#hackivist

[humantardis1941]

#fanfiction

#lucifer

#smut

#michaeldemiurgosappreciationsociety

#mdassmutfest2023

archiveofourown.org/chapters/12365…

Its Lucifers Stag Do. Michael would rather stay at home and read a good book. The night isn't what everyones expecting. And Michael shocks even Lucifer.

[mulchette]

I LOVE HACKIVISM! I LOOOOOOOVE HACKIVISM SO MUCH!!

[centrally-unplanned]

Very much enjoyed Tracing Woodgrain's foray into the internet life of jilted ex-rationalist and Wikipedia editor David Gerard. It is of course "on brand" for me - the social history of the internet, as a place of communities and individual lives lived, is one of my own passion projects, and this slots neatly into that domain in more ways than one. At the object-level it is of course about one such specific community & person; but more broadly it is an entry into the "death of the internet-as-alternate-reality" genre; the 1990's & 2000's internet as a place separate from and perhaps superior to the analog world, that died away in the face of the internet's normalization and the cruel hand of the real.

Here that broad story is made specific; early Wikipedia very much was "better than the real", the ethos of the early rationalist community did seem to a lot of people like "Yeah, this is a new way of thinking! We are gonna become better people this way!" - and it wasn't total bullshit, logical fallacies are real enough. And the decline is equally specific: the Rationalist project was never going to Escape Politics because it was composed of human beings, Wikipedia was low-hanging fruit that became a job of grubby maintenance, the suicide of hackivist Aaron Swartz was a wake-up call that the internet was not, in any way, exempt from the reach of the powers-that-be. TW's allusion to Gamergate was particularly amusing for me, as while it wasn't prominent in Gerard's life it was truly the death knell for the illusion of the internet as a unified culture.

But anyway, the meat of the essay is also just extremely amusing; someone spending over a decade on a hate crusade using rules-lawyering spoiling tactics for the most petty stakes (unflattering wikipedia articles & other press). The internet is built by weirdos, and that is going to be a mixed bag! It is beautiful to see someone's soul laid bare like this.

It can be tempting to get involved in the object-level topics - how important was Lesswrong in the growth of Neoreaction, one of the topics of Gerard's fixations? It was certainly, obviously not born there, never had any numbers on the site, and soon left it to grow elsewhere. But on the flip side, for a few crucial years Lesswrong was one of the biggest sites that hosted any level of discussion around it, and exposed other people to it as a concept. This is common for user-generated content platforms; they aggregate people who find commonalities and then splinter off. Lesswrong's vaunted "politics is the mindkiller" masked a strong aversion to a lot of what would become left social justice, and it was a place for those people to meet. I don't think neoreaction deserves any mention on Lesswrong's wikipedia page, beyond maybe a footnote. But Lesswrong deserves a place on Neoreaction's wikipedia page. There are very interesting arguments to explore here.

You must, however, ignore that temptation, because Gerard explored fucking none of that. No curiosity, no context, just endless appeals to "Reliable Source!" and other wikipedia rules to freeze the wikipedia entries into maximally unflattering shapes. Any individual edit is perhaps defensible; in their totality they are damning. My "favourite" is that on the Slate Star Codex wikipedia page, he inserted and fought a half-dozen times to include a link to an academic publication Scott Alexander wrote, that no one ever read and was never discussed on SSC beyond a passing mention, solely because it had his real name on it. He was just doxxing him because he knew it would piss Scott off, and anyone pointing that out was told "Springer Press is RS, read the rules please :)". It is levels of petty I can't imagine motivating me for a decade, it is honestly impressive!

He was eventually banned from editing the page as some other just-as-senior wikipedia editor finally noticed and realized, no, the guy who openly calls Scott a neo-nazi is not an "unbiased source" for editing this page wtf is wrong with you all. I think you could come away from this article thinking Wikipedia is ~broken~ or w/e, but you shouldn't - how hard Gerard had to work to do something as small as he did is a testament to the strength of the platform. No one thinks it is perfect of course, but nothing ever will be - and in particular getting motivated contributors now that the sex appeal has faded is a very hard problem. The best solution sometimes is just noticing the abusers over time.

Though wikipedia should loosen up its sourcing standards a bit. I get why it is the way it is, but still, come on.

[abbiistabbii]

I think every computer user needs to read this because holy fucking shit this is fucking horrible.

So Windows has a new feature incoming called Recall where your computer will first, monitor everything you do with screenshots every couple of seconds and "process that" with an AI.

Hey, errrr, fuck no? This isn't merely because AI is really energy intensive to the point that it causes environmental damage. This is because it's basically surveilling what you are doing on your fucking desktop.

This AI is not going to be on your desktop, like all AI, it's going to be done on another server, "in the cloud" to be precise, so all those data and screenshot? They're going to go off to Microsoft. Microsoft are going to be monitoring what you do on your own computer.

Now of course Microsoft are going to be all "oooh, it's okay, we'll keep your data safe". They won't. Let me just remind you that evidence given over from Facebook has been used to prosecute a mother and daughter for an "illegal abortion", Microsoft will likely do the same.

And before someone goes "durrr, nuthin' to fear, nuthin to hide", let me remind you that you can be doing completely legal and righteous acts and still have the police on your arse. Are you an activist? Don't even need to be a hackivist, you can just be very vocal about something concerning and have the fucking police on your arse. They did this with environmental protesters in the UK. The culture war against transgender people looks likely to be heading in a direction wherein people looking for information on transgender people or help transitioning will be tracked down too. You have plenty to hide from the government, including your opinions and ideas.

Again, look into backing up your shit and switching to Linux Mint or Ubuntu to get away from Microsoft doing this shit.

[misscammiedawn]

Recently I've been introducing my girlfriend to Mr. Robot and last night, while watching season 2, I noticed something that made me love the show even more than I already did.

The subtle but intentional little bits of character development and motivation peppered into the show for sharp eyed viewers.

See, in season 2 we are introduced to Dominique "Dom" DiPierro, an insomniac/workaholic FBI agent who is part of the team investigating the 5/9 hack where our protagonists hackivist group managed to encrypt all of the credit and debt data for a banking system that covers 70% of the population.

I am also quite in love with her for obvious reasons (see my redhead best head tag)

During this episode she has traveled with her team to Beijing to investigate the Chinese arm of the hacking. The investigation is aided by Chinese Security Minister Zhang. Unbeknownst to the FBI, Zhang is a public face for the series villain Whiterose, a transgender woman who runs The Dark Army, a militant hacking group whose influence is felt throughout the show.

During a party Dom disappears from the party to "look for a restroom" and finds a room of clocks, an indicator/reminder to any audience member who is not aware yet that Zhang is Whiterose. After a brief discussion Zhang invites Dom to a bedroom and shows off a closet full of beautiful outfits.

She even invites Dom into her philosophy on time travel and parallel universes which becomes a major factor in understanding her motivations throughout the show.

(Incidentally this scene is lit in golden hues, a sign for the show to indicate safety and trust. Both characters are in frame for the majority of the shots. This show famously tries to isolate characters in frame during conversations to show barriers and disconnect)

Whiterose says these are her sister's outfits and by the end of the episode Dom is informed that Whiterose does not have a sister.

In a later season she even says outloud "she was showing me who she was".

I wondered why the mastermind of the plot was willing to trust Dom so quickly and with no apparent gain and allow her to survive the attack on the FBI that would happen the next day. It wasn't because of her value as an asset as The Dark Army do not attempt to recruit Dom until season 3.

Then I watched the episode again yesterday and understood why.

First let's talk about Whiterose.

Whiterose is a transgender woman who lives in China, a place where she is unable to live openly as her authentic self. She is positioned both masked in the light of day (as Security Minister Zhang) and authentically in the darkness of her secret life (as head of The Dark Army, Whiterose) as having inordinate amounts of power. By this point of the show we have seen that the CEO of E(vil) Corp, Price, capitulates to her. Price is seen as the literal devil at this point of the show and has outright referred to himself as "Master of the Universe". Yet he is not above Zhang.

With all of her power she is unable to change the circumstances of injustice that she lives in and at this point of the show that is all we need to know about her. There is more but it is not for us to know at present.

Whiterose and Eliott are both trying to change the world that caused them so much pain. Whiterose wishes to forcibly alter the world. She believes that there is no method of changing the world as it is because at some point it went wrong and the only way to "fix" it is to literally jump into an alternate version of our world where circumstances were better. She is jaded to the point of which she believes there is no future, only a better version of the past. She fights to change the past.

Eliott, in spite of everything, wants to fight for a better future. He believes that he can give people the choice to live better lives if the ruling classes allowed for such change to happen.

This is a show about healing, after all. One wounded victim cannot accept a world of hurt and injustice and wants to go back and change things. One wounded victim cannot accept a world of hurt and injustice and wants to force the world to change for a better future.

It's a good show.

So why does Whiterose let Dom see her true self?

Dom is a lesbian and the show takes place in 2015. This episode takes place on June 26th 2015.

We do not know Dom's sexuality at this point of the show but we are later given the tools to unlock the secrets of this episode and conversation and to understand how Whiterose "clocked" her.

Earlier in the episode one of the characters, Angela, meets with a season 1 character in a bar. We see this playing on the television:

It's not the focus of the shot, but seeing the footage of the LOVE WINS balloons bouncing up and down will catch the eye. As will the rainbow colored whitehouse. It is on screen for about 8-12 seconds. SAME SEX MARRIAGE LEGAL even on the ticker.

DIRECTLY after this scene is the sequence of Dom and Whiterose meeting.

During this conversation Whiterose insists on knowing why Dom is an FBI agent and after obfuscating she tells her story:

"Final semester of law school, dating who I thought was the one. At dinner, days before graduation, they got down on one knee to propose, and (this is going to make me sound wacky) but I excused myself to the restroom and left out the back and that was that."

Notice the lack of gendered pronouns?

Darlene sure does in season 3 when she teaches the audience how a character in this show can hear that sentence and know what they are doing.

See these characters all know about masking and how it's done and so they catch those little tells. Darlene understood Dom's sexuality from just "On again, off again with someone but they're not really the one or anything like that."

Whiterose likely did digging on Dom before the meeting but both that conversation and the later reveal of how we, the audience, should decode her speech allows us to know Whiterose saw that Dom was in a relationship in law school that ended with her partner offering to marry her and that was the end of the relationship.

Whiterose knows what it is like to not be able to live as your authentic self (the reminder that the legalization of gay marriage JUST happened. Literally the day this conversation is happening) and saw an ally in Dom. Saw someone who understands what she feels and what she is fighting for. Whiterose consistently through the show is patient (a trait very unlike her) and kind with people she feels an empathetic bond with.

This understanding causes her to invite Dom to see "her sister's" outfits, knowing that the lie would not hold up very long. She just wanted someone who could see her for who she truly was to see her.

This show is about healing. It is about connection. It's about trying to be understood.

...and it legitimately is one of the best television shows that has ever aired.

I love it more than I can possibly put into words.

[rogha]

‘can you believe furries hacked the -‘ actually I would be more surprised if you told me a group of hackivists contained absolutely no furries

[summonhouse]

Is the hackivist crimew? Do you have a screenshot? Genuine curiosity

[rppr-podcast]

Eclipse Phase: Chancel

A team of Firewall agents sneaks into an isolated exoplanet colony and discover a society they could not imagine!

A reclusive oligarch, Jorge Fugger, has liquidated his entire portfolio in a single massive gatecrashing operation. Firewall knows he funneled vast amounts of material and personnel through the Martian Gate, all to a single location. A team of agents is sent in to infiltrate the operation and report back. They find more than they bargained for… Chris as Chi, Barsoomian hackivist Amanda as Estika,…

[0monkfruit0]

I'm reading through twitter and I come across this little account that goes by the name Anonymous. They are a hack group that exposes corrupt politicians and celebs.

What is this, the fucking apocalypse bingo?

We got the:

Deadly worldwide virus

"Violent" riots

A fucking hackavist group that exposes politicians

Like, what's next? The fuckin dinosaurs? Jurassic Park, the Remix? Zombies? Anarchy?

My second point:

Regardless of how violent these riots are, justice does need to be served because this bullshit has gone on too damn long. We gotta do what we gotta do. #blm

[writing-prompt-s]

You, a superhero, are awful at keeping your identity secret, yet somehow no villains have found you yet. 1 day after accidentally unmasking for the 30th time, you look online to find that the unmasked pictures of you are gone. There's a hackivist group dedicated to protecting your identity.

[bigfan-fanfic]

batboys and peter with a hackivist bf 👌

Peter: Sees if Tony has any spare equipment that might help you out.

Dick: Worries about you getting caught.

Jason: Thinks it’s awesome, but warns you about people trying to take you down in real life. 

Tim: Definitely tries to get you to teach him some hacking tricks.

Damian: Particularly thinks it’s cool if you work for environmental or conservationist causes.

[impuramortem]

h-toga replied to your post “I have,,,,,,,3 ocs,,,,,,,and then other canon muses,,,,help sos ”

:eyes:

Two are bnha ocs Heiwa and Iyasu 

and then the hackivist oc Fenriz 

[invisobil]

tucker’s mom is really restrictive with his time spent online because of the random things that would show up at the house - the changing table, the lawnmower, etc. he would explain that his friends sent them to him, but his mom knew that neither sam nor danny would ever send those items to tucker. she tried to sit down and explain to him internet safety but tucker didn’t really listen. so until he understands how to maintain his own privacy, tucker is restricted on his internet use.

[iced-chi]

Which 5 characters sum you up?

Shallan Davar (Stormlight Archives)

This nerd right here is super sarcastic, witty and sometimes dumbass and i love her. Also she has super unhealthy coping mechanisms caused by lifetime of abuse so lets jot that down. I'm pretty sure she's taking care of that at the end of Oathbringer... She's also queer so end on a positive note

Shawn/Gus (Psych)

These two sum up a lot of my relationships. As to which one I am depends on who I'm with, like @singinganddancinghorribly she's 100% Shawn and I'm Gus

Glimmer (She-ra)

She's v soft and v gay, but also if you fuck with her friends she will cut a bitch. Fuckin love her aesthetic too

Nomi (Sense8)

Shocker, i relate to a trans woman... who was played by a trans woman ... written by 2 trans women. Representation matters y'all. She's also was a hackivist so both punk, and techy. Also gay... if you couldn't tell from the gif

Kate (Everything Sucks)

Currently have same fashion sense (tho i aspire to glimmer) .also have bad habit of pushing people away who get close (BUT works on it! Which i am too). A+ tatse in music but i just love 90s alt. Also gay... shocker

Please excuse the bad screenshot, wanted to credit artist but mobile is mobile.

Since @singinganddancinghorribly took most people i would @, ummm @binary-suunset tag your it

[marcogiovenale]

L'art clandestin: Anonymat et invisibilité du graffiti aux arts numériques

L’art clandestin: Anonymat et invisibilité du graffiti aux arts numériques

EMMANUELLE DREYFUS , STÉPHANIE LEMOINE L’art clandestin Anonymat et invisibilité du graffiti aux arts numériques Gallimard, 2022 Ils sont graffeurs, street artistes, hackivistes ou artivistes plus ou moins célèbres. Dans la rue, sur le web ou dans les médias, leurs œuvres sont omniprésentes. Eux, pourtant, avancent à couvert¿: ils créent sous pseudonyme, fuient les journalistes et se protègent…

[arshnet]

Anonymous launched its offensive on Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine

Anonymous launched its offensive on Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine

The popular collective Anonymous declared war on Russia for the illegitimate invasion of Ukraine and announced a series of cyber attacks calling to action its members The Anonymous collective is calling to action against Russia following the illegitimate invasion of Ukraine. The famous groups of hackivists is also calling for action Russian citizens inviting them […] The post Anonymous launched…