#this looks abhorrent on tumblr app is it just me??

[ofallthingsnasty]

Do you know any other yandere/dark conent like yourself?

fyi you sent this twice and i've had someone in my inbox in the last weeks with the same 'problem' - your app/connection might be fucky, just so you know haha

Sure I do!! I don't know what fandoms you're looking for, so I'll just throw a whole bunch of people at you I adore. In general, check my fic recs tag!! I don't read much but I've reblogged a thing or two in my day, haha

@after-witch I love Theo - I've been following her for three years now and her writing is divine. She writes very delicately - if you like psychological horror/dark fic, bleak fates and that sinking feeling in your stomach, her blog is just the place! Theo has written and writes for a lot of fandoms (from JJK, HxH, BNHA etc to original content), I'm sure you'll find something you'll like. @391780 You HAVE to check out Early's stuff. Fat reader fics galore. They write everything from romance to soft dark to dark fic, all CoD. I know nothing about CoD but by some strike of fate her fics landed on my dash and I've been in love ever since. You don't need to know anything about that fandom, trust me, you can go in blind and you'll fall in love just as much. If you like dark dark stuff, her Nikto masterlist is perfect - and the Nobody series is my ultimate fave of theirs. So delicious, you'll want to curl up and cry afterwards (out of joy).

@darkficsyouneveraskedfor Roo is THE darkfic writer to me. She writes MCU/DC and again, I haven't watched a Marvel movie since 2015 - but you don't need those to read her fics. She crafts AUs you've never even thought about - and masterfully so. Seriously, I especially love her historical stuff and the way she puts you into these worlds is something else. Roo's writing is very direct and raw and hopeless. She doesn't write happy ends and it's amazing. One of my favorite series of hers is Tapestry , a medieval AU featuring Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes. If you want something even darker, Splintered is another masterpiece of hers that I've been screaming about on here for literal years 😭💕

@stupid-sloot-headcanons is another fixture on the 'dark fic side' of tumblr to me. Sloot has ... everything. Seriously. Pluck in a random fandom of yours and 9/10 times, she's written about it. Her thought/characterization posts never miss, she just gets characters through some form of magical mental connection, I swear.

@thus-spoke-lo Pain Management. You will read this. Now. No discussions. Adshjshfj but seriously, Lo has written SO much. So many different tropes, so many different levels of romance. I'm on a One Piece kick right now and her whole OP masterlist got me through the first 300 chapters of my re-read... The twists, the turns, the love (or not) - experience it for yourself (╹ڡ╹ ) And of course, I have to mention @girlwithsharpt33th and @tang3r1n - they're both still 'fresh' but give them a scroll... Things are brewing and they're perfect and disgusting and abhorrent 💕

and a rest in peace goes out to kyneslust (mae) and captainmcslashypaws... you two are missed. so much. 😭💕

[frongle-mayorofnewfrongulus]

hello tumblr since you disable ad reports half the time i will shout into the void.

please stop giving me ads about slot machines and anime girls in suggestive positions. please also do not half-crash my phone with gifs that are just patting yourself on the back. please stop putting that weird pikachu mask person on my screen.

perhaps give me ads relevant to the data i know you have on my interests. chickens and star trek and minecraft and pokemon and various forms of sea life and fungus and plants and birds will do the trick. you will have better luck selling things to me that way.

your ads are feeling less like a service and more like a repellent. i have your 'use my data to provide better reccomendations' button on and yet you are exclusively showing me ads that are abhorrent and unhelpful. wtf are these ads meant to do. no i don't want to gamble fuck off. I'm not going to download an app to look at anime girls. oh yeah also fuck off with the dating app add bongle or whatever it is ive seen more convincing roleplay on minecraft servers im gonna put your bones in a nutribullet and stick it in a compost bin so some growth can finally come from your shitass advertising. fuck

[mtnkat3]

Don't be long winded!

Well... didn't work that way!

Wrote in diary because. Well.

M.11.14.2022 3.06pm.

Ok.

Today's counseling was ... me & this place. How I interact with others.

And how to fix me.

Boundaries. Self respect. Value. Worthiness.

I am Valuable.

I am worthy of life, & of love.

I am deserving of life, & of love.

Teaching me that I need to reset my own personal boundaries. But also my boundaries for others & how I wish to be treated. What's been taught & learned needs to be reevaluated.

Does God want me to be constantly hurt because I let others devalue me? No.

And I also must learn to remember this for myself.

"Do unto others as you would have others do to you."

I don't want to be mean nor unkind to other people. To hurt them, their souls. The very thought is abhorrent to me!

And don't get me started on my thoughts about people who hurt babies, children, & God help me.. the kinds that kidnap & do horrible things like rape & human trafficking.

IT IS APPALLING!

For me, those people... eye for an eye.

The warrior queen in me just.. gets a strong urge to ...cleanse.

[I am a rape survivor. ~I~ had to think about that choice. And thank You Jesus, I did not have a child. And that He cleared my health too! You answered my prayers! But nor do I agree with abortion. That's God's domain, not mine. Certainly not the government.]

So treat them the way I want to be treated!

And reestablishing my boundaries in kind.

I am a good woman, but I am working to be better. And to keep doing my best! Strive every day!

I have done things wrong here. I admit that.

And that I am here like I strive for real life. Kind & value other people. Their time, & souls. But I will say that I am honest & deplore false behavior. I want the truth. Period.

I know a lot, if not most, people that use social media do so for a variety of reasons. But a lot of Tumblr & how it was started, as well as such other sites do so for escapism, & sadly wrong doing.

I don't agree with that.

Therefore I do not condone it.

My wee lil corner isn't about "sex, boobs, butts & hookups."

Those who want that need to go elsewhere.

And most have! I still get some of the bots.. following, I've had 2 or 3 in asks. I've been propositioned by supposed women. Ain't goin there. The only things I block are those. And the few actual real ones that I have blocked, had derogatory views that I want no part of.

I am here to heal.

I actually had a lightbulb moment💡 on that recently. I didn't just come to Tumblr to heal, like I thought. But God opened my eyes that I have been looking for the one I fell for years ago in this place.

I no longer know who that is.

That is where I messed up & made a fool of myself. But I can't do that anymore.

I feel in my soul he is here but I don't know who nor where. So I've given it to God. Because I hurt myself. And I feel I have hurt him too. Heck, maybe why I don't know!

I only hope thet those I have hurt, & maybe my soul's mate is among them, that someday I am forgiven.

Not that I expect anything to happen.

Expectations. No.

I just want the one I love.. to be happy & feel loved.

With. Or without. Me.

Because we humans scar each other with expectations. With the things we fantasize about, hope for & dream about.

For me, I expect nothing.

I thank God for every breath I breathe. That I wake up & make it thru another day.

I don't expect to be forgiven for me.

I pray the souls I unintentionally hurt can forgive because God heals the souls within. And then can be happy.

The only expectations I'll allow myself are to do better of myself.

Treat people better.

Give them the boundaries on how to treat me right.

And if that means they walk away from me then...

Let Them.

That post is very much on my mind.

[It & several others are in my note app & pinned to my status bar. That's how much I agree with... "Let them."]

And when I begin the work on my massive tattoo design... it will be a part of it. [I've been researching uv & 3d for.. ~10 years. My design is very personal.]

Heck, I think it's time to revisit my note pad & vacation plans!

Looking at all the towns along the coast I grew up with & wanna visit & reflect. And see how humanity has swarmed. Grimace. Think that's what stops me. Ruining my childhood memories. From NC to FL. From DC to the space coast. To across.. I so wanna go back to Busch Gardens! But I think the Florida is different than Williamsburg one. I loved the international aspects & learning new things. Loved the German stuff! So neat!

I need a flippin break! Huh. Maybe I should just find an island spa retreat somewhere & escape humanity for a month & hold off on my reminiscing tour again.

I'm just.. worn.

My tree is so bending in the middle that it's splintering. I don't like that. It's time to work on my healing.

My assigned tasks this week are read both of my books. Not to take notes. But read & absorb. Then go back later & do the note taking.

I do hope, & pray, that my soul's mate, my Bears ..Angels.. do in fact read my raw feelings here. And someday can forgive me. And if I am to be Blessed.. want.. me. For me.

For me, that's not something I am willing to give up hope on. Ever.

That's not what God instructs me to do. Not what He is wanting me to learn. He wants me to come to Him. First. And be Blessed with my soul's mates love. Because that is a precious & priceless Gift.

Not something I'd ever take for granted.

So... whomever.. wherever.. you .. are... please... hear my soul.. I am sorry. For all I have done wrong. My God heal that soul. And may He have Mercy & Grace upon mine.

As He Teaches, Guides, Molds, Loves, Protects, shows me His Wisdom, Guidance, Strength & Perseverance to get my life back on its proper track.

I love.

I believe.

I will endure, work & await. On my cliffside. ~True love never dies & true love always waits.~

So Thy Will Be Lord.

Your humbled bowed hurting confused listening closely quietly & carefully

Your complex quirky warrior queen daughter.

~Tijgeress kat Phoenix. 🌺🐾🐯✝️

🙊🙈🙉😖😟😥☔🌀🌬🌫🤓👩⚓🙏🙇‍♀️🌂🔗 ⛓🧰🏋️‍♀️🧘‍♀️📋📆📝💸⚙🏗🧱⚒🛠⚔⚖🔐🗽🦅🕊🥧🍁🧣🥾🍋🥤🥨🍯🍼☕🍫🍎🍑🍒 🐯🐾🐐🦉🐢🐛🦋🌱🌺🌹🌻🌷🌳🧶🧵 ⌚💡⚡🌠🗝🚀🔱⚜💝🐻🦌🧩♠️🎯♾🕯🧭🎶

M.11.14.2022 4.33pm. Corrections. 4.52pm.

[boueibu-and-budgies]

Wip wallpaper I’m making for myself, hope I can finish it on time for Boueitober since I couldn’t for Pretty Boy Week. The lineart isn’t done yet but omg I love how it’s looking

It’s a redraw of the last seconds of the Aikatsu Stars opening STARDOM!. I thought it was from MUSIC OF DREAM!!! which is my favorite, but okay…

Deviantart link!

[brucesterling]

Oath of Doom

https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/04/why-oath-keeps-tumblring/

TechCrunch is experimenting with new content forms. This is a rough draft of something new – provide your feedback directly to the author (Danny at danny@techcrunch.com) if you like or hate something here.

My three word Oath? I’m with stupid

It goes without saying that this piece about my employer is my work alone, doesn’t reflect management’s views, and is done under the auspices of TechCrunch’s independent editorial voice. No usage of internal information is assumed or implied.

This is a piece about TechCrunch’s parent company, formerly known as “Oath:” (okay just Oath, but who am I to flout a mandatory colon?) and now ReBranded™ as Verizon Media Group / Oath (See what they did there? They literally slashed Oath. Poetic).

Oath is essentially the creature of Frankenstein, a corporate alchemy experiment to fuse the properties of the companies formerly known as AOL and Yahoo into the larger behemoth known as Verizon. You can feel the terrible synergy emanating from the multiple firewalls it takes to get to our corporate resources.

Oath has a problem:* it needs to grow for Wall Street to be happy and for Verizon not to neuter it, but it has an incredible penchant for making product decisions that turn users off. Oath’s year over year revenues last quarter were down 6.9%, driven by extreme competition from digital ad leaders Google and Facebook.

The solution apparently? Give away page views. If that logic makes sense, well then, maybe you should fill out a job application.

The kerfuffle is over Tumblr, which is among Oath’s most important brands, in that people actually know what it is and kind of still like it. Tumblr, which Yahoo notably acquired under Marissa Mayer back in 2013, has been something of a product orphan — one of the few true software platforms left in a world filled with editorial content like TechCrunch and HuffPost (Oath sold off Flickr earlier this year to SmugMug — which also seems to be going through its own boneheaded product decision phase).

All was well and good — well, at least quiet — in the Tumblr world until Apple pulled the plug on Tumblr’s app in the App Store a few weeks ago over claims of child porn. Now let’s be absolutely clear: child porn is abhorrent, and filtering it out of online photo sharing sites is a prime directive (and legally mandated).

But Oath has decided to do something equally obnoxious: it intends to ban anything that might be considered “adult content” starting December 17th, just in time for the holidays when purity around family gatherings is key.

In Tumblr’s policy, “Adult content primarily includes photos, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples, and any content—including photos, videos, GIFs and illustrations—that depicts sex acts.” You’ll notice the written legerdemain — “primarily” doesn’t exclude the wider world of adult-oriented content that almost invariably is going to be subsumed under this policy.

Obviously, adults (and presumably teens as well) are pissed. As users are starting to see what photos are getting flagged (hint: not the ones with porn in them), that’s only making them more angry.

Oath is attempting to compress the content moderation engineering and testing of Facebook down to a span of a few weeks. And Facebook hasn’t even figured this one out yet, which is why people are still being murdered across the world from viral messages and memes it hosts that incite ethnic hatred and genocide.

I get the pressure from Apple. I get the safety of saying “just ban all the images” à la Renaissance pope. I get the business decision of trying to maintain Tumblr’s clean image. These points are all reasonable, but they all are just useless without Tumblr’s core and long-time users.

What flummoxes me from a product perspective is that it’s not as if banning all adult content is the singular solution to the problem. There is an entire spectrum of product, policy, legal, and product cultural ingredients that could be drawn upon. There could be more age verification, better separation of “safe for children” and “meant for adults content,” and more focus on messaging to users that moderation was meant to help the product and focus audiences rather than to puritanically filter.

Or you can just kill the photos, the somehow still loyal core user base, a safe space for expression via nudity and sexuality and, well, traffic along with it. And then you look at -6.9% growth and think: huh, I wonder if there is a connection....

[micahdawolf]

This is Tumblr going? And has Facebook already gone?

" Can you see this stuff? This is actually going to take away about 70% of the artists  I follow on Tumblr. Because when they say they are banning content, its not just obvious stuff like porn. Its any content they deem "too mature" wont be allowed. This is because the app store decided that tumblr is too risque to be allowed and banned them from the app store. Tumblr is desperate to keep their download rate, so they are going too extremes that will cause far more people to leave tumblr than they realize. I've been on Tumblr for five or six years, and I feel like I need to move content else ware. - Furthermore, I like what  Facebook looks like more and more. I am thinking about leaving it as well, and then finding another service where I can make multiple accounts that are mostly like Tumblr's feed, but with Facebook's storage abilities, but not as many adds or political ads and such. Instagram has been one suggestion made to me, but I am open to hear of any others. I need to make a list of my current contacts so if anyone who follows me or wants me to keep following them, needs to PM me any other messaging services they would like to have me on, that way I can make the best judgment on which accounts I should migrate too. ~  seyz me ---------------------------------------------------------A better, more positive TumblrSince its founding in 2007, Tumblr has always been a place for wide open, creative self-expression at the heart of community and culture. To borrow from our founder David Karp, we’re proud to have inspired a generation of artists, writers, creators, curators, and crusaders to redefine our culture and to help empower individuality. Over the past several months, and inspired by our storied past, we’ve given serious thought to who we want to be to our community moving forward and have been hard at work laying the foundation for a better Tumblr. We’ve realized that in order to continue to fulfill our promise and place in culture, especially as it evolves, we must change. Some of that change began with fostering more constructive dialogue among our community members. Today, we’re taking another step by no longer allowing adult content, including explicit sexual content and nudity (with some exceptions).   Let’s first be unequivocal about something that should not be confused with today’s policy change: posting anything that is harmful to minors, including child pornography, is abhorrent and has no place in our community. We’ve always had and always will have a zero tolerance policy for this type of content. To this end, we continuously invest in the enforcement of this policy, including industry-standard machine monitoring, a growing team of human moderators, and user tools that make it easy to report abuse. We also closely partner with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Internet Watch Foundation, two invaluable organizations at the forefront of protecting our children from abuse, and through these partnerships we report violations of this policy to law enforcement authorities. We can never prevent all bad actors from attempting to abuse our platform, but we make it our highest priority to keep the community as safe as possible. So what is changing?Posts that contain adult content will no longer be allowed on Tumblr, and we’ve updated our Community Guidelines to reflect this policy change. We recognize Tumblr is also a place to speak freely about topics like art, sex positivity, your relationships, your sexuality, and your personal journey. We want to make sure that we continue to foster this type of diversity of expression in the community, so our new policy strives to strike a balance. Why are we doing this?It is our continued, humble aspiration that Tumblr be a safe place for creative expression, self-discovery, and a deep sense of community. As Tumblr continues to grow and evolve, and our understanding of our impact on our world becomes clearer, we have a responsibility to consider that impact across different age groups, demographics, cultures, and mindsets. We spent considerable time weighing the pros and cons of expression in the community that includes adult content. In doing so, it became clear that without this content we have the opportunity to create a place where more people feel comfortable expressing themselves. Bottom line: There are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content. We will leave it to them and focus our efforts on creating the most welcoming environment possible for our community. So what’s next?Starting December 17, 2018, we will begin enforcing this new policy. Community members with content that is no longer permitted on Tumblr will get a heads up from us in advance and steps they can take to appeal or preserve their content outside the community if they so choose. All changes won’t happen overnight as something of this complexity takes time. Another thing, filtering this type of content versus say, a political protest with nudity or the statue of David, is not simple at scale. We’re relying on automated tools to identify adult content and humans to help train and keep our systems in check. We know there will be mistakes, but we’ve done our best to create and enforce a policy that acknowledges the breadth of expression we see in the community. Most importantly, we’re going to be as transparent as possible with you about the decisions we’re making and resources available to you, including more detailed information, product enhancements, and more content moderators to interface directly with the community and content. Like you, we love Tumblr and what it’s come to mean for millions of people around the world. Our actions are out of love and hope for our community. We won’t always get this right, especially in the beginning, but we are determined to make your experience a positive one. Jeff D’OnofrioCEO #news180,383 notesKeeping our promise to be transparent about state-sponsored disinformation campaignsHey Tumblr, This past March, we made you aware of steps we took to take down an Internet Research Agency (IRA) disinformation campaign operating on Tumblr in the lead up to the 2016 U.S. elections. The IRA is a Russian state-sponsored group that attempts to influence global political sentiment using Tumblr and other platforms. Our efforts helped indict 13 people who worked for the IRA. We said at the time that we would be on the lookout for additional evidence of fake Tumblr accounts affiliated with state-sponsored disinformation campaigns. In the days leading up to November 6, 2018, we were provided information by law enforcement authorities, including a list of Tumblr accounts allegedly tied to the IRA. We immediately initiated our own independent investigation and we have now identified a total of 112 accounts that we believe to be IRA-affiliated. These accounts appear to be relics of past IRA activity. None of the blogs contained any content related to the 2018 midterm elections, and all of the blogs were dormant since the 2016 election cycle. Although these blogs posed no threat to the 2018 elections, consistent with our promise in March, we: Immediately terminated these accounts and removed the original posts;Left reblogs of posts from these accounts in place for transparency purposes;Are notifying you if you liked, reblogged, replied to, or followed one of the accounts; andHave added the accounts to our public record of usernames linked to state-sponsored disinformation campaigns.U.S. intelligence officials and law enforcement continue to warn that we will see attempts at foreign influence in the future. We remain committed to closely monitoring for signs of state-sponsored disinformation campaigns and will continue to review any information made available to us. There are also things you can do to help stop the spread of disinformation and propaganda. Be aware that people want to manipulate the conversation. Knowing that disinformation and propaganda accounts are out there makes it harder for them to operate. The News Literacy Project has this handy checklist (hosted by John Jay College of Criminal Justice ) for spotting their tricks.Be skeptical of things you read. Disinformation campaigns work because they know people don’t fact check. Look for reliable sources, and double-check that the source really says the same thing as the post. You can also check Snopes and Politifact. Both are award-winning resources and usually have the latest viral claim fact-checked on the front page. Correct the record. When you see people spreading misinformation—even unintentionally—politely say something in a reblog or reply. If it’s your friend, send them a message to let them know.Most importantly, we’ll continue to keep our promise to be transparent with you. #news----------------------------------------------------------

[discoursecatharsis]

““safe blogs put constraints on artists wahh”

…

like dude if you and your fellow artists are drawing/writing about pedophilia, rape/romanticized rape, homophobic tropes, & racist shit

then GOOD you deserve to be constrained jfccccc””

———

I gotta go in on this, oh my god. I hope you’re in for a read lmao. I am in a shit mood so I am going to be vague tonight. Time for me to debunk this shit ( • ̀ω•́ )✧

—"Safe blogs put constraints on artists wahh"

Well of course they do. Like those with0ut-theshit blogs for example, those blogs not only say which people they shouldn’t reblog from because they drew a ship you don’t like, it actually labels them as a shitty person because they drew something for that ship. Whether it was a gift art for a friend, a commission, or even just a thing for a online group project, that blog labeled them as a bad person for drawing the pairing you deemed as unhealthy. It’s fine if you do not want to reblog a particular ship from an artist, but to blatantly refuse to support an artist, new or old, is just immature and really shitty behavior if I am being honest here. Which I am. No one deserves to be cast out of a “safe blog” for their shipping preferences. Whether one ships 0tayur1 (which is the main reason I am going so hard rn), sh@l@din, Sh31th, or even s@ngb*m, it does not make them a bad/unsafe artist and person.

—“like dude if you and your fellow artists are drawing/writing about pedophilia, rape/romanticized rape, homophobic tropes, & racist shit, then GOOD you deserve to be constrained jfccccc“

Okay. Since you did tag an*i 0t@yur1, I am going to debunk all of what you claim it to be. And defend my fellow artists and fanfic writers everywhere.

First things first, the whole pedophilia accusation… 0tab3k is in no way a pedophile. That word has been thrown around way too much for it to have any goddamn meaning at this point. He isn’t five years older than Yur1, he is barely an adult, Yur1 who is 16, is not a prebuescent child under the age of 13 which is the cut off age for pedophilia. I won’t delve into this further because I’m sure many people, CSA victims included, have told you an*is time and again, in depth, what pedophilia actually fucking means. And with some of the victims relaying their own experiences to you to prove it.

Second, 0tab3k….is….fucking….eighteen. He just turned eighteen two months prior of meeting Yur10. While it does mean, by law he has reached the age of majority in both Russia, Kazakhstan, and in 75% of the United States, he is still a teenager like Yur1. Reaching the age of majority in whatever country you reside from and live in does not mean you are an adult. Human brains do not finish developing until one is 25 anyway.

The age difference between 0tab3k and Yur10 is that of a Sophomore (10th grader) and Senior (12th grader) in high school. There are literally lots of couples who have the same age difference that 0tayur1 has and 99% of them were still the healthiest relationships they ever had. There is nothing abusive about an 18 year old and 16 year old dating. At all. Abuse can happen in any relationship no matter what age dynamic. It isn’t always the older person abusing the younger, or the man abusing the woman. LBGTQ relationships have the potential to be abusive if one or both partners have underlying problems from their past or mental health. It doesn’t happen with someone who is an adult preying on someone younger and vulnerable. It can happen with fucking anyone. Stop projecting abuse that aren’t there in the first place onto ships you hate.

Rape/romanticized rape. Okay as much as I do not wish to touch on this, I’m going to just a little. People can write about rape/noncon if they want. Like it or not, dark themes in fiction is a healthy way of exploring as long as you don’t try to condone or do that shit to someone in real life. Rape is a vile, degrading act no one deserves to go through. I don’t like it and I don’t like to write it (I wouldn’t even dare draw it either), people can explore that aspect of fiction if they please. As long as they tag their shit appropriately so people know to avoid it, I don’t see it as an issue. I don’t think anyone should romanticize rape, but it happens. 0tayur1 is not one of the fictional ships that happens in at all, my guy.

Now I’m going to talk about the homophobic tropes. My question is, fucking where is it?? Are you talking about ABO? Yur10 being grossed out by v1ktuur1 being all lovey dovey? Male/female roles inserted into a M/M ship? V1kt0r not doing the dishes or some shit? These are barely homophobic. You just have a stick so far up your ass about overused fandom tropes, you’re tasting it for next 84 years. And you don’t realize that 90% of the fandom is LBGTQ like yourself because you’re probably screaming "those straight, homophobic white girls” everytime you see some shit you don’t like that is barely an issue.

The racism thing, the reach is so far with this one, man. Tell me, where is the racist shit in this or any pairing??? I don’t see it. None of us do. Again, you are fucking projecting the problematic stuff that isn’t there in whatever you’re complaining about. Are you actually going around and looking for the shit so you can bitch to whoever listens and get them on your side? That is completely fucked of you.

“then GOOD you deserve to be constrained jfccccc“

Fuck off with this. Seriously??? You honestly think we artists who actively try to stay in our lane with our ships, having good fun, tagging what needs to be tagged deserve to be constrained, treated like a bad criminal because of the content of what we draw or write? People are so done with your “purity” complex that the ones on your safe list are actively trying to get off of it by drawing the things you, by your dumb ass morality standards, deem as bad and unsafe. When you make people on your “safe” list angry that you have done that while alienating a great deal of the fandom you’re in, then the real problematic person here is you. And when you run out of safe artists and people to support, your purpose to make fandom safe will be for naught. I’m sure deep down you know this. Maybe not. Whatever.

If you really want to avoid what squicks you, then actually learn to use the resources provided on the internet for use at the availability of your fingertips. If you are on mobile, use Washboard and don’t use the app. If you are on desktop, use xkit or tumblr savior. No one deserves to be constrained. You do not have the authority to do so in any fandom no matter how hard you try. Tumblr is not your safe space, fandom is not your safe space. The entire internet is not your safe space. No one on there or in the real world is going to cater to you. Ever. Your behavior as an an*i is abhorrent. Stop.

(submitted by crystallinekai)

👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

[readersforum]

Google & Facebook fed ad dollars to child porn discovery apps

New Post has been published on http://www.readersforum.tk/google-facebook-fed-ad-dollars-to-child-porn-discovery-apps/

Google & Facebook fed ad dollars to child porn discovery apps

Google has scrambled to remove third-party apps that led users to child porn sharing groups on WhatsApp in the wake of TechCrunch’s report about the problem last week. We contacted Google with the name of one of these apps and evidence that it and others offered links to WhatsApp groups for sharing child exploitation imagery. Following publication of our article, Google removed from the Google Play store that app and at least five like it. Several of these apps had more than 100,000 downloads, and they’re still functional on devices that already downloaded them.

A screenshot from earlier this month of now-banned child exploitation groups on WhatsApp . Phone numbers and photos redacted

WhatsApp failed to adequately police its platform, confirming to TechCrunch that it’s only moderated by its own 300 employees and not Facebook’s 20,000 dedicated security and moderation staffers. It’s clear that scalable and efficient artificial intelligence systems are not up to the task of protecting the 1.5 billion-user WhatsApp community, and companies like Facebook must invest more in unscalable human investigators.

But now, new research provided exclusively to TechCrunch by anti-harassment algorithm startup AntiToxin shows that these removed apps that hosted links to child porn sharing rings on WhatsApp were supported with ads run by Google and Facebook’s ad networks. AntiToxin found six of these apps ran Google AdMob, one ran Google Firebase, two ran Facebook Audience Network and one ran StartApp. These ad networks earned a cut of brands’ marketing spend while allowing the apps to monetize and sustain their operations by hosting ads for Amazon, Microsoft, Motorola, Sprint, Sprite, Western Union, Dyson, DJI, Gett, Yandex Music, Q Link Wireless, Tik Tok and more.

The situation reveals that tech giants aren’t just failing to spot offensive content in their own apps, but also in third-party apps that host their ads and that earn them money. While these apps like “Group Links For Whats” by Lisa Studio let people discover benign links to WhatsApp groups for sharing legal content and discussing topics like business or sports, TechCrunch found they also hosted links with titles such as “child porn only no adv” and “child porn xvideos” that led to WhatsApp groups with names like “Children ” or “videos cp” — a known abbreviation for “child pornography.”

WhatsApp has an encrypted child porn problem

In a video provided by AntiToxin seen below, the app “Group Links For Whats by Lisa Studio” that ran Google AdMob is shown displaying an interstitial ad for Q Link Wireless before providing WhatsApp group search results for “child.” A group described as “Child nude FBI POLICE” is surfaced, and when the invite link is clicked, it opens within WhatsApp to a group used for sharing child exploitation imagery. (No illegal imagery is shown in this video or article. TechCrunch has omitted the end of the video that showed a URL for an illegal group and the phone numbers of its members.)

Another video shows the app “Group Link For whatsapp by Video Status Zone” that ran Google AdMob and Facebook Audience Network displaying a link to a WhatsApp group described as “only cp video.” When tapped, the app first surfaces an interstitial ad for Amazon Photos before revealing a button for opening the group within WhatsApp. These videos show how alarmingly easy it was for people to find illegal content sharing groups on WhatsApp, even without WhatsApp’s help.

Zero tolerance doesn’t mean zero illegal content

In response, a Google spokesperson tells me that these group discovery apps violated its content policies and it’s continuing to look for more like them to ban. When they’re identified and removed from Google Play, it also suspends their access to its ad networks. However, it refused to disclose how much money these apps earned and whether it would refund the advertisers. The company provided this statement:

Google has a zero tolerance approach to child sexual abuse material and we’ve invested in technology, teams and partnerships with groups like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, to tackle this issue for more than two decades. If we identify an app promoting this kind of material that our systems haven’t already blocked, we report it to the relevant authorities and remove it from our platform. These policies apply to apps listed in the Play store as well as apps that use Google’s advertising services.

App Developer Ad Network Estimated Installs   Last Day Ranked Unlimited Whats Groups Without Limit Group links   Jack Rehan Google AdMob 200,000 12/18/2018 Unlimited Group Links for Whatsapp NirmalaAppzTech Google AdMob 127,000 12/18/2018 Group Invite For Whatsapp Villainsbrain Google Firebase 126,000 12/18/2018 Public Group for WhatsApp Bit-Build Google AdMob, Facebook Audience Network   86,000 12/18/2018 Group links for Whats – Find Friends for Whats Lisa Studio Google AdMob 54,000 12/19/2018 Unlimited Group Links for Whatsapp 2019 Natalie Pack Google AdMob 3,000 12/20/2018 Group Link For whatsapp Video Status Zone   Google AdMob, Facebook Audience Network 97,000 11/13/2018 Group Links For Whatsapp – Free Joining Developers.pk StartAppSDK 29,000 12/5/2018

Facebook, meanwhile, blamed Google Play, saying the apps’ eligibility for its Facebook Audience Network ads was tied to their availability on Google Play and that the apps were removed from FAN when booted from the Android app store. The company was more forthcoming, telling TechCrunch it will refund advertisers whose promotions appeared on these abhorrent apps. It’s also pulling Audience Network from all apps that let users discover WhatsApp Groups.

A Facebook spokesperson tells TechCrunch that “Audience Network monetization eligibility is closely tied to app store (in this case Google) review. We removed [Public Group for WhatsApp by Bit-Build] when Google did – it is not currently monetizing on Audience Network. Our policies are on our website and out of abundance of caution we’re ensuring Audience Network does not support any group invite link apps. This app earned very little revenue (less than $500), which we are refunding to all impacted advertisers.” WhatsApp has already banned all the illegal groups TechCrunch reported on last week.

Facebook also provided this statement about WhatsApp’s stance on illegal imagery sharing groups and third-party apps for finding them:

WhatsApp does not provide a search function for people or groups – nor does WhatsApp encourage publication of invite links to private groups. WhatsApp regularly engages with Google and Apple to enforce their terms of service on apps that attempt to encourage abuse on WhatsApp. Following the reports earlier this week, WhatsApp asked Google to remove all known group link sharing apps. When apps are removed from Google Play store, they are also removed from Audience Network.

An app with links for discovering illegal WhatsApp Groups runs an ad for Amazon Photos

Israeli NGOs Netivei Reshet and Screen Savers worked with AntiToxin to provide a report published by TechCrunch about the wide extent of child exploitation imagery they found on WhatsApp. Facebook and WhatsApp are still waiting on the groups to work with Israeli police to provide their full research so WhatsApp can delete illegal groups they discovered and terminate user accounts that joined them.

AntiToxin develops technologies for protecting online network harassment, bullying, shaming, predatory behavior and sexually explicit activity. It was co-founded by Zohar Levkovitz, who sold Amobee to SingTel for $400 million, and Ron Porat, who was the CEO of ad-blocker Shine. [Disclosure: The company also employs Roi Carthy, who contributed to TechCrunch from 2007 to 2012.] “Online toxicity is at unprecedented levels, at unprecedented scale, with unprecedented risks for children, which is why completely new thinking has to be applied to technology solutions that help parents keep their children safe,” Levkovitz tells me. The company is pushing Apple to remove WhatsApp from the App Store until the problems are fixed, citing how Apple temporarily suspended Tumblr due to child pornography.

Ad networks must be monitored

Encryption has proven an impediment to WhatsApp preventing the spread of child exploitation imagery. WhatsApp can’t see what is shared inside of group chats. Instead, it has to rely on the few pieces of public and unencrypted data, such as group names and profile photos plus their members’ profile photos, looking for suspicious names or illegal images. The company matches those images to a PhotoDNA database of known child exploitation photos to administer bans, and has human moderators investigate if seemingly illegal images aren’t already on file. It then reports its findings to law enforcement and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Strong encryption is important for protecting privacy and political dissent, but also thwarts some detection of illegal content and thereby necessitates more manual moderation.

With just 300 total employees and only a subset working on security or content moderation, WhatsApp seems understaffed to manage such a large user base. It’s tried to depend on AI to safeguard its community. However, that technology can’t yet perform the nuanced investigations necessary to combat exploitation. WhatsApp runs semi-independently of Facebook, but could hire more moderators to investigate group discovery apps that lead to child pornography if Facebook allocated more resources to its acquisition.

WhatsApp group discovery apps featured Adult sections that contained links to child exploitation imagery groupsGoogle and Facebook, with their vast headcounts and profit margins, are neglecting to properly police who hosts their ad networks. The companies have sought to earn extra revenue by powering ads on other apps, yet failed to assume the necessary responsibility to ensure those apps aren’t facilitating crimes. Stricter examinations of in-app content should be administered before an app is accepted to app stores or ad networks, and periodically once they’re running. And when automated systems can’t be deployed, as can be the case with policing third-party apps, human staffers should be assigned despite the cost.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that social networks and ad networks that profit off other people’s content can’t be low-maintenance cash cows. Companies should invest ample money and labor into safeguarding any property they run or monetize, even if it makes the opportunities less lucrative. The strip-mining of the internet without regard for consequences must end.

[technicalsolutions88]

Google has scrambled to remove third-party apps that led users to child porn sharing groups on WhatsApp in the wake of TechCrunch’s report about the problem last week. We contacted Google with the name of one these apps and evidence that it and others offered links to WhatsApp groups for sharing child exploitation imagery. Following publication of our article, Google removed that app and at least five like it from the Google Play store. Several of these apps had over 100,000 downloads, and they’re still functional on devices that already downloaded them.

A screenshot from today of active child exploitation groups on WhatsApp. Phone numbers and photos redacted

WhatsApp failed to adequately police its platform, confirming to TechCrunch that it’s only moderated by its own 300 employees and not Facebook’s 20,000 dedicated security and moderation staffers. It’s clear that scalable and efficient artificial intelligence systems are not up to the task of protecting the 1.5 billion user WhatsApp community, and companies like Facebook must invest more in unscalable human investigators.

But now, new research provided exclusively to TechCrunch by anti-harassment algorithm startup AntiToxin shows that these removed apps that hosted links to child porn sharing rings on WhatsApp were supported with ads run by Google and Facebook’s ad networks. AntiToxin found 6 of these apps ran Google AdMob, 1 ran Google Firebase, 2 ran Facebook Audience Network, and 1 ran StartApp. These ad networks earned a cut of brands’ marketing spend while allowing the apps to monetize and sustain their operations by hosting ads for Amazon, Microsoft, Motorola, Sprint, Sprite, Western Union, Dyson, DJI, Gett, Yandex Music, Q Link Wireless, Tik Tok, and more.

The situation reveals that tech giants aren’t just failing to spot offensive content in their own apps, but also in third-party apps that host their ads and that earn them money. While these apps like “Group Links For Whats” by Lisa Studio let people discover benign links to WhatsApp groups for sharing legal content and discussing topics like business or sports, TechCrunch found they also hosted links with titles such as “child porn only no adv” and “child porn xvideos” that led to WhatsApp groups with names like “Children ” or “videos cp” — a known abbreviation for ‘child pornography’.

WhatsApp has an encrypted child porn problem

In a video provided by AntiToxin seen below, the app “Group Links For Whats by Lisa Studio” that ran Google AdMob is shown displaying an interstitial ad for Q Link Wireless before providing WhatsApp group search results for “child”. A group described as “Child nude FBI POLICE” is surfaced, and when the invite link is clicked, it opens within WhatsApp to a group called “Children ”.  (No illegal imagery is shown in this video or article. TechCrunch has omitted the end of the video that showed a URL for an illegal group and the phone numbers of its members.)

Another video shows the app “Group Link For whatsapp by Video Status Zone” that ran Google AdMob and Facebook Audience Network displaying a link to a WhatsApp group described as “only cp video”. When tapped, the app first surfaces an interstitial ad for Amazon Photos before revealing a button for opening the group within WhatsApp. These videos show how alarmingly easy it was for people to find illegal content sharing groups on WhatsApp, even without WhatsApp’s help.

Zero Tolerance Doesn’t Mean Zero Illegal Content

In response, a Google spokesperson tells me that these group discovery apps violated its content policies and it’s continuing to look for more like them to ban. When they’re identified and removed from Google Play, it also suspends their access to its ad networks. However, it refused to disclose how much money these apps earned and whether it would refund the advertisers. The company provided this statement:

“Google has a zero tolerance approach to child sexual abuse material and we’ve invested in technology, teams and partnerships with groups like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, to tackle this issue for more than two decades. If we identify an app promoting this kind of material that our systems haven’t already blocked, we report it to the relevant authorities and remove it from our platform. These policies apply to apps listed in the Play store as well as apps that use Google’s advertising services.”

App Developer Ad Network Estimated Installs   Last Day Ranked Unlimited Whats Groups Without Limit Group links   Jack Rehan Google AdMob 200,000 12/18/2018 Unlimited Group Links for Whatsapp NirmalaAppzTech Google AdMob 127,000 12/18/2018 Group Invite For Whatsapp Villainsbrain Google Firebase 126,000 12/18/2018 Public Group for WhatsApp Bit-Build Google AdMob, Facebook Audience Network   86,000 12/18/2018 Group links for Whats – Find Friends for Whats Lisa Studio Google AdMob 54,000 12/19/2018 Unlimited Group Links for Whatsapp 2019 Natalie Pack Google AdMob 3,000 12/20/2018 Group Link For whatsapp Video Status Zone   Google AdMob, Facebook Audience Network 97,000 11/13/2018 Group Links For Whatsapp – Free Joining Developers.pk StartAppSDK 29,000 12/5/2018

Facebook meanwhile blamed Google Play, saying the apps’ eligibility for its Facebook Audience Network ads was tied to their availability on Google Play and that the apps were removed from FAN when booted from the Android app store. The company was more forthcoming, telling TechCrunch it will refund advertisers whose promotions appeared on these abhorrent apps. It’s also pulling Audience Network from all apps that let users discover WhatsApp Groups.

A Facebook spokesperson tells TechCrunch that “Audience Network monetization eligibility is closely tied to app store (in this case Google) review. We removed [Public Group for WhatsApp by Bit-Build] when Google did – it is not currently monetizing on Audience Network. Our policies are on our website and out of abundance of caution we’re ensuring Audience Network does not support any group invite link apps. This app earned very little revenue (less than $500), which we are refunding to all impacted advertisers.”

Facebook also provided this statement about WhatsApp’s stance on illegal imagery sharing groups and third-party apps for finding them:

“WhatsApp does not provide a search function for people or groups – nor does WhatsApp encourage publication of invite links to private groups. WhatsApp regularly engages with Google and Apple to enforce their terms of service on apps that attempt to encourage abuse on WhatsApp. Following the reports earlier this week, WhatsApp asked Google to remove all known group link sharing apps. When apps are removed from Google Play store, they are also removed from Audience Network.”

An app with links for discovering illegal WhatsApp Groups runs an ad for Amazon Photos

Israeli NGOs Netivei Reshet and Screen Savers worked with AntiToxin to provide a report published by TechCrunch about the wide extent of child exploitation imagery they found on WhatsApp. Facebook and WhatsApp are still waiting on the groups to work with Israeli police to provide their full research so WhatsApp can delete illegal groups they discovered and terminate user accounts that joined them.

AntiToxin develops technologies for protecting online networks harassment, bullying, shaming, predatory behavior and sexually explicit activity. It was co-founded by Zohar Levkovitz who sold Amobee to SingTel for $400M, and Ron Porat who was the CEO of ad-blocker Shine. [Disclosure: The company also employs Roi Carthy, who contributed to TechCrunch from 2007 to 2012.] “Online toxicity is at unprecedented levels, at unprecedented scale, with unprecedented risks for children, which is why completely new thinking has to be applied to technology solutions that help parents keep their children safe” Levkovitz tells me. The company is pushing Apple to remove WhatsApp from the App Store until the problems are fixed, citing how Apple temporarily suspended Tumblr due to child pornography.

Ad Networks Must Be Monitored

Encryption has proven an impediment to WhatsApp preventing the spread of child exploitation imagery. WhatsApp can’t see what is shared inside of group chats. Instead it has to rely on the few pieces of public and unencrypted data such as group names and profile photos plus their members’ profile photos, looking for suspicious names or illegal images. The company matches those images to a PhotoDNA database of known child exploitation photos to administer bans, and has human moderators investigate if seemingly illegal images aren’t already on file. It then reports its findings to law enforcement and the National Center For Missing And Exploited Children. Strong encryption is important for protecting privacy and political dissent, but also thwarts some detection of illegal content and thereby necessitates more manual moderation.

With just 300 total employees and only a subset working on security or content moderation, WhatsApp seems understaffed to manage such a large user base. It’s tried to depend on AI to safeguard its community. However, that technology can’t yet perform the nuanced investigations necessary to combat exploitation. WhatsApp runs semi-independently of Facebook, but could hire more moderators to investigate group discovery apps that lead to child pornography if Facebook allocated more resources to its acquisition.

WhatsApp group discovery apps featured Adult sections that contained links to child exploitation imagery groups

Google and Facebook, with their vast headcounts and profit margins, are neglecting to properly police who hosts their ad networks. The companies have sought to earn extra revenue by powering ads on other apps, yet failed to assume the necessary responsibility to ensure those apps aren’t facilitating crimes. Stricter examinations of in-app content should be administered before an app is accepted to app stores or ad networks, and periodically once they’re running. And when automated systems can’t be deployed, as can be the case with policing third-party apps, human staffers should be assigned despite the cost.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that social networks and ad networks that profit off of other people’s content can’t be low-maintenance cash cows. Companies should invest ample money and labor into safeguarding any property they run or monetize even if it makes the opportunities less lucrative. The strip-mining of the internet without regard for consequences must end.

from Mobile – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2T8FvB2 ORIGINAL CONTENT FROM: https://techcrunch.com/

[fmservers]

Google & Facebook fed ad dollars to child porn discovery apps

Google has scrambled to remove third-party apps that led users to child porn sharing groups on WhatsApp in the wake of TechCrunch’s report about the problem last week. We contacted Google with the name of one these apps and evidence that it and others offered links to WhatsApp groups for sharing child exploitation imagery. Following publication of our article, Google removed that app and at least five like it from the Google Play store. Several of these apps had over 100,000 downloads, and they’re still functional on devices that already downloaded them.

A screenshot from today of active child exploitation groups on WhatsApp . Phone numbers and photos redacted

WhatsApp failed to adequately police its platform, confirming to TechCrunch that it’s only moderated by its own 300 employees and not Facebook’s 20,000 dedicated security and moderation staffers. It’s clear that scalable and efficient artificial intelligence systems are not up to the task of protecting the 1.5 billion user WhatsApp community, and companies like Facebook must invest more in unscalable human investigators.

But now, new research provided exclusively to TechCrunch by anti-harassment algorithm startup AntiToxin shows that these removed apps that hosted links to child porn sharing rings on WhatsApp were supported with ads run by Google and Facebook’s ad networks. AntiToxin found 6 of these apps ran Google AdMob, 1 ran Google Firebase, 2 ran Facebook Audience Network, and 1 ran StartApp. These ad networks earned a cut of brands’ marketing spend while allowing the apps to monetize and sustain their operations by hosting ads for Amazon, Microsoft, Motorola, Sprint, Sprite, Western Union, Dyson, DJI, Gett, Yandex Music, Q Link Wireless, Tik Tok, and more.

The situation reveals that tech giants aren’t just failing to spot offensive content in their own apps, but also in third-party apps that host their ads and that earn them money. While these apps like “Group Links For Whats” by Lisa Studio let people discover benign links to WhatsApp groups for sharing legal content and discussing topics like business or sports, TechCrunch found they also hosted links with titles such as “child porn only no adv” and “child porn xvideos” that led to WhatsApp groups with names like “Children ” or “videos cp” ��� a known abbreviation for ‘child pornography’.

WhatsApp has an encrypted child porn problem

In a video provided by AntiToxin seen below, the app “Group Links For Whats by Lisa Studio” that ran Google AdMob is shown displaying an interstitial ad for Q Link Wireless before providing WhatsApp group search results for “child”. A group described as “Child nude FBI POLICE” is surfaced, and when the invite link is clicked, it opens within WhatsApp to a group called “Children ”.  (No illegal imagery is shown in this video or article. TechCrunch has omitted the end of the video that showed a URL for an illegal group and the phone numbers of its members.)

Another video shows the app “Group Link For whatsapp by Video Status Zone” that ran Google AdMob and Facebook Audience Network displaying a link to a WhatsApp group described as “only cp video”. When tapped, the app first surfaces an interstitial ad for Amazon Photos before revealing a button for opening the group within WhatsApp. These videos show how alarmingly easy it was for people to find illegal content sharing groups on WhatsApp, even without WhatsApp’s help.

Zero Tolerance Doesn’t Mean Zero Illegal Content

In response, a Google spokesperson tells me that these group discovery apps violated its content policies and it’s continuing to look for more like them to ban. When they’re identified and removed from Google Play, it also suspends their access to its ad networks. However, it refused to disclose how much money these apps earned and whether it would refund the advertisers. The company provided this statement:

“Google has a zero tolerance approach to child sexual abuse material and we’ve invested in technology, teams and partnerships with groups like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, to tackle this issue for more than two decades. If we identify an app promoting this kind of material that our systems haven’t already blocked, we report it to the relevant authorities and remove it from our platform. These policies apply to apps listed in the Play store as well as apps that use Google’s advertising services.”

App Developer Ad Network Estimated Installs   Last Day Ranked Unlimited Whats Groups Without Limit Group links   Jack Rehan Google AdMob 200,000 12/18/2018 Unlimited Group Links for Whatsapp NirmalaAppzTech Google AdMob 127,000 12/18/2018 Group Invite For Whatsapp Villainsbrain Google Firebase 126,000 12/18/2018 Public Group for WhatsApp Bit-Build Google AdMob, Facebook Audience Network   86,000 12/18/2018 Group links for Whats – Find Friends for Whats Lisa Studio Google AdMob 54,000 12/19/2018 Unlimited Group Links for Whatsapp 2019 Natalie Pack Google AdMob 3,000 12/20/2018 Group Link For whatsapp Video Status Zone   Google AdMob, Facebook Audience Network 97,000 11/13/2018 Group Links For Whatsapp – Free Joining Developers.pk StartAppSDK 29,000 12/5/2018

Facebook meanwhile blamed Google Play, saying the apps’ eligibility for its Facebook Audience Network ads was tied to their availability on Google Play and that the apps were removed from FAN when booted from the Android app store. The company was more forthcoming, telling TechCrunch it will refund advertisers whose promotions appeared on these abhorrent apps. It’s also pulling Audience Network from all apps that let users discover WhatsApp Groups.

A Facebook spokesperson tells TechCrunch that “Audience Network monetization eligibility is closely tied to app store (in this case Google) review. We removed [Public Group for WhatsApp by Bit-Build] when Google did – it is not currently monetizing on Audience Network. Our policies are on our website and out of abundance of caution we’re ensuring Audience Network does not support any group invite link apps. This app earned very little revenue (less than $500), which we are refunding to all impacted advertisers.”

Facebook also provided this statement about WhatsApp’s stance on illegal imagery sharing groups and third-party apps for finding them:

“WhatsApp does not provide a search function for people or groups – nor does WhatsApp encourage publication of invite links to private groups. WhatsApp regularly engages with Google and Apple to enforce their terms of service on apps that attempt to encourage abuse on WhatsApp. Following the reports earlier this week, WhatsApp asked Google to remove all known group link sharing apps. When apps are removed from Google Play store, they are also removed from Audience Network.”

An app with links for discovering illegal WhatsApp Groups runs an ad for Amazon Photos

Israeli NGOs Netivei Reshet and Screen Savers worked with AntiToxin to provide a report published by TechCrunch about the wide extent of child exploitation imagery they found on WhatsApp. Facebook and WhatsApp are still waiting on the groups to work with Israeli police to provide their full research so WhatsApp can delete illegal groups they discovered and terminate user accounts that joined them.

AntiToxin develops technologies for protecting online networks harassment, bullying, shaming, predatory behavior and sexually explicit activity. It was co-founded by Zohar Levkovitz who sold Amobee to SingTel for $400M, and Ron Porat who was the CEO of ad-blocker Shine. [Disclosure: The company also employs Roi Carthy, who contributed to TechCrunch from 2007 to 2012.] “Online toxicity is at unprecedented levels, at unprecedented scale, with unprecedented risks for children, which is why completely new thinking has to be applied to technology solutions that help parents keep their children safe” Levkovitz tells me. The company is pushing Apple to remove WhatsApp from the App Store until the problems are fixed, citing how Apple temporarily suspended Tumblr due to child pornography.

Ad Networks Must Be Monitored

Encryption has proven an impediment to WhatsApp preventing the spread of child exploitation imagery. WhatsApp can’t see what is shared inside of group chats. Instead it has to rely on the few pieces of public and unencrypted data such as group names and profile photos plus their members’ profile photos, looking for suspicious names or illegal images. The company matches those images to a PhotoDNA database of known child exploitation photos to administer bans, and has human moderators investigate if seemingly illegal images aren’t already on file. It then reports its findings to law enforcement and the National Center For Missing And Exploited Children. Strong encryption is important for protecting privacy and political dissent, but also thwarts some detection of illegal content and thereby necessitates more manual moderation.

With just 300 total employees and only a subset working on security or content moderation, WhatsApp seems understaffed to manage such a large user base. It’s tried to depend on AI to safeguard its community. However, that technology can’t yet perform the nuanced investigations necessary to combat exploitation. WhatsApp runs semi-independently of Facebook, but could hire more moderators to investigate group discovery apps that lead to child pornography if Facebook allocated more resources to its acquisition.

WhatsApp group discovery apps featured Adult sections that contained links to child exploitation imagery groups

Google and Facebook, with their vast headcounts and profit margins, are neglecting to properly police who hosts their ad networks. The companies have sought to earn extra revenue by powering ads on other apps, yet failed to assume the necessary responsibility to ensure those apps aren’t facilitating crimes. Stricter examinations of in-app content should be administered before an app is accepted to app stores or ad networks, and periodically once they’re running. And when automated systems can’t be deployed, as can be the case with policing third-party apps, human staffers should be assigned despite the cost.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that social networks and ad networks that profit off of other people’s content can’t be low-maintenance cash cows. Companies should invest ample money and labor into safeguarding any property they run or monetize even if it makes the opportunities less lucrative. The strip-mining of the internet without regard for consequences must end.

Via Josh Constine https://techcrunch.com

[theinvinciblenoob]

I dig on my employer Oath, and then Tencent Music notes and a major loss for the NYC ecosystem and what it means for open source.

TechCrunch is experimenting with new content forms. This is a rough draft of something new – provide your feedback directly to the author (Danny at danny@techcrunch.com) if you like or hate something here.

My three word Oath? I’m with stupid

It goes without saying that this piece about my employer is my work alone, doesn’t reflect management’s views, and is done under the auspices of TechCrunch’s independent editorial voice. No usage of internal information is assumed or implied.

This is a piece about TechCrunch’s parent company, formerly known as “Oath:” (okay just Oath, but who am I to flout a mandatory colon?) and now ReBranded as Verizon Media Group / Oath (See what they did there? They literally slashed Oath. Poetic).

Oath is essentially the creature of Frankenstein, a middle-school corporate alchemy experiment to fuse the properties of the companies formerly known as AOL and Yahoo into the larger behemoth known as Verizon. You can feel the terrible synergy emanating from the multiple firewalls it takes to get to our corporate resources.

Oath has a problem:* it needs to grow for Wall Street to be happy and for Verizon not to neuter it, but it has an incredible penchant for making product decisions that basically tell users to fuck off. Oath’s year over year revenues last quarter were down 6.9%, driven by extreme competition from digital ad leaders Google and Facebook.

The solution apparently? Drive page views down. If that logic doesn’t make sense, well then, maybe you should fill out a job application.

The kerfuffle is over Tumblr, which is among Oath’s most important brands, in that people actually know what it is and kind of still like it. Tumblr, which Yahoo notably acquired under Marissa Mayer back in 2013, has been something of a product orphan — one of the few true software platforms left in a world filled with editorial content like TechCrunch and HuffPost (Oath sold off Flickr earlier this year to SmugMug — which also seems to be going through its own boneheaded product decision phase).

All was well and good — well, at least quiet — in the Tumblr world until Apple pulled the plug on Tumblr’s app in the App Store a few weeks ago over claims of child porn. Now let’s be absolutely clear: child porn is abhorrent, and filtering it out of online photo sharing sites is a prime directive (and legally mandated).

But Oath has decided to do something equally obnoxious: it intends to ban anything that might be considered “adult content” starting December 17th, just in time for the holidays when purity around family gatherings is key.

In Tumblr’s policy, “Adult content primarily includes photos, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples, and any content—including photos, videos, GIFs and illustrations—that depicts sex acts.” You’ll notice the written legerdemain — “primarily” doesn’t exclude the wider world of adult-oriented content that almost invariably is going to be subsumed under this policy.

Obviously, adults (and presumably teens as well) are pissed. As users are starting to see what photos are getting flagged (hint: not the ones with porn in them), that’s only making them more angry.

Oath is attempting to compress the content moderation engineering and testing of Facebook down to a span of a few weeks. And Facebook hasn’t even figured this one out yet, which is why people are still being murdered across the world from viral messages and memes it hosts that incite ethnic hatred and genocide.

I get the pressure from Apple. I get the safety of saying “just ban all the images” à la Renaissance pope. I get the business decision of trying to maintain Tumblr’s clean image. These points are all reasonable, but they all are just useless without Tumblr’s core and long-time users.

What flummoxes me from a product perspective is that it’s not as if banning all adult content is the singular solution to the problem. There is an entire spectrum of product, policy, legal, and product cultural ingredients that could be drawn upon. There could be more age verification, better separation of “safe for children” and “meant for adults content,” and more focus on messaging to users that moderation was meant to help the product and focus audiences rather than to puritanically filter.

Or you can just kill the photos, the somehow still loyal core user base, a safe space for expression via nudity and sexuality and, well, traffic along with it. And then you look at -6.9% growth and think: huh, I wonder if there is a connection.

*Mandatory colon

Tencent Music reintroduces its IPO

Tencent Music. Photo by Zhan Min/VCG via Getty Images

Maybe the IPO markets are thawing a bit after the crash of the last few weeks and…tariffs. From my colleague Catherine Shu:

Tencent Music Entertainment’s initial public offering is back in motion, two months after the company reportedly postponed it amid a global selloff. In a regulatory filing today, the company, China’s largest streaming music service, said it plans to offer 82 million American depositary shares (ADS), representing 164 million Class A ordinary shares, for between $13 to $15 each. That means the IPO will potentially raise up to $1.23 billion.

My colleague Eric Peckham wrote a deeper dive behind the lessons of Tencent Music for the broader music industry:

At its heart, Tencent Music is an interactive media company. Its business isn’t merely providing music, it’s getting people to engage around music. Given its parent company Tencent has become the leading force in global gaming—with control of League of Legends maker Riot Games and Clash of Clans maker Supercell, plus a 40 percent stake in Fortnite creator Epic Games, and role as the top mobile games publisher in China—its team is well-versed in the dynamics of in-game purchasing.

Tencent Music has staked out a very differentiated business model from Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, etc. It has used an engagement-based product model to make live-streaming and virtual gifts huge business lines, without dealing with the product marketing logistics of subscription. Where the West always asks you to pay for access, Tencent is asking you essentially to pay to have fun and be part of an experience.

Eric asks I think a deep question: why hasn’t this model (which seems particularly obvious in music given the overall events component of that business) been back-ported from China to the Western world? He sees a world where Facebook buys Spotify (I don’t) but I think there is absolutely a gap in the market for a music platform to really own this model.

NYC loses an open-source superstar

Photo: Amanda Hall / robertharding / Getty Images

Wes McKinney is a major open-source star and the engineer behind pandas, which is one of the fundamental Python data libraries, as well as a founding engineer of Apache Arrow, which is an in-memory data structure specification.

So it is big news that he has decided to decamp from New York City, where has has lived for ten years, to Nashville. Writing on his personal blog:

I’ve increasingly felt that open source development is at odds with the values that are driving a large portion of the corporate world, particularly in the United States. Many companies won’t fund open source work because there is no “return on investment”. This is deeply frustrating, and being surrounded by people whose actions align with profit-motive can be pretty discouraging. It’s not necessarily that people who work in NYC or SF are greedy or amorally concerned with making money. In many cases they are just responding to incentives coming from pretty low on the hierarchy of needs.

And

Full-time open source developers in many cases will make less money than their peers who work at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, or another major tech company. If we are to enable more people to do open source development as a full-time vocation, we need to grow supportive tech communities in places that are more affordable. (emphasis his).

I think this is a very interesting trend to watch in the coming years. It’s not just the small business and art types who want to move to lower cost locales to match their lifestyle spending to the (economic) value of their work. Software developers who want to work on more meaningful projects outside of advertising and finance will also increasingly need to consider these sorts of geographical adjustments.

As I wrote a few months ago about digital nomads:

From cryptocurrency millionaires in Puerto Rico to digital nomads in hotspots like Thailand, Indonesia, and Colombia, there is increasingly a view that there is a marketplace for governance, and we hold the power as consumers. Much like choosing a cereal from the breakfast department of a supermarket, highly-skilled professionals are now comparing governments online — and making clear-headed choices based on which ones are most convenient and have the greatest amenities available.

Economic migration — whether from cost-of-living, ecosystem or governance culture, or just for new horizons — is the watchword of this century. It’s a huge loss for NYC that people like McKinney can no longer find their work compatible with the city.

What’s next

I am still obsessing about next-gen semiconductors. If you have thoughts there, give me a ring: danny@techcrunch.com.

Thoughts on Articles

Imagined Communities – a major classic book of social science thought, it’s amazing how well it has held up, and the lessons it holds for us in the cyber age. Intending to write a review of it for this weekend, so expect more notes later.

Quietly, Japan has established itself as a power in the aerospace industry – I love industrial policy and national economic development, and Eric Berger has done a great job on both fronts with his dispatch in Ars Technica. Japan is roaring back into space, increasing its launch capabilities and also preparing to deploy its own GPS infrastructure. An important contextual read for those who follow SpaceX.

Why we stopped trusting elites — a compelling deep dive by William Davies in The Guardian into how populism is animated by the failures of elites. Couldn’t agree more that elites have lost significant trust over the last few decades, mostly from hubris, corruption, and outright fraud (the financial crisis being just the largest). Elites need to hold themselves to much higher standards if we want to ask our fellow citizens for their support.

Reading docket

What I’m reading (or at least, trying to read)

Huge long list of articles on next-gen semiconductors. More to come shortly.

via TechCrunch

[fmservers]

Why Oath keeps Tumblring

I dig on my employer Oath, and then Tencent Music notes and a major loss for the NYC ecosystem and what it means for open source.

TechCrunch is experimenting with new content forms. This is a rough draft of something new – provide your feedback directly to the author (Danny at danny@techcrunch.com) if you like or hate something here.

My three word Oath? I’m with stupid

It goes without saying that this piece about my employer is my work alone, doesn’t reflect management’s views, and is done under the auspices of TechCrunch’s independent editorial voice. No usage of internal information is assumed or implied.

This is a piece about TechCrunch’s parent company, formerly known as “Oath:” (okay just Oath, but who am I to flout a mandatory colon?) and now ReBranded as Verizon Media Group / Oath (See what they did there? They literally slashed Oath. Poetic).

Oath is essentially the creature of Frankenstein, a middle-school corporate alchemy experiment to fuse the properties of the companies formerly known as AOL and Yahoo into the larger behemoth known as Verizon. You can feel the terrible synergy emanating from the multiple firewalls it takes to get to our corporate resources.

Oath has a problem:* it needs to grow for Wall Street to be happy and for Verizon not to neuter it, but it has an incredible penchant for making product decisions that basically tell users to fuck off. Oath’s year over year revenues last quarter were down 6.9%, driven by extreme competition from digital ad leaders Google and Facebook.

The solution apparently? Drive page views down. If that logic doesn’t make sense, well then, maybe you should fill out a job application.

The kerfuffle is over Tumblr, which is among Oath’s most important brands, in that people actually know what it is and kind of still like it. Tumblr, which Yahoo notably acquired under Marissa Mayer back in 2013, has been something of a product orphan — one of the few true software platforms left in a world filled with editorial content like TechCrunch and HuffPost (Oath sold off Flickr earlier this year to SmugMug — which also seems to be going through its own boneheaded product decision phase).

All was well and good — well, at least quiet — in the Tumblr world until Apple pulled the plug on Tumblr’s app in the App Store a few weeks ago over claims of child porn. Now let’s be absolutely clear: child porn is abhorrent, and filtering it out of online photo sharing sites is a prime directive (and legally mandated).

But Oath has decided to do something equally obnoxious: it intends to ban anything that might be considered “adult content” starting December 17th, just in time for the holidays when purity around family gatherings is key.

In Tumblr’s policy, “Adult content primarily includes photos, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples, and any content—including photos, videos, GIFs and illustrations—that depicts sex acts.” You’ll notice the written legerdemain — “primarily” doesn’t exclude the wider world of adult-oriented content that almost invariably is going to be subsumed under this policy.

Obviously, adults (and presumably teens as well) are pissed. As users are starting to see what photos are getting flagged (hint: not the ones with porn in them), that’s only making them more angry.

Oath is attempting to compress the content moderation engineering and testing of Facebook down to a span of a few weeks. And Facebook hasn’t even figured this one out yet, which is why people are still being murdered across the world from viral messages and memes it hosts that incite ethnic hatred and genocide.

I get the pressure from Apple. I get the safety of saying “just ban all the images” à la Renaissance pope. I get the business decision of trying to maintain Tumblr’s clean image. These points are all reasonable, but they all are just useless without Tumblr’s core and long-time users.

What flummoxes me from a product perspective is that it’s not as if banning all adult content is the singular solution to the problem. There is an entire spectrum of product, policy, legal, and product cultural ingredients that could be drawn upon. There could be more age verification, better separation of “safe for children” and “meant for adults content,” and more focus on messaging to users that moderation was meant to help the product and focus audiences rather than to puritanically filter.

Or you can just kill the photos, the somehow still loyal core user base, a safe space for expression via nudity and sexuality and, well, traffic along with it. And then you look at -6.9% growth and think: huh, I wonder if there is a connection.

*Mandatory colon

Tencent Music reintroduces its IPO

Tencent Music. Photo by Zhan Min/VCG via Getty Images

Maybe the IPO markets are thawing a bit after the crash of the last few weeks and…tariffs. From my colleague Catherine Shu:

Tencent Music Entertainment’s initial public offering is back in motion, two months after the company reportedly postponed it amid a global selloff. In a regulatory filing today, the company, China’s largest streaming music service, said it plans to offer 82 million American depositary shares (ADS), representing 164 million Class A ordinary shares, for between $13 to $15 each. That means the IPO will potentially raise up to $1.23 billion.

My colleague Eric Peckham wrote a deeper dive behind the lessons of Tencent Music for the broader music industry:

At its heart, Tencent Music is an interactive media company. Its business isn’t merely providing music, it’s getting people to engage around music. Given its parent company Tencent has become the leading force in global gaming—with control of League of Legends maker Riot Games and Clash of Clans maker Supercell, plus a 40 percent stake in Fortnite creator Epic Games, and role as the top mobile games publisher in China—its team is well-versed in the dynamics of in-game purchasing.

Tencent Music has staked out a very differentiated business model from Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, etc. It has used an engagement-based product model to make live-streaming and virtual gifts huge business lines, without dealing with the product marketing logistics of subscription. Where the West always asks you to pay for access, Tencent is asking you essentially to pay to have fun and be part of an experience.

Eric asks I think a deep question: why hasn’t this model (which seems particularly obvious in music given the overall events component of that business) been back-ported from China to the Western world? He sees a world where Facebook buys Spotify (I don’t) but I think there is absolutely a gap in the market for a music platform to really own this model.

NYC loses an open-source superstar

Photo: Amanda Hall / robertharding / Getty Images

Wes McKinney is a major open-source star and the engineer behind pandas, which is one of the fundamental Python data libraries, as well as a founding engineer of Apache Arrow, which is an in-memory data structure specification.

So it is big news that he has decided to decamp from New York City, where has has lived for ten years, to Nashville. Writing on his personal blog:

I’ve increasingly felt that open source development is at odds with the values that are driving a large portion of the corporate world, particularly in the United States. Many companies won’t fund open source work because there is no “return on investment”. This is deeply frustrating, and being surrounded by people whose actions align with profit-motive can be pretty discouraging. It’s not necessarily that people who work in NYC or SF are greedy or amorally concerned with making money. In many cases they are just responding to incentives coming from pretty low on the hierarchy of needs.

And

Full-time open source developers in many cases will make less money than their peers who work at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, or another major tech company. If we are to enable more people to do open source development as a full-time vocation, we need to grow supportive tech communities in places that are more affordable. (emphasis his).

I think this is a very interesting trend to watch in the coming years. It’s not just the small business and art types who want to move to lower cost locales to match their lifestyle spending to the (economic) value of their work. Software developers who want to work on more meaningful projects outside of advertising and finance will also increasingly need to consider these sorts of geographical adjustments.

As I wrote a few months ago about digital nomads:

From cryptocurrency millionaires in Puerto Rico to digital nomads in hotspots like Thailand, Indonesia, and Colombia, there is increasingly a view that there is a marketplace for governance, and we hold the power as consumers. Much like choosing a cereal from the breakfast department of a supermarket, highly-skilled professionals are now comparing governments online — and making clear-headed choices based on which ones are most convenient and have the greatest amenities available.

Economic migration — whether from cost-of-living, ecosystem or governance culture, or just for new horizons — is the watchword of this century. It’s a huge loss for NYC that people like McKinney can no longer find their work compatible with the city.

What’s next

I am still obsessing about next-gen semiconductors. If you have thoughts there, give me a ring: danny@techcrunch.com.

Thoughts on Articles

Imagined Communities – a major classic book of social science thought, it’s amazing how well it has held up, and the lessons it holds for us in the cyber age. Intending to write a review of it for this weekend, so expect more notes later.

Quietly, Japan has established itself as a power in the aerospace industry – I love industrial policy and national economic development, and Eric Berger has done a great job on both fronts with his dispatch in Ars Technica. Japan is roaring back into space, increasing its launch capabilities and also preparing to deploy its own GPS infrastructure. An important contextual read for those who follow SpaceX.

Why we stopped trusting elites — a compelling deep dive by William Davies in The Guardian into how populism is animated by the failures of elites. Couldn’t agree more that elites have lost significant trust over the last few decades, mostly from hubris, corruption, and outright fraud (the financial crisis being just the largest). Elites need to hold themselves to much higher standards if we want to ask our fellow citizens for their support.

Reading docket

What I’m reading (or at least, trying to read)

Huge long list of articles on next-gen semiconductors. More to come shortly.

Via Danny Crichton https://techcrunch.com