#Social Media hacking problem 2019

[mariacallous]

After her husband moved to Saudi Arabia for work, 27-year-old Fadya Salman started sending nude pictures of herself from their home in the Yemeni capital Sana’a. It wasn’t the same as being together, but it helped keep their bond alive.

Then her phone got stolen. The thief threatened to publish the photos online unless Salman—whose name has been changed here to protect the safety of this story’s sources—went out with him. She had become a victim of what authorities in many countries call “sextortion”—the act of threatening to share nude or explicit images unless demands for money or sexual acts are met.

Salman refused. Eventually, her family learned what had happened, and in 2022, she was murdered. A childhood friend who asked not to be named said her younger brother had killed her under pressure from their father in a so-called honor killing. A criminal investigation officer in Yemen confirmed that she had been killed, though no charges have been brought, as is often the case with such killings.

“It was a nightmare,” the friend said while describing Salman’s ordeal. “When a woman is put in a situation like that, she’s on her own. She can’t trust anyone to help her. She can’t go to a male relative because they’ll assume she’s to blame, and another woman won’t be able to help.”

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and its international law enforcement agency warned this year that sextortion is becoming a global crisis. Deep-rooted patriarchal traditions have made women in the Middle East and North Africa particularly vulnerable to this blackmail, activists say. While the bulk of cases are never reported to authorities, a 2019 survey by Transparency International found that one in five people polled in Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine had experienced sextortion or knew someone who had—among the worst rates in the world.

Widespread societal attitudes that place the burden of preserving familial honor on women often prevent victims from seeking justice. Instead, as in Salman’s case, the blackmail can have tragic consequences.

Such strict societal codes are particularly pronounced in Yemen, which ranked last in the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index for 15 consecutive years (from 2006 to 2020) and has a troubled history of so-called honor killings.

Amaal Aldobai, a Yemeni women’s rights activist and head of the Centre for Combating Violence Against Women, said that women are easy prey for perpetrators of sextortion.

“If a woman falls victim to sextortion, she cannot tell her family because they will sentence her to death instead of getting justice,” Aldobai said.

While some women are lured into sending private images by promises of marriage, Yemeni activist Mokhtar Abdel Moez said that the majority fall victim to gangs that hack into women’s phones and coerce them into prostitution or paying a large sum of money.

“This results in hundreds of cases of divorce, murder, and suicide every year,” he said. “What is incredible is that, in some incidents, women gave in to coercion and were forced into prostitution to avoid the publishing of images that are not even scandalous yet are enough to lead to their murder merely for being in a strange man’s possession.”

Abdel Moez is the founder of Sanad, a nonprofit organization in Yemen that supports cybercrime victims through a network of around 400 volunteer digital experts. When he began the group in March 2020, he didn’t expect to find so many cases of sextortion.

Sanad has received about 17,000 reports of cybercrimes since its launch, 6,000 of which were reported in 2023. Abdel Moez estimates that about one in four are cases of sextortion.

Official figures are far lower. An official at the Ministry of Interior in the Houthi-led government in Sana’a, who asked not to be named as he is not authorized to speak to the media, said that 114 electronic crimes—including sextortion—were reported in 2022.

Yemen’s Saudi-backed administration in Aden keeps no tally of reported sextortion cases, but multiple officials said they had received dozens of such reports, mostly targeting women.

Fearing their families’ wrath and distrusting the two rival administrations fighting over power, vulnerable victims instead seek out activists such as Moez and his team. When they receive a report of a crime, the team at Sanad works to identify and contact the extortionist to try to persuade them to hand over and delete the blackmail content.

Egyptian activist Mohamed El-Yamani started a network called Qawem (or “Resist” in English) in 2020, after a young woman took her own life out of fear that her ex-boyfriend would expose private images of her.

Egypt ranked 134th out of 146 countries in the 2023 Gender Gap Index, and El-Yamani says his group has received reports of more than 100,000 cases of sextortion since it started. But he believes that this is only a small fraction of the crimes committed.

El-Yamani said that Qawem has successfully intervened in 4,000 cases, using a network of volunteers to dissuade each perpetrator by tracing his location and threatening to expose his actions to his family, friends, and colleagues. Realizing that the victim has support is often enough to deter blackmailers, but if it doesn’t, Qawem encourages victims to report the perpetrators to the authorities.

In one case, El-Yamani said, images of a girl from a prominent family in Egypt were published online, showing her without a headscarf. The girl had refused to accede to the demands of her blackmailer, who wanted money and video calls with her. When the content was published, she was accused of recklessness and made to stay home from school.

El-Yamani said Qawem managed to defuse the situation by tracking down the blackmailer and getting him to apologize and remove the content from the internet, while also convincing the girl’s father to allow his daughter to return to school.

Egypt, El-Yamani added, is a regional leader in tackling the problem. Authorities have created digital investigation units throughout the country to handle such crimes, and they have passed laws to ensure that the identities of victims who come forward remain hidden. Qawem-style interventions would be much harder in countries such as Yemen and Syria, he said.

“Many women in these countries would rather deal with their sextortionists secretly, regardless of the consequences, as their families would hold them responsible for not protecting their family’s honor,” El-Yamani said.

Experts say that the patriarchal nature of family relations in some Middle Eastern countries has contributed to the problem.

“One common factor in all 3,657 cases that approached us is the victims’ blind trust in the perpetrator, due to them lacking the feeling of being loved and embraced in their own surroundings,” said Zainab al-Aasi, a Syrian psychiatrist and the founder of a nonprofit called Gardenia that offers legal and mental support to female victims of sextortion.

In Yemen, there are no laws addressing sextortion, said Fawzia el-Meressi, a board member at the Yemeni Women’s Union, a nonprofit. Even if there were, she argued, such crimes against women would not stop; they are the result of a patriarchal system that “creates a huge void between her and her male family members, which is exploited by criminals.”

Omaima, 21, whose name has also been changed for her safety, connected online with a man introduced to her by a friend as a researcher for a women’s health organization. The man offered payment for information about her life—a persuasive offer in Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world, where 80 percent of the population depends on humanitarian aid.

At first, Omaima responded to the questions he sent via WhatsApp, sharing details about her relationship with her husband and pictures of her without a headscarf—a major taboo in the strict Muslim society that she is part of.

Then the questions began to take on a sexual nature, making her feel uncomfortable, she said. But after she began to ignore him, the man threatened to send the photos to her husband, carrying out the threat when she refused to engage.

Her husband divorced her. “He didn’t even hear me out,” Omaima said.

This piece is published in collaboration with Egab, a group that works with journalists across the Middle East and Africa.

[revfilmo]

Social media are fun, no questions asked there but what is it in their core? Can we trust the social media at all? Or is it all just a government program to control all of us?

The answer is… well… it’s kinda complicated.

On paper, we have some rules – don’t want any strangers peeking at your posts – make your profile private and select only the best ones to be your subscribers; don’t leak your location – no photos next to your door, guys, come on; and god, I hope you all know about no bank information out here – keep those numbers from the back of your car secure. But what else is there? And who is actually responsible about online safety?

Of course, the masses will just scream “YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY”. Easy here, not everything should be on our shoulders.

In the UK, government officials just recently decided that maybe they should step up and try to regulate the socials and as the result, Online Safety Act was issued.

The strongest protections in the Act have been designed for children. Platforms will be required to prevent children from accessing harmful and age-inappropriate content and provide parents and children with clear and accessible ways to report problems online when they do arise.

The Act will also protect adult users, ensuring that major platforms will need to be more transparent about which kinds of potentially harmful content they allow, and give people more control over the types of content they want to see.

So, judging on that quote, we still can see that even that regulation is kinda more about how platforms should keep the users safe and if they don’t, they will be overlooked by the government.

Again, in the UK OFCOM is the main institution to look over everything and regulate everything and they have issued the guidance for the platforms to follow – have their algorithms in check, hide harmful content, highlight more positive messages. It’s not only about protecting children, but about general awareness and mental health, safety of women and girls, preventing misinformation. So, if you have noticed that sometimes Instagram asks you if everything is okay after you looked into something sad, don’t worry, they are not spying on you. At least, no openly – they are trying to protect you and offer help.

But data? What about data? Here is the where everything is not that nice. Every our action here – is a numerous amount of data that now considered a new gold. And for gold there always will be some diggers.

Facebook. The biggest platform out in the Web, has experienced the biggest data breach in 2019 and even after two years, in 2021 it all resurfaced again. Millions, even billions of people have been hacked, their names, dates of birth, locations, preferences, information about gender, phone numbers, EVERYTHING has been stolen. That was and still remains the biggest data breach in the history. Where did all the data go? No one really knows and we can talk a lot about some conspiracies but the fact is – data is important. Keep is safe.

Don’t accept all the cookies from some random websites, check if the connection is secure and, honestly, just be aware of the “stranger danger” out in the Internet. Don’t chat to some stranger users on Roblox, don’t fall for Instagram scam “you can win a million if you tag a friend”, don’t be afraid to report any profile that looks a bit suspicious. Keep yourself safe here, and even platforms say you have nothing to worry about, don’t trust them so much. Don’t put all information about yourself on your page, maybe don’t even have your real name – think of some creative nickname and trust with your real name to only your friends and trusted people. And just enjoy your life here and even more, outside of the web ❤️

[xtruss]

No Sympathy For Biden! God Brutally Humiliated “War Criminal, Demented and Genocidal Joe Biden.”

War Criminal, Demented and Genocidal Joe Biden. © AFP 2023, Jim Watson

Poor Joe. No, Poor Us. Poor United States. Poor Democratic Party.

We’ve been suckered. While we were fearfully obsessing over the ethically-challenged Donald Trump, a much more talented grifter—Joe Biden along with his hidden passel of co-conspirators—conned the electorate, the news media and most of his own party’s leaders out of the American presidency.

The Bidenite scam sounds like a fourth entry in Alan J. Pakula’s “paranoia trilogy” of 1970s political thrillers.

A populist socialist senator takes an early lead in the 2020 primaries. Ruling-class elites panic. Who can stop him?

Alarmed party bosses and their mouthpieces in the corporate media recruit an unlikely centrist champion to take him on: the oldest person ever to run for president, a washed-up hack who came in fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire.

Even more worrisome, the elderly man presents with signs of dementia. He “campaigned unevenly and delivered uncomfortably meandering performances at the debates that often worsened as each debate dragged on,” a major national political magazine pundit observes.

A 19th century-style boss who controls a chunk of the Black vote yanks his secret levers of power: just before Super Tuesday, several of the younger candidates drop out and simultaneously endorse the demented old man. “Rarely, if ever, have opponents joined forces so dramatically,” the New York Times reports. A narrowed field and the Black bloc finishes the hit. The socialist drops out a month later.

The dementia problem remains.

Proven Incompetent VPOTUS Kamala Harris’ Second Presidential Campaign to Fail - Just Like Her First? the Washington Post cited an unnamed Democratic strategist as saying that Harris previously failed to live up to Democrats’ expectations because "she ran a terrible campaign (which kicked off in January 2019)."

A leftist columnist (cough cough) argues in March 2020 that the emperor has no brain (“Biden obviously has dementia and should withdraw from the race”); right-wingers agree. They are ignored by the media, the vast majority of whom live deep inside the mushy, muddled, moderate middle where common sense goes to die. 40% of voters (including 20% of Democrats) tell a June 2020 Rasmussen Reports poll they think Biden suffers from dementia. They are called victims of Republican disinformation.

To the party elites—the DNC, congressional leaders like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, media allies such as the Times op-ed page and MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough—Biden’s diminished mental acuity is a feature, not a bug.

Never the fastest car in the showroom to begin with, nor possessed of a strong moral center, the enfeebled Democratic nominee will say and do pretty much anything they want. All the scammers have to do now is get Biden into the White House without the voters figuring out that he isn’t all there.

With the Democratic nomination nailed down, Biden’s co-conspirators receive a gift from the gods: the Covid-19 pandemic prompts incumbent President Donald Trump into ordering a national lockdown. 2020 becomes a campaign like no other—one perfect for a Biden who can’t campaign or speak extemporaneously.

No rallies. No press conferences. No town halls. No unscripted interviews. “Everybody says, you know, ‘Biden’s hiding.’ Well, let me tell you something, we’re doing very well. We’re following the guidelines of the medical profession,” Biden explains.

Biden spends the campaign in his Delaware basement, reading prepared speeches to a TV camera. On election night, he acknowledges his win against Trump remotely to a parking lot full of socially-distanced cars.

The Bidenite plot is breathtakingly audacious.

Scott Ritter: Biden's Election Withdrawal Shows Who is Actually Running America! “Who's running America? Because it's not Joe Biden. We don't know who. It's an unelected group of handlers who are drawn from what I guess we can call the establishment. Some people might refer to it as the deep state. And these are the people who are calling the shots,” Ritter stated, noting that “the critical decisions of governance” this group makes are made “for the American people, but not necessarily on behalf of the American people.”

“America is in a crisis, a crisis of democracy, a crisis of identity. And it doesn't look like we have a solution because for the most part, the American people have been confused and misled and manipulated by the mainstream media into somehow thinking that this is normal,” Ritter lamented.

For the next four years—a timespan as long as America’s involvement in World War II—Biden’s puppeteers will keep on hiding him. A hidden junta will disguise, deflect and distract from the mental condition of the president of the United States, the most powerful political leader on the planet holding an office that calls for countless public appearances, gaslighting like crazy while they call the shots.

This digital Potemkin presidency will be propped up by teleprompters, even in intimate private fundraisers with big donors, fake interviews in which “reporters” are spoon-fed questions that Biden responds to by reading prepared text, and pompous accusations of ageism fired at skeptics.

It was a ridiculous scheme, carried out in plain sight. And it worked. Biden gave hardly any press conferences or interviews. A minute cabal of staff and family members kept the president, like a hostage, in a bubble.

“Biden’s closest aides—often led by Jill Biden’s top aide, Anthony Bernal [a thuggish figure nicknamed “Biden’s Rasputin” by insiders], and deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini—took steps early in his term to essentially rope off the president,” Axios would report after Biden’s 2024 debate performance revealed his mental condition. Even the White House residence staff hardly ever saw him.

Reality, however, intruded.

In 2021, Biden said he had discussed the Jan. 6th Capitol riot with German chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017. He also confused French President Emmanuel Macron with his predecessor Francois Mitterrand, who died in 1996: “Mitterrand from Germany—I mean, from France—looked at me and said, ‘You know, what...why…how long you back for?”

He called out for a Congressional ally at a rally—a woman who had died a month earlier in a widely-reported car crash and whose family had received a condolence call from him: “Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie?,” he asked. “She was going to be here.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Biden said in 2023, was “clearly losing the war in Iraq.” He more recently introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as Putin.

Voters noticed. An August 2023 AP-NORC poll found 69% of Democrats (and 89% of Republicans) thought Biden was too old to run for reelection. The press kept covering.

The ruse fell apart twice.

First came Biden’s hubristic quest for a second term. Had Biden kept his implicit promise to serve only four years before passing the torch, media and voter attention would have been focused on the Democrats who wanted to succeed him, including Vice President Kamala Harris.

As with Ronald Reagan’s last few years in office, Biden’s mental diminishment would have been tacitly understood as a temporary problem. The crisis we’re currently facing is as if Reagan had run in 1988, asking for four more years and making lame excuses—he has a cold, he has jet lag, he stutters—while visibly suffering from Alzheimer’s.

Second, not sticking to the plan. Once underway and committed to a reelection campaign, Operation Hidin’ Biden’s control team ought to have refused to debate Trump. Debates aren’t mandatory; the excuse that Trump was a contemptable convicted felon and insurrectionist would have gotten journalists off Biden’s back. Clearly a big part of Biden World got spooked by low polls—low because citizens like to see their presidents.

So, to prove to the world that they were right and that voters should no longer believe their lying eyes, panicked Democrats foolishly demanded an early, high-profile debate that, with the benefit of hindsight included rules that hurt Biden. Democrats should have wanted Trump to talk over Biden. They should have asked for a big, noisy, disruptive audience to drown out Biden’s rambling, confused, word salad.

They crossed their fingers and hoped for the best and prayed Joe would have one last good day. As anyone experienced with dementia patients can tell—my mom died of Alzheimer’s—there comes a time when the last good day is in the past. Biden has been there for quite some time.

I look forward to reading the first solid tell-all book about this debacle. Congressional Republicans have signaled they plan to investigate Biden’s physical and mental health. The legislative branch must exercise its constitutional oversight powers to find out how it happened and who is responsible.

But, let’s be something the president can’t be: clear. Joe Biden and the people behind him do not deserve our sympathy. Save your pity for we, the people of the United States.

Biden was elected under false pretenses. He was “president”*, not President. We don’t know who really made the big decisions in the White House.

This is not how democracy or representative government work. BidenGate was the co-option of a major political party, a coup d’état and an insidious attack that the American people couldn’t defend themselves against because they never knew it happened.

A stooge was installed, so perfectly ironically, by those who loudly claimed to be defending democracy from a wannabe fascist. The Democratic Party traitors who carried out and knew about this obscenity should be held legally and politically accountable.

— Sputnik International | Ted Rall | Monday July 22, 2024

[dertaglichedan]

The Massive UnitedHealth Hack Is Obamacare’s Fault and That’s No Lie

The following content is sponsored by Americans for Limited Government.

Remember that moment 15 years ago when then President Barack Obama promised that his plan for socialized medicine would not extend to illegal aliens, and Rep. Joe Wilson yelled out, “You lie!” Remember how Democrats and their media enablers all denounced Wilson both for his lack of decorum and for lying himself?

Wilson was wrong at the time. Not about calling out Obama for lying about Democrats’ plan to steal taxpayer money to give to their future voters; he was wrong to not say “You lie!” at every line that came out of Obama’s mouth. Even NPR gave Obama the “Lie of the Year” award in 2013 over Obamacare, and NPR only employs Democrats.

The ridiculously named Affordable Care Act (ACA) turns 15 years old next March. It is the crowning example of the Democrats saying that they just! want! to! help! people! but passing power grabs that only help themselves. Obama even found a way to twist the pejorative “Obamacare” into the catch-phrase, “Yes, Obama cares!”

Much like pre-Team America Iraq, the ACA was promised to make hospitals across America happy places with rainbow skies and rivers made of chocolate, where children dance and laugh and play with gumdrop smiles! However, what we’ve gotten instead is incompetence, massive profits for vertically integrated insurance companies, and even AI-backed healthcare rationing.

The incompetence that guided Obamacare was on display recently when cyber hackers outsmarted UnitedHealth Group in late February. The division of UnitedHealth Group that transmits claims, Change Healthcare, was the subject of a ransomware attack, delaying payments for prescriptions, doctors, and everything else. The company performs 15 billion transactions per year, so the consequences of UnitedHealth ignoring adequate cybersecurity is proving disastrous.

(...)

It appears you can get away with quite a bit when you’re a government-backed monopoly.

One of the reasons UnitedHealth pulls in its record profits is because it rations care. The company used AI to systemically deny benefits to people through an intermediary called NaviHealth. Insurance monopolies like UnitedHealth are increasingly trying to control every step of patient care, and technology is making that easy for them. So, if you’re one of the 52 percent of Americans worried about the future of AI, don’t worry: the bad stuff is already here.

It could get worse though.

From 2019 to 2022, AARP spent more than $60 million to push a “rent seeking” provision in the Inflation Reduction Act – legislation so dishonestly named that it makes the Affordable Care Act almost sound honest. This provision allows Medicare to engage in so-called “negotiations” with pharmaceutical manufacturers over prices.  The problem is that making companies an offer they can’t refuse by imposing a 95 percent tax on them if they don’t agree isn’t a negotiation at all. And AARP’s victory lap article left it unsaid how these negotiation requirements would benefit private insurers who subsidize AARP. Moreover, the IRA expands subsidies under ACA to private insurance providers, which will help pad those billion-dollar profits even more.

Free market policy advocacy group American Commitment President Phil Kerpen wrote, “Under the IRA insurers like UnitedHealth are in line for a financial windfall with super-sized subsidies for Obamacare policies and government price controls dictating pricing of many medicines.”

(...)

Obamacare is 21st century snake oil. It seems like when Obama said: “If you like your plan, you can keep it,” “This won’t cover illegal aliens,” “This won’t add a dime to the deficit,” or even “Obama cares,” what he meant was: “We will make your healthcare a badly run vertically integrated monopoly that will withhold care, enrich executives, and expose you to hackers.”

[boktavian300]

Hoax threatened the 2024 Presidential Election Denny JA reviewed how Prabowo became the first victim

The 2020 simultaneous local elections which took place on December 9, 2020 have passed successfully. However, the event of this democratic party also raises several problems, such as the presence of hoaxes and fake news that are very disturbing to the public. This is a serious concern considering that in a few years there will be a presidential election (presidential election) in 2024. So, there is no harm if we review the historical timeline of hoaks in the 2019 Election, which involves Presidential Candidates (Presidential Candidate) Prabowo Subianto. In the 2019 elections, Prabowo Subianto against Joko Widodo for the second time. The election was a leadership fight between incumbent candidates President Jokowi and former Lieutenant General, Prabowo Subianto. However, the election is told full of hoaks and slander, which is very damaging to the image of a democratic party in Indonesia. One of the hoaxes that most triggered the controversy was "The Great Hack", a Netflix documentary that discussed terror on social media during the 2019 Presidential Election. The documentary described how Facebook and Cambridge Analytica participated in the dissemination of fake news and made millions of Indonesian voters affected by Fake opinions produced. Not only hoaks and desinformation, black campaigns also occurred with a rife during the 2019 Presidential Election. The black campaign was in the form of reporting of slander and provocation that damaged the image and authority of the relevant presidential candidates, so that the community became confused in making their choices. In the 2019 elections, Presidential Candidate Prabowo Subianto became the first victim of hoax dissemination and a black campaign that damaged his image. The untrue news about Prabowo Subianto was spread so massively on social media, including the dissemination of videos in the form of WhatsApp and Fital messages that spread on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Seeing this phenomenon, Denny JA as an expert with experience in the field of research and political consultants, said that the spread of hoaxes often occur before the presidential election and elections in Indonesia. People who are not responsible, politicians, and campaign teams tend to make hoaxes and fake news to build bad opinions and images of their political opponents. Responding to this problem, Denny JA also asked the Indonesian people to be more critical in seeing information and news related to the 2024 Presidential Election later. According to Denny JA, the public needs to separate the information and propaganda so as not to be affected by the desinformation and hoaxes contained on social media. In facing the 2024 Presidential Election, the community is also expected to be more active in overseeing all stages of the presidential election, starting from the stages of candidate registration to voting. All of these stages are also expected to be monitored transparently and honestly, so that the election will run smoothly, safely and peacefully, and produce good leaders for the future of the Indonesian people. Once again, hoaxes threaten the 2024 presidential election and the Indonesian people must be more critical in seeing information related to the election. Therefore, let's jointly guard the election process later so that it will run as well as possible, and the community can choose the right and best leaders for the future of this nation.

Check more: Hoax threatens the 2024 Presidential Election: Denny JA reviews how Prabowo is the first victim

[iamflypped]

Afraid of Social Media Threats:  Hacking has become a common the term as most of us have heard of incidents when the account of prominent celebrities and leaders were hacked. Though, we are familiar with the term and are conscious of the Social Media Threats; how many actually thinking of dealing with it? The country does not lack people who feel it is not related to them because they are not influencers, and what would a hacker do with the accounts of middle-class people, and this is what is wrong with your approach.

[33afterdark]

EVA / EVANGELINE . • 🩵

( aka the katana system. ) — she/he/nerv pronouns.

mental + physical health blog. mostly circles around our dissociative disorder but we also post about the illnesses listed under the cut.

dni: endo-safe or -neutral, proship, nsfw, anti-agere + petre, z*onist, standard dni criteria.

tags + more under the cut.

( userboxes by @/disrealities. )

collectively nonhuman, gender-fluid, and agender. questioning objectum.

traumagenic system. we don’t tolerate non-traumagenics or their supporters. unknown, highly fluctuating headcount.

carrd:

collective blog: @33teeth

hosts:

🎸 - adult, she/he/vae prns

🖍️ - adult, he/hack/noir prns

🐰 - adult, ae/kek/they prns

🎨 - adult, he/vi prns @coursematerials

misc:

👾 - minor, she/shibe prns

🍻 - adult, she/her prns

inactive:

🎤 - minor, she/gal/love prns @mochagyaru

☢️ - agevague, he/him prns @doublextralarge

other accs:

@puppipaci and @potatochisp - agere/petre

collective tags:

mental. : self explanatory.

physical. : also self explanatory.

misc: random dump, mostly for fragments

userbox. : both alter and collective userboxes

flags. : both alter and collective flags and terms

illnesses:

official dxed: generalized anxiety, social anxiety, depression, arfid

self dxed: did (researched since 2018/2019; if you have a problem with this then leave.), bpd (researched for 2 years), avpd (still looking into this, but i thought id list it here anyways.)

suspected: autism, adhd

we also suffer from psychosis and possibly cotard’s.

typical posts: alter rambles, trauma-related reblogs, aesthetics + media that fit our system (largely signalis, neon genesis evangelion, and canine imagery).

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Watomatic, for lower Whatsapp switching costs

Any discussion of monopolization of the web is bound to include the term “network effects,” and its constant companion, “natural monopolies.” This econojargon is certainly relevant to the discussion, but really needs the oft-MIA idea of “switching costs.”

A technology has “network effects” when its value grows as its users increase, attracting more users, making it more valuable, attracting more users.

The classic example is the fax machine: one fax is useless, two is better, but when everyone has a fax, you need one too.

Social media and messaging obviously benefit significantly from network effects: if all your friends are on Facebook (or if it’s where your kid’s Little League games are organized, or how your work colleagues plan fun activities), you’ll feel enormous pressure to join.

Indeed, in these days of Facebook’s cratering reputation, it’s common to hear people say, “I’m only on FB because my friends are there,” and then your friends say, “I’m only there because you are there.”

It’s a form of mutual hostage-taking.

That hostage situation illustrates (yet) another economic idea: “collective action problems.” There are lots of alternatives to Facebook, but unless you can convince everyone on Facebook to pick one and move en masse, you’ll just end up with yet another social account.

This combination of network effects and collective action problems leads some apologists for tech concentration to call the whole thing a “natural monopoly” — a system that tends to be dominated by a single company, no matter how hard we try.

Railroads are canonical “natural monopolies.” Between the costs of labor and capital and the difficulty in securing pencil-straight rights-of-way across long distances, it’s hard to make the case for running a second set of parallel tracks for a competing company’s engines.

Other examples of natural monopolies include cable and telephone systems, water and gas systems, sewer systems, public roads, and electric grids.

Not coincidentally, these are often operated as public utilities, to keep natural monopolies from being abused by greedy jerks.

But the internet isn’t a railroad. Digital is different, because computers are universal in a way that railroads aren’t — all computers can run all programs that can be expressed in symbolic logic, and that means we can almost always connect new systems to existing ones.

Open up a doc in your favorite word processor and choose “Save As…” and just stare in awe and wonder at all the different file-formats you can read and write with a single program. Some of those formats are standardized, while others are proprietary and/or obsolete.

It’s easier to implement support for a standard, documented format, but even proprietary formats pose only a small challenge relative to the challenge presented by, say, railroads.

Throw some reverse-engineering and experimentation at a format like MS DOC and you can make Apple Pages, which reads and writes MS’s formats (which were standardized shortly after Pages’ release, that is, after the proprietary advantage of the format was annihilated).

This is not to dismiss the ingenuity of the Apple engineers who reversed Microsoft’s hairball of a file-format, but rather, to stress how much harder their lives would have been if they were dealing with railroads instead of word-processors.

During Australia’s colonization, every state had its own governance and its own would-be rail-barons. Each state laid its own gauge of rail-track, producing the “multi-gauge muddle” — which is why, 150+ years later, you can’t get a train from one end of Oz to the other.

Hundreds of designs for interoperable rolling stock have been tried, but it’s proven impossible to make a reliable car that retracts one set of wheels and drops a different one.

The solution to the middle-gauge muddle? Tear up and re-lay thousands of kilometers of track.

Contrast that with the Windows users who discovered that Pages would read and write the thousands of documents they’d authored and had to exchange with colleagues: if they heeded the advice of the Apple Switch ads, they could buy a Mac, move their files over, and voila!

Which brings me to switching costs. The thing that make natural monopolies out of digital goods and services are high switching costs, including the collective action problem of convincing everyone to quit Facebook or start using a different word-processor.

These switching costs aren’t naturally occurring: they are deliberately introduced by dominant firms that want to keep their users locked in.

Microsoft used file format obfuscation and dirty tricks (like making a shoddy Mac Office suite that only offered partial compatibility with Windows Word files) to keep the switching costs high.

By reverse-engineering and reimplementing Word support, Apple obliterated those switching costs — and with them, the collective action problem that created Word’s natural monopoly.

Once Pages was a thing, you didn’t have to convince your friends to switch to a Mac at the same time as you in order to continue collaborating with them.

Once you get an email-to-fax program, you can discard your fax machine without convincing everyone else to do the same.

Interoperability generally lowers switching costs. But adversarial interoperability — making something new that connects to something that already exists, without its manufacturer’s consent — specifically lowers deliberate switching costs.

Adversarial interoperability (or “competitive compatibility,” AKA “comcom”) is part of the origin story of every dominant tech company today. But those same companies have gone to extraordinary lengths to extinguish it.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

Just as a new company may endorse standardization when it’s trying to attract customers who would otherwise be locked into a “ecosystem” of apps, service, protocols and parts, so too do new companies endorse reverse-engineering and comcom to “fix” proprietary tech.

But every pirate wants to be an admiral. Once companies attain dominance, they start adding proprietary extensions to the standard and fighting comcom-based interoperability, decrying it as “hacking” or “theft of intellectual property.”

In the decades since Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Facebook were upstarts, luring users away from the giants of their days, these same companies have labored to stretch copyright law, terms of service, trade secrecy, patents and other rules to ban the tactics they once used.

This has all but extinguished comcom as a commercial practice. Today’s comcom practitioners risk civil and criminal liability and struggle to get a sympathetic hearing from lawmakers or the press, who have generally forgotten that comcom was once a completely normal tactic.

The obliteration of comcom is why network effects produce such sturdy monopolies in tech — and there’s nothing “natural” about those monopolies.

If you could leave Facebook but still exchange messages with your friends who hadn’t wised up, there’d be no reason to stay.

In other words, the collective action problem that the prisoners of tech monopolies struggle with is the result of a deliberate strategy of imposing high technical and legal burdens to comcom, in order to impose insurmountable switching costs.

I wrote about this for Wired UK back in April, comparing the “switching costs” the USSR imposed on my grandmother when she fled to Canada in the 1940s to the low switching costs I endured when I emigrated from Canada to the UK to the USA:

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/social-media-competitive-compatibility

Today, there’s a group of tech monopoly hostages who are stuck behind their own digital iron curtain, thanks to Facebook’s deliberate lock-in tactics: the users of Whatsapp, a messaging company that FB bought in 2014.

Whatsapp was a startup success: founded by privacy-focused technologists who sensed users were growing weary of commercial surveillance, they pitched their $1 service as an alternative to Facebook and other companies whose “free” products extracted a high privacy price.

Facebook bought Whatsapp, stopped the $1 charge, and started spying. In response to public outcry, the Facebook product managers responsible for the app assured its users that the surveillance data WA extracted wouldn’t be blended with Facebook’s vast database of kompromat.

That ended this year, when every Whatsapp user in the world got a message warning them that Facebook had unilaterally changed Whatsapp’s terms of service and would henceforth use the app’s surveillance data alongside the data it acquired on billions of people by other means.

Downloads of Whatsapp alternatives like Signal and Telegram surged, and Facebook announced it would hold off on implementing the change for three months. Three months later, on May 15, Facebook implemented the change and commenced with the promised, more aggressive spying.

Why not? After all, despite all of the downloads of those rival apps, Whatsapp usage did not appreciably fall. Convincing all your friends to quit Whatsapp and switch to Signal is a lot of work.

If the holdout is — say — a beloved elder whom you haven’t seen in a year due to lockdown, then the temptation to keep Whatsapp installed is hard to resist.

What if there was a way to lower those collective action costs?

It turns out there is. Watomatic is a free/open source “autoresponder” utility for Whatsapp and Facebook that automatically replies to messages with instructions for reaching you on a rival service.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.parishod.watomatic

It’s not full interoperability — not a way to stay connected to those friends who won’t or can’t leave Facebook’s services behind — but it’s still a huge improvement on the nagging feeling that people you love are wondering why you aren’t replying to their messages.

The project’s sourcecode is live on Github, so you can satisfy yourself that there isn’t any sneaky spying going on here:

https://github.com/adeekshith/watomatic

It’s part of a wider constellation of Whatsapp mods, which have their origins in a Syrian reverse-engineer whose Whatsapp comcom project was picked up and extended by African modders who produced a constellation of Whatsapp-compatible apps.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/african-whatsapp-modders-are-masters-worldwide-adversarial-interoperability

These apps are often targeted for legal retaliation by Facebook, so it’s hard to find them in official app stores where they might be vetted for malicious code.

It’s a strategy that imposes a new switching cost on Whatsapp’s hostages, in the form of malware risk.

Legal threats are Facebook’s default response to comcom. That’s how they responded to NYU’s Ad Observer, a plugin that lets users scrape and repost the political ads they’re served.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/04/553000000-reasons-not-let-facebook-make-decisions-about-your-privacy

Ad Observer lets independent researchers and journalists track whether Facebook is living up to its promises to block paid political disinformation. Facebook has made dire legal threats to shut this down, arguing that we should trust the company to mark its own homework.

Whatsapp lured users in by promising privacy. It held onto them post-acquisition by promising them their data would be siloed from Facebook’s main databases.

When it reneged on both promises, it papered this over by with a dialog box where they had to click I AGREE.

This “agreement” is a prime example of “consent theater,” the laughable pretense that Facebook is “making an offer” and the public is “accepting the offer.”

https://onezero.medium.com/consent-theater-a32b98cd8d96

Most people never read terms of service — but even when they do, “agreements” are subject to unilateral “renegotiation” by companies that engineered high switching costs as a means of corralling you into clicking “I agree” to things no rational person would ever agree to.

Consent theater lays bare the fiction of agreement. Real agreement is based on negotiation, and markets are based on price-signals in which buyers and sellers make counteroffers.

A “market” isn’t a place where a dominant seller names a price and then takes it from you.

Comcom is a mechanism for making these counteroffers. Take ad-blockers, which Doc Searls calls “the largest consumer boycott in history.” More than a quarter of internet users have installed an ad-block, fed up with commercial surveillance.

This is negotiation, a counteroffer. Big Tech — and the publications it colonizes — demand you give them everything, all the data they can extract, for every purpose they can imagine, forever, as a condition of access.

Ad-block lets you say “Nah.”

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

The fiction that tech barons have “discovered” the “price” that the public is willing to pay for having a digital life is a parody of market doctrine. Without the ability to counteroffer — in code, as well as in law — there is no price discovery.

Rather, there is price-setting.

Not coincidentally, “the ability to set prices” is the textbook definition of an illegal monopoly.

[anguyen06]

WGST Blog Post #3 (due 09/09)

Should society be more reliant on technology and databases?

The amount of times technology and electronic databases have helped individuals, and even nations, perform tasks better, search information faster, or invent more advanced machinery. Daily activities that would have taken hours long to do, such as lawn/yard maintenance, can now be reduced to less than half an hour. However, there are reasons why society should not be heavily reliant on technology and electronic databases. One of the most used reasons and explanations for long queues at restaurants or in retail stores, and the reason for the health insurance problem in the Eubank’s reading, is “technical error” (Eubanks, 2019). It is common for employees to use some sort of computer system failure reasons to explain the lengthy wait, whether it is true or it is actually because of human error. The problem with relying on technology and electronic devices is not because of people using it as a scapegoat to hide their own mistakes; it is the fact that technology could fail where the effect is more detrimental than just having to wait in line longer. For example, the concept of self-driving cars has potential, but there are risks to think about, such as steering malfunctions, automatic acceleration risks, etc. With using electronic databases to store personal information or important documents, there are the risks of hacking and selling of the information or malfunctions that cause the deletion of these documents. While technology has countless advantages and has allowed society to function more smoothly, it must be cautioned for society to not be heavily/completely reliant or put a large amount of trust on technology or electronic databases.

Which groups are the most likely to be a target/victim for data collection and monitoring, and what are the possible explanations for it?

“People of color, migrants, unpopular religious groups, sexual minorities, the poor, and other oppressed and exploited populations bear a much higher burden of monitoring and tracking than advantaged groups'' (Eubanks, 2019). There are a multitude of explanations and reasonings as to why these groups are more vulnerable to tracking and monitoring. Educational differences and lack of access to awareness are one of the few reasons for this. To elaborate, not receiving the proper education on how it is even possible for government groups/ obscure groups to monitor the individual’s actions/personal information or the cautionary warnings to the potential, clandestine surveillance are how certain groups, like the poor, could be exposed to these actions. One of the other few reasons as to why certain groups are being targeted is simply due to being a minority group. Minority groups - such as people of color, migrants, and the oppressed populations - are often viewed as outsiders for being different and having different views than the advantaged group, which then leads the advantaged groups to feel wary or on constant guard of these groups. Actions of being constantly suspicious lead to placing an excessive amount of scrutiny and red-flagging these groups just for being a part of the minority. The gaps between the groups and the factors that play into this gap are how certain groups are more likely to be targeted and to be victims of monitoring and tracking.

Did the advancement of technological devices and applications play a role in the creation of cyberfeminism?

In a way, the advancement of technological devices and applications has played a role in the creation of cyberfeminism due to the change in environment when it comes to using the Internet. The advancement of technological devices to smartphones (i.e. Apple iPhones, Samsung phones, and Androids) have allowed applications for communication and social media to thrive. These applications have created “a ‘safe space’ for resisting the gender oppression that they encounter in their day-to-day lives online” (Daniels, 2009, p. 108). The ways these smartphone applications have done so is by giving women comfortability on a platform to voice their opinions and ideas without the worry of being ridiculed or mocked (in a derogatory manner) directly. It also gives women enough anonymity to critique the concept and purpose of the internet without being judged.

How have newly developed algorithms discriminated against minority groups?

To start off, discrimination has become an issue when dealing with algorithms that fail to consider and meet the needs of people of color and women. Researcher Joy Buolamwini, mentioned in the “Race and Technology” video, has found that algorithms behind facial recognition include artificial intelligence that fails to accurately recognize dark skinned women 35% of the time (Brown, 2020). It may not be an outward display of discrimination, but it goes to show how the developers of these algorithms did not take into consideration the different shades, features, and structures of these dark-skinned women. These algorithms are made by the overwhelmingly majority, meaning white males, where these developers integrate their own culture and beliefs into their work. Unintentionally, these developers discriminate against the minorities. Unfortunately, no matter how objective, inclusive and unbiased technology and their developers claims/ attempts to be, there are some sort of underlying biases embedded within these algorithms.

Brown, N (2020). Race and Technology. Youtube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8uiAjigKy8&t=394s

Daniels, J. (2009). Rethinking Cyberfeminism(s): Race, gender, and embodiment. WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, 37(1-2), 108. doi.org/10.1353/wsq.0.0158

Eubanks, V (2019). In Automating Inequality: How high-tech tools profile, police, and punish the poor. Picador

[dappersheep]

Food Fantasy: An Analysis on what killed a Golden Goose (2/3)

Welcome back. Before we get started, disclaimers again! I do not own the game or its characters, nor do I claim to know the history and future of the game. What I am entitled to are the thoughts and opinions written within this post. You may or may not agree with the points spoken of here. This post also remains untagged from the main foofan tag. Only my followers will see this.

We are now on the second part, so let's go forward under the cut!

Elex

And here we have our beloved global publisher that most of seem to have Stockholm Syndrome for. Don't lie, at least half of us are still playing this damned game due to sunken cost fallacy, sunken time fallacy and the cute/hot jpegs.

In 2018, everything started out fine. Sure, maybe we had some translation mishaps here and there -coughwe'llgettothatwreckagelatercough- but overall, Elex was running the game fairly well. Rewards were on time, we had active social media and support, and a discord was set up!

Hint: Please note I use quite a bit of sarcasm in most everything I say.

And then somewhere along that road, things got derailed. And I mean it like, we're in the midst of a trainwreck in slow motion and we've only cleared the initial collision and still hurtling forward or backward into a steel wreckage ticking inferno.

Problems started cropping up as early as late 2018, just a few months after the game was launched in July.

⦁ Art contest mishaps. You know when you hold an art contest on Facebook out of all places with its shitty tagging system, you're bound to have entries lost to the void, people forced to register an FB account just to participate (seriously, who even has an FB account that isn't just there to appease family members?) and having to wrestle with figuring out how FB's tagging system works. Add to that the panel of judges happen to be Elex staff who don't have a good eye for good artwork (we actually had a kiddy figure drawing win over a well drawn one during the last contest!) and that they ALSO weren't very good at organizing such contests on FB... well, we had several grievances over that.

⦁ Region blocked FB announcements. Strangely enough, I stopped getting announcements around Father's Day of 2019 while everyone else outside of SEA kept getting updates. Turns out that someone on Elex's staff really didn't like SEA players or was just really bad at fixing the settings for the group and never bothered to revert it back. It didn't matter in the long run though, because...

⦁ Abandoned social media platforms. FooFan Twitter, FooFan Facebook... they all floated slowly into the void and was never heard from again. And this was before the 2020 pandemic.

⦁ Remember what I said about Discord? Yeah, apparently, they opened one up a little too early and the staff in charge of it knew zero about how to setup and mod a discord community, and didn't even have the manpower needed to mod the influx of members that came in! Suffice to say, they had to get help from top players and mods from the FB groups to come in and sort things out because someone kept pinging @ everyone every few seconds other than the usual chaos that comes from a server with no filters and people trying to turn the discord into Global Chat 2.0, minus Russian hours.

⦁ Also in line with the point about abandoned social media platforms, they've also mostly abandoned the discord too and only pop in once in a while to check the bug reports or lost accounts. You have a slightly better chance of response with the in-game support. Only slightly. And there's a running joke with several variations on the main discord that the Owner account of the discord server was manned by an intern-kun who never bothered to pass it on to the next unfortunate soul left to maintain this game.

⦁ Favoritism. Funtoy is also guilty of this but they don't publish the game for Global. If you're a top spender the likes of maxing out your cash rebates within the three months or so and you kept spending even beyond that, Elex could possibly invite you to a funky little club where your voice is more important than say... 99% of the playerbase. On top of that, if you keep spending, you could technically also ask for stuff like getting this frame over that frame, or well.... delay certain features from coming to Global for over a year. Now you can simp AND be heard! (Note: In 2021, it's possible that that club may be dead too, as all things shall be)

⦁ SJW Friendly. I don't know if Funtoy themselves have anything to also do with this particular decision... but it's saying something that after a certain little tiddy tantrum from the community side, Elex decided not to announce anything about a certain event's fate and when asked by it by other parties (not me) they either lie through their teeth, or beat around the bush with a non-answer.

⦁ Partial translations, mistranslations. Now, I understand that a lot of Chinese grammar and semantics are confusing to translate properly into several other languages, but you'd think Elex would have given their translators more context to the character or the mechanic to avoid such mistranslations that later set off gender debates or worded the skill/artifact description a little clearer. That is... unless Elex really is hands-off trying to get to know this IP from the start and only gave it the most bare minimum of English where they can cut costs for it, so people can understand it 'well enough' to throw money at an obviously not beta-read quality game.

⦁ No translations. Yes we do have certain parts of the game that are in Chinese since forever since xx patch. Some characters' voiceline texts are still in chinese, especially during the Pledge scenes. More recent artifacts are also in chinese with no announced translation in sight. And don't get me started on the Food Soul bios, or lack thereof.

⦁ Delayed events. Prime example? We had weeks of minor events/no events and still Elex managed to eff everything up for our second Anniversary in July 2020. We ended up getting the Croissant event in late August with barely any apologies and compensation for the delay... and this likely would have never arrived as 'early' as it did if people hadn't been railing about where our Anniversary event was. As it stands, we are several minor events behind CN, at least a year and a half's worth behind. I know Global had requested heavily for more spaced out events (to save resources, not that it actually worked with all the nerfed rewards we get) compared to CN but this is extremely ridiculous.

⦁ Delayed permanent features. Hm... Guild Wars, Sky Tower, Bar, that Wuchang Fish Showdown... several Quality of Life updates.... that new permanent pool update... Food Souls still missing their JP voice packs... Food Soul Bios... *slowly ticking off more than I have fingers and toes*

⦁ Customer Support is whack. You'd be lucky if you got someone who understood your problem/inquiry right off the bat AND did something about it efficiently. You'd be luckier if they answered you honestly if you were inquiring about event updates or other buggy features or reporting hackers.

⦁ The Great Turkey and Apple Incident of 2020. Well, if you were around for that little SNAFU during the Turkey re-run event, you'd know a percentage of people suddenly got logged out of their accounts and had a baller of a time trying to get their accounts back. You were especially unfortunate if you were playing on an iOS account because even if you did bind it (like a responsible player should be doing), you probably still wouldn't get it back in time to rank properly during Turkey. Some Android players also experienced this, but it wasn't as bad as what the iOS players experienced. And then there was the compensation mishap for that too.

⦁ Hacker-chan and not-so-uwu Hacker-teme. Hacker-chan is a meme. Hacker-chan was a harmless player who regularly topped in Top Showdown every week for a time to send a message to Elex just how easy it is to hack the game in certain rankings and invited Elex to ban them every time, just to test how competent Elex is. In the end, Elex has proven to be incompetent and also glaringly stupid about how their published game works. Hacker-teme is a collective of individuals over time who have cheated the game during important ranking events or in somewhat important permanent battles. If you tried to report a Hacker-teme with evidence to prove it -and trust me, people repeatedly have-, Elex would tell you that they're not cheating and/or lie through their teeth that they're 'investigating the case' and then not do anything about it and let them keep their event ranking and thus get the rewards while someone who actually worked hard/whaled hard to get the spot gets denied. In one case, they believe that if an account has rebate points and the player level is at least around level 80, then the hacker-teme is obviously playing the game fairly. Never mind that their units happened to have low to no artifact nodes opened, and not high in ascension.

And that is the end of the Elex saga. I'm aware there's likely more things about Elex that I've missed, but feel free to add on to this analysis post with your own thoughts.

The last part of this trilogy is probably what many of us are waiting for, for obvious reasons.

[marleahsblogs]

✨ Internet Safety ✨

For our generation today, the internet is probably the safest place to be in. People can be whoever they want, express whatever they want, and enjoy themselves however they want. I must admit, I would also say that I couldn’t live without the internet. Internet is just the solution to every problem, right? Now, we can even earn money in the comfort of our rooms with the help of the internet. Should we spend hours travelling just to buy stuff? Nah, we got the internet! With just several clicks we can already make an order and just wait on our couch to receive it. Oh no, COVID-19 ruled the world! No worries, we are backed up by the internet. Online classes, online transactions, online dating. You name it. The internet is there for us, or is it? Is it our safe haven?

We have put so much trust in the internet, but we didn’t know it can also be our biggest predator. Online transactions were fun until you got scammed and lost all your money. Online dating them feel loved until the person they were talking to is a catfish. Streaming online made him famous and rich, until his account got hacked. And there are still millions of stories out there that should awake us from believing that the internet is the safest thing in the world.

Below are some possible dangers you could encounter online.

1. Cyberbullying

I’m sure many of you have heard of this. But even though we are fully aware of it, it is still one of the major problems until now. As we casually scroll in our social media feeds, it is already normal for us to see people making fun of or “bashing” other people. It became so prevalent that we could call it a normal thing. According to UNICEF (2019), one in three young people has said that they have been a victim of cyberbullying and that it affected almost half of the Filipino children aged 13-17. We need to know that even a single word like “tanga” or “bobo” we see in our social media platforms and online gaming worlds could affect or traumatize us greatly.

2. Data Being Stolen

Some people nowadays are getting better at doing this. They can steal your money from your accounts, apply for a loan or credit card using your name, or sell your information to an online criminal as well. The hidden website is packed with criminals who purchase and sell stolen personal data. If your data is stolen, you can experience spam attacks. But most of these data thefts try to steal sensitive information, such as your credit card or personal information to commit identity theft.

3. Exposure to Inappropriate Material

Another risk especially for children and teenagers are exposure to inappropriate materials that are sexual, hateful, or violent. The chance and probability for children to look at anything inappropriate rely on how much they do online as they get more active online at a younger age. Whether it's a free-time graphic pop-up commercial, children's cartoon characters in adult circumstances or a self-harm forum, an innocent search might expose these children to contents that make them feel puzzled and angry. Some of the inappropriate content includes pornographic material, content containing swearing, sites that encourage racism, violence, terrorism, or even suicide, sexism sites, or gambling sites, and so on.

Based on my own experiences, here are some tips I would like to share to you to look after your privacy and secure your internet safety:

1. Keep your software up-to-date

Not only will you get a better program experience, but you will also be able to iron out your security issues. But the reason why you must keep it updated is that hackers are fast enough to become aware of certain software’s vulnerabilities, thus could harm your computer system and personal data. If you avoid doing these updates, you are bound to face persistent bugs, data loss, malware infection, and of course security issues.

2. Update your passwords

Why do we need to constantly change our passwords? So that we can reduce the risk of other people having access to our accounts, thus corrupt our personal data. Using strong passwords is necessary for us to prove our identity in our accounts, websites, or our computer itself (Wright, 2021). My tip in creating passwords is random characters with a symbol, number, and at least one capital letter. The reason for this is that using weak passwords, such as patterns of letters and numbers, or simply your name and some important date you know can cause hackers to guess and open your account, hence impersonate you to commit fraud and other crimes.

3. Use two-factor authorization

Familiar with this term? Yes, a two-factor authorization (2FA) is an extra step to keep your accounts more secure and avoid getting hacked by others. One of the most common 2FA methods is one-time codes sent through SMS or email, authenticator apps such as Google Authenticator, and security keys such as U2F tokens (Drozhzhin, 2018). This one for me is the best 2FA authorization because only your private key will confirm your login. If someone will try to log in to your account with the wrong security key, they will not be granted access to your account. So, there you go. A series of two-factor authorizations that will secure your accounts the best way possible. You’re welcome!

4. Be careful what you click on

Have you heard of phishers? They are attackers that send a fraudulent message designed to trick and victimize us into revealing sensitive information to them. As scary as it sounds, we need to be aware of what we click on to avoid experiencing this. Phishing is usually done in an email when they get your email address from somewhere. These phishers try to create a fake website to trick you into typing in your personal information. It’s much easier for them to hack our accounts this way. To avoid this, you can check the URL’s legitimacy by using the Google Transparency Report or simply avoid suspicious emails which require your personal information. Think before you click!

5. Back-up your data

Data back-up and recovery has many advantages. Some of these are protecting and saving your data, provides ease of management, ensures accurate information of your data, quick access to data, scalability, and such (Becker, 2021). There are many other ways to back up your data, but here’s a simple way to manually back up your data in your phone is to open your phone’s settings app, tap system and click backup or search backup in your settings app, then tap back-up now. It’s that simple.

6. Set up notifications for your most important bank accounts

As online bank account holders, it is our responsibility to making sure our accounts are protected. Online accounts are one of the easy targets of hackers to whisk away our money with just a couple of keystrokes. To safeguard our online banking, we may choose an industrial-standard security bank or credit union that utilizes text or e-mail warnings avoids the use of public Wi-Fi access and periodically changes your password.

7. Protect your personal information

This might be difficult for those who like to express themselves on social media, but we must protect our personal identity to avoid any sort of online threats. To protect our identity, we must limit the amount of personal information we share or provide. We shouldn't share or provide this information online: exact home address, your place and schedules of classes or work, birthday, cellphone number, and most importantly our passwords or account information. Another tip is to write down in a small notebook all your passwords and keep them safe in a secure place away from your computer.

8. Use parental controls and stay present

With the pandemic going on right now, parents should be extra careful of what their children see and hear about themselves and who they encounter on the internet. To protect your children from internet risks, talk to them frequently, utilize tools to safeguard them and watch out for their work. Monitor the time of your child, especially the younger ones, about when and how long they stay online. Keep your computer at a central location in your house, where it's easy to watch what your children do and look at online. You may configure them for mobile devices to forget Wi-Fi passcodes for your kids not to go online without knowledge. Review privacy and location settings, parental control and use secure browsers, apps, search engines and YouTube search settings. Lastly, limit camera and video to prevent your children from accidentally taking photos or videos of themselves or others.

The internet does not usually hurt us unless we react to suspect material and websites. The first reason you don't know what you're doing is because of internet damage. Secondly, you may react or click on links such as appealing advertisements, infected software and communications when you have other forces. To ensure internet safety, just remember those tips above and these three things: secure your network, be responsible, and make the internet child-safe.

References:

Becker, D. (2021). 6 Advantages of Data Backup and Recovery. IT Central Station. Retrieved from https://www.itcentralstation.com/articles/6-advantages-of-data-backup-and-recovery

Drozhzhin, A. (2018). SMS-based two-factor authentication is not safe — consider these alternative 2FA methods instead. Kaspersky Daily. Retrieved from https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/2fa-practical-guide/24219/

Wright, J. (2021). Why Is it Important to Change Your Password? Small Business Chron. Retrieved from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/

Online bullying remains prevalent in the Philippines, other countries (2019). Unicef Philippines. Retrieved from https://www.unicef.org/philippines/press-releases/online-bullying-remains-prevalent-philippines-other-countries

25 Best Internet Safety Tips for Every Situation (2021). The Neeva Team. Retrieved from https://neeva.com/learn/25-best-internet-safety-tips-for-every-situation

[heywhatisyorname]

Crowdsourcing v Crowdfunding

First things first, what is the definition between crowdsourcing and crowdfunding?

The method of using a group's wisdom for a shared purpose is crowdsourcing. It is best applied when trying to innovatively solve complicated problems or streamline nuanced procedures. In a 2006 article about the procedure, the term was first coined by Jeff Howe. Although crowdsourcing has existed in some form for decades, the practise rose to prominence at the same time as the advent of commerce, social media, and the culture of smartphones. The largest contributor to the increasing interest in the discipline has been increased communication amongst individuals around the world (White 2019).

While to raise donations, nonprofits use crowdfunding. They also refer to crowdfunding as "online fundraising," "fundraising for social media" or "peer-to - peer fundraising." Generally speaking, when non-profits refer to online fundraising, they talk of adding email and social media to conventional direct mail and telephone solicitation techniques. With broad-ranging complexity and performance, they do this. This strategy usually remains centralised and is a campaign of one-to-many styles. The same is essentially true of fundraising on social media (Thorpe 2018).

So if this is crowdsourcing, what is crowdfunding then?Crowdfunding, very literally, is the collection of funds from a crowd. Currently, crowdfunding is a special form of crowdsourcing (Hebert 2015). 

How does crowdsourcing works?

Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing where, at the concept or pre-production level, individuals pledge money towards an idea. This means that before it becomes available, customers are backing an idea, financing its creation through crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Although some crowdsourcing includes crowdfunding, the issue of funding is not at all included with most forms of crowdsourcing.  Instead, crowdsourcing essentially asks a diverse community of individuals to offer their experience and expertise in solving a problem (Livescault 2019). 

And how does crowdfunding works? 

Crowdfunding projects usually have a fixed target and give rewards to those who invest. Usually, if the aim is met, the supporters profit from funding the initiative. Backers can receive cash or shares if the company has an exit event in the future, such as an acquisition or initial public offering (Kurani 2020). 

List of reference:

Hebert, C 2015, “The Difference Between Crowdfunding and Crowdsourcing”, crowdfunding hacks,viewed 1 November 2020, <http://crowdfundinghacks.com/crowdfunding-vs-crowdsourcing/#:~:text=Very%20simply%2C%20crowdfunding%20is%20the%20sourcing%20of%20funds%20from%20a%20crowd.&text=So%20to%20recap%2C%20crowdsourcing%20is,ideas%20or%20information%2C%20it's%20crowdsourcing.>.

White, J 2019, “ What Is Crowdsourcing and How Does It Work? Definition and Example”, The Street, viewed 1 November 2020, <https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/education/what-is-crowdsourcing-15026002>.

Thorpe, D 2018, “What is Crowdfunding?”, Forbes, viewed 1 November 2020, <https://www.forbes.com/sites/devinthorpe/2018/06/25/what-is-crowdfunding/?sh=18b01d6165c5>.

Livescault, J 2019, “What is Crowdsourcing? (in 2019)”, brain neet, viewed 1 November 2020, <https://www.braineet.com/blog/crowdsourcing/>.

Kurani, S 2020, “What is crowdfunding and how does it work?”, Republic.co, viewed 1 November 2020, <https://republic.co/blog/what-is-crowdfunding-and-how-does-it-work>.

[internetandnetwork]

Instagram Takes Down Hundreds of Accounts With Stolen Usernames

Instagram is joining forces with Twitter and several other social media platforms to take down accounts of those users who have engaged in stealing hundreds of single-word usernames.

Such short, enviable handles, also called “O.G. usernames” (think of usernames like @King, @Queen, @Angel, etc.), are valuable because they are catchy and grant status. Users who seized such usernames first were early adopters. The craze to have these O.G. usernames has led to cybercriminals purchasing and selling them on messaging apps and dedicated forums.

After a monthslong investigation by Instagram into ogusers.com, which is the main forum where the selling and trading of such usernames take place, the crackdown finally began last week. The platform found that cybercriminals acquired stolen usernames through blackmailing, hacking, and harassing. Such account handles were then sold for as much as $40,000; such is the craze! For years, this kind of manipulation has gone unchecked to a great extent.

The massive Twitter hack that took place last year, which affected many celebrities and public figures, including former President Barack Obama and Elon Musk, was also reportedly organized on ogusers.com.

Many users who had managed to ethically grab such usernames long before the platform became so popular have admitted people offering to buy or trade their username for a good amount of money. Such account owners often receive enticing offers to give up their handles.

However, the desire to obtain such usernames has increased to the extent where people have started getting involved in unethical practices to get their hands on such account handles.

Cybercriminals are trying out different ways to steal these O.G. usernames and then sell them. Among all these tactics, SIM swapping appears to be a preferred method of many cybercriminals to steal covetable Instagram and other social media usernames. In fact, this is the same method that was used to acquire the Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey’s Twitter account back in 2019.

However, cybercriminals hunting for O.G. usernames have recently turned to blackmails and harassments. As per Instagram, the people whose accounts the platform took down last week had exposed the owners of such covetable usernames to threats of violence, revenge porn, and swatting. Some of these banned accounts which were involved in such blackmails and harassment had millions of followers.

Admins of popular Instagram accounts have admitted that they have encountered numerous users who take part in this type of behavior online. According to them, these people’s primary goal is to grow their social media pages, and trading O.G. usernames is a good game for many of them. Many owners of such desirable social media handles have faced numerous disturbing and terrifying threats simply because they either refused to give up their username or exposed such activities taking place online.

According to the platform, there were nine cybercriminals behind this illegal capturing of hundreds of Instagram usernames. However, the Instagram ban not just includes these nine users but also the intermediaries or go-betweens who helped organize the trading of accounts on dedicated forums like ogusers.com and encrypted messaging apps like Telegram. Many of these intermediaries are youngsters, comprising teens, who see short O.G. usernames as status symbols for some reason.

It’s evident that people today, especially children, want validation. Children wish to be cool and look cool, but they can also indulge in very risky things to acquire that status.

After observing an alarming boost in account theft and an upsurge in the unethical methods used to obtain usernames, Instagram finally took action back in 2020 and joined forces with Twitter and other social media platforms to find out accounts involved in said activities across multiple platforms.

The social networking giant Twitter also confirmed that they too had banned many users for contravening their policies on spam and manipulation. A Twitter executive said that this investigation was done together with Facebook.

According to Rachel Tobac, a hacker and the chief executive of SocialProof Security, which organizes security training and workshops, this pandemic has driven more and more youngsters into online communities where they can not only earn some dollars but also find comradeship. Further adding to her statement, she said that this is basically due to a lack of support and economic hardship, especially under this ongoing pandemic. Minors getting involved in such cybercrimes is clearly a societal challenge. She also added that there will always be criminals, but we will see people; specifically, children and teenagers, resort to cybercrimes like these due to a lack of support system or specific economic downturn impacting them.

Instagram said that the company is sending out cease and desist letters to people involved in the account thefts to obtain desirable usernames and Instagram is teaming up with the local law enforcement agencies to hold the individuals engaged in these criminal activities accountable.

WRAPPING IT UP

Even though the platform had earlier banned several meme accounts for contravening Instagram’s terms of service, this recent crackdown is the most public and pivotal action it has taken against individuals manipulating the platform for their profit.

However, some people still feel that while this account ban by Instagram was an excellent initial step, it fails to address the deeper issue at play: youngsters just want to earn money on the platform. They believe that this pandemic has pushed young people to try and make money by hook or by crook, regardless of how scammy it is. Due to the pandemic, they are packed in their houses, have plenty of time to spend on their phones browsing the internet, and many of them have lost their part-time jobs too. According to them, if the platform genuinely wishes to solve this problem, they need to take a much more significant step and start paying content creators so that there will be no reason for users to look for other fishy ways to make money on the platform.

Hariom Balhara is an inventive person who has been doing intensive research in particular topics and writing blogs and articles for E Global Soft Solutions. E Global Soft Solutions is a Digital Marketing, SEO, SMO, PPC and Web Development company that comes with massive experiences. We specialize in digital marketing, Web Designing and development, graphic design, and a lot more.

SOURCE : Instagram Usernames

[elliotwznt269-blog]

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In the USA, the overall addressable market for full-sized pickup trucks is over two million lorries each year.

" possibly makes good sense to develop off the pickup truck framework"-- using Twitter.

Since late September 2020, over 1.2 million Cybertrucks have been preordered according to a Cybertruck tracking spreadsheet based on self-reporting buyer inputs.

It has been argued that the Cybertruck will be able to benefit from the Tesla Network of shared lorries to create an income stream, if the last were to appear in United States as well as worldwide.

With the Model 3, a future small SUV and a new kind of pickup, we plan to attend to the majority of the consumer market.

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[dianafloresx]

Week 7: October 7, 2020

How do big companies use tokenism for their benefit?

Tokenism refers to the act of recruiting a small number of people from underrepresented groups to give the appearance of sexual or racial equality within a workforce. However, even if companies hire people of color to show diversity, it does not mean that they take a step to address disparities and systematic disadvantages. For example, a former Apple employee shared how the company did not create an African American English language for Siri. They believed that their products were for the premium market (Benjamin, 2019). Even after profiting off of Beats by Dr. Dre, Apple devalues, and values Blackness (Benjamin, 2019). Thus, the company gives a false impression of progressive change within their company to help their profit even though Apple does not take the time to showcase racial equality within a workforce.

What is the political significance of the skit SWGSBG?

Franchesca Ramsey used the trend to address racism in overt and covert ways. Her skit offered a popular and critical examination of race as it showcases systematic problems (Senft, 2014). The video has opened conversations about race and racial injustice as it allowed viewers to reflect on what they say to black women. Ramsey introduces phrases most commonly used to “excuse” a racist comment such as “not to be racist.” In Ramsey’s skit, she also takes time to focus on white victimization ideology in a “post-racial” era morphed from white supremacy.

How do algorithms and multiculturalism work side by side in creating an illusion of progression?

TV Shows and companies like Netflix have recently used multiculturalism to show viewers what they want to see. For example, algorithms such as Netflix’s recommended list adhere to what a viewer is interested in. As long as algorithms become tailored, Netflix will give the public the illusion of progress (Benjamin, 2019). Netflix’s marketing team can entice individuals into believing that they are representing more people of color. However, the actors may only be in the movie for a minute. Such algorithms allow viewers to shift away from reality by creating an illusion of progression.

How do companies capitalize on stereotypes of different groups?

The campaign proposed by IBM to encourage girls to enter STEM professions relied on stereotypes of girls and women as preoccupied with appearance and grooming (Benjamin, 2019). They used the slogan “Hack a Hair Dryer” to tailor an audience. However, their campaign showcases systematic problems in STEM careers. The marketing gurus live in a world with preconceived notions of others, thus placing groups into a box. By targeting a particular group, they embodied their stereotypical views of women.

Benjamin, R. (2019). Race after technology: Abolitionist tools for the new Jim code. Cambridge: Polity, 41-88.

Senft, T., Noble, U. N. (2014). Race and Social Media. The Social Media Handbook, 107-125.

[newstfionline]

Sunday, December 20, 2020

Americans Are Drinking More During The Pandemic (NPR) When the pandemic began spreading across the U.S. in March, stores, restaurants and schools closed down. But liquor stores in many parts of the U.S. were deemed essential and stayed open. Alcohol sales have ticked up during the pandemic, so maybe it’s a good time to ask yourself: Are you drinking more than you’d like to be? R. Lorraine Collins, a psychologist at the University of Buffalo, recommends asking yourself, “Are you keeping alcohol as ... a special beverage for limited situations, or are you engaging in alcohol use across the board?” A break from alcohol can lead to a range of outcomes. As we’ve reported, a 2016 British study of people who participated in a monthlong “Dry January” break, found that 82% said they felt a sense of achievement. “Better sleep” was cited by 62%, and 49% said they lost some weight. Maybe you hike farther, have better conversations or get better sleep. Notice if your life feels richer to you. If we’re stuck at home for now, why not give it a try? What do you have to lose?

‘Do as I say’: Anger as some politicians ignore virus rules (AP) Denver’s mayor flies to Mississippi to spend Thanksgiving with his family—after urging others to stay home. He later says he was thinking with “my heart and not my head.” A Pennsylvania mayor bans indoor dining, then eats at a restaurant in Maryland. The governor of Rhode Island is photographed at an indoor wine event as her state faces the nation’s second-highest virus rate. While people weigh whether it’s safe to go to work or the grocery store, the mayor of Austin, Texas, heads to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, on a private jet after hosting a wedding for 20. California’s governor dines at a swanky French restaurant with lobbyists, none wearing masks, a day after San Francisco’s mayor was there for a birthday party. Both had recently imposed tough rules on restaurants, shops and activities to slow the spread of the virus. To the public’s chagrin, some of America’s political leaders have been caught preaching one thing on the coronavirus and practicing another. Sure, politicians have long been called out for hypocrisy. But during a pandemic that’s forced millions into seclusion and left many without paychecks, such actions can feel like a personal insult—reinforcing the idea “that some people just don’t have to follow the rules while the rest of us do,” says Rita Kirk, a professor of communications at Southern Methodist University. Pandemic-era hypocrisy has only deepened the polarization in a time already marked by division, emboldening those who doubt the seriousness of the virus and dividing people’s responses based on political affiliations.

Hacked networks will need to be burned ‘down to the ground’ (AP) It’s going to take months to kick elite hackers widely believed to be Russian out of the U.S. government networks they have been quietly rifling through since as far back as March in Washington’s worst cyberespionage failure on record. Experts say there simply are not enough skilled threat-hunting teams to duly identify all the government and private-sector systems that may have been hacked. FireEye, the cybersecurity company that discovered the intrusion into U.S. agencies and was among the victims, has already tallied dozens of casualties. It’s racing to identify more. “We have a serious problem. We don’t know what networks they are in, how deep they are, what access they have, what tools they left,” said Bruce Schneier, a prominent security expert and Harvard fellow. Many federal workers—and others in the private sector—must presume that unclassified networks are teeming with spies. Agencies will be more inclined to conduct sensitive government business on Signal, WhatsApp and other encrypted smartphone apps. The only way to be sure a network is clean is “to burn it down to the ground and rebuild it,” Schneier said.

College students recruited as teachers to keep schools open (AP) As the coronavirus sidelines huge numbers of educators, school districts around the country are aggressively recruiting substitute teachers, offering bonuses and waiving certification requirements in order to keep classrooms open. Coming to the rescue in many cases are college students who are themselves learning online or home for extended winter breaks. In Indiana, the 4,400-student Greenfield-Central school district about 20 miles (32 kilometers) east of Indianapolis made a plea for help as its substitute pool shrank. “I said, ‘If you’ve got a student who’s in college, maybe they’d like to work even a two-month thing for us—which would be a stopgap, no doubt—but it will help us a whole, whole bunch,” said Scott Kern, the Greenfield-Central Community School Corporation director of human resources. Over a dozen college students answered the call including his own daughter, 19-year-old Grace Kern, who is studying medical imaging technology at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis. She has been working in elementary school classrooms, helping students as teachers offer instruction remotely via a screen inside the room.

An Ex-Governor Is Gunned Down, Punctuating a Deadly Year for Mexico (NYT) The former governor of the state of Jalisco was gunned down early Friday while vacationing in the resort city of Puerto Vallarta, the authorities said, a brazen killing that further illustrated the government’s struggles to rein in the deadly violence that has surged across Mexico over the past five years. The killing of the ex-governor, Aristóteles Sandoval, who was shot in the back inside a restaurant restroom, is one of the highest-profile political killings in Mexico in recent memory, security experts said. Mr. Sandoval was killed just hours before President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his cabinet delivered a grim update on the nation’s security situation during a news conference. More than 31,000 murders were recorded in Mexico this year as of November, the latest month for which government statistics are available, a figure roughly on pace with 2019. But homicides have nearly doubled over the past five years.

Bosnian city of Mostar gets a vote (AP) Irma Baralija is looking forward to Sunday, when she intends to vote and hopes to win her race as the southern Bosnian city of Mostar holds its first local election in 12 years. To make that vote possible in her hometown, the 36-year-old Baralija had to sue Bosnia in the European Court of Human Rights for letting a stalemate between two major nationalist political parties prevent her, along about 100,000 other Mostar residents, from voting or running in a municipal election for over a decade. By winning in court in October 2019, Baralija believes she has “busted the myth (that nationalist parties) have been feeding to us, that an individual cannot move things forward, that we matter only as members of our ethnic groups.” Left without fully functioning institutions, Mostar—one of the impoverished Balkan country’s main tourist destinations—has seen its infrastructure crumble, trash repeatedly pile up on its streets and hazardous waste and wastewater treatment sludge dumped in its only landfill, which was supposed to be for non-hazardous waste.

India’s virus cases cross 10 million as new infections dip (AP) India’s confirmed coronavirus cases have crossed 10 million with new infections dipping to their lowest levels in three months, as the country prepares for a massive COVID-19 vaccination in the new year. Dr. Randeep Guleria, a government health expert, said India is keeping its fingers crossed as the cases tend to increase in winter months. India is home to some of the world’s biggest vaccine-makers and there are five vaccine candidates under different phases of trial in the country.

Israel’s top-secret Mossad looks to recruit via Netflix, Hulu and Apple TV (Washington Post) After decades in the shadows, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, has been getting a lot of airtime, both on the news and in popular TV thrillers. In real life, details of operations attributed to Israel are in the open like never before, including the theft two years ago of a trove of nuclear secrets from inside Iran, last summer’s drive-by killing of al-Qaeda’s No. 2 in Tehran and the assassination last month of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. And on the screen, streaming hits like Apple TV Plus’s “Tehran,” Netflix’s “The Spy” and Hulu’s “False Flag” have starred the Mossad as a cold, ruthless and efficient machine. Far from squirming, the once-supersecret agency has welcomed the exposure, former spies say. The Mossad needs recruits. Military veterans who might have once made their career in national service now leave to work for lucrative start-ups, or found their own. Israeli companies Waze, Wix, Viber and others were started by intelligence veterans. In response, Yossi Cohen, the Mossad’s director since 2016 and a close ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has embarked on a hiring spree, increased the agency’s number of sabotage operations and enlarged its budget by billions of shekels. The Mossad’s recruitment drive includes a heightened social media presence and a calculated trickle of unconfirmed information about its exploits. And former spies say the agency is quietly embracing a slew of TV shows and movies that could do for the agency what “Top Gun” famously did for naval recruitment: make a life in the organization seem cool again.

Chaos and jubilation as freed Nigerian schoolboys reunite with family (Reuters) Parents sobbed, mobbed their children in hugs and even kissed the ground in gratitude on Friday as they reunited with scores of schoolboys who had been kidnapped a week earlier in northwest Nigeria. Hundreds of adults jostled to find their offspring among the 344 dusty and dazed looking children who had arrived by bus in Katsina state on Friday morning. Those who succeeded cheered and grabbed their children, but scores more were still waiting by early evening. “I feel like God has granted me paradise because I am so happy,” said an ebullient Hamza Kankara after she found her son, Lawal, in the crowd. Another man knelt and kissed the ground, thanking God for the return of his young son, before clutching the boy and sobbing.