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dutiful-wildcraft · 18 days ago

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Omegaverse: Alpha!Soap x Omega FOC

Fluff, Smut, Background Poly141, showering, some finger action, be nice. MDNI

Banner: @/diviniyae

Their girl is going into heat, though she doesn't know. Never does.

Soap thought she was faking it at first. Trying to be somehow demure about it, like some fantasy novel. But no. For as clever and cocky as their omega is, it bites her in the ass every time.

He understands now how girls can forget their periods. Ruby doing the same with a heat that only comes twice a year, he supposes she could forget that too. Mistaking her body's calling cards as some fluke.

She doesn't keep track of it. Swears up and down she'll know it when she feels it coming.

Yet they all keep it scribbled onto calendars and apps. Watching. Waiting.

The days never exact but pretty close. So when Ruby starts being…elusive, they all share a knowing look.

It starts with naps, long, frequent. Their stubborn girl fighting yawns and watery eyes in the mid-afternoon. Determined to finish her book or little craft project only to pass out on one of them, warm cheek pressed to their skin as they are effectively held hostage for a few hours until she stirs.

(Simon usually volunteers for that one.)

From there her sleep schedule is fucked. Rising late, sleeping briefly, pretending to go to bed at a reasonable hour to only be caught puttering around in the wee hours of the night and corralled back into bed.

Next, is the elusiveness, irritability. She trends far, far away from them. Hiding. Stubborn to feed. Finicky. Nesting. Her den (not a nest, she insists) a heavily guarded fortress until she's soft and ready to share. Hissing and yowling and anyone who pestered her there.

They tactically leave their clothes about, well worn shirts and old pillows that disappear within the day.

They almost work in shifts, giving her space yet looking after her, as if to pretend there wasn't an omega shaped alligator snapping about their home. Waiting patiently for the prickly thing to go soft and sweet, crawling into one of their beds as the levee finally breaks.

It's a toss up as to who she goes too. No favorites. (Though Gaz would argue it’s him.)

But Soap?

Well he would beg to differ.

Some would call him amicable, a bit brash but good to work with others, but you see, Soap can be a greedy, greedy man, and when he sets his mind to something, he will almost certainly have it.

It’s inevitable, a bit of snarling and snapping between possessive Alphas. Instinct that only really kicks in under the heat haze of an omega. That’s natural, and he loves his mates, wouldn’t trade the experience of his pack for the world.

And while he wouldn’t hog his omega all to himself, he could be tactical.

He keeps track of her cycle, down the day and time. Clockwork. Algorithms he's always had a knack for.

Waits for his reward for being a good, patient boy.

And it comes in the form of sleep heavy Ruby, hair tangled, mascara smudged beneath her eyes, yawning with a little growl as she comes shuffling into the kitchen, in a rumpled t-shirt and too big sweatpants, lulled by the scent of savory sweet noodles and potstickers he's cooked in the middle of the night just for her.

This is his time. The brief interim where she is hazy, sickly sweet. The calm before the storm where she can be fed and bathed and loved.

She beelines it right for him, wrapping her arms around his middle and mashing her face into the soft heat of his back.

And steamin’ jesus, does she smell good, rich milky chocolate over playful cherry syrup that slides right down his throat. Lays heavy in his belly.

“Aah~, g'mornin there teddy girl.” he teases warmly, twisting about in her arms so he can bury his face in her hair, squeeze her hard enough to earn himself a grunt and little giggles.

He kisses the top of her head, revels in the well worn scent of perfuming omega and his mates. “What's got you up so late?”

She pretends to think, and he can already see the lie coming a mile away.

“M' hungry”

He just stares, eyebrow raised as he presses a palm to her forehead. She's hot to the touch, not quite burning, but it won't be long.

“That all?”

She sniffs, nods, distracted by the food plated on the counter, a little ravenous look in her eye.

Keeping an arm around her, he plucks up a relatively cool potsticker off of the plate beside him, hand feeding it to her much to her delight, the omega wiggling happily in his arms as she takes a bite.

Bloody princess, he smirks, as if it doesn't delight him just as much to coddle her.

She's a good girl, quiet, sharp as a whip, doesn't want for anything and stays out of trouble (often to her own detriment, though they're working that out of her.)

It's rare to get her to indulge like this, let herself be babied. To play with him like he knows she wants too.

She takes another bite, teeth scraping against his fingers and he just barely bites back his hiss, her little stunt pooling blood right down to his groin. He scruffs her, palm sharp and quick as he snags her by the back or her neck, tugging her to look up at him. It's hardly a real scruff, a sharp little pinch that has her grinning up at him in a mix of shit-eating and sheepish.

“Ya wanna try that again, minx?”

“I think… maybe… I'm about to start my heat.” she announces, as if it hadn't been apparent over the last week.

Soap doesn't tease her this time. No ‘I told you so.’ Doesn't make her feel silly for doing what she needed to, even if she were as stubborn as a mule.

He only hums, hugs her close again with a warm thumb rubbing behind her ear.

“Then we best get you fed, aye?”

She eats well, scarfing down her own plate and going for seconds, occasionally stealing her favorite bites off of Soap's plate until she's sated and schmoozing her way into Soap's lap on their oversized sectional. Her soft belly pressed against his as she snuggles under his chin, nose pressed to his collar where his scent is more rich. Her purrs are quiet, only audible in the midnight quiet of the living room, devolving into soft breaths as she drifts back off to sleep.

This.

This is what he was waiting for. This little pocket in time he’s carved out for just them. He knows he is one of the rare few to have her like this, not just whining underneath him, but laughing against his skin, nipping and tickling and teasing. A girlish nature about her that she keeps under a tight mask of reserved young lady. It comes out at times, a rambunctious thing after too much coffee, or when she is particularly excited about something, nose practically pressed to the glass for aquarium trips.

He feels just a little bad for keeping this little phase secret, but this is something special, a Ruby just for him.

And he isn’t done with her yet.

He reaches down, smooths his hand over the curve of her rear, giving her a few warning pants before pinching sharply, causing her to yelp, glaring at him as if he'd just pissed in her cereal.

“Not bedtime yet girl, we've got to hosed you off.”

She wrinkles her nose. “For what?”

“Because you stink. And you're going to be hell on wheels to catch and bathe when you're too keen on wallowing in the sweat of 4 alphas.”

She remains unconvinced. He could make her, pack her in there with a stern rumble and a swat to the ass like Price, but there would be time for that later.

“You want your alpha's to smell like you don't ye?”

That catches her attention, suspicious brown eyes looking him up and down. “Let's get this layer off so you can start fresh.” he tugs at the same shirt of Simon's she's been wearing for a little too long now.

It's a lie.

A big fat lie. A clever ruse to scrub her clean so he can mark her up first, have her reeking of him before the real work starts. He's a fair man, delights in his pack and all of their scents, but there is something special about scenting her down first that makes the alpha in him preen in delight.

He corrals her into their oversized shower, fussing with the knobs to get the perfect scalding temperature that he knows she prefers, during it down ever so slightly in the hopes of preventing himself from parboiling.

When he turns again she is standing at the ready, arms in the air as she does a playful little shimmy. Happy girl. Wiggling like an excited puppy as she waits for him to strip her down.

He knows the drill. Tugging at the bottom of her shirt, trying his best to ignore the damp patch already against the front of her lavender colored panties. Patience. With a steadying breath he pulls the fabric up over her belly, mouth watering over the reveal of full soft breasts and stretch marks that dance across her skin like lightning. She’s beautiful, a walking luxury that he gets to see with his own two eyes every day.

He yanks the garment over her head with little fanfare, dodging her rumpled swats as he yanks her underwear down with the same energy, tugging at the soaked cotton around her ankle and snickering as she’s forced to hop a little to get them kicked away. Soap’s poor brain quickly short circuiting at the captivating bounce of warm soft skin, the rich scent of arousal thick in his nose from his position. Neither of them will last much longer with they’re brains intact.

Focus, John, focus.

He goes to work removing his own clothes next, putting on perhaps a little more flare than necessary as he tugs off his shirt, stomach rippling and shoulders flexing as he yanks if up and over the forest of hair on his chest. His athletic shorts go more quickly, the alpha trying with no minimal amount of effort to focus with the hard on that slaps against his stomach with the flourish.

When he meets her eyes again he might as well be a piece of meat. Pretty soft brown lost in a void of black as she looks upon him with a ravenous delight, movement slinky as a cat’s as she tries to corner him.

He just barely catches her before she can sink kitten nails into the fur of his chest, snagging her wrists in one hand and redirecting her toward the shower spray. She whines dejectedly, the sound of it yanking at his instincts like a steel chain.

Soothe, protect.

“You did that on purpose…” she grumbles, truly sulking like a wet cat as he corrals her under the shower spray.

“Cannae fathom, what you're on about.” he replies with an air of superiority, squeezing a small dollop of her face wash between his palms before setting to work scrubbing away smeared eyeliner. He toys with her skin, pinching and squishing her round cheeks comically as she tries halfheartedly to snap at him, instead breaking down into goofy giggles as he smooshes her cheeks together like a fish, planting a loud smacking kiss to her lips that has them both laughing. “Help me get you clean, and we can play however you like, lamb.”

Which, he truly did put in an effort on the getting clean part, at least at first, but the plan fell apart as soon as it was time for the rest of her to be scrubbed down. His hands are slick, gliding over her belly, squeezing at her sides, traveling up to palm at her breasts, relishing in the weight of them in his hands, the way her breath hitches as he thumbs over her nipples.

“John.” she gasps, the swell of her ass grinding against his length as she arches into the touch.

“I know.” he coos, pressing a kiss to her shoulder, mouthing slowly along her neck, her jaw, nipping at her ear as he teases at sensitive nipples. “Just a little more, you can be good aye?”

She huffs, whimpers softly, but nods, tilting her head back to look at him. “Atta girl” he purrs, rewarding her with a soft kiss to her forehead as he continues his ‘cleaning.’ Calloused hands abandoning her chest to drag along her spine, stirring up more purrs from his omega as he massages there for a moment before sliding down to the plush of her ass, over her hips.

His fingers glide through more than the slippery slide of soap between her thighs, and this time he can’t bite back his groan, the sound rumbling into her skin as he noses at the junction of her shoulder, breathing deep the rich scent of cherry cordial from the very source. Eyes lidded as he watches the heave of her chest, his movements slow and deliberate as he curls fingers through soaking wet folds.

His omega shudders, a breathless whine leaving her as she shifts her legs wider, tries to give him more access, tries to bend in a mockery of a real presentation.

His cock throbs, his tip flushed red and weeping where it leaves incessant little kisses over the curve of her ass.

He could take her here, fuck her senseless and put her to bed stretched and ready for the rest of his pack. She looks so pretty like this, skin flushed and lips parted, staring back at him with glassy eyes through the strands of soaked red hair.

Focus, Mactavish.

He’ll take her, but he won’t waste a knot that his precious omega will need later, and without his rut to back him up, keeping her satisfied will require some refractory tact at minimum.

He curls his fist into the strands at the base of her skull, earning himself another pitiful whine as he pulls her back like a lead.

“No sweetness, not ready for that yet, but I’ll take care of you.” he hushes, tugging her back into his chest as he slowly begins working a finger over the tight bundle of nerves at her center.

And oh does she melt, weight falling against his chest as he works her up, a litany of little whimpers echoing through the bathroom like music as he zeros in on the rhythm she likes. “That’s it, come for me sweet girl and when I get you dried off I’ll give you some fingers to fill this pretty cunt hm?”

She’s speechless, always so quiet until you work a few orgasms out of her, the poor thing panting like a dog as she nods desperately. He grips her chin with his free hand, tugging her over to swallow any noises she had to give him in hungry kisses. All tongue and teeth as he adds a few more fingers to swirl over her swollen clit.

She’s close, he can feel it, her body pulled taught, hot against his chest as she starts to tremble. He slides his hand down to her throat, tilting her back to gaze into glassy brown eyes, tears beading in the corner as she slowly breaks. Please, please, please, a desperate and breathless plea as she finally seizes in his arms, hips jerking uselessly as her orgasm washes over her, dragging a high pitched cry from her throat.

He doesn’t break away, just pulls her in for more kisses, lips sucking and nibbling over the sensitive gland along her shoulder as he slows his rhythm, working her down nice and easy until she’s boneless in his arms.

He can smell it more clearly now, her perfume ripe and thick, her body finally tipping over into full blown heat thanks to his well intentioned efforts.

It won't be long until the others wake to the scent of her permeating through the house, heat sick and crying for them in just a few hours time.

A second attempt at a shower was in order.

#johnny soap mactavish #soap cod #soap x oc #cod ocs #oc: ruby martin #wildcraft writing #omegaverse

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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years ago

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When the app tries to make you robo-scab

When we talk about the abusive nature of gig work, there’s some obvious targets, like algorithmic wage discrimination, where two workers are paid different rates for the same job, in order to trick occasional gig-workers to give up their other sources of income and become entirely dependent on the app:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

Then there’s the opacity — imagine if your boss refused to tell you how much you’ll get paid for a job until after you’ve completed it, claimed that this was done in order to “protect privacy” — and then threatened anyone who helped you figure out the true wage on offer:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/07/hr-4193/#boss-app

Opacity is wage theft’s handmaiden: every gig worker producing content for a social media algorithm is subject to having their reach — and hence their pay — cut based on the unaccountable, inscrutable decisions of a content moderation system:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

Making content for an algorithm is like having a boss that docks every paycheck because you broke rules that you are not allowed to know, because if you knew the rules, you’d figure out how to cheat without your boss catching you. Content moderation is the last place where security through obscurity is considered good practice:

https://doctorow.medium.com/como-is-infosec-307f87004563

When workers seize the means of computation, amazing things happen. In Indonesia, gig workers create and trade tuyul apps that let them unilaterally modify the way that their bosses’ systems see them — everything from GPS spoofing to accessibility mods:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#gojek

So the tech and labor story isn’t wholly grim: there are lots of ways that tech can enhance labor struggles, letting workers collaborate and coordinate. Without digital systems, we wouldn’t have the Hot Strike Summer:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/02/not-what-it-does/#who-it-does-it-to

As the historic writer/actor strike shows us, the resurgent labor movement and the senescent forces of crapulent capitalism are locked in a death-struggle over not just what digital tools do, but who they do it for and who they do it to:

https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/

When it comes to the epic fight over who technology acts for and against, we need a diversity of tactics, backstopped by tech operated by and for its users — and by laws that protect workers and the public. That dynamic is in sharp focus in UNITE Here Local 11’s strike against Orange County’s Laguna Cliffs Marriott Resort & Spa.

The UNITE Here strike turns on the usual issues like a living wage (hotel staff are paid so little they have to rent rooming-house beds by the shift, paying for the right to sleep in a room for a few hours at a time, without any permanent accommodation). They’re also seeking health-care and pensions, so they can be healthy at work and retire after long service. Finally, they’re seeking their employer’s support for LA’s Responsible Hotels Ordinance, which would levy a tax on hotel rooms to help pay for hotel workers’ housing costs (a hotel worker who can’t afford a bed is the equivalent of a fast food worker who has to apply for food stamps):

https://www.unitehere11.org/responsible-hotels-ordinance/

But the Marriott — which is owned by the University of California and managed by Aimbridge Hospitality — has refused to bargain, walking out negotiations.

But the employer didn’t walk out over wages, benefits or support for a housing subsidy. They walked out when workers demanded that the scabs that the company was trying to hire to break the strike be given full time, union jobs.

These aren’t just any scabs, either. They’re predominantly Black workers who rely on the $700m Instawork app for gigs. These workers are being dispatched to cross the picket line without any warning that they’re being contracted as strikebreakers. When workers refuse the cross the picket and join the strike, Instawork cancels all their shifts and permanently blocks them from new jobs.

This is a new, technologically supercharged form of illegal strikebreaking. It’s one thing for a single boss to punish a worker who refuses to scab, but Instawork acts as a plausible-deniability filter for all the major employers in the region. Like the landlord apps that allow landlords to illegally fix rents by coordinating hikes, Instawork lets bosses illegally collude to rig wages by coordinating a blocklist of workers who refuse to scab:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/company-that-makes-rent-setting-software-for-landlords-sued-for-collusion/?comments=1

The racial dimension is really important here: the Marriott has a longstanding de facto policy of refusing to hire Black workers, and whenever they are confronted with this, they insist that there are no qualified Black workers in the labor pool. But as soon as the predominantly Latino workforce struck, Marriott discovered a vast Black workforce that it could coerce into scabbing, in collusion with Instawork.

Now, all of this isn’t just sleazy, it’s illegal, a violation of Section 7 of the NLRB Act. Historically, that wouldn’t have mattered, because a string of presidents, R and D, have appointed useless do-nothing ghouls to run the NLRB. But the Biden admin, pushed by the party’s left wing, made a string of historic, excellent appointments, including NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, who has set her sights on punishing gig work companies for flouting labor law:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/10/see-you-in-the-funny-papers/#bidens-legacy

UNITE HERE 11 has brought a case to the NLRB, charging the Instawork, the UC system, Marriott, and Aimbridge with violating labor law by blackmailing gig workers into crossing the picket line. The union is also asking the NLRB to punish the companies for failing to protect workers from violent retaliation from the wealthy hotel guests who have punched them and screamed epithets at them. The hotel has refused to identify these thug guests so that the workers they assaulted can swear out complaints against them.

Writing about the strike for Jacobin, Alex N Press tells the story of Thomas Bradley, a Black worker who was struck off all Instawork shifts for refusing to cross the picket line and joining it instead:

https://jacobin.com/2023/07/southern-california-hotel-workers-strike-automated-management-unite-here

Bradley’s case is exhibit A in the UNITE HERE 11 case before the NLRB. He has a degree in culinary arts, but racial discrimination in the industry has kept him stuck in gig and temp jobs ever since he graduated, nearly a quarter century ago. Bradley lived out of his car, but that was repossessed while he slept in a hotel room that UNITE HERE 11 fundraised for him, leaving him homeless and bereft of all his worldly possessions.

With UNITE HERE 11’s help, Bradley’s secured a job at the downtown LA Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites, a hotel that has bargained with the workers. Bradley is using his newfound secure position to campaign among other Instawork workers to convince them not to cross picket lines. In these group chats, Jacobin saw workers worrying “that joining the strike would jeopardize their standing on the app.”

Today (July 30) at 1530h, I’m appearing on a panel at Midsummer Scream in Long Beach, CA, to discuss the wonderful, award-winning “Ghost Post” Haunted Mansion project I worked on for Disney Imagineering.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork

[Image ID: An old photo of strikers before a struck factory, with tear-gas plumes rising above them. The image has been modified to add a Marriott sign to the factory, and the menacing red eye of HAL9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' to the sky over the factory. The workers have been colorized to a yellow-green shade and the factory has been colorized to a sepia tone.]

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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luulapants · 3 months ago

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Do you have any tips to be more punk in 2025 specifically for minors?

Hey, great question! Let's take a look at our list and see what still applies and what we can flip around for you.

Cut fast fashion - Still applies! Try clothing swaps with friends.

Cut subscriptions Analyze your media consumption - Do you tend to play phone games that are psychologically manipulative? Are algorithms taking you to content that makes you upset? Track your screen time, think about what's being sold to you, and resist only consuming the media that is fed to you.

Green your community self - Forget touching grass, find ways to touch dirt. Spend time outside in nature. Go for hikes, look at trees, track how plants and animals change over the seasons. You're part of the natural world, so go connect with it!

Be kind - Still applies! Try handing out more compliments.

Intervene - Still applies, and especially applies to bullies, including teachers. This can be as simple as saying, "That was a really messed up thing to say. I think you owe X an apology."

Get closer to your food - Still applies! Try packing your lunch.

Use opensource software Reject Web 2.0 - Before you try to learn Linux, people your age need to start by learning some basic computer and coding skills. My generation was given computer classes and had social media that encouraged custom coding. Yours has been deprived of this education and given prepackaged web content. Reject AI. Right click + inspect element + fuck around. Learn Raspberry Pi. Become the cyberpunk hacker you want to see in the world.

Make less trash - Still applies! If mom won't let you start a compost in the backyard, propose starting one at school!

Get involved in local school politics - Know what's going on with your school board, with school administration. Start an underground, uncensored school newspaper with the real dirt.

DIY > fashion - High school is where a lot of adults learned their bad habits about keeping up with appearance/fashion demands. Refuse to buy in now and make homemade the new cool.

Ditch Google - Still applies! And also check your app settings to see if you have apps with unnecessary permissions.

Forage - Still applies!

Volunteer - Still applies! There might be fewer opportunities for minors, but you'll never know until you ask. Don't be afraid to be the only young person at the volunteer session.

Help your neighbors classmates - Offer to study with students who are struggling. Become someone people can trust to tell if their home situation is difficult. If you have friends who don't get enough to eat at home, bring them home for dinner. Check on people.

Fix stuff - Still applies! This can be a fun activity with friends, too. Let's all hang out and see if we can fix this busted stereo!

Mix up your transit - Still applies! Is taking the bus considered lame at your school? Do it anyway.

Engage in the arts - Still applies! Pay attention to art events that your classmates are putting on. Go to the school play - or join! Stop in the art classrooms to see what people are working on.

Go to the library - Still applies, public and school libraries! Talk to the librarians - they know things. Find out if there are after school programs you can take advantage of.

Listen local - Even more local! Stop by the band room after school to listen to practice. Does someone in your school have a band? Listen to them, cheer them on! Start a band! The great thing about punk music is that you can be really, really awful and still sound punk as hell.

Buy local Barter local - Lots of young folks don't have much control over or access to money, but that doesn't mean you and your classmates can't engage in barter. Figure out what you have to offer that other people might want, and trade for stuff you want. I used to cut hair and pierce ears in exchange for weed and rides to the mall. Maybe you can sew a friend's jacket in exchange for them bringing you a homemade lunch.

Become unmarketable - Still applies! PLEASE do this.

Use cash Steal ethically - Before engaging in shoplifting, make sure you know who you're stealing from! Stealing from Walmart is morally correct. Stealing from a family-owned grocery, a local coop, or a local artist? That fucking sucks, dude. Don't do it.

Give what you can - And only what you can. We ask a godawful lot from teens. You're in school all day, you're doing extracurriculars and maybe working and doing homework. You probably don't have a lot of money. You probably don't have a lot of time. But maybe you can bring your elderly neighbor's trash cans up from the street. Find the small actions that you have space for.

Talk about wages - PLEASE! If you have a job, this applies to you even more. Why? Because the adults working at your minimum wage job probably can't afford to be rabble rousers, but what do you have to lose except your shitty part-time Panera job?? A teenager who doesn't actually need their job to live has the opportunity to be the voice of truth in any workplace.

Think about wealthflow Resist indoctrination - Education systems are being gutted. Algorithms are feeding us misinformation. Cocomelon probably gave you ADHD or some shit - Jesus. It's a mess. Do what you can to practice critical thinking, expand your literacy, read stuff that seems boring. Start a book club or philosophy club with your friends. Ask who's profiting from a given situation. Resist knee-jerk reactions. Becoming an educated, thoughtful person is one of the greatest acts of resistance a young person today can engage in.

#asks #punk #diy #action is activism #think global act local #youth culture

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 4 months ago

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 18, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Jan 19, 2025

Shortly before midnight last night, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published its initial findings from a study it undertook last July when it asked eight large companies to turn over information about the data they collect about consumers, product sales, and how the surveillance the companies used affected consumer prices. The FTC focused on the middlemen hired by retailers. Those middlemen use algorithms to tweak and target prices to different markets.

The initial findings of the FTC using data from six of the eight companies show that those prices are not static. Middlemen can target prices to individuals using their location, browsing patterns, shopping history, and even the way they move a mouse over a webpage. They can also use that information to show higher-priced products first in web searches. The FTC found that the intermediaries—the middlemen—worked with at least 250 retailers.

“Initial staff findings show that retailers frequently use people’s personal information to set targeted, tailored prices for goods and services—from a person's location and demographics, down to their mouse movements on a webpage,” said FTC chair Lina Khan. “The FTC should continue to investigate surveillance pricing practices because Americans deserve to know how their private data is being used to set the prices they pay and whether firms are charging different people different prices for the same good or service.”

The FTC has asked for public comment on consumers’ experience with surveillance pricing.

FTC commissioner Andrew N. Ferguson, whom Trump has tapped to chair the commission in his incoming administration, dissented from the report.

Matt Stoller of the nonprofit American Economic Liberties Project, which is working “to address today’s crisis of concentrated economic power,” wrote that “[t]he antitrust enforcers (Lina Khan et al) went full Tony Montana on big business this week before Trump people took over.”

Stoller made a list. The FTC sued John Deere “for generating $6 billion by prohibiting farmers from being able to repair their own equipment,” released a report showing that pharmacy benefit managers had “inflated prices for specialty pharmaceuticals by more than $7 billion,” “sued corporate landlord Greystar, which owns 800,000 apartments, for misleading renters on junk fees,” and “forced health care private equity powerhouse Welsh Carson to stop monopolization of the anesthesia market.”

It sued Pepsi for conspiring to give Walmart exclusive discounts that made prices higher at smaller stores, “[l]eft a roadmap for parties who are worried about consolidation in AI by big tech by revealing a host of interlinked relationships among Google, Amazon and Microsoft and Anthropic and OpenAI,” said gig workers can’t be sued for antitrust violations when they try to organize, and forced game developer Cognosphere to pay a $20 million fine for marketing loot boxes to teens under 16 that hid the real costs and misled the teens.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau “sued Capital One for cheating consumers out of $2 billion by misleading consumers over savings accounts,” Stoller continued. It “forced Cash App purveyor Block…to give $120 million in refunds for fostering fraud on its platform and then refusing to offer customer support to affected consumers,” “sued Experian for refusing to give consumers a way to correct errors in credit reports,” ordered Equifax to pay $15 million to a victims’ fund for “failing to properly investigate errors on credit reports,” and ordered “Honda Finance to pay $12.8 million for reporting inaccurate information that smeared the credit reports of Honda and Acura drivers.”

The Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice sued “seven giant corporate landlords for rent-fixing, using the software and consulting firm RealPage,” Stoller went on. It “sued $600 billion private equity titan KKR for systemically misleading the government on more than a dozen acquisitions.”

“Honorary mention goes to [Secretary Pete Buttigieg] at the Department of Transportation for suing Southwest and fining Frontier for ‘chronically delayed flights,’” Stoller concluded. He added more results to the list in his newsletter BIG.

Meanwhile, last night, while the leaders in the cryptocurrency industry were at a ball in honor of President-elect Trump’s inauguration, Trump launched his own cryptocurrency. By morning he appeared to have made more than $25 billion, at least on paper. According to Eric Lipton at the New York Times, “ethics experts assailed [the business] as a blatant effort to cash in on the office he is about to occupy again.”

Adav Noti, executive director of the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, told Lipton: “It is literally cashing in on the presidency—creating a financial instrument so people can transfer money to the president’s family in connection with his office. It is beyond unprecedented.” Cryptocurrency leaders worried that just as their industry seems on the verge of becoming mainstream, Trump’s obvious cashing-in would hurt its reputation. Venture capitalist Nick Tomaino posted: “Trump owning 80 percent and timing launch hours before inauguration is predatory and many will likely get hurt by it.”

Yesterday the European Commission, which is the executive arm of the European Union, asked X, the social media company owned by Trump-adjacent billionaire Elon Musk, to hand over internal documents about the company’s algorithms that give far-right posts and politicians more visibility than other political groups. The European Union has been investigating X since December 2023 out of concerns about how it deals with the spread of disinformation and illegal content. The European Union’s Digital Services Act regulates online platforms to prevent illegal and harmful activities, as well as the spread of disinformation.

Today in Washington, D.C., the National Mall was filled with thousands of people voicing their opposition to President-elect Trump and his policies. Online speculation has been rampant that Trump moved his inauguration indoors to avoid visual comparisons between today’s protesters and inaugural attendees. Brutally cold weather also descended on President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration, but a sea of attendees nonetheless filled the National Mall.

Trump has always understood the importance of visuals and has worked hard to project an image of an invincible leader. Moving the inauguration indoors takes away that image, though, and people who have spent thousands of dollars to travel to the capital to see his inauguration are now unhappy to discover they will be limited to watching his motorcade drive by them. On social media, one user posted: “MAGA doesn’t realize the symbolism of [Trump] moving the inauguration inside: The billionaires, millionaires and oligarchs will be at his side, while his loyal followers are left outside in the cold. Welcome to the next 4+ years.”

Trump is not as good at governing as he is at performance: his approach to crises is to blame Democrats for them. But he is about to take office with majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate, putting responsibility for governance firmly into his hands.

Right off the bat, he has at least two major problems at hand.

Last night, Commissioner Tyler Harper of the Georgia Department of Agriculture suspended all “poultry exhibitions, shows, swaps, meets, and sales” until further notice after officials found Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, or bird flu, in a commercial flock. As birds die from the disease or are culled to prevent its spread, the cost of eggs is rising—just as Trump, who vowed to reduce grocery prices, takes office.

There have been 67 confirmed cases of the bird flu in the U.S. among humans who have caught the disease from birds. Most cases in humans are mild, but public health officials are watching the virus with concern because bird flu variants are unpredictable. On Friday, outgoing Health and Human Services secretary Xavier Becerra announced $590 million in funding to Moderna to help speed up production of a vaccine that covers the bird flu. Juliana Kim of NPR explained that this funding comes on top of $176 million that Health and Human Services awarded to Moderna last July.

The second major problem is financial. On Friday, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen wrote to congressional leaders to warn them that the Treasury would hit the debt ceiling on January 21 and be forced to begin using extraordinary measures in order to pay outstanding obligations and prevent defaulting on the national debt. Those measures mean the Treasury will stop paying into certain federal retirement accounts as required by law, expecting to make up that difference later.

Yellen reminded congressional leaders: “The debt limit does not authorize new spending, but it creates a risk that the federal government might not be able to finance its existing legal obligations that Congresses and Presidents of both parties have made in the past.” She added, “I respectfully urge Congress to act promptly to protect the full faith and credit of the United States.”

Both the avian flu and the limits of the debt ceiling must be managed, and managed quickly, and solutions will require expertise and political skill.

Rather than offering their solutions to these problems, the Trump team leaked that it intended to begin mass deportations on Tuesday morning in Chicago, choosing that city because it has large numbers of immigrants and because Trump’s people have been fighting with Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson, a Democrat. Michelle Hackman, Joe Barrett, and Paul Kiernan of the Wall Street Journal, who broke the story, reported that Trump’s people had prepared to amplify their efforts with the help of right-wing media.

But once the news leaked of the plan and undermined the “shock and awe” the administration wanted, Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan said the team was reconsidering it.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Consumer Financial Protection Bureau #consumer protection #FTC #Letters From An American #heather cox richardson #shock and awe #immigration raids #debt ceiling #bird flu #protests #March on Washington

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fatehbaz · 1 year ago

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They’ve built a “Great Wheel” on the Seattle waterfront [...].

The small timber village became a military outpost in the Puget Sound War [...], [and] soon evolved into a trade gateway, with timber tailings and other industrial trash from Henry Yesler’s mill used to fill in the marshlands [...], atop which migrant laborers raised tents and shanties [...] now working to feed raw materials into the furnaces of the Second Industrial Revolution burning in the East. [...] The first nationwide strike ripped across the country’s railways in 1877, but in Seattle the unrest took on a grim character, as thousands of unemployed white workers rioted against their Chinese counterparts [...]. Meanwhile, [...] local elites rebuilt [...] downtown [...] from scratch, hosting the tallest building on the West Coast alongside other new constructs [fueled] with money gleaned from the supply chains linking eastern capital to Alaskan gold. [...] Today the city - again rebuilt [...] - is seen as one of the primary beneficiaries of the “Fifth” Industrial Revolution in information technology, outshone only by California’s Silicon Valley. [...] The digital was increasingly thought of as somehow "immaterial," sustained by intellectual labor more than physical toil [...].

Silicon Valley myths of [...] "immaterial" labor disguise a more gruesome dynamic in which growing segments of the global labor force are being deprived even of the basic brutality of the wage, instead forced out into growing rings of slums, prisons, and global wastelands. [...]

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Perched alongside a downtown business corridor [...], Seattle's Great Wheel seems to peer out over [...] [the] prophesied “cooperative commons,” an infotech metropolis abutting the beauty of an evergreen arcadia. But travel below Seattle’s cluster of infotech industries and the image appears much the same as that of a hundred years prior - a trade gateway, squeezing value from supply chains by selling transport and logistical support. The southern stretch of the metropolis bears little resemblance to the revitalized urban core of the city proper. Instead of the “cognitive labor” of Microsoft, it is defined instead by the cold calculation of companies like UPS, founded in Seattle when the city was one link in a colonial supply chain built first for timber, then Alaskan gold, then World War. [...]

In south Seattle, this logistics empire takes the form of faceless warehouses, food processing facilities, container trucks, rail yards, and industrial parks concentrated between two seaports, an international airport, three major interstates, and railroads traveling in all directions. Meanwhile, the poor have been priced out of the old inner city, moving southward [...]. [T]hey can be found staffing the airport and the rail yards, hauling cargo in and out of two the major seaports, loading boxes in warehouses [...]. And, beyond them, the shadow stretches out to Washington’s rural hinterlands where migrant laborers staff a new boom in agriculture and raw materials [...] - and further still into America’s long-depressed interior, where the Great Wheel meets its opposite: Memphis, the FedEx logistics city, watched over by a great black pyramid [the infamous Bass Pro Shop pyramid]. [...]

Every Seattle is capable of creating an eco-friendly, “cooperative commonwealth” tended by apps and algorithms only insofar as there is a Memphis that can provide human workers to sort the packages, a Shanghai to build the containers that carry them, and a Shenzhen to solder together the circuits of the machines that govern it all.

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All text above by: Phil A. Neel. "The Great Wheel". Brooklyn Rail. April 2015. Published online at: brooklynrail.org/2015/04/field-notes/the-great-wheel. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Text within brackets added by me for clarity. Presented here for commentary, teaching, personal use, criticism purposes.]

#ecology #multispecies #abolition #imperial #colonial #edwardian #temporality #hinterlands #tidalectics #archipelagic thinking #intimacies of four continents #caribbean #carceral geography

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bigulalgotrading · 2 months ago

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Is Algorithmic Trading Safe for Investors? Risks & Challenges

Benefits and challenges of Algorithmic Trading, a fast, precise method for executing trades. Learn how to mitigate risks like system failures market volatility.

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centrally-unplanned · 4 months ago

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Since I am blogging about it, I will outline my Tiktok "ban" stance - it is "fine", I have no objections and mildly support it, though I am not nearly as concerned about the tool as its proponents are and I approach it differently.

Fundamentally, "you can never impinge on freedoms in international relations" is a silly stance, because it leaves you vulnerable to exploitation by other parties. You do in fact have to "build" markets, rights, etc, none of them exist in the state of nature or whatever. China currently bans the large majority of western social media apps from the country as part of an explicit strategy for industrial policy for its own tech space and as information control on its citizenry. It is completely fair to go "samesies" in response, in the same way free trade agreements are signed by both parties. Now the US government didn't put a "until China lets Facebook in" clause in the bill or anything, but that is because everyone knows China isn't budging on this topic, I can't fault them for not bothering.

China also definitely does do the things it is accused of re: Tiktok. They aren't as heavy-handed as they are with their domestic platforms of course, but they algorithmically censor anti-China content, promote messages they care about, and share user data with central authorities. Now, I care about this less than others. Algorithms are perpetually overstated in their power, as users have agency, opinions, and also know what algorithms are and notice the rigging. The vast majority of people self-select their information consumption more than algs shape it. Tiktok is not a very effective tool in the CCP's kit. But it still is a tool, and again a stance of "the US government can never interfere with our speech institutions but foreign governments can go to town" is not practical stance, that isn't free speech at all. I find these crimes to be minor, but given that the punishment is "sell Tiktok to a US company at a fair price", that seems fine to me. The fact that ByteDance isn't doing that speaks volumes.

(I really don't care about the data stuff, as a bonus note. Data privacy is the perpetual "dog that didn't bark", and we in fact have large social costs from how religiously we try to protect it to avoid exaggerated harms. But it isn't of no concern, I am sure there are valid points in there.)

Still, I don't think people should downplay that it is legitimately awful for the community in practice. There are lots of wildly exaggerated numbers going around (no, 170 million Americans are not "active users" lol unless you stretch that word to the moon), but still, there are going to be millions of people who will have something load-bearing in their lives affected by a legal fight. The world is full of tradeoffs, I have no reason to think they should be happy about this. They have every right to lament it.

I do think this is another classic example of the US "legalism" policy dynamic - the idea of sitting down and just building the parallel infrastructure for US-hosted Tiktok once Bytedance refused to sell, and cutting them out of the loop entirely, was completely beyond us to consider, when that is the win-win solution to the dilemma. But w/e, in this case I recognize that is pretty idealistic, can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

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mossybee-exe · 20 days ago

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Solarpunk Worldbuilding 2 - Mesh Intranet

*Artwork by @bird_wells214 as reference*

*Unknown artist*

As mentioned in the previous post, there is still internet in this world but it's different now. No longer is it doom scrolling that's filled with politics, drama, influences, and more. Now, it's the intranet.

The internet exists, but it's localized. Instead of one global net, each town has ther own unique mesh intranet. Communities share and upload stories, tech guides, magazines, songs, ans documentaries - all accessible for free.

"Influencers" exist in a way, but it's different now (more on that in another post).

While every Data Slate has a journal and map built in, there's a collection of unique "apps" that people can get and use.

This includes but not limited to:

Mood Gardens - Like a mood tracker in a sense. A gentle, visual space where users "plant" their feelings like seeds. You can select a mood (calm, angry, happy, sad, etc) and pair it with a sound, color, or image. Others can visit your little digital garden and leave small acts of care - Like a kind comment shaped like a dew drop, or a song in the shape of a mushroom. Mood Gardens bloom or wilt based on how the person feels over time, creating a space of quiet emotional check-ins and empathy.

Story Weave - A collaborative story writing and memory keeping project. Residents can start a thread with a piece of story - fiction or nonfiction, fantasy or memoir - and others can respond with artwork, voice recordings, music or the next part of the tale. It's part art gallery, part campfire circle, and part community archive.

Masked Mosaic - An anonymous space where users can share secrets, confessions, or thoughts they're not ready to attach a name to yet. Every post appears as a piece of Mosaic art with changing colors and patterns based on tone. It's moderated with care and compassion by community - appointed listeners rather than traditional mods.

Patchwork Trades - Kind of like Facebook Marketplace. A beautifully, digital barter board shaped like a quilt. Instead of listings and posts, every item or service offered appears as a patch. You might hover over or click a patch and find "hand-drawn pronoun pins" or "will watch your cat and water your plants." When Trades happen, a thread is digitally stitched between the two patches, showing the connections growing.

BuzzHive - A social update board styled like a honeycomb. You can share what you're up to - "Baking sweet potato rolls!" "Making rain charms today." "Feeling soft + sleepy." - but instead of likes and comments, others can send reactions like tiny bees: "hum of support" "sunbeam hug" "sprout of joy" or "quiet sit with you."

GroveTube - This is where people post tutorial videos - like how to bind books with wild-grass thread, build a bee-sade lantern, or compost using only forest scraps. It also includes soft-spoken vlogs, musical performances from tree balconies, and messages from traveling members. There's no algorithm, just categories like "soothing" "skillshare" "storytelling" or "random joy."

Rest Mode/Gentle Logout - Instead of pushing for endless engagement, the intranet encourages resting offline. If someone logs out for a few days or weeks, their profile softly fades to dusk colors, with a message like, "[User] is in rest-mode. Send soft love." Others can leave soft tokens or small notes that don't alert the person until they log back in.

The Vault of Remembering - A quiet, encrypted memorial place for those who have passed on. It contains memories, audio clips, digital letters, and little symbols like wind chimes or falling stars that friends and family can leave behind. It's updated during community Remembrance days with candles lit both physically and digitally.

The ideas are free to use for whatever you want or use for inspiration! All I ask is that you CREDIT ME! And feel free to send me an ask on more details to this lovely world :)

#my solarpunk world #solar energy #solarpunk #worldbuilding #writers on tumblr #writeblr #writing #utopia

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mariacallous · 7 months ago

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For the first time, internal TikTok communications have been made public that show a company unconcerned with the harms the app poses for American teenagers. This is despite its own research validating many child safety concerns.

The confidential material was part of a more than two-year investigation into TikTok by 14 attorneys general that led to state officials suing the company on Tuesday. The lawsuit alleges that TikTok was designed with the express intention of addicting young people to the app. The states argue the multi-billion-dollar company deceived the public about the risks.

In each of the separate lawsuits state regulators filed, dozens of internal communications, documents and research data were redacted — blacked-out from public view — since authorities entered into confidentiality agreements with TikTok.

But in one of the lawsuits, filed by the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office, the redactions were faulty. This was revealed when Kentucky Public Radio copied-and-pasted excerpts of the redacted material, bringing to light some 30 pages of documents that had been kept secret.

After Kentucky Public Radio published excerpts of the redacted material, a state judge sealed the entire complaint following a request from the attorney general’s office “to ensure that any settlement documents and related information, confidential commercial and trade secret information, and other protected information was not improperly disseminated,” according to an emergency motion to seal the complaint filed on Wednesday by Kentucky officials.

NPR reviewed all the portions of the suit that were redacted, which highlight TikTok executives speaking candidly about a host of dangers for children on the wildly popular video app. The material, mostly summaries of internal studies and communications, show some remedial measures — like time-management tools — would have a negligible reduction in screen time. The company went ahead and decided to release and tout the features.

Separately, under a new law, TikTok has until January to divest from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, or face a nationwide ban. TikTok is fighting the looming crackdown. Meanwhile, the new lawsuits from state authorities have cast scrutiny on the app and its ability to counter content that harms minors.

In a statement, TikTok spokesman Alex Haurek defended the company’s child safety record and condemned the disclosure of once-public material that has now been sealed.

"It is highly irresponsible of NPR to publish information that is under a court seal,” Haurek said. “Unfortunately, this complaint cherry-picks misleading quotes and takes outdated documents out of context to misrepresent our commitment to community safety.”

He continued: “We have robust safeguards, which include proactively removing suspected underage users, and we have voluntarily launched safety features such as default screentime limits, family pairing, and privacy by default for minors under 16.”

Kentucky AG: TikTok users can become ‘addicted’ in 35 minutes

As TikTok’s 170 million U.S. users can attest, the platform’s hyper-personalized algorithm can be so engaging it becomes difficult to close the app. TikTok determined the precise amount of viewing it takes for someone to form a habit: 260 videos. After that, according to state investigators, a user “is likely to become addicted to the platform.”

In the previously redacted portion of the suit, Kentucky authorities say: “While this may seem substantial, TikTok videos can be as short as 8 seconds and are played for viewers in rapid-fire succession, automatically,” the investigators wrote. “Thus, in under 35 minutes, an average user is likely to become addicted to the platform.”

Another internal document found that the company was aware its many features designed to keep young people on the app led to a constant and irresistible urge to keep opening the app.

TikTok’s own research states that “compulsive usage correlates with a slew of negative mental health effects like loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, empathy, and increased anxiety,” according to the suit.

In addition, the documents show that TikTok was aware that “compulsive usage also interferes with essential personal responsibilities like sufficient sleep, work/school responsibilities, and connecting with loved ones.”

TikTok: Time-limit tool aimed at ‘improving public trust,’ not limiting app use

The unredacted documents show that TikTok employees were aware that too much time spent by teens on social media can be harmful to their mental health. The consensus among academics is that they recommend one hour or less of social media usage per day.

The app lets parents place time limits on their kids’ usage that range from 40 minutes to two hours per day. TikTok created a tool that set the default time prompt at 60 minutes per day.

Internal documents show that TikTok measured the success of this tool by how it was “improving public trust in the TikTok platform via media coverage,” rather than how it reduced the time teens spent on the app.

After tests, TikTok found the tool had little impact – accounting for about a 1.5-minute drop in usage, with teens spending around 108.5 minutes per day beforehand to roughly 107 minutes with the tool. According to the attorney general’s complaint, TikTok did not revisit this issue.

One document shows one TikTok project manager saying, “Our goal is not to reduce the time spent.” In a chat message echoing that sentiment, another employee said the goal is to “contribute to DAU [daily active users] and retention” of users.

TikTok has publicized its “break” videos, which are prompts to get users to stop endlessly scrolling and take a break. Internally, however, it appears the company didn’t think the videos amounted to much. One executive said that they are “useful in a good talking point” with policymakers, but “they’re not altogether effective.”

Document: TikTok demoted people it deemed unattractive on its feed

The multi-state litigation against TikTok highlighted the company’s beauty filters, which users can overlay on videos to make themselves look thinner and younger or to have fuller lips and bigger eyes.

One popular feature, known as the Bold Glamour filter, uses artificial intelligence to rework people’s faces to resemble models with high cheekbones and strong jawlines.

TikTok is aware of the harm these beauty filters can cause young users, the documents show.

Employees suggested internally the company “provide users with educational resources about image disorders” and create a campaign “to raise awareness on issues with low self esteem (caused by the excessive filter use and other issues).”

They also suggested adding a banner or video to the filters that included “an awareness statement about filters and the importance of positive body image/mental health.”

This comes as the documents showcase another hidden facet of TikTok’s algorithm: the app prioritizes beautiful people.

One internal report that analyzed TikTok’s main video feed saw “a high volume of … not attractive subjects” were filling everyone’s app. In response, Kentucky investigators found that TikTok retooled its algorithm to amplify users the company viewed as beautiful.

“By changing the TikTok algorithm to show fewer ��not attractive subjects’ in the For You feed, [TikTok] took active steps to promote a narrow beauty norm even though it could negatively impact their Young Users,” the Kentucky authorities wrote.

TikTok exec: algorithm could deprive kids of opportunities like ‘looking at someone in the eyes’

Publicly, TikTok has stated that one of its “most important commitments is supporting the safety and well-being of teens.”

Yet internal documents paint a very different picture, citing statements from top company executives who appear well-aware of the harmful effects of the app without taking significant steps to address it.

One unnamed TikTok executive put it in stark terms, saying the reason kids watch TikTok is because of the power of the app’s algorithm, “but I think we need to be cognizant of what it might mean for other opportunities,” said the company executive. “And when I say other opportunities, I literally mean sleep, and eating, and moving around the room, and looking at someone in the eyes.”

TikTok’s internal estimate: 95% of smartphone users under 17 use TikTok

TikTok views itself as being in an “arms race for attention,” according to a 2021 internal presentation.

And teenagers have been key to the app’s early growth in the U.S., but another presentation shown to top company officials revealed that an estimated 95% of smartphone users under 17 use TikTok at least once a month. This lead a company staffer to state that it had “hit a ceiling among young users.”

TikTok’s own research concluded that kids were the most susceptible to being sucked into the app’s infinitely flowing feed of videos. “As expected, across most engagement metrics, the younger the user, the better the performance,” according to a 2019 TikTok document.

In response to growing national concern that excessive social media use can increase the risk of depression, anxiety and body-image issues among kids, TikTok has introduced time-management tools. These include notifications informing teens about how long they are spending on the app, parental oversight features and the ability to make the app inaccessible for some down time.

At the same time, however, TikTok knew how unlikely it was these tools would be effective, according to materials obtained by Kentucky investigators.

“Minors do not have executive function to control their screen time, while young adults do,” read a TikTok internal document.

TikTok pushes users into filter bubbles like ‘painhub’ and ‘sadnotes’

TikTok is well aware of “filter bubbles.” Internal documents show the company has defined them as when a user “encounters only information and opinions that conform to and reinforce their own beliefs, caused by algorithms that personalize an individual’s online experience.”

The company knows the dangers of filter bubbles. During one internal safety presentation in 2020, employees warned the app “can serve potentially harmful content expeditiously.” TikTok conducted internal experiments with test accounts to see how quickly they descend into negative filter bubbles.

“After following several ‘painhub’ and ‘sadnotes’ accounts, it took me 20 mins to drop into ‘negative’ filter bubble,” one employee wrote. “The intensive density of negative content makes me lower down mood and increase my sadness feelings though I am in a high spirit in my recent life.”

Another employee said, “there are a lot of videos mentioning suicide,” including one asking, “If you could kill yourself without hurting anybody would you?”

In another document, TikTok’s research found that content promoting eating disorders, often called “thinspiration,” is associated with issues such as body dissatisfaction, disordered eating, low self-esteem and depression

Despite these heedings, TikTok’s algorithm still puts users into filter bubbles. One internal document states that users are “placed into ‘filter bubbles’ after 30 minutes of use in one sitting.” The company wrote that having more human moderators to label content is possible, but “requires large human efforts.”

TikTok’s content moderation missing self-harm, eating disorder content

TikTok has several layers of content moderation to weed out videos that violate its Community Guidelines. Internal documents show that the first set of eyes aren’t always a person from the company’s Trust and Safety Team.

The first round typically uses artificial intelligence to flag pornographic, violent or political content. The following rounds use human moderators, but only if the video has a certain amount of views, according to the documents. These additional rounds often fail to take into account certain types of content or age specific rules.

According to TikTok’s own studies, the unredacted filing shows that some suicide and self-harm content escaped those first rounds of human moderation. The study points to self-harm videos that had more than 75,000 views before TikTok identified and removed them.

TikTok also has scattershot policies on content that includes disordered eating, drug use, dangerous driving, gore and violence. While TikTok’s Community Guidelines prohibit much of this content, internal policy documents say the company “allows” the content. Often, the content is findable on TikTok and just not “recommended,” meaning it doesn’t show up in users’ For You feeds or took a lower priority in the algorithm.

The company has talking points around its content moderation work. One example highlighted in the documents details a child sent to the emergency room after attempting a dangerous TikTok challenge. When dealing with the negative fallout from the press, TikTok told employees to use an internal list of talking points that said, “In line with our Community Guidelines, we do not allow content that depicts, promotes, normalizes, or glorifies [dangerous] behavior, including dangerous challenges.”

TikTok acknowledges internally that it has substantial “leakage” rates of violating content that’s not removed. Those leakage rates include: 35.71% of “Normalization of Pedophilia;” 33.33% of “Minor Sexual Solicitation;” 39.13% of “Minor Physical Abuse;” 30.36% of “leading minors off platform;” 50% of “Glorification of Minor Sexual Assault;” and “100% of “Fetishizing Minors.”

TikTok slow to remove users under 13, despite company policy

Kids under 13 cannot open a standard TikTok account, but there is a “TikTok for Younger Users” service that the company says includes strict content guardrails.

It is a vulnerable group of users, since federal law dictates that social media sites like TikTok cannot collect data on children under 13 unless parents are notified about the personal information collected. And even then, social media apps must first obtain verifiable consent from a parent.

In August, the Department of Justice sued TikTok for violating the federal law protecting the data of kids under 13, alleging that the app “knowingly and repeatedly violated kids’ privacy.”

In the internal documents, however, company officials instructed TikTok moderators to use caution before removing accounts of users suspected to be under 13.

An internal document about “younger users/U13” says TikTok instructs its moderators to not take action on reports of underage users unless their account identifies them as under 13.

The previously-redacted portions of the suit suggest the company is aware these young users have accounts – through complaints from parents and teachers — but does little to remove them.

TikTok in crisis mode after report on TikTok Live being ‘strip club filled with 15-year-olds’

After a 2022 report on Forbes about underage kids stripping on TikTok’s live feature, the company launched its own investigation.

That’s when TikTok officials realized there was “a high” number of underage streamers receiving digital currency on the app in the form of a “gift” or “coin” in exchange for stripping — real money converted into a digital currency often in the form of a plush toy or a flower.

TikTok discovered “a significant” number of adults direct messaging underage TikTokkers about stripping live on the platform.

As part of this internal probe, TikTok officials found that in just one month, 1 million “gifts” were sent to kids engaged in “transactional” behavior.

In an understated assessment, one TikTok official concluded: “[O]ne of our key discoveries during this project that has turned into a major challenge with Live business is that the content that gets the highest engagement may not be the content we want on our platform.”

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ajmakoko · 6 months ago

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Summary of evidence and concerns:

Trump is a Russian asset working for Putin (see book American Kompromat by journalist Craig Unger or Active Measures documentary with Hillary Clinton(1), sources below). Elon and Trump are working together (2). They both have substantial ties to Epstein (3) (4) (5) (6). Trump stole election software in 2020 (7). Similarly, Elon Musk has been in contact with Russia for the last 2 years (8). This includes during the Ukraine War when Russia began using Starlink (9) while it was claimed they got them third party and not from Musk himself; however now appears imo to show Elon is a doublecrosser.

Starlink, Elon's satellite company, was installed in some voting machines across the country (10) and may have interfered with vote tabulation. Voting machines were found to be connected to the internet (11). An independent report on voting machines concluded that tabulation tampering was possible with current voting machines, so hand counts are vital (12). In September, Politico had an investigation finding Russian malware on a state voter registration database (13). Also, there were malicious fake texts from fake DNC organizations, connected to Elon who donated to them, that were fishing voter info (14).

Elon had results of election on an app 4 hours before official counts had it (15), per Joe Rogan podcast in a discussion to Theo Von. Earlier this year, Tana Monogeau, released info that she'd been offered millions of dollars to endorse the Trump campaign and that she knew others had taken the deal (16).

They will release more info admitting their fraud because they are a Russian asset trying to start a civil war here (speculation). They want us to be confused about sources and who to trust and what's real, they want to release the truth to anger us and lies to anger us. Trump has refused to write an ethics statement for transition of power saying he will transition peacefully (17). JD Vance has also told the EU that unless they allow X unfettered access to the EU (to spread propaganda), they will withdraw the US from NATO (18) - which will prompt wars or takeover either way and weakens Germany, who is entering an election since their government couldn't agree on Ukraine budget. A Russian space chief said Elon Musk’s plan to bomb Mars is a cover to put nuclear weapons in space (19).

Also speculation, are reports of widespread ballot rejection, especially for signatures. There are articles claiming already that it is because GenZ does not know cursive (20) - except the signature simply must match your driver's license. It's not a cursive writing test. Avocado toast but with gen z voting fraud. We do not yet have the ballot rejection rates but typically they are around 1% to 1.5% (21).

Crypto is how right wing conservatism got funded here. It's why it took off- it was basically UBI for those men, funded by foreign intelligence for this purpose along with other uses for crypto like dark money, drugs, trafficking, etc (22)(23). The least informed people we knew were investing in crypto when it was starting, mining bitcoins. They couldn't tell you what a stock or tariff is, yet they were making bank in crypto trading. Crypto trading, especially memecoins, appears to be an obvious scam to most because it's the stock market without ownership. So why were these 4chan pedophiles and nazis doing so well? Because it was just meant to give them money the whole time. And crypto is great for transferring money internationally from shady organizations to shady people (24). Far right catchphrases and meme campaigns dispersed online including X, give out the key words/catchphrases for the new coin that isn't a scam and will disperse money. People who are deep in these groups interner algorithms get these keywords first and normal outsiders will either not notice or will stay away. No normal person wants a coin that references Hitler if they are just scrolling memecoins.

Once the government has been taken over, they can force their memecoin as the national currency and then rug pull, which is also what Musk is likely going to do to Tesla at the same time. The entire point is to bankrupt America for Putin and his cartoon villain cohorts. Musk is already saying he wants to withdraw from US currency due to national debt (Trump added most of the national debt) (25).

If you're in Germany, take note. They are coming for you next, your election is soon.

News Links

(1) https://youtu.be/5umiMThrlsA?si=mwgr4U2c2jleJEBj

(2) https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/elon-musk-weighing-trump-staffing-decisions-sources/story?id=115730434

(3) https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/03/trump-infiltrate-voting-machines-georgia-2020.html

(4) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-interview.html

(5) https://www.businessinsider.com/jeffrey-epsteins-ex-girlfriend-dated-kimbal-musk-brother-of-tesla-founder-elon-musk-2020-1

(6) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fire-and-fury-the-podcast/id1750757108

(7) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/01/trump-jeffrey-epstein-tapes

(8) https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-to-know-about-elon-musks-reported-phone-calls-with-putin-and-why-it-matters

(9) https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-using-thousands-spacex-starlink-terminals-ukraine-wsj-says-2024-02-15/

(10) https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnewsvideo/comments/1gnxqmw/elon_musks_company_starlink_praised_by_tulare/

(11) www.nbcnews.com/news/ncna1112436

(12) https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/inside-georgias-effort-to-secure-voting-machines-as-experts-raise-concerns

(13) https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/01/us-election-software-national-security-threats-00176615

(14) https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2024/10/pro-trump-dark-money-network-tied-to-elon-musk-behind-fake-pro-harris-campaign-scheme/

(15) https://grabien.com/story.php?id=499986

(16) https://www.buzzfeed.com/natashajokic1/tana-mongeau-paid-political-endorsement

(17) https://apnews.com/article/trump-transition-planning-ca3a6be50d147b04b6498184e5599b1e

(18) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/jd-vance-elon-musk-x-twitter-donald-trump-b2614525.html

(19) https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/499968-russian-space-chief-elon-musks-plan-to-bomb-mars-is-a-cover-to-put/

(20) https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-voters-struggle-signatures-cast-mail-ballot-problems-2024-11

(21) https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2024:_Analysis_of_rejected_ballots

(22) https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/far-right-extremists-raise-millions-cryptocurrency-bitcoin/

(23) https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/10/opinion/crypto-cryptocurrency-money-conspiracy.html

(24) https://apnews.com/article/cryptocurrency-coronavirus-pandemic-technology-business-europe-f7f754fc2c68b0eb0d712239323f26c3

(25) https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/11/10/its-unsustainable-tesla-ceo-elon-musk-issues-us-serious-bankruptcy-warning-amid-huge-bitcoin-and-dogecoin-price-surge/

Personal Testimony from the dickbags themselves:

youtube.com/live/HBPNfAUPz08?si=PZQa_D_wbN9VoA6y

In the first minute:

"Your votes are rigged. We can win New Mexico."

"If you can watch your vote counter, if we can bring God down from heaven (he's referencing Starlink), we can win this, win California, win a lot of states."

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/if-trump-loses-im-fcked-elon-musk-in-interview-with-tucker-carlson/articleshow/114024254.cms

“If [Trump] loses, I’m f*cked… How long do you think my prison sentence is going to be?”

Why does Elon think he would go to prison though? For what crime?

youtu.be/Zmc0EN8XAY8?si=5u_mJNte37r4JmUb

Trump:"Our little secret is having a big impact"

If Trump was so sure the election was rigged and they were going to turnover every state including California, then why hasn't he asked for a recount in all the states with representatives that didn't get elected that he thought would be? Shouldn't he be suing for recounts? He did it last time. Why doesn't he want an investigation this time?

#AssetForfeitureTrumpMusk

If they get locked into years of asset forfeiture from layers and layers of state and municipal claims and lawsuits (which will require discovery lol), we may be able to stop them. Which is likely part of why they are moving to bitcoin as well.

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