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maisbaldwin · 6 months

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Sportswashing: Has Saudi Arabia Changed Formula One for Better or for Worse?

by Maisie Baldwin

It’s the start of a new Formula One season, and after two races in the Middle East Red Bull are already looking to dominate. As Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen take to the podium once again, overlooking the Saudi Arabian crowd, it’s clear this Red Bull team will be a force to be reckoned with this year. Their biggest competition? The talk surrounding Formula One’s involvement in the new phenomenon: sportwashing.

What is this sportswashing that’s on everybody’s lips? Although it’s something that has arguably been about in global sports for many years, it’s become a more prominent topic for debate in the last decade.

As detailed by human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and Grant Liberty, sportswashing is a term used to describe sports being used as an attempt to improve the reputation of a country or organisation, like a form of propaganda, or as some have coined, “reputation laundering”.

We now see the Formula One calendar branching away from just the classic European circuits of Silverstone and Circuit de Monaco and now heading further out in an attempt to make the sport more global and more accessible. Or are these intentions more financially powered? Could it be argued that some of these choices favour profit over people?

Adam Coogle, the Middle East researcher for the international organisation Human Rights Watch, explained to CNN how there’s now an increase in Gulf countries looking to host major global sports event to boost their reputations, however honest it may be.

“Unfortunately, many of these sporting events take place without these countries addressing the root causes of their reputational problems such as longstanding and systematic human rights abuses against political dissidents and activists, foreign migrant workers, and women.”

“Enacting reforms to ensure basic human rights for both citizens and foreigners would be something everyone can cheer.”

Formula One isn’t the only sport drawn towards the big money deals coming from Saudi Arabia, with recent headlines across sport being filled with speculation of these partnerships. With new major money pro leagues arising in football and golf, as well as heavyweight title clashes at the top of boxing now choosing Saudi Arabia as their stage, is this the way global sports are going to go? And more importantly, is this the way sports should be going? Or is this all, along with Formula One, a prime example of sportswashing?

Money Talks

One of the main talking points surrounding the conversation of these new Saudi Arabia deals is the big money contracts given to clubs and organisations. In March 2021, human rights organisation Grant Liberty launched an investigation into sportswashing, and specifically Saudi Arabia’s involvement. The findings of the report concluded that there has been a $1.5billion investment in recent sportswashing acts from Saudi authorities up until 2021. $169 million of that went into football, $107 million into boxing and a further $20 million into golf.

Looking at Formula One specifically, they took the largest amount of money of any sport as $650million of this total was spent on the sport alone, as part of a new 10-year deal with the country spanning until 2031.

The first race of this $65 million a year deal took place in the country in December 2021, at a time where women living in Saudi Arabia were protesting for the right to even be able to drive. All whilst the countries LGBTQ+ rights were very much in the spotlight once again.

This opened the stage for activist driven 7-time world champion, British Mercedes driver Sir Lewis Hamilton, who spoke about these concerns before the race.

“Of course, the human rights issue is a persistent and massive problem in some of the places we go,”

“I think this year has shown how important it is not just for us as a sport, but for all sports around the world is to use the platforms they have to push for change.”

Waving the Flag

Holding Grand Prix’s in these countries however also creates a platform for change both in the sport and around the world.

Labelled as one of the greatest Formula One battles of all time, the 2021 Championship title was decided over three closing Grand Prix’s in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the famous ‘Duel in the Desert’ in Abu Dhabi, where the young Dutch driver Max Verstappen was controversially crowned Formula One champion in a last lap battle. Notably, this trio of races were in the same year that Formula One announced their $650 million 10-year partnership to race in Saudi Arabia.

The first of these closing three Grand Prix’s was staged in Qatar on November 21, 2021. For this race weekend, championship contender Hamilton made global headlines as he deemed to wear a rainbow design helmet, in a country where LGBTQ+ rights remain a massive humane issue.

This helmet represented the Pride Flag, with the back of the helmet reading “We Stand Together”.

In his press conference on the days leading up to that race, Hamilton talked about how serious an issue these human rights cases are, and that Formula One as a sport needs to do what they can.

“Equal rights is a serious issue.”

“As these sports go to these places, they’re duty-bound to raise awareness for these issues and these places need scrutiny and needs to media to speak about these things”.

“If we [Formula One] are coming to these places, we need to be raising the profile of the situation.”

Most recently, Hamilton chose to spread awareness on another occasion and wear the rainbow helmet again as Formula One returned to Qatar last month on October 8, 2023, when their LGBTQ+ issues remain the same.

When speaking to the BBC in the build up to that race, Hamilton explained “It’s always good and well raising awareness for things, but it is more about the work that is done in the background and the conversations you continue to have.”

He also spoke about his first time wearing the helmet back in Qatar in November 2021, and he admitted he was aware he could be ‘thrown in jail.’

“It was nerve-wracking because I didn’t know how the country would react,”

“As a sport we have to continue to work on our inclusivity. Diversity continues to be an issue.”

For the last couple of years there was a media swarm over the rainbow flag helmet, with many fans on Twitter supporting Hamilton’s choice to wear the Pride Flag in different LGBTQ+ restricted countries.

So, there is a possible argument that although there is a case of ‘sportswashing’ to be debated with these races, does the involvement of these countries also give athletes and those within the sport a more prominent platform to raise awareness? If our beloved sports were avoiding these countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, would the human rights issues there be more ignored globally than they already are? Or can it still be argued that encouraging sports involvement in these countries is just helping to cover up these issues?

What Saudi Arabia have to say

Despite the buzz of the media attention and fan criticism over the last few years, Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi Arabia Crown Prince, has openly said to the public that he doesn’t care about the sportswashing term used towards his country’s sporting approach. Rather, he found praise in the growing interest in sport in the country.

In an exclusive interview earlier this year with Fox News, the Crown Prince claimed that the money was what mattered. “If sportswashing is going to increase my GDP by 1%, then we’ll continue doing sportswashing.”

“I don’t care [about sportswashing,] I have 1% growth in GDP from sport and I am aiming for another 1.5%. Call it what you want – we are going to get that 1.5%.”

An additional research investigation produced by organisation Grant Liberty more recently in 2023, highlighted reports from the January of this year claiming that Saudi Arabia had proposed a $20 billion bid for the Formula One enterprise. Although Liberty Media Group quickly rejected this offer, its only one example of Saudi Arabia’s drive to survive, and their aim to dominant a significant portion of global sports. But is this all just a way of diverting attention from other headlines?

However, despite all of these views, Saudi Arabia directly claim that their heavy financial investment in sport is part of their ‘Vision 2023’ manifesto. In these plans Saudi Arabia aim to create a “vibrant society in which all citizens can thrive and pursue their passions”.

Part of these plans are to bring sport worth billions of pounds to the country, as an initiative to boost the kingdom’s living standards, increase the number of people getting more active, as well as opening the country to tourism.

In 2019 around the time of the ‘Clash on the Dunes’ heavyweight boxing fight between Anthony Joshua and Andy Ruiz Jr, Saudi Arabia’s sports minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Turki al-Saud that the country was going to aim to keep hosting major events.

“We want to host as many events as we can, to feed our strategy and promote diverse sports in the kingdom”.

“We’re showcasing that, hopefully, if we do bid for them one day, we can host an Olympics or a football World Cup.”

He also said that Saudi Arabia have made significant efforts to change since 2017, with developments in women’s rights to drive and attend sports events as a part of their 2030 plans. Despite this, he believes that “no country is perfect”.

In response Amnesty International UK’s head of campaigns Felix Jakens, said that these comments ignored the continuous human rights battle in the country, “with the jailing of peaceful activists and the near-total crushing of Saudi civil society.”

“It’s all well and good the Saudi sports minister smiling for the cameras,”

“But he must know that people are being arrested on a regular basis in Saudi Arabia simply for daring to voice criticism of his government.”

It’s clear that during peaks of criticism, Saudi Arabia officials are quick to defend the state of their country and the progress of their government. But for many who stand with human rights organisations, there is a lack of believable substance to these statements, and that these sporting events will not fix the underlying humane issues many are facing.

The Safety of Saudi

A concern raised from these new Grand Prix’s is the risk to safety for fans and those involved. With the human rights landscapes of countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, there is a loud cry for the safety of not only the drivers and staff involved with Formula One, but the thousands of fans that travel to follow it.

A notable incident took place at the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix in the March of the 2022 Formula One season. During the Friday practice session, the backdrop of the action was covered in flames and smoke, from a site around 10 miles from the Jeddah Corniche Circuit. The cause of the explosion was launched missiles from Houthi rebels into an oil facility near the circuit.

This triggered a four-hour meeting between drivers that lasted into the early hours of the Saturday morning, as some felt uneasy with the levels of safety driving at this circuit. Stefano Domenicali, Formula One’s chief executive, reassured drivers of their safety and that the weekend was not under any threat.

Domenicali was assured by Saudi Arabia authorities of their safety over the weekend and that there was no threat to the teams.

“We have received total assurances that, for the country, safety is first, no matter the situation – safety has to be guaranteed.”

Prior to this race there was already a lot of discussion surrounding Formula One’s involvement with Saudi Arabia and arguably their lack of awareness to the state of the country. Just before the 2022 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, the Saudi state executed 81 men in one day, 41 of those being from the Shia minority, who had been part of anti-government protests aiming to achieve greater political participation.

In the two weeks leading up to the 2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, the second race of the season, 13 executions also took place in the country by Saudi state.

Yasser al-Khayyat, the brother of one of those 81 men Mustafa al-Khayyat, has spoken out towards Formula One’s chief executive Stefano Domenicali, in a letter seen by The Guardian. He asks Domenicali to make a change in their partnership with Saudi Arabia.

“Silence is complicity. It is how the regime gets away with its atrocities and suppresses calls for democratic reforms. If you truly want Formula One to be an agent for change, rather than a tool to ‘sportswash’ Saudi abuses, please end Formula One’s silence.”

“They use the spectacle of this sporting championship to distract from the murder of my brother and hundreds of others”.

“The silence of bodies like Formula One enables this violence and bloodshed. Formula One’s partnership with the regime has coincided with an acceleration of executions.”

Al-Khayyat was encouraged to speak up after Domenicali spoke to the Guardian, after the CEO said that he felt Formula One was helping to make change.

“To open up the discussion on issues in these places, I take pride in it. I know it is easy to criticise me, but I have no fear because with soft power, I believe in the right context, in the right way, I can achieve results.”

Those in charge of Formula One believe that they are doing the right thing by bringing their Grand Prix’s to these countries accused of sportswashing, and those that fall victim to these human rights crimes feel as though they’re encouraging it. So, is Formula One doing the right thing or is this only adding fuel to the fire?

Has Sports Sold its Soul to Saudi Arabia?

It seems that events in Saudi Arabia and Qatar are very much a part of our sporting present and future. But so are the issues surrounding human rights in these Gulf countries. Choosing to stage events there for rumoured big money contracts, arguably puts sport’s reputation in jeopardy because of the ‘sportswashing’ label.

Specifically with Formula One, whilst these Grand Prix’s have allowed drivers such as Lewis Hamilton to have their say and use races as a platform, it shouldn’t need to be held in these countries for these issues to be recognised.

But it seems Saudi Arabia has its grip on sport for years to come, and the finances are favoured over the underlying troubles faced by many.

#formula one #formula1 #f1news #Lewis Hamilton #saudi arabia

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qqueenofhades · 4 years

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Okay, I’ve read Joe Biden’s plans.

I’ve just sat down and spent several hours actually reading all the damn plans on his website, the whole thing, so you don’t have to. And here’s the conclusion:

They’re pretty good.

Are they absolutely everything we want immediately? Maybe not. Are they a solid Democratic agenda anyway? Yes they are. Are they better than Trump?

Light years!

His Violence Against Women plan is lengthy, detailed, and pays specific attention to violence against Native, lesbian and bisexual, low-income, disabled, rural, transgender (especially trans women of color) immigrant, domestic abuse victims, and other vulnerable women. He calls for replacing and expanding Obama-era policies and funding for campus sexual assault programs that DeVos trashed, and for providing money for culturally specific services that are sensitive to the diverse backgrounds of survivors. He also notes that sexual assault, while it predominantly affects women and girls, needs to be taken seriously and addressed for people of all gender identities.

His gun safety plan is forceful and lays out several steps for banning assault weapons, taking existing weapons from offenders, closing gun purchase background check and other legal loopholes, addressing the intersection between domestic violence and weapons ownership, and reducing or eliminating weapons and ammunition stockpiling.

His plan for tackling climate change and creating green jobs is also lengthy. He makes the connection between economic, environmental, and racial justice. He pledges to immediately rejoin the Paris Agreement and restore American leadership on the issue in pushing for even stronger climate standards, make climate change a central part of our trade, international, and justice goals, demand a worldwide ban on fossil fuel subsidies and tax breaks (!!!) and if the Green New Deal is passed, to sign it, as well as for the U.S. to achieve 100% clean energy and zero percent net emissions by 2050.

His healthcare plan is decent. It offers an immediate public option for all Americans regardless of private, employer, or no coverage, and generous new tax credits to put toward the cost of coverage. It strongly protects abortion rights and federal funding for Planned Parenthood, as well as rescinding the “gag rule” that prevents U.S. federal aid money from being used to provide or even talk about abortions in NGOs abroad. It attacks generic and drug price gouging. It calls for doubling the capital gains tax on the super-wealthy (from 20% to 39.5% paid on capital gains by anyone making over $1 million) to help fund healthcare reform. He also has a separate plan on the opioid crisis in America, and on older Americans and retirement, including the protection and re-funding of Medicare and Social Security.

His immigration plan is lengthy and detailed. He apologizes for and acknowledges the excessive deportation that occured during the Obama-Biden administrations, pledges to do better, and attacks Trump’s current inhumane acitivities on every front. The policy of children in cages, indefinite detention, the metered asylum system, and the Muslim Ban are gone on day one. In this and his LGBTQ plan, he notes the vulnerability of LGBTQ refugees, incuding LGBTQ refugees of color. He proposes streamlining of visa applications and prioritizing the immediate reunification of families. It also specifically states that ICE and CBP agents will be held directly accountable for inhumane treatment.

Speaking of which, his LGBTQ plan is comprehensive. It pays attention to multiple intersectional issues, down to the high rates of incarceration among trans people of color. (He also notes the rates of violence against trans women of color particularly.) He calls for a complete ban on conversion therapy and the discrimination against HIV-status individuals, as well as removing the ban on blood donation from gay and bisexual men. He will remove the transgender military ban immediately. He calls for funding for mental health and suicide prevention among LGBTQ populations.

His plan to empower workers calls for raising the federal minimum wage to $15, as well as indexing this to median hourly wages to ensure that working-class and middle-class wages grow closer to parity, and implementing strong legal protections for unions. He expresses support for striking workers and to empower the National Labor Relations Board in workplace advocacy. Farmworkers, domestic workers, gig economy workers, and other non-traditional labor groups are included in this. He will restore all Obama-Biden policies related to workplace safety and regulation.

His plan to restore American dignity and leadership in the world calls for immediately investing in election security and reform, restoration of the Voting Rights Act, immediately restoring White House press briefings and other Trump refusals of information, tackling criminal justice reform and systematic racial discrimination, calling for campaign finance reform, and basically blowing up all the stupid things the Trump administration does on a daily basis. It also calls for an end to all ongoing wars in the Middle East, restoring the Iran nuclear deal, and new arms control treaties with Russia, among general repairing of international alliances.

His plans for K-12 education and post-high school education call for greatly expanded funding across all levels of 2-year, 4-year, and other educational options. There will be no student loan payments for anyone making under $25,000 a year; everyone else will pay a capped amount and be completely forgiven after a certain period. Public servants qualify for up to $50,000 in loan forgiveness. This is not total loan forgiveness for everyone, which is obviously important for me and many of us, but it’s acceptable to start with. Additionally, his wife is a teacher and has a proven track record of calling for education investment and supporting public school funding.

His plan for housing addresses the needs of formerly incarcerated, LGBTQ, veteran, low-income, sexual assault survivor, black and Hispanic, and other vulnerable populations at risk of losing housing. It calls for a tax on companies and corporations with in excess of $50 billion in assets to fund comprehensive new housing initiatives, including $100 billion in accessible and low-income housing development. It includes extensive investment in public transportation and a high-speed rail system. This ties into his plan to repair infrastructure and invest in new technologies across the country.

His plan for criminal justice reform calls for the end of mass incarceration, the decriminalization of marijuana, the automatic expunging of all cannabis convictions, and an end on jail sentences for drug use. It highlights systematic institutional racism and the impact on black and brown people particularly. It calls for an end on all profiteering and private prisons. It focuses on reintegrating offenders into society and funding the needs of people released from prison. It proposes to “expand and use the power of the U.S. Justice Department to address systemic misconduct in police departments and prosecutors’ offices.” It broadens funding for social services and other programs for people who are otherwise placed into the prison pipeline.

There are more plans, which you can find here. These are the ones I read top to bottom. I am not by any means a Joe Biden fangirl; he was not my first choice, my second choice, or really anywhere on my list. However, having carefully read through his policy documents, I can say that:

He has at the least a good team of advisors who are keenly aware of the political climate, and is willing to both restore Obama-era standards and to improve on them where necessary. Obviously, all politicians’ promises are politicians’ promises, but this is a solid Democratic platform with obvious awareness of the progressive wing of the party.

If progressive legislation is passed in the House and Senate, he will sign it, including the Green New Deal.

He represents a clear and definite improvement over Donald Trump.

Is he everything we want? No. Are his policies better than I was expecting? Yes. I advise you to read through them for yourself. It has made me at least feel better about the likelihood of voting for him.

I realize it’s an unsexy position, especially on tumblr, to advocate for an old centrist white man. I’m not thrilled about having to do it. However, speaking as someone who was very resistant to Biden and still doesn’t agree with all of his previous legislative track record, that’s my consensus. He is a candidate who broadly aligns with values that I care about. His policies represent a concrete end to the damage of the Trump administration and gets us on the right track again.

Joe Biden, if he is the Democratic nominee, will receive my vote on November 3, 2020. I urge you to consider what I’ve laid out above and join me.

#hilary for ts #politics for ts #long post #if you're gonna argue with me about this #at least read the plans first #i'm still not super excited #but it's acceptable #it's much better than trump #it does more than i expected #and that's a good start #so there we have it #joe biden

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 years

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Facebook algorithm boosts pro-Facebook news

Facebook is a rotten company, rotten from the top down, its founder, board and top execs are sociopaths and monsters, committers of non-hyperbolic, no-fooling crimes against humanity. They lie, they cheat, they steal. They are some of history’s greatest villains. Because Facebook is a terrible company run by terrible people, it periodically erupts in ghastly scandal. Sometimes whistleblowers or reporters reveal historic crimes, including (but not limited to) deliberately helping to foment genocide.

Sometimes, the scandals are contemporary: either Facebook blithely announces it’s going to do something terrible, or we learn of some terrible thing underway from leaks or investigations.

Thanks to a history of anticompetitive mergers — Whatsapp, Instagram, Onavo and more — based on fraudulent promises to antitrust regulators, Facebook has grown to nearly three billion users — except FB doesn’t have users, really — it has hostages.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/dont-believe-proven-liars-absolute-minimum-standard-prudence-merger-scrutiny

As Facebook’s own internal memos show, the company doesn’t just buy up competitors so users have nowhere to flee to, it also engineers in high “switching costs” to make it more painful to leave the system.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

For example, Facebook’s internal memos show that the manager for its photo products set out to seduce users into entrusting FB with their family photos, because that way quitting Facebook would mean abandoning your memories of your kids, departed grandparents, etc.

Everybody hates Facebook, especially FB users. The point of high switching costs, after all, is to increase the pain of leaving so that FB can dole out more abuse to its users without fearing that they’ll quit the whole enterprise.

FB’s mission is to increase the size of the shit-sandwich they can force you to eat before you walk away. But they’re not mere sadists: shit-sandwiches have a business model: the more hostages they take, the more they can extract from advertisers — their true customers.

The polite term for what FB has is a “two-sided market” (selling advertisers to users and users to advertisers). The technical term is “a monopoly and a monoposony” (a monopsony is a market with a single buyer).

The colloquial term?

“A racket.”

A scam. A bezzle. A blight.

Facebook gouges advertisers on rate cards, then lies about the reach of its ads (like when it lied about the popularity of video, evincing a media-wide “pivot to video” that bankrupted dozens of news- and entertainment-sites).

Facebook didn’t set out to destroy journalism by price-fixing ads, lying to advertisers and media outlets.

FB set out to acquire a monopoly and extract monopoly rents from advertisers and publishers, with a pathological indifference to how these frauds would harm others.

Having shown a willingness to destroy journalists and media outlets to extract a few more billions for its shareholders, Facebook has attracted a lot of enemies in the media.

If you’re a whistleblower with a story to tell, there’s a journalist whose editor will allocate the resources to report your story out in depth. The combination of a rotten company and a lot of pissed off journalists produces a lot of bad ink for the company.

But the fact remains that FB has a vast pool of hostages, billions of them, and it gets to decide what they see, when and how. I used to joke with my human rights activist friends that the best use for Facebook was showing people why and how to leave Facebook.

FB’s response was predictable. As Ryan Mac and Sheera Frenkel write in the New York Times, FB’s Project Amplify is a Zuckerberg-led initiative to systematically promote positive coverage of FB and its founder — including articles that originate with FB itself.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/technology/zuckerberg-facebook-project-amplify.html

That is, FB staffers are charged with writing puff pieces about how great the company is, and FB’s algorithm will push these ahead of reporting by actual journalists who present detailed, factual, multi-sourced accounts of the company’s fraudulent and depraved conduct.

Project Amplify marks a pivot from FB’s longstanding policy of issuing insincere apologies for its scandals. Company sources told the reporters that everyone figured out these don’t convince anyone, so the company turned to pushing happy-talk quackspeak instead.

One of the leaders of this project is Alex Schultz, “a 14-year company veteran who was named chief marketing officer last year,” but the major impetus comes from Zuck himself, one of the most hated men on the planet.

Amplify is just one of FB’s strategies for distorting the discourse about itself. In July, it neutered Crowdtangle, an widely used analytics tool that showed that FB’s top posts were unhinged far-right disinformation and conspiracies.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/15/three-wise-zucks-in-a-trenchcoat/#inconvenient-truth

And Facebook has declared all-out legal warfare (accompanied by a disinformation campaign) to kill Adobserver, an NYU project that tracks paid political disinformation on the platform.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/05/comprehensive-sex-ed/#quis-custodiet-ipsos-zuck

By shutting down Crowdtangle and Adobserver, FB hopes to control the academic findings about the company’s role in disinformation, hate, and harassment. The company runs its own research portal where academics are expected to access data about the platform.

But as with the journalists who report on it, FB has heaped abuse on the academics who research it.

Its portal data was bad, leaving PhD and masters’ theses are at risk of retraction. Mid-dissertation researchers have been set back to square one.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/2020-election-misinformation-distortions#facebook-sent-flawed-data-to-misinformation-researchers

In retrospect, Facebook’s decision to game its own algorithm to push pro-company quackspeak seems inevitable. It’s not just that no one believes the company’s apologies anymore (if they ever did) — it’s that the company seems incapable of hiring competent spin doctors.

Take the WSJ’s blockbuster “Facebook Files,” a series of reports detailing the company’s willingness to harm children, commit fraud, and allow millions of favored, powerful people to violate its rules with impunity.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-09-16/facebook-s-promised-to-gain-the-public-s-trust

FB’s response was genuinely pathetic. In a perfunctory blog post, its top flack — the widely despised British politician Nick Clegg, paid millions to front FB on the global stage — vilified the WSJ’s reporting without producing any factual rebuttals.

https://about.fb.com/news/2021/09/what-the-wall-street-journal-got-wrong/

It’s the kind of ham-fisted policy advocacy that Facebook is (in)famous for. Who can forget the absolute shitshow in India over its Internet Basics program, when it bribed telcos to exempt FB and the services it hand-picked from their data-caps?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/12/facebook-free-basics-india-zuckerberg

This Net-Neutracidal maneuver, falsely billed as a way to bring the internet to poor people (something is absolutely does not do), was the subject of a consultation by India’s telco regulators.

FB pushed deceptive alerts to millions of its Indian users, tricking them into sending a flood of form-letters to the regulator urging it to leave Internet Basics intact.

But whoever drafted the form letter didn’t bother to check whether it addressed any of the questions the regulator was consulting on. That made these millions of letters non-responsive to the consultation, so the regulator ignored them.

FB lost! It’s almost as though people who are good at fighting policy battles don’t want to work for Facebook, and the only talent they can attract are the kinds of opportunistic blunderers that no one takes seriously and everyone hates.

Weird, that.

#pluralistic

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the-lightning-strikes-again · 4 years

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So you also stalk and doxx somebody because they didn’t like a ship? I mean the anti sucks because of what they did, but so do you because you sunk to their level. Pot calling kettle black, much. VLD fandom shippers really do keep digging that hole deeper for themselves. Get a real job and real life.

Hi, anon. For the record, this person also was crawling through my own blogs and systematically trolling my content back in 2019 and earlier this year despite my attempts to block them. Their actions to so desperately access content and creators they despise were a direct abuse of Tumblr Community Guidelines. I’d also submitted abuse reports regarding this issue, but Tumblr support largely fails in the arena of support. So no, it’s not stalking to be concerned about being stalked by someone who has systematically hated and harassed you.

By your own definition, you would demand that victims shut up and simply allow their abusers to continue abusing them and others. That’s quite sad, actually. For your sake, I do hope you never face harassment yourself.

You also are misusing the word “doxx,” the definition of which is: a cyber attack that involves discovering the real identity of an Internet user. She happily and publicly blasted her own following and blog-creating habits and consistently has used her anonymous blogs to get around blocking controls. And I don’t know who mariposa is in real life, and I genuinely do not want to know them or anything about them, but I hope whoever they are, they get therapy because of all the many hoops and blockades they themselves had to jump through in order to suicide bait people for the last 12 months for their own sick hate-boner amusements. So no, it’s not doxxing to call out an anonymous user on an anonymous platform for maliciously abusing said anonymity, the right to create multiple blogs, and said platform’s anti-harassment rules. And in fact, I’ll add here that I genuinely hope this anti actually does get help for their mental issues so that maybe one day they can return to fandom and respectfully stay in their lane without abusing people, and celebrate whatever content so tickles their fancy. I literally couldn’t care what ship or show that is for them. I have friends who are anti-Lotura and also other friends who are anti-Voltron entirely. But this anti? I really do hope they get a life in whatever way they can that is positive and not dependent on maliciously preying on people.

Another caveat of the definition of “doxxing” is that the callout is for the purpose of encouraging malicious harassment.

As I stated in my original post about this, I literally do not care what people ship or why. Nor do I endorse harassment of any kind. I’m going to post a screenshot here as a reminder, because perhaps you just missed it:

My post’s goal was to ensure a block wall against this person since they clearly cannot not control themselves--and to encourage submitting abuse reports, because many victims don’t do this. What other alternative would you have had me do, if you were in my position and had already submitted abuse reports yourself with no response?

Now, if you personally are okay with someone systematically suicide baiting, attempting to circumvent your blocking controls, trolling and disrupting your posts to silence and control you, seeing other people like you suffer the same, and doing absolutely nothing about it? That’s on you. And that complicity and silence in such behavior is precisely what allows trolls to grow and hijack social media for their sick empires.

If you have deep concerns regarding this issue, I do suggest you perform some research about doxxing and harassment. And while you’re at it, please DO submit a ticket to Tumblr support and ask them, just as I have, for better blocking controls and safer environments here. Because you’re absolutely right. Fandom can be ridiculous, and it shouldn’t have to be. I shouldn’t have had to deal with nearly 12 months of alleged adults abusing me, my content, and my friends, and this platform, and me constantly trying to do damage control and keeping silent about it. No one should have to deal with this. We shouldn’t have to resort to even asking for community block walls that, by the way, probably wouldn’t have stopped this anti. Given that she was systematically pinging blogs to test for blocking weaknesses...

And if you are in any way genuinely concerned about the state of this site, the ridiculously ineffective state of blocking, and the general safety of any fandom to enjoy whatever ship it likes, I ask you to join me in raising concerns about rule-breaking anti behavior to Tumblr Support, and the fact that they’ve left multitudes of victims to drown in silence.

I’m going to assume that you’re a good person and that your moral disdain for me doesn’t have to do with victims calling out the abuses of their abusers--but that perhaps you’re also just generally upset by the whole mess, as I am.

If you care at all about wanting to fix fandom instead of sitting back and being complicit in its ongoing disasters, come off your anonymous status and talk to me via private message or chat. Perhaps we can find better ways to handle these kinds of problems, together. If we want to exist in a world where we can just celebrate what we like and get back to what fandom is supposed to be about, then we cannot afford to be enemies. And I don’t want to be enemies. Because that’s not how the world gets better.

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velvetv0nblack · 4 years

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An open letter;

(Possible trigger warning)

I’m not even sure why I’m writing this, maybe because this theme of abuse has be something I’ve been experiencing as a third party, the person removing the victim this time, you know the role many of my friends filled within our tumultuous relationship... maybe it’s because my friends abuser is now threatening and harassing me for helpingher leave... maybe it’s because I’ve finally found my therapeutic dosage of lithium, am in a clear mind and are therefore able to reflect properly for the first time in my life... or maybe it’s because this is not an apology, I mean maybe it is if you had only been a serial cheat, but the truth is you fractured my skull and cut me open with a knife, so this is not a fucking apology. Also I’d rather rip my own eyes out of my skull, smash them with a hammer, and then inject the liquid into my ass than actually engage you in any kind of conversation, so knowing that this is the one platform you can still check for me on, I’m going to post this here... Its about time I had my say without putting myself in physical danger.

You would think I wouldn’t have an essay to correct your 3 lines of a nothing apology, but here we are I guess.

This kind of self deprecating “I wasn’t good enough for you” narrative is truly infuriating, and not because you were actually good enough for me but because of the very reasons you proved yourself not be “not good enough”. You weren’t undeserving of me because you didn’t work, I am physically incapable of doing so myself and I didn’t fall in love with you because you came across mad motivated. You weren’t undeserving of me because you took drugs, drank like a fish or smoked like a chimney, we were both purposefully killing our selves in the same way. You weren’t undeserving of me at all, until you fucked my best friend in the bathroom and collectively gaslit me into wondering if I was imagining the whole thing, and slowly but systematically broke down my confidence and support network away from me. I want this to be very clear; the reason you do not deserve me or any other decent human being is because, you are an abuser, you abuse people.

I was barely a whole person when I met you. I was barely an adult. I had lived through so much already, and had been abused in every area of my existence. I was easy pickings to you. The issue was you were not a pawn to me, a player in any game, or any of that. To me you were this fascinating, beautiful soul, to me you were someone who needed my love who needed someone to support you and I couldn’t believe that you chose me to fill that role. I was freshly 18 that month, and I had just had a flat mate steal £3k and kill my kitten.

I weighed all of 63lbs that night you lost the plot on me because I didn’t want to go to Big Red to watch that actual cunt of a waitress smile at me as she gave you lap dances, it’s not even a dance joint it was a fucking bar. You allowed other people to emotionally abuse me with you for months up until this point and I just didn’t want to go, all I wanted was the keys and I would of gone home alone and gone to bed. Why you feel the need to publicly humiliate me again instead of just leaving it? You couldn’t just go be adulterous without me watching and hurting, so you followed me home, screaming at me the whole time. You told me I was pathetic, you hated me, I should just kill myself- on a bus on a Saturday night, from the bar I worked in, in soho, back to our place near Caledonian Road. I was so unstable anyway, undiagnosed autism, misdiagnosed mental health issues, on the wrong if any medication, deep within the throws of an addiction and eating disorder... you. I couldn’t take you verbally ripping my heart out anymore when I decided that throwing myself from our 3rd story window would hurt less. The fact I could of died isn’t what made you grab me and stop me jumping, no in fact you told me you don’t care if I kill my self as long as it’s not in the flat, you were much more concerned with the amount of drugs in the flat and the prison opposite our window. At that point you threw me full pelt across the other side of the room, all 63lbs of me flew through the air like a paper aeroplane and smashed directly into your guitar. You know your beloved custom Les Paul? The headstock came off, and at that very moment despite the fact you were the one who threw me, my life was the one in danger. You started strangling me and threatening to have men come down to London to gang rape my then 14 year old sister. It gets a little fuzzy, that’s what your brain does when you experience potentially life ending trauma. I do know I ended up with stitches in my lips and hands, that you fractured my right eye socket- that I still suffer issues with to this day- and had black bruising covering my entire body like a bus had hit me.

For a couple of years there my brain completely blocked out important details of that night, and a lot of our relationship. Don’t worry though periodically I have the real type of flashback where I relive these events and I come back to reality remembering more than I ever wanted to. I’m yet to even touch on the fact that whilst I may of been able to escape you in waking life, my dreams are perpetually stuck in this horrific PTSD dream land, a town that is a mash up of all the places I’ve been traumatised in my life, the place you eternally reside inside my head to traumatise me whilst I desperately need to rest. You haven’t really left my life despite the efforts I have made to avoid you (I think I’ve seen you once, from a distance once at Download 2 years ago, my heart fell out my ass, and I dragged Camilla in another direction) I have only 2 dreams in 6 years that haven’t included you chasing me down to finish what you started and kill me or keep me captive. But that’s what trauma does, and oh how you traumatised me.

I really loved you though, that’s why I stayed, and those couple times I tried to leave before I came back. I loved you so unconditionally that it took me realising that everyone else around us was so complicit that they’d help you hide by body. To this very day I cannot believe a man, a male roommate, walked in on you pinning me into a sofa by my neck, with both your planted knees on top of my chest, full weight suffocating me, biting the end of my nose until it was blackened and he had the audacity me I needed to calm down. I have to label the guy the world biggest pussy in my head so I don’t get wound up about it.

I wasn’t perfect, I can never be perfect, I have more imperfections than most. I am severely mentally and physically unwell- I sure as hell am a pain in the ass to love- however I cannot actually think of a damn thing I did to deserve constant unending emotional abuse, threatens and follow through of physical abuse and then after I left stalking and harassment. I am difficult but I am not deserving of abuse and that’s all you gave me in the end... unless of course you “needed your baby girl to suck your dick” - that was the only time you were ever nice to me, and I know because I recently read back a bunch of our texts and you flipped between “I hate you, I’m gonna kill you/kill your self” to “I need my beautiful girl to come and suck my dick I love you so much” is actually fucking insane. - Should I bring up the fact you would bang pathetic girls on the scene and then dicknotise them into stalking and harassing me with you? Because... what I had the audacity to leave a man, of over 6ft tall, who would become violent to my 5ft 63lbs self?

So yeah, you didn’t deserve me, but not because of any self deprecating attention seeking reason but because you’re a sociopath, who seems to take pleasure in fucking with vulnerable women.

Am I happy? Now that’s a fucking difficult one to answer.

I ended up homeless on and off for a year. Despite the homelessness I had suffered before this was worse because of the place I was in mentally.

You caused me to develop complex PTSD.

You caused me to have a 3 year long psychotic break.

You caused me to live in secure supported housing, where I was prayed upon by other residents.

You caused me to fall victim to abuse within the system

Not sure if you know this but our mental health services sucks ass, after leaving you I had a delightful therapist that would text me telling to kill my self and would tell me you were right to abuse me.

But I got one thing from our relationship, I fine tuned my “four Fs” ...I no longer freeze or fight in the face of difficulty... I developed an ability to fawn.

Dead ends are no longer in my eyeline, I will metaphorically straight on walk through someone else’s house to get where I need to be, I will jump the fence, break the locks and out run any guard dog. I may fall down but I’m never out.

When I was diagnosed with multiple chronic illnesses and essentially lived in hospital for 3 years, even when I thought to end my life it was weighed out by the thought of “how do I get to a place we’re I can do even 5% of what I want? What do I have to change, manifest?”.

You see if you could only temporarily break me but not stop me then why the hell would I let my own mind and body do that? That ability to fawn came with an ability to find a middle path, to be diplomatic. That ability to fawn gave me the patience to understand medical text and use that to access the right care. ~ I am actually thinking of starting a medical degree just to prove I can ~ I am now 98lbs and healthy for my size and stature, I now have a home with a housing association who like me so much they have me a lifetime partner agreement, meaning I will never be homeless again. I have been clean 7 whole goddamn years and 2 months. I have the most beautiful empathic cat, 2 foster dogs and an incredibly patient partner, who has known me before you had ever entered my life. I am as healthy as someone in my position can be, I still struggle with the anorexic thoughts but I eat everyday of the fucking week now.

I am not “happy” as happy is an emotion and emotions are fleeting but I am content in living for the simple life I have fought ever so hard for. I am strong, and determined and constantly fucking working on making more for myself. I’m proud of myself.

All I have to say is get therapy. If you’re really sorry work on yourself enough to be able to apologise properly before you fuck my day up by rising your head again for this weakness. I can’t say I don’t have morbid curiosity, because that’s me all over, however I’m much more determined to keep all that I have work for mentally, emotionally, and physically safe. For that reason I would never in my right medicated mind talk it out with you, email you back or seek you out. I’m sorry, it is what it is.

You can not damage someone irreparably both mentally and physically and think “I’m sorry for being a cunt” even close to cuts it. You are mentally unbalanced, in a way not even I can relate to.

#what was the point #open letter to my abuser #its not 2014 anymore buddy

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mwplanet · 4 years

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NO JUSTICE NO PEACE

George Floyd

Photo via Wikipedia

By Ashling Ayekun

Following the murder of George Floyd on May 25, many cities across America have broken out in protest calling for an end to police brutality and racial injustices against black people.

In Minneapolis, on May 25, a 46-year-old African American man named George Floyd was murdered by police officer Derek Chauvin from Chauvin kneeling on his neck for an unsettling 8 minutes and 46 seconds. Floyd was unarmed and was initially arrested for trying to use what was suspected to be a counterfeit 20 dollar bill, which in fact turned out to be a false claim.

The entire encounter was caught on video, in which Floyd can clearly be heard calling out several times that he can not breathe, sharing the same final words as Eric Garner, another African American man murdered by police officers in 2014. Despite Floyd’s pleas, Chauvin does not remove his knee and the 3 other police officers do nothing to stop Chauvin or help Floyd. Chauvin continued to kneel on Floyd’s neck for nearly three minutes after he had become unresponsive. An independent autopsy states that Floyd died from “asphyxiation from sustained pressure” which aligns with what can be seen in the video, unlike the Hennepin County medical examiner’s report which states the cause of death is “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdue; restraint and neck compression.”

The video, taken by a bystander, capturing the tragic last moments of Floyd’s life quickly spread through social media and has been seen by millions of people across the world. As disturbing as this incident was for many to witness, sadly this is just one of the recent cases in a long history of African American people in America losing their lives to police brutality or racially charged acts of violence. A few others include Oscar Grant (2009), Aiyana Jones (2010), Rekia Boyd (2012), Eric Garner (2014), Michael Brown (2014), Tamir Rice (2014), Sandra Bland (2015), Walter Scott (2015), Philando Castile (2016), Ahmaud Arbery (2020), and Breonna Taylor (2020), many of whom who have yet to receive justice for their murders.

George Floyd’s death is described as “the straw that broke the camel's back” as many individuals gathered in Minneapolis following his death to protest and call for an end to police brutality/violence, the systematic oppression of black people in America and justice for the many others who have lost their lives because of it. All 50 states in America and many other countries,including Canada, followed in Minneapolis’s footsteps as protesters took to the streets wielding posters and chanting in unison as they marched.

Unfortunately, many of these peaceful protests were met with more violence from police officers. Multiple videos circulating social media platforms show peaceful protesters, as well as reporters, being attacked with teargas, rubber bullets (which can be fatal when shot at the eyes/head), being kicked and punched, and even crowds being run over with police vehicles. Many people have also shared their experiences on Twitter of getting arrested, being held in jails with other peaceful protesters, being denied access to bathrooms, food and water, for many hours before eventually being released. In some of these peaceful protests and riots, looting began to take place and buildings were set ablaze in an attempt to make a political statement by those fed up with the systemic injustices towards the black community. In response, many US cities have introduced a curfew for its citizens, but in some cases only sent out the alert a few hours or minutes before said curfew began. Many people have openly expressed that they feel the riots and protests do nothing and are “un-American.” On the contrary, it is important to note that throughout history riots, protests, and rebellions such as the Stonewall riot, the King Assassination riots, and suffragette riots have, in fact, brought about some form of change as they intended. Additionally, there have been reports that white supremacist groups have infiltrated these protests and riots with the intent to destroy property and incite violence.

Concerning these issues, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, referred to protesters as “THUGS” and stated that “when the looting starts the shooting starts.” However, just a month prior, when Americans gathered to protest the lockdown orders put in place to limit the spread of COVID-19, Trump referred to these protestors as “very good people” and instructed the Governor of Michigan to “see them, talk to them, make a deal”. It is clear that Trump failed to show the same level of support and understanding for those protesting the murder of yet another unarmed black person in America.

The four officers involved in George Floyd’s death, from left to right: Derek Chauvin, Alexander Keung, Thomas Lane, Tou Thao.

Photo via Star Tribune

Following the protests and riots, all 4 police officers involved in the wrongful death of George Floyd (Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, Alexander Kueng, and Tou Thao) have now been arrested and charged. Derek Chauvin was initially charged with third-degree murder but has since had his charged increased to second-degree murder as Minnesota Attorney General Kieth Ellison stated “I believe the evidence available to us now supports the stronger charge of second-degree murder,” at a conference earlier this week. The other three now-former police officers have been charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder. While this is a monumental step in receiving the justice that George Floyd deserves, the ongoing problem of racial inequities and abuse of power in police forces and judicial systems still needs to be properly addressed and acted upon. Hence, people continue to protest and demand justice for the many others affected by these issues and for real change to be done through profound systemic reforms.

#ashlingayekun #black lives matter #no justice no peace #george floyd #i cant breathe

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realitysangle · 4 years

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Okay, I’ve read Joe Biden’s plans.

I’ve just sat down and spent several hours actually reading all the damn plans on his website, the whole thing, so you don’t have to. And here’s the conclusion:

They’re pretty good.

Are they absolutely everything we want immediately? Maybe not. Are they a solid Democratic agenda anyway? Yes they are. Are they better than Trump?

Light years!

If progressive legislation is passed in the House and Senate, he will sign it, including the Green New Deal.

He represents a clear and definite improvement over Donald Trump.

Joe Biden, if he is the Democratic nominee, will receive my vote on November 3, 2020. I urge you to consider what I’ve laid out above and join me.

#Joe Biden

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 years

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#1yrago EFF just sent this letter to every official negotiating the EU's Copyright Directive

To Whom It May Concern:

I write today on behalf of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to raise urgent issues related to Articles 11 and 13 of the upcoming Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive, currently under discussion in the Trilogues.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF champions user privacy, free expression, and innovation through impact litigation, policy analysis, grassroots activism, and technology development. We work to ensure that rights and freedoms are enhanced and protected as our use of technology grows. We are supported by over 37,000 donating members around the world, including around three thousand within the European Union.

We believe that Articles 11 and 13 are ill-considered and should not be EU law, but even stipulating that systems like the ones contemplated by Articles 11 and 13 are desirable, the proposed text of the articles in both the Parliament and Council texts contain significant deficiencies that will subvert their stated purpose while endangering the fundamental human rights of Europeans to free expression, due process, and privacy.

It is our hope that the detailed enumeration of these flaws, below, will cause you to reconsider Articles 11 and 13's inclusion in the Directive altogether, but even in the unfortunate event that Articles 11 and 13 appear in the final language that is presented to the Plenary, we hope that you will take steps to mitigate these risks, which will substantially affect the transposition of the Directive in member states, and its resilience to challenges in the European courts .

Article 13: False copyright claims proliferate in the absence of clear evidentiary standards or consequences for inaccurate claims.

Based on EFF’s decades-long experience with notice-and-takedown regimes in the United States, and private copyright filters such as YouTube's ContentID, we know that the low evidentiary standards required for copyright complaints, coupled with the lack of consequences for false copyright claims, are a form of moral hazard that results in illegitimate acts of censorship from both knowing and inadvertent false copyright claims.

For example, rightsholders with access to YouTube's ContentID system systematically overclaim copyrights that they do not own. For instance, the workflow of news broadcasters will often include the automatic upload of each night's newscast to copyright filters without any human oversight, despite the fact that newscasts often include audiovisual materials whose copyrights do not belong to the broadcaster – public domain footage, material used under a limitation or exception to copyright, or material that is licensed from third parties. This carelessness has predictable consequences: others — including bona fide rightsholders — who are entitled to upload the materials claimed by the newscasters are blocked by YouTube and have a copyright strike recorded against them by the system, and can face removal of all of their materials. To pick one example, NASA's own Mars lander footage was broadcast by newscasters who carelessly claimed copyright on the video by dint of having included NASA's livestream in their newscasts which were then added to the ContentID database of copyrighted works. When NASA itself subsequently tried to upload its footage, YouTube blocked the upload and recorded a strike against NASA.

In other instances, rightsholders neglect the limitations and exceptions to copyright when seeking to remove content. For example, Universal Music Group insisted on removing a video uploaded by one of our clients, Stephanie Lenz, which featured incidental audio of a Prince song in the background. Even during the YouTube appeals process, UMG refused to acknowledge that Ms. Lenz’s incidental inclusion of the music was fair use – though this analysis was eventually confirmed by a US federal judge. Lenz's case took more than ten years to adjudicate, largely due to Universal's intransigence, and elements of the case still linger in the courts.

Finally, the low evidentiary standards for takedown and the lack of penalties for abuse have given rise to utterly predictable abuses. False copyright claims have been used to suppress whistleblower memos detailing flaws in election security, evidence of police brutality, and disputes over scientific publication.

Article 13 contemplates that platforms will create systems to allow for thousands of copyright claims at once, by all comers, without penalty for errors or false claims. This is a recipe for mischief and must be addressed.

Article 13 Recommendations

To limit abuse, Article 13 must, at a minimum, require strong proof of identity from those who seek to add works to an online service provider's database of claimed copyrighted works and make ongoing access to Article 13's liability regime contingent on maintaining a clean record regarding false copyright claims.

Rightsholders who wish to make copyright claims to online service providers should have to meet a high identification bar that establishes who they are and where they or their agent for service can be reached. This information should be available to people whose works are removed so that they can seek legal redress if they believe they have been wronged.

In the event that rightsholders repeatedly make false copyright claims, online service providers should be permitted to strike them off of their list of trusted claimants, such that these rightsholders must fall back to seeking court orders – with their higher evidentiary standard – to effect removal of materials.

This would require that online service providers be immunised from Article 13's liability regime for claims from struck off claimants. A rightsholder who abuses the system should not expect to be able to invoke it later to have their rights policed. This striking-off should pierce the veil of third parties deputised to effect takedowns on behalf of rightsholders ("rights enforcement companies"), with both the third party and the rightsholder on whose behalf they act being excluded from Article 13's privileges in the event that they are found to repeatedly abuse the system. Otherwise, bad actors ("copyright trolls") could hop from one rights enforcement company to another, using them as shields for repeated acts of bad-faith censorship.

Online service providers should be able to pre-emptively strike off a rightsholder who has been found to be abusive of Article 13 by another provider.

Statistics about Article 13 takedowns should be a matter of public record: who claimed which copyrights, who was found to have falsely claimed copyright, and how many times each copyright claim was used to remove a work.

Article 11: Links are not defined with sufficient granularity, and should contain harmonised limitations and exceptions.

The existing Article 11 language does not define when quotation amounts to a use that must be licensed, though proponents have argued that quoting more than a single word requires a license.

The final text must resolve that ambiguity by carving out a clear safe-harbor for users, and ensure that there’s a consistent set of Europe-wide exceptions and limitations to news media’s new pseudo-copyright that ensure they don’t overreach with their power.

Additionally, the text should safeguard against dominant players (Google, Facebook, the news giants) creating licensing agreements that exclude everyone else.

News sites should be permitted to opt out of requiring a license for inbound links (so that other services could confidently link to them without fear of being sued), but these opt-outs must be all-or-nothing, applying to all services, so that the law doesn’t add to Google or Facebook's market power by allowing them to negotiate an exclusive exemption from the link tax, while smaller competitors are saddled with license fees.

As part of the current negotiations, the text must be clarified to establish a clear definition of "noncommercial, personal linking," clarifying whether making links in a personal capacity from a for-profit blogging or social media platform requires a license, and establishing that (for example) a personal blog with ads or affiliate links to recoup hosting costs is "noncommercial."

In closing, we would like to reiterate that the flaws enumerated above are merely those elements of Articles 11 and 13 that are incoherent or not fit for purpose. At root, however, Articles 11 and 13 are bad ideas that have no place in the Directive. Instead of effecting some piecemeal fixes to the most glaring problems in these Articles, the Trilogue take a simpler approach, and cut them from the Directive altogether.

Thank you,

Cory Doctorow Special Consultant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation

https://boingboing.net/2018/10/23/unsafe-at-any-speed-4.html

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things2mustdo · 3 years

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Just a handful of massive companies, with wealth greater than some countries, controls almost every aspect of the internet. They can decide which voices to amplify or silence, which businesses to boost or crush (or acquire), and what personal data they will collect and monetize, all with almost no accountability or oversight.

This centralization of power into the hands of a few multinational corporations runs counter to the original dream of a free, open, and fair internet. And as the events of recent years have shown, they are a threat to democracy.

In December 2020, the European Commission released its proposal for the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the EU’s attempt to curtail Big Tech’s power and revive competition on the internet. Like the flurry of American antitrust investigations, the DMA is a sign that politicians finally have recognized how much Big Tech has abused its ever-growing power over the past decade.

As a company dedicated to building a better internet for all, we have been following the developments in the EU closely and we support the DMA. We’ve created this analysis to help our community better understand the issues around the DMA and what it would do.

But there is also a strong caveat: This regulation will only be as effective as its enforcement. The EU must devote the resources necessary to fundamentally shift the balance of power on the internet back into the hands of people.

Who does the DMA apply to?

The DMA is a set of rules that target “gatekeeper platforms,” which are massive tech companies that control “core platform services” of the internet that link a business and its customers. A gatekeeper can control more than one core platform service, and many of them do. The DMA contains a list of what are considered core platform services, which includes search engines, social networking services, certain messaging services, and operating systems. The European Commission can also add services to that list as necessary.

In many cases, these core platform services function as a bottleneck, forcing all companies to use the same tool to reach the vast majority of their market. Controlling these bottlenecks gives a gatekeeper platform immense power to effectively cut off a company from the segment of the market it controls. Think of how Apple controls which apps it allows on its mobile devices or how Google controls which companies will be the first search result. This control coupled with Big Tech’s global scale has given these companies unprecedented power.

To ensure that it does not hinder companies that are still developing, the DMA’s rules would only apply to gatekeeper platforms that have met all of the following criteria for the past three years:

Achieve either an average market capitalization of at least €65 billion — or have an annual turnover of at least €6.5 billion in the European Economic Area (EEA)

Have at least 45 million monthly active end users within the EU

Have at least 10,000 yearly active business users within the EU

(It is slightly more complicated than this, but these are the important standards to know.)

The DMA only targets the truly massive corporations. This way, companies and potential competitors to the Big Tech monopolists are not burdened with undue regulation.

What does the DMA do?

The DMA rules would impose a number of obligations on gatekeepers. These obligations are intended to prevent them from abusing their power and engaging in anti-competitive behavior. They do not address free speech on the internet or how to govern it (that is covered in the EU’s proposed Digital Services Act). Think of the DMA as essentially a list of “Dos” and “Don’ts” for Big Tech. Some of the most important obligations are listed below:

Article 5(a) — Don’t mix personal data without a user’s explicit consent This would prevent gatekeepers from combining personal data collected from their core platform services with personal data collected from other services or from a data broker without explicit consent. It would also prevent them from forcing you to automatically sign in to all of a gatekeeper’s services if you only want to sign in to one. Example: Google would not be able combine the data it has collected from you with commercially available data, like your credit score. You would also be able to sign in to Gmail without signing in to all of Google’s services.

Article 5(c) — Do allow business users to promote offers to end users In effect, gatekeepers would be required to allow businesses to inform their customers about alternative purchase options. Example: Apple would have to let app developers inform their users of cheaper subscription offers that are available via their website in the App Store.

Article 5(e) — Don’t force business users to adopt the platform’s authentication system. Businesses could still choose to use the gatekeeper’s ID system, but it would not be required. Example: An app developer would be allowed to create their own ID system for their app and Google would not be able to force them to use its ID system.

Article 5(f) — Don’t cross-tie core products. Gatekeepers would not be able to force users to sign up for one of its core services as a precondition to getting access to another of its services or products. Gatekeepers’ products and services would be available to users separately. Example: Users would be able to access the Android operating system without a Gmail account.

Article 6(a) — Don’t spy on business users to gain an unfair competitive advantage. Currently, gatekeepers can use private data from their platform and monitor their business users’ data to determine how to place, price, and advertise competing goods or services. The DMA would ban this practice. Example: Amazon would no longer be able to use its search results data to determine what goods to clone and start selling itself.

Article 6(b) — Do allow users to uninstall any pre-installed software applications Gatekeepers would have to allow their users to uninstall any pre-installed software applications that are not essential to running the hardware. Example: You would be able to delete the pre-installed calendar or calculator apps on your smartphone.

Article 6(c) — Do allow third-party app stores and users to side-load apps. Under the DMA, gatekeepers would only be allowed to prevent third-party app stores if they damage or undermine the “integrity of the hardware or operating system.” Gatekeepers would not be able to prevent users from accessing services they acquired outside their platform. Example: Apple would not be able to block users from downloading apps that are not in the App Store.

Article 6(d) — Don’t give preference to platforms’ own products in rankings. Gatekeepers would not be able to unfairly rank their own products and services more favorably than their competitors.

Article 6(e) — Don’t lock users in. Gatekeepers would not be able to technically restrict users from deleting apps or switching away from default apps. They also would not be able to force users to use a particular internet service provider.

Article 6(f) — Do make platforms interoperable with other service providers. Gatekeepers would have to make their platforms open to some key third-party service providers, like payment providers, digital identity providers, or ad-tech sellers, on the same terms as their own services.

Article 6(h) — Do make data portable and continuously accessible in real time. Gatekeepers would have to give all users the ability to download their data and take it to a rival. They would also have to make both end and business user data continuously accessible in real time to their competitors.

Article 6(i) — Do give businesses access to their own data. Gatekeepers would have to give business users real-time, continuous access to high-quality data from the gatekeepers’ platform about their sales, customers, and other commercial activity.

Article 6(k) — Do provide fair and nondiscriminatory access to app stores. The DMA states that gatekeepers that manage app stores would have to accept apps onto their platform in a fair and nondiscriminatory manner.

What happens if a company violates a DMA obligation?

The DMA currently states that the European Commission alone will be responsible for enforcement, meaning they would investigate any alleged violations and hand out penalties to any gatekeepers that violate the DMA’s new rules.

The authors of the DMA seem to understand the size of the companies they are trying to rein in. In fact, these companies are so large, they regularly set aside billions of dollars just to pay regulatory fines. In light of this, gatekeepers that violate the DMA would face:

Fines of up to 10% of the company’s total worldwide annual turnover Example: Facebook’s global revenue for 2019 was $71 billion. It could, therefore, be subject to a $7.1 billion fine.

Periodic penalty payments of up to 5% of the average daily turnover for ongoing infractions

And if a company repeatedly or systematically violates its DMA obligations as a gatekeeper, the Commission could impose additional penalties, including potential “structural remedies” (e.g., being forced to sell parts of the business).

The DMA could change the internet

Proton supports the DMA as a welcome recognition that it is time to stop letting Big Tech run the internet.

As an organization dedicated to defending fundamental human rights and democracy. Big Tech’s accumulation of power has been an ongoing concern. Before we can create an internet that puts people first, we need to end the monopolies’ domination. The DMA targets many of the most egregious abuses over the past decade, especially in the mobile device sector.

If the DMA’s obligations are enforced quickly and vigorously, they have the potential to change the very business model many of the gatekeepers rely upon. Several of the DMA’s obligations, such as the prohibition on mixing gatekeeper data and commercially available data, would make it harder for companies like Google and Facebook to monetize users’ personal data.

And if these companies continuously violate the DMA, the Commission could force Google to divest from YouTube (or Facebook from Instagram).

The DMA’s success or failure will come down to how the current draft’s principles are fleshed out into actual provisions that can be implemented and how the Commission decides to pursue enforcement. Big Tech has been cementing its position for years, so it is important that the EU gets the DMA correct from the beginning. Every delay gives tech monopolists more time to further entrench their advantages.

One cause for concern is the amount of manpower the European Commission is calling for. According to recent documents, the task group that will lead DMA enforcement is to be composed of 80 individuals, which seems woefully inadequate given their task’s scope and complexity. Further, the Commission suggests creating this team only after the DMA is enacted, meaning they could be stuck playing catch up.

The GDPR is a pertinent example. The GDPR has been successful in giving users a greater window into which companies have access to their data. The DMA is also taking inspiration from the GDPR in that it is legislation that aspires to be global in its impact. Unfortunately, the current DMA proposal did not learn from the GDPR’s mistake of not having national data protection agencies fully staffed when the GDPR was implemented. This staffing lag meant that it took over a year before any major penalties for GDPR infractions were handed out.

Advocating for a strong DMA

We are now entering a critical phase of the DMA. Big Tech is going to try to exert all its influence to water down the DMA obligations and their enforcement, precisely because it would expose them to true competition. European citizens and independent tech companies must prevent these lobbying efforts from succeeding.

We will go into greater depth on how we would like to see the DMA bolstered and implemented in another blog post.

If you live in Europe and want an internet that respects your security, privacy, and freedom, contact your MEP and tell them you support a strong DMA that is actively enforced.

The DMA represents the best chance society has had in years to check Big Tech’s power and break up the monopolists.

#dma #big tech #europe #digital markets act

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endenogatai · 3 years

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International coalition joins the call to ban ‘surveillance advertising’

An international coalition of consumer protection, digital and civil rights organizations and data protection experts has added its voice to growing calls for a ban on what’s been billed as “surveillance-based advertising”.

The objection is to a form of digital advertising that relies upon a massive apparatus of background data processing which sucks in information about individuals, as they browse and use services, to create profiles which are used to determine which ads to serve (via multi-participant processes like the high speed auctions known as real-time bidding).

The EU’s lead data protection supervisor previously called for a ban on targeted advertising which relies upon pervasive tracking — warning over a multitude of associated rights risks.

Last fall the EU parliament also urged tighter rules on behavioral ads.

Back in March, a US coalition of privacy, consumer, competition and civil rights groups also took collective aim at microtargeting. So pressure is growing on lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic to tackle exploitative adtech as consensus builds over the damage associated with mass surveillance-based manipulation.

At the same time, momentum is clearly building for pro-privacy consumer tech and services — showing the rising store being placed by users and innovators on business models that respect people’s data.

The growing uptake of such services underlines how alternative, rights-respecting digital business models are not only possible (and accessible, with many freemium offerings) but increasingly popular.

On a growth tear, DuckDuckGo reveals it picked up $100M in secondary investment last year

In an open letter addressing EU and US policymakers, the international coalition — which is comprised of 55 organizations and more than 20 experts including groups like Privacy International, the Open Rights Group, the Center for Digital Democracy, the New Economics Foundation, Beuc, Edri and Fairplay — urges legislative action, calling for a ban on ads that rely on “systematic commercial surveillance” of Internet users in order to serve what Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg likes, euphemistically, to refer to as ‘relevant ads’.

The problem with Zuckerberg’s (self-serving) framing is that, as the coalition points out, the vast majority of consumers don’t actually want to be spied upon to be served with these creepy ads.

Any claimed ‘relevance’ is irrelevant to consumers who experience ad-stalking as creepy and unpleasant. (And just imagine how the average Internet user would feel if they could peek behind the adtech curtain — and see the vast databases where people are profiled at scale so their attention can be sliced and diced for commercial interests and sold to the highest bidder).

The coalition points to a report examining consumer attitudes to surveillance-based advertising, prepared by one of the letter’s signatories (the Norwegian Consumer Council; NCC), which found that only one in ten people are positive about commercial actors collecting information about them online — and only one in five think ads based on personal information are okay.

1/4

80-90% of people online don't want to be spied on for 'more relevant ads,' finds @Forbrukerradet's report.

Neither do we at @edri, which is why we join over 50 orgs & 20 academics & experts for a transatlantic call to #BanSurveillanceAdvertising.https://t.co/bTCdZIsSuP pic.twitter.com/3rtDjAMIxA

— EDRi (@edri) June 23, 2021

A full third of respondents to the survey were “very negative” about microtargeted ads — while almost half think advertisers should not be able to target ads based on any form of personal information.

The report also highlights a sense of impotence among consumers when they go online, with six out of ten respondents feeling that they have no choice but to give up information about themselves.

That finding should be particularly concerning for EU policymakers as the bloc’s data protection framework is supposed to provide citizens with a suite of rights related to their personal data that should protect them against being strong-armed to hand over info — including stipulating that if a data controller intends to rely on user consent to process data then consent must be informed, specific and freely given; it can’t be stolen, strong-armed or sneaked through using dark patterns. (Although that remains all too often the case.)

Europe’s cookie consent reckoning is coming

Forced consent is not legal under EU law — yet, per the NCC’s European survey, a majority of respondents feel they have no choice but to be creeped on when they use the Internet.

That in turn points to an ongoing EU enforcement failure over major adtech-related complaints, scores of which have been filed in recent years under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — some of which are now over three years old (yet still haven’t resulted in any action against rule-breakers).

Over the past couple of years EU lawmakers have acknowledged problems with patchy GDPR enforcement — and it’s interesting to note that the Commission suggested some alternative enforcement structures in its recent digital regulation proposals, such as for oversight of very large online platforms in the Digital Services Act (DSA).

In the letter, the coalition suggests the DSA as the ideal legislative vehicle to contain a ban on surveillance-based ads.

Negotiations to shape a final proposal which EU institutions will need to vote on remain ongoing — but it’s possible the EU parliament could pick up the baton to push for a ban on surveillance ads. It has the power to amend the Commission’s legislative proposals and its approval is needed for draft laws to be adopted. So there’s plenty still to play for.

“In the US, we urge legislators to enact comprehensive privacy legislation,” the coalition adds.

US privacy, consumer, competition and civil rights groups urge ban on ‘surveillance advertising’

The coalition is backing up its call for a ban on surveillance-based advertising with another report (also by the NCC) which lays out the case against microtargeting — summarizing the raft of concerns that have come to be attached to manipulative ads as awareness of the adtech industry’s vast, background people-profiling and data trading has grown.

Listed concerns not only focus on how privacy-stripping practices are horrible for individual consumers (enabling the manipulation, discrimination and exploitation of individuals and vulnerable groups) but also flag the damage to digital competition as a result of adtech platforms and data brokers intermediating and cannibalizing publishers’ revenues — eroding, for example, the ability of professional journalism to sustain itself and creating the conditions where ad fraud has been able to flourish.

Another contention is that the overall health of democratic societies is put at risk by surveillance-based advertising — as the apparatus and incentives fuel the amplification of misinformation and create security risks, and even national security risks. (Strong and independent journalism is also, of course, a core plank of a healthy democracy.)

“This harms consumers and businesses, and can undermine the cornerstones of democracy,” the coalition warns.

“Although we recognize that advertising is an important source of revenue for content creators and publishers online, this does not justify the massive commercial surveillance systems set up in attempts to ‘show the right ad to the right people’,” the letter goes on. “Other forms of advertising technologies exist, which do not depend on spying on consumers, and cases have shown that such alternative models can be implemented without significantly affecting revenue.

“There is no fair trade-off in the current surveillance-based advertising system. We encourage you to take a stand and consider a ban of surveillance-based advertising as part of the Digital Services Act in the EU, and the for U.S. to enact a long overdue federal privacy law.”

Data from Dutch public broadcaster shows the value of ditching creepy ads

The letter is just the latest salvo against ‘toxic adtech’. And advertising giants like Facebook and Google have — for several years now — seen the pro-privacy writing on the wall.

Hence Facebook’s claimed ‘pivot to privacy‘; its plan to lock in its first party data advantage (by merging the infrastructure of different messaging products); and its keen interest in crypto.

It’s also why Google has been working on a stack of alternative adtech that it wants to replace third party tracking cookies. Although its proposed replacement — the so-called ‘Privacy Sandbox‘ — would still enable groups of Internet users to be opaquely clustered by its algorithms in ‘interest’ buckets for ad targeting purposes which still doesn’t look great for Internet users’ rights either. (And concerns have been raised on the competition front too.)

Where its ‘Sandbox’ proposal is concerned, Google may well be factoring in the possibility of legislation that outlaws — or, at least, more tightly controls — microtargeting. And it’s therefore trying to race ahead with developing alternative adtech that would have much the same targeting potency (maintaining its market power) but, by swapping out individuals for cohorts of web users, could potentially sidestep a ban on ‘microtargeting’ technicalities.

Legislators addressing this issue will therefore need to be smart in how they draft any laws intended to tackle the damage caused by surveillance-based advertising.

Certainly they will if they want to prevent the same old small- and large-scale manipulation abuses from being perpetuated.

The NCC’s report points to what it dubs as “good alternatives” for digital advertising models which don’t depend on the systematic surveillance of consumers to function. And which — it also argues — provide advertisers and publishers with “more oversight and control over where ads are displayed and which ads are being shown”.

The problem of ad fraud is certainly massively underreported. But, well, it’s instructive to recall how often Facebook has had to ‘fess up to problems with self reported ad metrics…

“It is possible to sell advertising space without basing it on intimate details about consumers. Solutions already exist to show ads in relevant contexts, or where consumers self-report what ads they want to see,” the NCC’s director of digital policy, Finn Myrstad, noted in a statement.

“A ban on surveillance-based advertising would also pave the way for a more transparent advertising marketplace, diminishing the need to share large parts of ad revenue with third parties such as data brokers. A level playing field would contribute to giving advertisers and content providers more control, and keep a larger share of the revenue.”

EU’s top privacy regulator urges ban on surveillance-based ad targeting

EU parliament backs tighter rules on behavioural ads

Adtech ‘data breach’ GDPR complaint is headed to court in EU

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#IFTTT #RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204425

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shirlleycoyle · 4 years

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How a Petition to Shut Down Pornhub Got Two Million Signatures

Laila Mickelwait's timing was perfect. It was, in some ways, inevitable that her “TraffickingHub” campaign to shut down Pornhub would go viral when it launched in February.

Right after the Superbowl, an event that's been incorrectly called the biggest human trafficking day of the year for almost a decade—the Washington Examiner published Mickelwait's op-ed titled “Time to shut Pornhub down.” In that piece, she used recent incidents of exploitative content on one of the most popular porn platforms on the internet to argue that Pornhub should be shut down entirely. She highlighted videos that led to the arrest of a rapist after he uploaded child porn of his victim to the site, as well as the Girls Do Porn lawsuit.

Mickelwait told me that readers of that op-ed asked her to start a petition. Now, it has nearly two million signatures in support of shuttering Pornhub. In March, dozens of protestors, some from anti-porn and anti-sex work groups, gathered outside of Mindgeek's Montreal headquarters, in support of TraffickingHub. Mindgeek is the parent company of Pornhub, as well as several other porn sites, including RedTube and YouPorn.

“Pornhub, the world's largest and most popular porn site, has been repeatedly caught enabling, hosting, and profiting from videos of child rape, sex trafficking, and other forms of non-consensual content exploiting women and minors,” the TraffickingHub petition states. “We're calling for Pornhub to be shut down and its executives held accountable for these crimes.”

Motherboard's own reporting on the Girls Do Porn lawsuit has shown how tube sites like Pornhub are used by abusers to dox and harass women and post nonconsensual porn. Our reporting has shown that Pornhub’s held partnerships with companies like Girls Do Porn, which systematically pressured, harassed, and threatened women into doing porn have legitimized them, and that Pornhub's failure to enforce its own policies means it can host illegal content like upskirt videos. There are many legitimate reasons for revenge porn victims and adult content owners to be critical of Pornhub, some of which TraffickingHub points out.

But what people who sign the TraffickingHub petition might not understand is that the campaign, while focused on Pornhub, comes from the world of anti sex trafficking activism—and specifically, from a large Christian organization, Exodus Cry, which opposes decriminalizing or legalizing sex work and wants to abolish porn altogether. On its website, Exodus Cry claims to be “committed to abolishing sex trafficking and breaking the cycle of commercial sexual exploitation while assisting and empowering its victims.”

The people speaking out against TraffickingHub, many of them sex workers and abuse survivors themselves, say its parent organization has a history of homophobia and bigotry, and are peddling a victim narrative to “save” sex workers while harming them with pushes for legislation that doesn't work.

Religiously affiliated anti-trafficking organizations aren't just Bible thumpers. The legislation they've advocated for has done tangible harm to sex workers, on top of upholding stigmas against sex work as work, painting everyone in the sex trade as victims in need of saving from their circumstances.

Exodus Cry's website states that it uses funding to change laws that will “end the sex industry,” and “works with governments and legislators… to implement legislation that creates criminal culpability for sex buyers, pimps, and traffickers, and brings freedom and support to victims.”

As TraffickingHub gained popularity in recent months, years of criticism of Exodus Cry has resurfaced. Some of that criticism stems from a “chapter leader application” form that once appeared on the Exodus Cry website.

The application involved taking a “purity covenant,” agreeing to a detailed, Biblical statement of faith, and answering questions like “Do you believe heterosexual sex outside of marriage is sinful? Yes/No, if No please explain,” and “Are you currently struggling with pornography?; Have you struggled with pornography in the past?; Are you or have you struggled with homosexual thoughts, feelings or behaviors?”

University of Liverpool criminologist Gemma Ahearne, who found and wrote about the application in June 2019, said that at the time it was accessible on the Exodus Cry website and visible through a Wayback Machine archive. The application is no longer available on the Exodus Cry website, and the Internet Archive told Motherboard the entire Exodus Cry domain was excluded from the Wayback Machine as of June 1, 2019, following a response to a request from a rights holder to have it removed from archival view.

On August 19, I emailed Mickelwait to ask about the origins of the chapter application. On August 20, she responded with what she said was “an official statement from Exodus Cry on the libelous accusations.”

The statement, which was published on the Exodus Cry website the same day, said that “Exodus Cry is an organization that since its inception has never advocated, campaigned, or focused on any other issue besides sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation. Sexual exploitation is the singular focus of Exodus Cry, and any suggestion that Exodus Cry has campaigned against any other issue is categorically false.”

The statement also includes a quote from Exodus Cry founder Benjamin Nolot in response to a 2013 tweet in which he said “I oppose homosexual marriage on the premise that it is an unspeakable offense to God and His design for marriage between a man and a woman.”

A 2013 tweet from Benjamin Nolot. Screenshot via Open Democracy

“Like much of our nation, a decade ago when the issue was being widely debated, I expressed in a single personal tweet that I thought government had a role to play in defining marriage,” Nolot said in that statement. “Even former president Obama held similar views in the past. Today, like many, my views have evolved and I believe every individual should make that decision for themselves without government being involved in such a personal choice. I advocate for the right of all people to be free from all forms of oppression and that without question includes the LGBTQ+ community.”

Mickelwait and the statement also said that Exodus Cry does not even have chapters, something she's brought up previously on Twitter when confronted with the application screenshots.

“There is only one Exodus Cry. Exodus Cry does not have chapters,” the statement says. “Therefore a 'chapter application' has no relevance to our organization’s work. This claim intentionally misrepresents our organization.”

Exodus Cry may not have chapters now, but it did at one point. A 2009 annual report by Exodus Cry touted the organization had “26 chapters in five different nations (including the United States).” a 2010 annual report mentions a “local Exodus Cry chapter” in Norfolk, Virginia.

I sent Mickelwait these reports, and asked again whether the chapter application, which included the “purity covenant” and the questions about gay marriage ever appeared on the Exodus Cry site.

She sent me another statement, attributed to Nolot: “We have investigated the 'chapters' application and determined that 12 years ago when EC was formed a volunteer borrowed a document that had been used by another ministry as a model for EC and there were sections related to chapters that inadvertently remained in the documents as a relic. As explained, EC does not have chapters, and has not had chapters for over a decade, therefore the application has no relevance to our work. Exodus Cry is in the process of removing those legacy materials now that they have been brought to our attention”

The chapter application is no longer available on the Exodus Cry website, nor does the site seem explicitly religious at first glance. There's a page that notes the organization's original connection to prayer, quotes the Bible, and says that "we have seen the Lord’s mighty hand of deliverance in response to prayer," but otherwise Exodus Cry and TraffickingHub both have slick websites featuring animated explainer videos and photographs of excited and diverse young people.

The organization's own tax filings show it seems to be slowly distancing itself from religious affiliation. In 2015, it stated its purpose as being "built on a foundation of prayer and is committed to abolishing sex slavery through Christ centered prevention, intervention, and holistic restoration of trafficking victims.” In 2017, it dropped the “Christ” part, and by 2018, it made no mention of prayer or religion whatsoever, instead stating its purpose as an “international non-profit organization committed to abolishing sex trafficking and the commercial sex industry while assisting and empowering its victims.”

In 2018, Open Democracy wrote about Liberated: The New Sexual Revolution a documentary directed by Nolot which has been on Netflix since 2017. The film documented spring break in Florida and critiqued “hookup culture,” but didn't disclose the religiously-affiliated background of its production—drawing criticism from women's rights groups for hiding these affiliations.

Primarily by interviewing drunk college students on the beach, the documentary builds the case that sexualization in media and pop culture is to blame for objectification of women's bodies and toxic masculinity. Like the current debate around “WAP” that upset several Republican politicians and conservative pundits, it questions whether women can take full, unashamed and public ownership of their sexuality without harming themselves, and whether that is something people really want or are just told that they want by popular culture. It identifies and highlights issues many people, even those who don't think of themselves as religious or anti-sex, can agree are problems—such as the pressure some young women feel to cater to a male gaze, rape culture, and risky or dangerous sexual encounters in college—without ever making its religious affiliations explicit. Someone can easily browse Netflix, watch Liberated, and largely agree with its message without knowing anything about the people who made it.

TraffickingHub similarly gained support on social media from people who didn't understand what they were signing up for.

Mika Lavallee is not a sex worker or an activist, but when she saw the TraffickingHub petition on Twitter, she signed it immediately.

“I signed the petition for the purpose of allyship. For victims and survivors of sex trafficking,” she said. “The TraffickingHub video really did a good job at villainizing Pornhub, and at a perfect time when many petitions for all sorts of injustices were being shared on all social media platforms. Without doing my research, I signed the petition thinking I was doing a good thing that would make positive change and help victims.”

Ginger Banks, Gwen Adora, and Maya Morena are just three of the many sex workers who have been speaking out against TraffickingHub, posting Instagram, Twitter and TikTok videos about Exodus Cry's conservative roots for months.

“It's such a fucking publicity game, especially with like, 'Oh my god, but it was named 'stop sex trafficking' and you're against it? That means you're for sex trafficking,’” Banks told me.

Banks recently started her own petition, demanding that Pornhub and its sister sites YouPorn and Redtube change their video uploading and verification processes so that content couldn't go up without the owner's consent. As of writing, that petition has over 8,000 signatures.

Adora hosted an Instagram Live about the TraffickingHub campaign in July. “The entire mission of TraffickingHub is not what myself, other sex workers and survivors believe to be effective for their end goal—shutting down a porn site isn't going to stop the abuse that happens in person and online,” Adora told me.

Lavallee saw one of Banks' videos on the topic, and regretted putting her name on the petition without digging deeper. “I truly felt uncomfortable that I had signed that petition,” she said. “I am pro everything they’re against!”

Change.org petitions were flying around the internet around the time Lavallee signed TraffickingHub this spring. Many of them were demanding justice for Black people murdered or harmed by law enforcement. But people across all industries started demanding more for themselves: a newly-invigorated labor movement broke out across the U.S., and this included within the adult industry. TraffickingHub's use of “abolitionist” language has a long history within trafficking awareness groups. The term abolition appropriates 18th and 19th century movements to abolish slavery, and Exodus Cry invokes the legacy of William Wilberforce, a deeply religious 18th century abolitionist against the British slave trade.

Abolition has gained a renewed mainstream popularity during the Black Lives Matter movement, as people call to abolish the police. But in the context of sex work, workers reject the phrase. “Not only do sex workers not see our work as akin to slavery but using this term minimizes and trivializes the experiences of those who have (and do) endure slavery,” according to the Global Network of Sex Work Projects.

TraffickingHub's arrival tapped into something sex workers have been talking about for some time, but has only recently reached mainstream conversations.

“Criticisms of various companies and MindGeek are fairly common in the sex work community,” Morena told me. “Campaigns like this often find something real they can use to push an agenda. For many people, the TraffickingHub campaign is the first time they've ever heard of MindGeek, or tech conglomerates in general that make a business model largely from stolen porn.”

TraffickingHub's website notes that it is “powered by” Exodus Cry. Mickelwait said that she initiated and directs the TraffickingHub campaign, which is supported by Exodus Cry financially, with human resources, technical support, and legal support.

“There are 300 organizations and almost two million people from 192 countries who are part of this effort who agree that no one should be raped and trafficked for profit on the world’s largest and most popular porn site,” Mickelwait told me. “The Traffickinghub campaign is a non-partisan, non-religious effort that consists of a diverse group of individual advocates who share this common goal.”

Exodus Cry and some of the groups supporting TraffickingHub are against all forms of commercial sex work, and are working toward legislation sex workers say will harm them. Eighty-two organizations are listed on the TraffickingHub website as supporting the cause. Almost half of these explicitly support an “end demand” model of sex work (they use the term “prostitution” instead of sex work), also known as the Nordic model, which criminalizes sex buyers and which sex worker advocacy groups say only exposes them to more risk because sex work doesn’t go away, it simply becomes less visible and thus more dangerous.

A few examples: The Coalition Against Women in Trafficking believes decriminalizing sex work would be “a gift to pimps, traffickers and the sex industry.” The UK-based Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation is anti-pornography and against all sex work, and lists several claims about the adult industry on its site, including that “it’s impossible to know for sure whether production was consensual,” which is false. Dublin-based NGO Ruhama states “prostitution has negatively impacted on women’s liberty, bodily autonomy and physical and mental wellbeing.” Space International calls for the Nordic Model. Defend Dignity, one of the groups present at the Mindgeek headquarters protest, states that “prostitution is a form of sexual exploitation, oppression, and violence especially against women and children and seriously undermines their dignity and value” and "prostitution is detrimental to a healthy society.”

So many of these organizations claim to be fighting for exploited women by pushing a model of partial decriminalization—in “ending demand” and the Nordic model—while ignoring the people they're trying to “rescue,” who say that they don't want full legalization or to end demand but rather, full decriminalization of the sex trade. They often set up the argument as legalization versus criminalization, with their own solution in the middle, even though sex workers as well as human rights groups including Amnesty International say that only full decriminalization will make their work safer.

On Exodus Cry's website, the organization claims that “time, testing, and research have demonstrated unequivocally that policies focused on eliminating demand are extremely effective in eliminating sex trafficking,” citing a 2012 paper on legalizing sex work. But this isn't what that paper claims.

“The likely negative consequences of legalized prostitution on a country’s inflows of human trafficking might be seen to support those who argue in favor of banning prostitution, thereby reducing the flows of trafficking,” the paper's authors concluded. “However, such a line of argumentation overlooks potential benefits that the legalization of prostitution might have on those employed in the industry. Working conditions could be substantially improved for prostitutes–at least those legally employed–if prostitution is legalized.”

“Research and the testimonies of survivors have demonstrated that full decriminalization and legalization legitimizes and increases trafficking as well as the violence and exploitation of vulnerable sex workers and we don’t support legislation that would expose the most vulnerable to increased harm and exploitation,” Nolot said when I told him sex workers say the “end demand” model would harm them.

“Partial decriminalization is the only solution that will both protect those who sell or are sold for sex, while holding those who exploit them accountable for their actions,” Nolot added. He cited as research, a paper written by anti-porn and anti-sex work activist Melissa Farley, and SPACE International executive director Rachel Moran, both outspoken advocates for the Nordic model.

One of the biggest organizations supporting TraffickingHub is the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, which lobbies to abolish pornography, wants to pass the EARN-IT bill which a myriad of internet freedom advocates say will be devastating to rights online, and applauded the passage of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), which has done material harm to sex workers and made exploitation worse. On August 4, the White House press secretary cited NCOSE's unfounded statement that TikTok enables human trafficking as proof that EARN-IT should pass. Ron DeHaas, chairman of the board for NCOSE, says porn is a tool of Satan.

TraffickingHub argues that Pornhub removed 118 instances of child sexual abuse material in the last three years—a statistic Pornhub doesn't deny. But sex workers who speak out against shutting down Pornhub point out is the culpability of most social networks for abusive content, including revenge or child porn. In 2019, Facebook said it removed 11.6 million pieces of content related to child nudity and child sexual exploitation in just three months. Twitter says it took action to remove more than 30,000 unique accounts reported for child sexual abuse between January and June 2019.

“Being against the organization or their goals becomes ‘you're against these survivors personally”

In response to the TraffickingHub petition, the UK-based child sexual abuse nonprofit Internet Watch Foundation has said that platforms like Twitter and Facebook “pose more of an issue of child sexual abuse material than Pornhub does.”

“But, of course, no one will petition for those social media sites to be taken down—because people are more concerned about porn and sex work than anything else,” Adora said.

“Pornhub has a steadfast commitment to eradicating any and all illegal content, including non-consensual and under-age material, and actively works to employ state of the art, comprehensive measures to protect its platform from such content. Any suggestion otherwise is categorically and factually inaccurate,” a Pornhub spokesperson told Motherboard. “Regarding the group [Exodus Cry] behind the campaign and petition, their history of hateful rhetoric toward women and the LGBTQ community, as well as toward those who don't abide by their vision of purity, is extremely disturbing.”

In a response to Pornhub's previous public statements against Exodus Cry and TraffickingHub's allegations, TraffickingHub published a “Statement of Inclusion,” which says “we do not discriminate based on sex, race, class, political views, religious or non-religious views, or sexual orientations.” The response then quotes support from several sex-worker exclusionary radical feminist and anti-sex work organizations, including abolitionist organization Prostitution Research & Education that denies sex work is real work, and prominent anti-porn scholar Gail Dines.

Politicians, lobbyists, and fundraising organizations use human trafficking as a lever to pull on whatever pet project they want, because trafficking—especially child and sex trafficking—is a conversation-ender. No one, not even people who oppose more funding for trafficking prevention or criticize groups like Exodus Cry, would support sex trafficking or say it needs to be allowed to go on unchecked. But campaigns like TraffickingHub set up a false dichotomy: Either you're for shutting down Pornhub, or you're against stopping saving children from the horrors of sex trafficking.

“Being against the organization or their goals becomes ‘you're against these survivors personally,’” sex worker Maya Morena said. “People sign on largely because of the emotional appeal, they're less likely to look into the orgs, or the possible consequences of pushing for a quick carceral solution. People forget that they're supporting organizations and actual political policies.”

We've seen it happen most recently with the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, FOSTA. After Donald Trump signed the bill into law, Exodus Cry wrote on its Facebook page: “FOSTA/SESTA has already made a significant impact on the ecosystem of sex trafficking… This could be considered the most significant macroeconomic event ever, related to commercial sexual exploitation.” In a way, that's correct. After FOSTA, it became harder than ever for sex workers to vet clients, as sites cracked down on sexual speech in order to avoid breaking the law and incurring fines.

The legislation wasn't even effective at stopping human trafficking. “Not only is the law arguably creating negative side effects for speech online and creating danger for sex workers, it is not even achieving its legal objective,” law associate Emily Born wrote in her study of post-FOSTA impacts for the New York Law Review in 2019.

The way anti-trafficking organizations portray sex workers as needing rescue is apparent throughout their missions. For example, Exodus Cry's “In Her Shoes” campaign tells stories of women who were so moved by abolitionists' messages of salvation from brothels or sex work that they handed over their stiletto heels, as a “symbol of slavery, fastened about the ankles of sexually exploited women.” When Helen Taylor, Exodus Cry's Director of Outreach and Intervention, testified at a DC council hearing against the Community Safety and Health Amendment Act of 2019 (which would have decriminalized sex work in DC, making sex work safer), she pulled out a pair of high heels as a prop.

The TraffickingHub website says that donations made through the campaign go to Exodus Cry. According to Exodus Cry, it's raised almost $200,000 through TraffickingHub so far. “Those who financially support the Traffickinghub campaign are enabling us to further expose the violent injustice of rape and sex trafficking that Pornhub is profiting from,” Mickelwait told me. “In addition, funds coming into the campaign help provide support and legal services to survivors of sexual abuse and exploitation on Pornhub.”

There are no details on the TraffickingHub campaign site as to how, exactly, they plan to shut Pornhub down or hold it accountable, beyond amassing signatures, which in themselves don't do anything. But Mickelwait told me that the plan is “to hold Pornhub accountable to the full extent of the law both criminally, civilly and legislatively.”

Mickelwait plans to keep the petition running until it accomplishes the “aims of the movement,” she said: “To hold Pornhub accountable for enabling and profiting from the mass rape and trafficking of women and children; and until the enactment of legislation that requires third-party verification of age and consent for every person featured in every video on 'porn tube' platforms that host pornography.”

If that accountability comes in the form of a total shutdown of Pornhub and tube sites like it, some sex workers say this will only make things worse for them, as their work is already marginalized. But sex workers don't represent a homogeneity of needs and beliefs. Some sex workers stand by TraffickingHub, in spite of what Exodus Cry stands for, and are willing to look the other way when it comes to Exodus Cry's abolitionist agenda. Others believe Exodus Cry's mission will only harm them more.

“The people that are pushing back on [Pornhub] that still say, ‘I rely on this and I just want them to do better,’ are not getting the same kind of traction publicly, because they're sex workers,” sex worker rights advocate Kate D'Adamo told me. "I think it is disingenuous, and intentionally disingenuous, from folks like Laila [Mickelwait] to pretend like there are people who are pro-Pornhub, [versus] people who want to shut it down… Most people that I've interacted with want Pornhub to do better, but just can't lose that income. But they do have very valid concerns.”

Mickelwait told me that she'd consulted with sex workers and sexual abuse survivors from a range of experiences and beliefs while building the TraffickingHub campaign. Two of those spoke only on the condition of anonymity, claiming that they feared retribution or retaliation from Mindgeek, Pornhub's parent company.

“Multiple people in my industry have told me Laila from TraffickingHub is tricking me and others by claiming to be against child porn, but really they want to abolish porn,” a sex worker who is supportive of TraffickingHub's mission told me. “There's truth to that… It gave me pause, but ultimately, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I don't think anyone is going to abolish porn, that's ridiculous. When you have consenting adults agree to make love on camera, there is nothing illegal about that.”

Most of the TraffickingHub supporters who are also sex workers I spoke to expressed frustration about Pornhub's lack of responses to copyright complaints and stolen content.

One said that they came across TraffickingHub online after getting frustrated with reporting their own stolen content on Pornhub. They say Pornhub didn't take the content down, so they went searching for help.

“I was furious,” they said. “It was on this day when I searched for an organization with like-minded views and found TraffickingHub.”

Another sex worker, who goes by Kai, told me that Mickelwait reached out to them to ask about their experiences with Pornhub. Kai, who is a victim of child sexual abuse, stopped uploading their work to Pornhub recently, after seeing what they said was disturbing content on the platform.

“So many sex workers including myself are survivors of sexual abuse and other sexual violence,” Kai said. “I cannot in good faith support a website that would profit off the torture and pain of children, and even some adults as well. TraffickingHub is necessary to show that no amount of money and no site should ever be able to support and profit off of trauma and abuse.”

I asked Kai what they thought about Exodus Cry's stances on prostitution being a form of exploitation.

“I will not lie, I have seen criticism of Exodus Cry saying they are homophobic and against sex work,” they said. “I am a gay sex worker and honestly if it is true I don't really care. Everybody has a right to their own opinion if it is true and ultimately all I care about is that right now that you're trying to help us."

Shiloh Connor set up a separate petition called “Sex Workers Against ExploitationHub” in June, “to raise traction in sex work circles without being forced to interact with problematic orgs like ExodusCry,” they said. “I don't necessarily think THAT petition is necessary, but I do believe that a dedicated campaign to shut down MindGeek and redistribute its financial assets is necessary," Connor told me.

“We the undersigned formally condemn and demand the shutdown of MindGeek and its subsidiaries, and the funds gained from the company over the past 5 years be redistributed to all models, content producers, camgirls, showgirls, and victims of abuse/trafficking exploited by the company,” the petition, which has raised a little more than 3,200 signatures, states.

Connor said that while they agree with criticisms against Exodus Cry, they still spoke with Mickelwait. “Yes, she has acknowledged her organization's homophobia and SWERFisms [sex worker-exclusionary radical feminists, or feminists who don't support sex work] lightly in the past. But words are not enough,” they said. “I feel that by creating a sex positive campaign to walk alongside hers, I can start a conversation about the inherent humanity of sex workers, and how anti-trafficking orgs and decrim orgs need to work together.”

“That is categorically and demonstrably false as innumerable written and other communications I have had reflect," Mickelwait said regarding Conor's claim that she's acknowledged the organization's past. "Exodus Cry is nothing but loving toward, respectful of, and supportive of the LGBTQ+ community, and any suggestion that I have said otherwise is false.”

Not all sex workers want Pornhub to shut down, because Pornhub can be an important source of income for some: its verified Amateur Program, Modelhub platform, ad revenue on video uploads, and tips from fans all pay out to varying degrees. For many established models, Pornhub is a revenue stream among several other paid subscription platforms like Onlyfans. And because Pornhub is one of the world's most popular and accessible porn sites, even free content can boost a performer's brand if fans find them there and move to paid sites.

“We are the people who depend on these platforms for income, but we also acknowledge and push for change”

Supporters and detractors of the campaign agree that Pornhub needs to do a better job of preventing stolen content from being hosted on the site. Banks' petition for better verification practices voices what most sex workers who've had their work reposted to tube sites without their contest struggle with: that their content can go up on these sites for free, without their knowledge, often without their credit, and without them profiting from the ads that run alongside the content. But for years—and still, today—porn piracy was something most people outside of the industry didn't care to talk about. The only people speaking up about it were sex workers, and people who aimed to use the problem of piracy to accuse the entire industry of exploitation.

“It's not a crazy concept that they should only allow porn on their website from people who want their porn on the website,” Banks said. “There's just no one else speaking out against this, and the only place you have [people speaking out] is the internet, where stuff is so viral… people don't do any of their own research, they just take what they are told at face value.”

In the same way, many of the people criticizing TraffickingHub are sex workers who are often pushed to the margins of the internet thorough shadowbanning or, ironically, platforms kicking them off due to FOSTA or appeasing advertisers and investors—the very same practices they're fighting against.

Holding Pornhub accountable for copyright infringement and lax verification processes is a catch-22 for some sex workers. Because the industry is already stigmatized, speaking out about the issues within it—as many did when accusers of on-set abuses came forward in June—is even more difficult.

“Sex workers are the most critical people when it comes to our own porn platforms and the problems that come with them,” Adora said. “We are the people who depend on these platforms for income, but we also acknowledge and push for change. We participate in our own boycotts—we are the people who make porn companies money so we are vocal about our criticisms and hold them accountable for their wrongdoings. Not many other social platforms can say that.”

The campaign for shutting down Pornhub doesn't stop with one platform. Mickelwait celebrated PayPal's removal of service to Pornhub as a win, and are pushing for other major credit card companies to do the same—despite sex workers saying that fewer payment options in an already highly discriminatory financial situation will only make exploitation worse.

Screenshot of a February 2020 tweet from Laila Mickelwait

We're inundated with sex trafficking and human trafficking narratives every day, from Wayfair conspiracy theories to QAnon being given a platform in the White House.

Now, a trafficking narrative is threatening to advance another harmful bill through Congress: the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act, known as EARN IT. This bill would form a National Commission on Online Child Sexual Exploitation Prevention, and develop practices meant to “prevent, reduce, and respond to the online sexual exploitation of children, including the enticement, grooming, sex trafficking, and sexual abuse of children and the proliferation of online child sexual abuse material.” The commission would be made up of law enforcement officials and Silicon Valley industry representatives.

In July, a Judiciary Committee panel unanimously voted to progress EARN-IT to Senate vote, applauding themselves for working toward stopping trafficking.

“I think that EARN-IT and TraffickingHub really play into each other in terms of providing this very glossy cover that a lot of people don't necessarily look into,” D'Adamo said. “At the end of the day it's going to be people who are reliant on—not just Pornhub but porn sites in general—for their income, who are not going to be centered, and whose livelihoods are not going to be considered when we're looking at what the damage is.”

How a Petition to Shut Down Pornhub Got Two Million Signatures syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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emedpharmatech · 4 years

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How e-pharmacy is beneficial to customers

An online pharmacy store can effectively address various issues the Indian healthcare customer and system face. Let’s find out the most advantageous benefit it offers:

Consumer convenience:

Consumer access:

Consumer education:

Data records:

Medicine authenticity:

Transaction records:

Data analytics:

Industry sustainability:

The customer would most likely be able to order medicines in a quick manner, from their mobile phone or computer. This will fundamentally help patients who are as of now sick and not in a condition to go out to search for a pharmacy store.

Online platforms can aggregate supplies, making generally hard to look out medicines available to customers across the country. Offline pharmacy stores can just keep limited inventory, bringing about a customer requesting various stores to get his or her meds.

Online pharmacies have the technology infrastructure to offer value-added information to customers, for example, drug interactions, medicine reminders, side effects, and information on less expensive substitutes. The more aware customers will dependably benefit from the power of knowledge, which is effectively appropriated through the electronic medium

All prescription purchases can be tracked - viably reducing the problem of medication abuse and self-medication.

With full tracking systems and strong technology backend, fake medications can be traced back to the channel/supplier/manufacturer, in this way making the market significantly more transparent and guaranteeing that credibility is strictly maintained

Organized online players would have systematic records for all the transactions, with full charges paid on every transaction. An extraordinary advantage to the state thinking about the size of the market

Online drug stores can store and analyze a lot of data on shoppers across the country which can be very valuable for planning public health policies.

An online pharmacy model will empower existing pharmacies to begin online tasks and serve a broader set of customers, or a network of drug stores incorporating to one platform and getting a broader customer base while also guaranteeing that the inventory is consolidated

ePharmacy store is very well aligned to the objectives of national development

As per industry experts, an online pharmacy store helps a lot in national development goals and has a clear and unmistakable advantage to customers just as the business. Across the world, it has been seen that the growth of e-commerce and retail are complementary and strengthen each other. Traditional brick and mortar retailers likewise innovate and strengthen their operations by utilizing e-commerce to achieve more customers.

The small sector of organized drug store retail in India would get an immense lift and a full industry can be changed by utilizing the internet in a smart way. Moreover, web-based transactions are well adjusted to state key is known issues in pharmacy retail store – tracking for credibility, traceability of medicine, misuse counteractive action, addressing the utilization of drugs without prescription, tax loss, and value-added services for customer empowerment in healthcare, which is on the whole key zones of national development. Moreover, this would likewise empower doctors to adopt e-prescriptions in a big way – tending to the huge issue of errors because of a misreading of doctors’ handwriting as well as the recording of information for public health planning.

Industry specialists say it is, thus, the opportune time as a country to decide the regulatory framework to help e-pharmacy stores have an obvious operating model, in accordance with the concerns of the regulator, while offering benefits to the customers.

Looking for developing an online pharmacy store that can drive more customers to your pharmacy store? Get in touch with us by dropping an email on [email protected] or call us: +91 720 209 7862 directly. Our experts will reach out to you within 24 hours with the best information you required.

#online #pharmacy #onlinepharmacy #medicalstore #epharmacy #best app for pharmacy business #best pharmacy apps

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 years

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EFF just sent this letter to every official negotiating the EU's Copyright Directive

To Whom It May Concern:

Article 13: False copyright claims proliferate in the absence of clear evidentiary standards or consequences for inaccurate claims.

Article 13 Recommendations

Online service providers should be able to pre-emptively strike off a rightsholder who has been found to be abusive of Article 13 by another provider.

Article 11: Links are not defined with sufficient granularity, and should contain harmonised limitations and exceptions.

The existing Article 11 language does not define when quotation amounts to a use that must be licensed, though proponents have argued that quoting more than a single word requires a license.

Additionally, the text should safeguard against dominant players (Google, Facebook, the news giants) creating licensing agreements that exclude everyone else.

Thank you,

Cory Doctorow Special Consultant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation

https://boingboing.net/2018/10/23/unsafe-at-any-speed-4.html

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maritimecyprus · 4 years

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(http://www.MaritimeCyprus.com) This article highlights shipowners, operators, masters and crews obligation to ensure safe working arrangements are in place for any work involving a ship’s elevator.

During 2018 and 2019, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) received notification of two separate accidents that involved crew members being trapped and crushed by a moving elevator. In both instances, the elevator moved while the crew members were working between the elevator casing and the cage, resulting in fatal crush injuries.

Incidents resulting in crush injuries caused by an elevator are not new, with a similar fatality investigated by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) in 2007. In this instance, a crew member was crushed in the elevator while conducting repairs. Elevator related fatalities have also been reported on multiple ships in other parts of the world.

AMSA believes that such incidents are avoidable through the application of simple and effective risk controls.

Designed for a life at sea

Marine elevators are designed and built to cope with the tough demands of a vessel at sea. Marine elevators should:

Withstand rough weather conditions and ship movements, shocks, and vibrations

Perform reliably in heavy seas: up to ±10º rolling for a period of 10s, or up to ±5º pitching for a period of 7s

Have high-quality electrification and components that meet international marine safety standards

Include advanced control and monitoring systems

Feature cars and landing doors that are approved and certified by major classification bodies

Systemic failures related to fatal crushes in elevators on ships

Similar systematic failures have been identified in all of these fatal accidents. The following were considered to be some of the key safety issues:

Elevator instruction manuals lacked unambiguous and useable safety guidance.

No proper risk assessments were in place for elevator maintenance as part of the safety management system.

Risk assessments that did exist were not effectively implemented.

Crew were not aware of—or did not consider—all of the hazards associated with working in the elevator. An example of this is the counterweights that moved down as the lift cage moved up, causing harm.

Untrained personnel were used to carry out maintenance and repairs on the ship’s elevators.

No appropriate safeguards were in place—such as isolation lock-out—to ensure that the elevator cage did not inadvertently move while the crew were working in the elevator shaft.

Expectation

An elevator shaft is a very hazardous environment in which to work. The potential dangers involve:

height risk

injury by falling object(s)

noise

electrocution from live electrical circuits

unanticipated movement of the elevator cage.

AMSA stresses the importance of conducting a proper risk assessment and implementing relevant procedures, which are applied in practice to ensure the safety of crew working on a ship’s elevator.

AMSA also recommends planning for elevator maintenance or deferring elevator maintenance work until the vessel is in port and utilizing a trained manufacturer’s technician.

Source: Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA)

Notes on Elevator Service and Maintenance

Many vessel owners and operators often wonder about finding a reliable marine elevator service company. How does one determine quality? Who is qualified? Must one use an OEM approved agent only? What does it take for a marine elevator service company to be certified? What are the rules and regulations governing the marine elevator industry?

All valid questions, but not so easy to answer. Let’s try and clear up the confusion. The following report provides a guideline for owners of marine elevators worldwide.

ISO and EN

There are various norms for elevators on vessels (or “lifts on ships” as they are also referred to); most used are the ISO 8383 and the EN81/1 and 2 (traction and hydraulic elevators). These two norms give general guidelines on how to build marine elevators and how and by whom they should be inspected on a regular basis.

Owners often think that marine elevator companies can be ISO 8383 or EN81/1 approved, but such a thing just doesn’t exist. The ISO and EN codes of practice only set out guidelines for marine elevator settings and how to perform inspections; there are no diplomas that can be obtained.

The ISO 8383 code (download here) states the following regarding safety inspections:

Clause 12.3 of ISO 8383 shown above contains an interesting but also confusing definition regarding safety inspections: “The maintenance operations shall be carried out by ‘authorized lift maintenance personnel’ ””. What is the actual definition of “authorized lift maintenance personnel”? And how can one become “authorized”?

The person responsible for lifts at AFNOR, the French Standardization Association and its ISO institute for normalization (www.afnor.org) steers us in the right direction:

“The ISO 8383 standard has purposely been published since 1986 without that particular definition. Currently there is an ISO enquiry about possible revision of this standard.”

AFNOR is preparing a proposal which might be integrated into future revised drafts of EN 81-1 under 3.1.2: authorized person (personne autorisée): “only a competent person with the permission of the owner of the lift may have access to restricted areas (machinery and pulley spaces, lift well, pit and car roof)”.

If AFNOR does implement this amendment, it would finally be stated in writing who must authorize marine elevator service companies. It is the owner, not the OEM or an OEM approved agent.

Class

Classes (Lloyds, DNV, BV, GL, etc.) only refer to the ISO 8383 and do not add further instructions or guidelines, except for RINA. In RINA’s paragraph about elevators, the need for the owner to authorize the marine elevator service company is added. Quite interesting, this is exactly what AFNOR might be adding to the ISO 8383!

People sometimes think that marine elevator companies can be Class approved, but such approval does not exist. Classes do not have an approval system in place for marine elevator service companies.

Flags

Each flag state can have its own additional rulings. Examples: vessels under a Danish flag need to have a safety inspection performed every three months. The German Flag requires a safety inspection every 2½ years. China has no rules for third party inspections at all.

For merchant vessels, our advice is to have a third party safety inspection performed each year, and a load test every five years. For ferries, offshore platforms and cruise vessels more frequent inspections and service calls are recommended, because of high frequency use (and possible abuse by passengers).

National elevator institutes

National elevator institutes (many countries have one) often set out guidelines for elevator service companies (for instance for safety inspections). These guidelines do differ somewhat by country, but in general they are set out as follows for marine elevator service companies:

Business processes must be formalised

Liability insurance of sufficient coverage needs to be in place (€1 million+)

Technicians need to have had formal elevator training, have a national recognised diploma, and/or have a substantial number of years of experience in the field

For marine elevators on offshore platforms special certificates apply (NOGEPA, OPITO, HUET)

A formalised plan for safe working and risk assessment needs to be in place

All technicians need to be trained and aware of safety.

Insurers

It is advisable for owners to check with their liability insurer about marine elevator maintenance rules, just to be on the safe side. If a serious elevator accident does occur, they are the ones deciding on the coverage (or not) of all cost. “Negligence” is the key word in general (having your elevator serviced by a local plumber for example).

“Maker approved” agents

There are no rules or regulations for marine elevator service companies to be “maker approved”. Some manufacturers imply the need for it though; they insist that only OEM approved technicians are allowed to work on their marine elevators; an owner could be held liable in case of a possible incident.

This point is understandable from a commercial point of view, but legally there is no basis for it and no liability insurer can force an owner to do so. In fact, it is forbidden within the EU to protect the market in such a way.*

Some interesting details. Often OEMs service other brands of marine elevators themselves, not following their own authorization rules they propagate. OEMs are also quite reluctant to hand out authorization letters to marine elevator service companies. Market protection of their own installed base can be a (silently) heard reason, but another excuse that is heard in the market is that “it’s just too much hassle to manage an agent network”. From Schindler KK: “Business style of this kind is very difficult for us to handle, so we decided not to have authorized companies”.

*Note: OEMs can however dictate to owners to use their services exclusively during the warranty period. If owners do not abide by this, their warranty claims can be declined.

Conclusions

There is no such thing as an ISO or Class certified company

Do not take risks: ask your marine elevator company (including OEM agents) how they guarantee top quality and safety.

youtube

Fatal accidents caused by moving elevators on ships (www.MaritimeCyprus.com) This article highlights shipowners, operators, masters and crews obligation to ensure safe working arrangements are in place for any work involving a ship’s elevator.

#AMSA #Marine Accident investigation

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netflixanthrothings-blog · 5 years

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Born a Crime - YSJ

Trevor Noah is the author of the autobiographical comedy memoir Born a Crime. The title of the book was inspired by the relationship between his black African mother and his white Swiss father, which was legally prohibited by the 1927 “Immorality Act” (Noah, 2016). Born a Crime provides an exemplary blend of sociopolitical analysis as well as a first-hand account of the days under Apartheid rule and its aftermath. The main issues addressed in the book include racism, gender, colonialism, religion, and class. Noah predominantly highlighted the institutional racism experienced by South Africans during the Apartheid era. The author’s purpose of the book is to showcase his perspective as a mixed child under Apartheid, from a micro level of Trevor and his family’s experiences but also from a macro level of forces and powers at work opposing each other.

After the development of Apartheid in 1652, first influenced by the Dutch East India Company (Feinstein, 2005), the system was based on institutionalized racial segregation that installed policies to protect white supremacy, by separating residential areas, educational institutions and places of worships to maintain racial differences (McEwen & Steyn, 2016). In this racial system, it has its own social mobility where the lighter the skin of each race, the more likely that an individual of said race can rise up in the social hierarchy.

Guest (2017) defined culture as a system of knowledge, beliefs, patterns of behavior, artifacts and institutions that are created, learned, shared and contested by a group of people. In Soweto families, women were responsible for taking care of the children and cleaning homes whereas men were obligated to be the breadwinner of the family and had to move into the city to look for jobs to feed the family (Noah, 2016). However, under the apartheid state, patriarchy co-existed with colonialism and developed a racial and gendered hierarchy that resulted in segregated employment locations. White men were given managerial jobs and black men were delegated to hard labor such as mining and farming (Jaga et al., 2017). Eventually, structural separation caused their husbands to leave their families permanently. Most women and mothers were left to raise their families alone, and the empty void left by absent men were filled by religion - commonly Christianity. Another element of the black culture in South Africa is the ‘black tax’ which is the curse of being both black and poor (Noah, 2016). Poor black families remain in a vicious cycle which sees them spend all their time and money fixing problems of the past instead of focusing on progressing forward, economically.

Trevor’s mother, Patricia Noah was an independent woman who raised Trevor to know that there were no limits to what he could accomplish. She defied all societal standards and taught her son to survive in a racist society. By doing so, she brought Trevor to places that were common for the whites because she didn’t believe in division among whites and colored was and she wanted his son to see the world beyond the ghetto. Most importantly, she never let oppression define who she was. With the acknowledgment that being a black woman meant being the minorities that were most oppressed and lowest of the social hierarchy, she still fought hard for her son to become more than what society determined him to be. The predominant social ideology would put black people in lower social hierarchy for work, commonly hard labor, whereas Noah disregarded the societal expectations of a black man’s career, and instead used the platform he had as a comedian and political commentator to provide insight and voice out for the extensive issues faced by the black community. As Laurel Thatcher Ulrich said, “Well-behaved women seldom make history” (Ulrich, 2007), Patricia was one of the rebellious women that made a small difference in Trevor’s childhood that led him to a successful career that made a substantial impact in the world we live in today.

Ghetto is defined as an impoverished residential area of a city which houses a minority of neighbors who are unemployed, on drugs or in and out of jail (Pattillo, 2003). In his teenage years, Noah grew up in the ghetto - the chaotic yet systematic social hierarchy based on which avenue people lived. Living in the hood, cheese symbolized the rich; the poorer you are the more ghetto you are and the richer you are, the more cheese you are. Crime is not an exception but a norm in the ghetto. The only difference is the type of crime and its severity. The ghetto does not discriminate - it does not exclude its people from the crimes that define it and it does not allow its people to leave it either (Noah, 2016). As an illustration, Noah was not an exception, although he was biracial, growing up in the hood encouraged him to commit crimes, in particularly the CDs and video games he copied and sold.

Colonialism is the implementation of a political coalition that denies its indigenous people equal rights and exploits its nation economically (YPI, 2013). Similarly, colonialism in South Africa created a flawed system of institutionalized racism that made people turn against one another so that the government could overrule and control the people - South Africa went to war itself when Zulu and Xhosa blamed each other for the problem that the whites created.

It shaped the culture of South Africa in which the colonists used the hegemonic aspect of power that people propagandized themselves to believe that interracial marriage was invalid. In relation to the book in the chapter of Go Hitler!, colonial powers never indoctrinated history with emotions or moral dimension to the people in South Africa. Ergo, under no circumstances, they grew to be aware and sensitive on complications such as the impact Hitler had on the world. During one of his DJ sets in a Jewish school, the dancers around him chanted “Go Hitler” repeatedly. Trevor and his crew did not realize that Hitler had a negative connotation to the Jewish because the name ‘Hitler’ in South African culture was to indicate a person with great strength, not the dictator of Germany’s Nazi Party.

In the course of introduction to cultural anthropology, the standpoint of colonialism was the reason race was constructed all over the world. Many colonists during that era theorize that all cultures develop the same approach; where it begins as savage, then barbarian, to cultured. They acknowledged the unilineal cultural evolution and repudiated the historical particularism the nation had. Besides, the course has explored the importance of intersection language and culture, through which the social power of the speaker determines language acceptability.

In the book, he stated “If you’re Native American and you pray to the wolves, you’re a savage. If you’re African and you pray to your ancestors, you’re a primitive. But when white people pray to a guy who turns water into wine, well, that’s just common sense.” Colonialism forced the majority of humanity to believe and follow the process of how Westerns developed in their culture, these colonists continuously westernized and Christianized places to go because they think they were helping them for the better. However, they became ethnocentric as they did not justify the history of their culture and judged them as being wrong and barbaric. Moreover, the author stated, “Language, even more than color, defines who you are to people.” Language creates an imaginary bond instantly when someone speaks of the same language or accent and it meant that you belonged in that tribe and that you are capable of crossing boundaries, handling situations and navigating the world.

According to Trevor’s purpose, his exploration of culture was comparatively subjective because the insightful memoir strikes in as personal and historical. Noah wrote about his childhood amidst weaving in cultural and political information about the legacy of Apartheid with humor and relayed it in a natural way that made it relatable to the audience. His life in South Africa ingrained him with fearlessness as he discussed the subject of complexities and contradictions of race and how his personal story embodies them. Born a Crime has demonstrated the extreme lengths that black people had gone through to survive the abuse, discrimination, and racism they faced.

Personally, I’ve learned so much more about the history and culture of South Africa that I previously had knowledge on. The stories have shown me the importance of a mother’s role in her child’s life, such as ideologies like to be the man you are today, to never let painful memories hinder you from trying something new, and not conform to rules that are not rational. This book demonstrated the importance of Noah’s relationship with his mother and helped the audience feel what he went through in an emotional aspect which is unlikely to be taught in classrooms. The most important lesson I took away from this book is when Noah stated, “People love to say, “Teach a man how to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime,” but never “And if would be nice if you gave him a fishing rod.” Minorities all over the world spent their whole lives being discriminated at the bottom of the social hierarchy will never have the opportunity to progress economically or socially because they are never given access to resources or support. I’ve become more aware that I am privileged to not experience oppression daily as the black community.

#born a crime #trevor noah #book review

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