Tag: technology

VFM and Gab

All VFM who emailed me prior to noon today have received their registration emails from Gab.  In the event you don’t think you have, you are advised as follows:

Many in the lists had already been sent, mostly gmails, those folks should check both their “social” and spam folders. Usually best to do an inbox search. Google is pushing our emails to both of those folders.

Remember, once you’re on, be sure to do a post with #DreadIlk and #VFM so that others can find and follow you.

By the way, @a will be appearing at the Monday Brainstorm on the Disconvergence. I’m hoping that we’ll actually have three of the major #AltTech players there. Invites will go out this evening.

UPDATE: And this is what #AltTech in action looks like. In tangentially related news, the Brainstorm invites have gone out to the Brainstormers and OGs. They’ll go out next to the VFM. Tomorrow I’ll open it up to everyone else. We can seat up to 1,000.

The Disconvergence

Three things happened in September.

  1. Twitter blocked links to Vox Popoli.
  2. I stopped tweeting on Twitter and moved to #Gab.
  3. Monthly site traffic grew from 2.83 million pageviews to 2.97 million pageviews. 

Conclusion: Twitter is officially irrelevant with regards to site traffic. Traffic over the October-December period will either confirm or contradict that conclusion.

Regardless, next week, the rise of Alt-Tech is going to become more apparent. Project Big Fork is already partnering with Brave and Gab. Plans for other alternatives are already in the works. The cultural high ground of social media cannot be conceded to the SJWs who run it.

Although the balance of resources looks imposing, this is a series of battles that are eminently winnable due to the Impossibility of Social Justice Convergence. Remember, the more an institution converges towards the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice, the less it is able to perform its primary function.

As long as Alt-Tech focuses on its primary functions rather than upon becoming a reverse image of the SJW-converged social media institutions, its victory in the long term is inevitable. This is the beginning of our Gramscian long march.

But we will need your help, in a wide variety of ways. On Monday at 7 PM Eastern, I’ll be holding an open Brainstorm for all the Dread Ilk and everyone else interested in supporting what I am calling the Alt-Tech Disconvergence. Invites will be going out to the OGs, Brainstormers, and VFM first, as there is only room for 1,000 seats.

What you’re missing

If you’re not on Gab.

The fundamental uselessness of genocide is best exemplified by the fact that the Turks killed 1.5 million Armenians and somehow missed BOTH the Kardashians and the Sarkeesians.

Watch out, the DREAD ILK are arriving! Stickwick is here. I thought I could feel the average IQ jump. In other good news, #RunThemDown is trending here. #YouWontSeeThatOnTwitter

Just to be clear, I’m not banned from Twitter. I just don’t see any point in providing free content to a site that not only thought-polices that content, but blocks access to my primary content. And perhaps more importantly, the guys behind Gab are smart, friendly people who aren’t SJWs.

And then, there is this:

@Spacebunny
It’s 2016 and literally everything is offensive. So what is the most offensive costume you can come up with for this Halloween?

@voxday
Milo in blackface carrying a drowned migrant child.

We’re the George and Gracie of Gab, with just a twist of artistic cruelty.

How SJWs neutralize rival institutions

This is a vital description of the way SJWs attack social media institutions outside their control, from a blog to an entire social media organization:

Containment, however, is not a winning strategy on its own. Even if you contain a conversation, even if you contain a user base, it can still grow in theory. As degenerate as people are today, quality is easily detected by others, whether it is great art, entertaining jokes or damning evidence. This is why, once a “space” (I’ll drop the quotes now, but please note that I don’t intend to justify the existing use of this terminology, I intend to dismantle it) is contained, the next move is to ensure its destruction. There are two ways to do this, we will now discuss the first of them:

Strategy 2: Dilution and poisoning

Just because a space is contained by no means implies that they intend to leave it alone. Containment keeps people inside the space from going out, like a gated city under siege by a numerically and tactically superior enemy. Dilution and pollution are the artillery and siege weapons deployed to make ensure everyone in the city starves or gets poisoned. Their aim is to destroys the target containment space and ensure those inside surrender and assimilate into the outer safe space.

What keeps a space alive? Two key ingredients: new users and new content (also known as OC). A new participants/lurkers, after becoming familiar with a space, create new content. The OC doesn’t make itself after all, and every individual has a finite amount of time and finite will to continue. If they feel they are alone, lacking the will to continue, they will give up. New content, attracts new people and if it directs them to the space that created it, they can participate and grow it. Thus the two parameters are tightly coupled. Lose one and you lose the other.

By diluting the content that exists in a space with bad quality content, it will repel new users. Subtle sliding and shitposts are the main weapon of choice. Burying OC, burying quality posts and ensuring only the rubbish rises to the top. This has an additional benefit, the shitposting will force some users to demand a higher level of moderation. This will go back to the phase of containment, where infiltrating parties will be able to contain the containment through various rules as we saw on gghq and as we are seeing on KiA. The reaction is expected as is part of the strategy.

The other, much more dangerous weapon is poisoning, inserting bad ideas, rotten OC into the target. Making their OC less special/less distinct than that which can be obtained outside in the “safe space”. Forcing those inside to play by the rules of the outside, changing their language. Calling them “edgelords” for being different, to shame them from creating certain content. We saw this on KiA where moderators will ban anyone who will call Brian Flynt a man. We also saw this on GGHQ where “dangerous ideas” were censored and the users banned for posting it. The justification is always perception by the outside.

Furthermore, promotion of mixing the enemy narrative and compromising also disinterests new users. An extreme position attracts a lot more people than a dilute position. At this point in time, you can see on twitter how closely the so-called #GamerGate activists resemble the SJWs themselves, from their language, smarm, mannerism and even their beliefs. This is because they are acting as the poison, while simultaneously diluting the discussion with their own low quality content.

Keep this in mind as you begin to use Gab, Big Fork, and other Alt-SocialMedia. The SJWs will be throwing everything they have at these alternatives in an attempt to neutralize them.

We’re already seeing that today with Twitter’s attempt to block access from Twitter to this blog. Remember, if you post links here, use one of the many country suffixes, so instead of .com, use .it, .fr, or .de. They’ll likely get around to blocking all those too, but remember the rule: make the rubble bounce. We can’t stop them from doing it, but we can make it an ongoing pain in their posterior.

And keep in mind one reason this blog still has lively and informative discourse in the comments is because the moderators and I ruthlessly weed out every SJW, troll, and hasbari who attempts to derail it.

Whatever, Twitter

I’ve never been a big fan of the medium, I don’t need to use it, and while I probably will get around to accessing my account eventually, their inept technical support simply doesn’t inspire me to make it a priority.

Unfortunately, we’re unable to verify you as the account holder and cannot assist you in accessing the account.

If you know which email address is associated with the account and you no longer have access to that email, please contact your email provider for assistance. More information can be found here: https://support.twitter.com/articles/107907.

For privacy reasons, we are not able to provide any additional information about this account’s email address. Even if you mistyped your email address on signup, we require that you write to us from the exact address tied to the account. There are no security questions you can answer nor additional information you can provide as proof of ownership.

While we understand it can be disappointing when you lose access to an account, these account verification requirements are in place to protect accounts and private user data.

So, they lock the account for “security” reasons at the same time they block links to this blog, but can’t unlock it because I’m not verified. Right. I’m not disappointed at all. It’s not a big deal, all I need to do is restore access to my old email address, but right now, I’m just too busy to bother.

The point is, don’t be concerned if you don’t see me on Twitter for a while. I don’t care about Twitter any more than they do about their users.

But I will observe that this sort of casual indifference to customer relations, especially concerning problems they themselves caused, is the hallmark of a company that is doomed, sooner or later.

Especially when I’ve been on Twitter for years and have only 23,000 followers. I’ve been on Gab for all of about 4 hours and already have 500. Stefan Molyneux has nearly 2,000. If we can reach nearly as many people and without having to put up with all the SJW harassment, that’s a complete no-brainer.

UPDATE: Or maybe I won’t go bother going back at all. Now Twitter is locking the accounts of users who simply retweet a link to this blog. Which means that the “suspicious activity” that got my account locked in the first place was almost certainly posting a link here.

UPDATE: I’ve already changed the @voxday link here from Twitter to Gab. Apparently the waiting list has increased 18k, to 62k, in just the last few hours, so get in line now.

On Gab now

As I can no longer access my Twitter account – for, as far as I can tell, non-nefarious reasons, I hasten to add – you may wish to consider following me at Gab.

Big Fork is on schedule for an October 3rd launch. We have managed to significantly increase the speed, so things are now running at acceptable speeds. We’ll continue to improve that with an infrastructure rebuild if we meet with sufficient post-launch support.

SJWs never stop harassing

Guess which of the four items is the cause of the warning.

UPDATE: And now I’m temporarily locked out of my Twitter account. I doubt it is Twitter; I suspect someone has been trying to hack it.

What happened?


We have detected unusual activity on your account. For your security, your account has been locked until you change your password.


What can you do:
To secure your account, please change your password before logging back in.

Can’t say I didn’t warn you

Do not – repeat – DO NOT – post pictures of your children on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or anywhere else on the Internet. They are not old enough to consent to it or understand the long-term consequences, and you are violating their privacy. It’s particularly egregious when you see parents posting pictures of their kids all over the place, but they refrain from posting pictures of themselves.

I expect there are going to be a lot of these cases in the future, and that the children are going to win because the parents quite clearly did not have their children’s interests at heart, but were merely indulging their own egos:

A 18-year-old woman from Carinthia is suing her parents for posting photos of her on Facebook without her consent. She claims that since 2009 they have made her life a misery by constantly posting photos of her, including embarrassing and intimate images from her childhood. Her lawyer Michael Rami says that to date, her parents have posted 500 images of her on the social media site without her consent, and he believes she has a good chance of winning in court.

You may now proceed with the expected snowflaking.

Twitter eats itself

It’s fascinating to watch Twitter wage war on its raison d’etre:

Twitter is taking another step forward in ensuring that its service is a safe place to be. The company today announced that it’s giving everyone access to its quality filter, which automatically screens out tweets from suspicious accounts and hopefully will minimize or eliminate abuse from taking place on the platform.

Users will also now have the ability to limit which notifications they receive across both mobile and the web.

During the company’s second quarter earnings call, Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey responded to complaints around harassment, bullying, and abuse that seemed to be running rampant on the service. He acknowledged that Twitter hadn’t done enough, but promised that it was working on not only improving enforcement of its policies, but also developing new technological solutions to combat the hate.

The launch of this feature to everyone comes on the heels of a critical report by BuzzFeed alleging a lack of concern Twitter has displayed toward harassment. The company has since responded to the article claiming that it’s not factual and “We are going to continue our work on making Twitter a safer place.”

As for notifications, you can now select to receive notifications from just those you follow.

The thing is, if you just mind your business and simply mute or block anyone you don’t want to see, there isn’t a problem. I give people two chances to demonstrate they’ve got something substantive to say, and once I determine that they’re too stupid or too argumentative to bother, I mute them and move on.

So, given that it’s already quite easy to avoid any significant or persistent unpleasantries, what Twitter is trying to do is effectively impossible. They’re trying to make it a place that will feel sufficiently safe to users who are going out of their way to interact with people they don’t know while avoiding any criticism from them.

People have been asking about Big Fork. It’s going well. Figure an announcement within 5 weeks.

Milo corners Twitter

Either Twitter is desperate or they have some seriously incompetent lawyers handling @nero’s data request.:

Twitter attempted to dodge Milo Yiannopoulos’ data request by falsely claiming that he lives in the United States of America and is therefore ineligible to receive the information.

“Twitter International Company provides the Twitter Services to individuals who live outside the United States of America. We understand that you live in the United States,” said Twitter in their reply today, despite the fact that Yiannopoulos has permanent residence in the United Kingdom and remains a citizen there.

“As a result, we are not a data controller in respect of your personal data. Consequently, we will return your postal order, in the sum of €6.35, to you.”

Yiannopoulos replied shortly after, stating:


TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN


I do not live in the United States. I am a permanent UK resident at the address listed on my letter, and a citizen of the United Kingdom.


You are clearly prevaricating by waiting until now to make this statement as opposed to making simple inquiries as to my country of residence.


Twitter has the choice of waiving the EUR 6.35 or paying the shipping and handling costs of sending a new money order, which will be EUR 7.


As a matter of interest, given that you have my UK address, where did you send the money order back to? To dispatch it to a UK address seems quite at odds with your proposition that I am a resident of the United States.


You have 21 days from the date of the original Subject Access Request to reply in full. This situation has not changed. I look forward to receiving the information requested within the time frame permitted by law.


Yours


Milo Yiannopoulos”

Seriously, who advised them to try to play that sort of ridiculous game? I’ve noticed that American companies often fail to take foreign courts very seriously, as if they assume they are merely some sort of state-level court that can be beaten at the federal level. No wonder so many of them end up paying massive fines.

I know for a fact that Milo’s been in London recently anyhow. It’s just a bizarre, time-wasting response by Twitter.