection for employees targeted by what it views as insincere complaints to human resources used as a bullying tactic and goading. The organizers said Google should be more attuned to when people seeking to stir animosity or expressing views opposite the company’s stated values try to take over discussions about race, gender and other sensitive subjects. 

Wait a minute…

“My coworkers and I are having our right to a safe workplace being endangered,” said staff site reliability engineer Liz Fong-Jones, one of the lead organizers. She said employees experience stress and fear of physical reprisal when internal conversations are leaked to media, sometimes with writers’ names. 

Oh. It’s just the usual suspects crying to the media again.

You know, I expect criminals also experience stress and fear of physical reprisal when their crimes come to light. By Google SJW logic, newspapers should stop reporting on crime for fear of causing stress to criminals.

Facebook is now facing the same problem that Google has been dealing with for the last year, which is whistleblowing employees who are willing to expose the problematic behavior of their colleagues and superiors. Perhaps the loyalists should get in touch with Wired, so they can complain about how terrible it is that their threats and other misdeeds are being exposed to the public.

According to two Facebook employees, workers have been calling on internal message boards for a hunt to find those who leak to the media. Some have questioned whether Facebook has been transparent enough with its users and with journalists, said the employees, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation. Many are also concerned over what might leak next and are deleting old comments or messages that might come across as controversial or newsworthy, they said.

I have no doubt that the so-called “Ugly Memo” is neither the last nor the worst thing we’re going to see coming out of the Facebook internal messaging boards.

Jean-Louis Gassée concludes that the Zuckerbot thinks human beings are suboptimally cognitive bio-machines with an inability to penetrate falsehoods perpetrated by advanced forms of bio-machine processing:

Carefully reading and re-reading Zuckerberg’s words puts me ill at ease. Of course, simply complaining that Facebook’s CEO sounds well-rehearsed won’t do. He’s a pro at managing a major crisis. Persphinctery statements are part of the fare (from the NYT interview):

“Privacy issues have always been incredibly important to people. One of our biggest responsibilities is to protect data.”

But we quickly get to the misrepresentations.

“… someone’s data gets passed to someone who the rules of the system shouldn’t have allowed it to, that’s rightfully a big issue and deserves to be a big uproar.”

Here, Zuckerberg glosses over the pivotal fact that researcher Aleksandr Kogan accessed data in a manner that was fully compatible with Facebook’s own rules (see below). It appears that the rule-breaking started after he put his mitts on the data and made a deal with Cambridge Analytica.

Next, we’re treated to the resolute statements. Facebook now realizes what transpired and will make sure it won’t happen in the future:

“So the actions here that we’re going to do involve first, dramatically reducing the amount of data that developers have access to, so that apps and developers can’t do what Kogan did here. The most important actions there we actually took three or four years ago, in 2014. But when we examined the systems this week, there were certainly other things we felt we should lock down, too.”

Three rich sentences, here. And a problem with each one…

First, an admission that Facebook’s own rules allowed developers overly-broad access to our personal data. Thanks to Ben Thompson, we have a picture of the bewildering breadth of user data developers had access to:

(Thompson’s Stratechery Newsletter is a valuable source of insights, of useful agreements and disagreements.)

Of course, developers have to request the user’s permission to make use of their data — even for something as seemingly “innocent” as a game or psychological quiz — but this isn’t properly informed consent. Facebook users aren’t legal eagles trained in the parsing of deliberately obscure sentences and networks of references and footnotes.

Second, Mark Zuckerberg claims that it wasn’t until 2014 that the company became aware of Cambridge Analytica’s abuse of Facebook’s Open Graph (introduced in 2010). This, to be polite, strains credulity. Facebook is a surveillance machine, its business is knowing what’s happening on its network, on its social graph. More damning is the evidence that Facebook was warned about app permissions abuses in 2011:

“… in August 2011 [European privacy campaigner and lawyer Max] Schrems filed a complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commission exactly flagging the app permissions data sinkhole (Ireland being the focal point for the complaint because that’s where Facebook’s European HQ is based).”

Finally, Zuckerberg tells us that upon closer examination Facebook realizes that it still has problematic data leaks that need to be attended to (“So we’re going ahead and doing that” he reassures us).

The message is clear: Zuckerberg thinks we’re idiots. How are we to believe Facebook didn’t know — and derived benefits — from the widespread abuse of user data by its developers. We just became aware of the Cambridge Analytica cockroach…how many more are under the sink? In more lawyerly terms: “What did you know, and when did you know it?”

Once more, sociosexual analysis provides useful insight. Remember, the Zuckerbot is not merely a Gamma, it is a Super King Gamma Emulation. And what do Gammas always believe? That their ludicrously transparent deceptions are impenetrable, of course.

Meanwhile, one of the Zuckerbot’s human assistants has let the sociopathic cat out of the bag:

On June 18, 2016, one of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s most trusted lieutenants circulated an extraordinary memo weighing the costs of the company’s relentless quest for growth.

“We connect people. Period. That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it,” VP Andrew “Boz” Bosworth wrote.

“So we connect more people,” he wrote in another section of the memo. “That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs someone a life by exposing someone to bullies.

“Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools.”

Zuckerbot doesn’t care at all about its “fellow humans”. And it’s simply grotesque parody when it tries to pretend it does.

Barron’s contemplates them.

The proverbial sky seems to be falling on Facebook (FB), with founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg agreeing to finally answer questions from Congress in the coming weeks.

Lawmakers will be pushing Zuckerberg about the company’s privacy controversy, but the issues go deeper for Facebook. The fallout from the Cambridge Analytica data-harvesting episode has exposed Facebook to two risks that aren’t getting much attention: One is the possibility, slight as it might be, that Facebook is newly vulnerable to competition. The other very real risk is Facebook’s ability to retain and recruit top talent in hypercompetitive Silicon Valley. The biggest names in the Valley routinely poach workers from one another.

First, those plucky competitors. I need not look further than my email folder. Idka, an advertising-free social network, on Wednesday announced its subscription-based platform would be free to new users through October 2018. The company, which has vowed not to sell or share user data, claims a 50{0e0118f8ae392893e7132af0e0c1b6af259b6ae2f64a392a36423d79bfd12d2b} increase in new users and an 800{0e0118f8ae392893e7132af0e0c1b6af259b6ae2f64a392a36423d79bfd12d2b} increase in website visits in the past week.

I wonder where all those new users came from…. Seriously, though, if you’re not on Idka yet, give it a whirl. We’re going to establish a new Voxiversity group there later this week.

Q asserts that it isn’t only Facebook that is in the crosshairs.

FACEBOOK data dump?
Who made it public? 
Who sold shares -30 days from announcement?
You can’t imagine the magnitude of this.
Constitutional CRISIS.
Twitter coming soon.
GOOG coming soon.
AMAZON coming soon.
MICROSOFT coming soon.
+12 
Current censorship all relates to push for power [mid-terms].
LAST STAND.

Sounds like a fascinating spring and summer.