Slashdot Mirror

The social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook say that they are platforms, and therefore they should not be held liable for awful things that people say on their platforms. They aren't curated information streams like a newspaper, where nothing is published without editorial oversight.

However, they have been indulging in quite a bit of curation. And it hasn't been even-handed. If they like you, you can literally get away with inciting violence; if they don't like you, they will strike you down or shadow-ban you for any reason or no reason.

There are numerous cases of conservatives being suspended or banned from social media over relatively mild stuff (for example, telling a journalist to "Learn to code") while liberals can make jokes about the President being assassinated, wish for conservative people's children to be raped, etc. The post "#MAGAkids go screaming, hats first, into the woodchipper" did not result in any punishment from Twitter. This tweet was accompanied with a cartoon picture of a man feeding a body into a woodchipper and bloody snow. By "#MAGAkids" he meant some high school students who were in the news at the time.

https://www.rt.com/usa/449368-disney-producer-threatens-maga-kids/

Keith Olbermann wrote on Twitter these words: "we should do our best to make sure the rest of his life is a living hell." Who was the target of his wrath? A man who had a permit to hunt turkeys who shot a turkey. Olbermann has a million followers and some of them went on to harass the hunter. Twitter did not punish Olbermann in any way. (Faced by a backlash of bad publicity, Olbermann made a follow-up tweet saying that his words were not intended as an actual threat.)

https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2019/03/27/keith-olbermann-urges-followers-make-hunters-life-living-hell-killing-rare-turkey/

I found an article that claims that a statistical analysis shows that this isn't just a few anecdotes, it's a trend.

https://quillette.com/2019/02/12/it-isnt-your-imagination-twitter-treats-conservatives-more-harshly-than-liberals/

I tried to use Facebook Messenger to send a link to a satirical essay. It would not allow me to send it, and it gave a totally nonsense reason. I just tried it again just now and the same thing happened; here's the error:

It looks like you were misusing this feature by going too fast. You've been blocked from using it.

Learn more about blocks in the Help Center.
If you think this doesn't go against our Community Standards let us know.

I was "going too fast"? After not using Messenger for over 24 hours, I attempted to send a single URL, so that message is clearly nonsense. Obviously I was merely guilty of wrongthink. The essay makes the point that the USA is spending so much money that it's not possible to "soak the rich" to pay for it all, using a sort of reducto ad absurdium. Clearly someone who works for Facebook doesn't like this essay or doesn't like "Iowahawk". If you want to read this forbidden essay, here you go:

Iowahawk: Feed Your Family on 10 Billion a Day

Then there is the current controversy over Twitter apparently shadowbanning the movie Unplanned. So far Twitter has adamantly maintained that everything that looked like shadowbanning was just buggy code, but this seems really egregious. The Unplanned Twitter account at one point had more followers than Planned Parenthood, and then suddenly it had zero followers. Peopl

The violence is certainly being committed by both sides. In Portland in October, for example, both sides engaged in violent attacks.

But my point is that that the mayor of Portland, who is a Democrat, appears to enforce the laws less strictly against the social justice rioters.

WHAT IT IS USED FOR is the key

Yeah, like these usages are entirely acceptable, since they are done by the GREATEST NATION on earth.

ONE MILLION UIGHURS IN CHINESE PRISONS.

Wow, what a change of heart for Americans! We are suddenly having real empathy about Muslims, as long as they are not being locked up in Guantanamo.

The Chief of INTERPOL for chrissake was arrested and secretly detained for MONTHS without being charged.

Wow, another change of heart for a top Chinese security official who supposedly have done, well because he was the top police chief, all the political crimes such as "disappear dissidents, undesirable ethnicities, journalists, etc."

Majority of accusations against Huawei or China are falsified, exaggerated, outdated, or hypocritical.

Whether China has done that or not, they has not launched a major PR campaign over the issue against US in the many years PRISM, which revealed direct attacks against Chinese network, has been exposed. The US government and policticians, on the other hand, keep using the same things from IP theft to industry espionage that the US had committed to attack China and never mention its own dirty history (so that they can use the issues to rally the support of populism and nationalism.) That's called hypocrisy.

Saw this Change.org petition earlier this week.

Spying is big business. For example, spying is Google's main theme for which services to keep and which to do away with. Perhaps spying is driving these ancestry services as well. We already know these ancestry services share client data with police (1, 2, 3). Perhaps this data sharing is listed in the terms of service, but either way the sharing helps authorities augment their database and helps them perform more surveillance on ordinary citizens (most citizens don't commit crimes and therefore should not face such treatment; I'm not convinced those who commit crimes deserve this treatment but the vast majority of the public absolutely don't).

Spying is big business. For example, spying is Google's main theme for which services to keep and which to do away with. Perhaps spying is driving these ancestry services as well. We already know these ancestry services share client data with police (1, 2, 3). Perhaps this data sharing is listed in the terms of service, but either way the sharing helps authorities augment their database and helps them perform more surveillance on ordinary citizens (most citizens don't commit crimes and therefore should not face such treatment; I'm not convinced those who commit crimes deserve this treatment but the vast majority of the public absolutely don't).

Meh. Come back when China's average person is as well off as a the US's average person. As a middle class member I'd rather be anywhere in the US than anywhere else in the world from an economic standpoint.

You'd like to live in San Francisco, for instance?

https://media.boingboing.net/w...

https://www.gospelherald.com/d...

Or maybe in a district with open pools of raw sewage?

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/41857...

Let's be clear and honest, the Huffington post is far right wing, they just play to the left for views, they profit off the left, they are most definately not part of the left. Just like the pretend left indentitarians, the SJW freaks, they play left, well, they are fucking worse, they are deep state and shadow government tools, created to make the left look bad, left == workers and right == bosses, all else is a lie, put out by the bosses, just the way it is. Huffington Post, sold out to far right corporations, the second a big enough offer came in and they just gave the people who did the writing the finger and no share of hundreds of millions of dollars.

What happens when dinosaur media bought up the internet, well they tried to turn them into dinosaurs and well, it failed because dinosaurs turning new media into dinosaur media, wont save them from extinction, just take down the new media they bought.

Dinosaur media, simply failed to come to terms with the level of competition on the internet, hence the skullduggerous push for the elimination of net neutrality to create an entirely corrupt and disingenuous barrier to block competition. Problem is, well, the likes of slashdot, how much bandwidth do you need for text, not much at all and hence whilst they can try to stifle video competition, they totally fail on touching text based.

The level of global competition is also growing, look at https://www.rt.com/ or https://www.bbc.com/, their focus international news to an international audience, something for which US news media is extremely poorly equipped due to the level of empty headed bullshit and corporate propaganda flooding their channels, simply news, most people do not want to hear and who will go elsewhere at the first opportunity and you ain't seen nothing yet. The best current job for AI is auto translation services for web sites and the level of competition that will introduce for international content to an international audience will be huge and will be the downfall of US media, to used to dominating in order to adapt to mass competition, hence their solution the end of net neutrality and US internet isolation.

https://www.rt.com/usa/443494-tucker-hate-crime-antifa/

Actually RT is not all bad. Naturally it's slanted in favour of Putin/Kremlin line, but it is still interesting at times, and you can always cross-check stories that seem dubious against other sources. Which is what the discerning reader should be doing in any event, regardless of the outlet.

Nor should we be afraid of a little criticism. For example: Is Ryan correct in her assertion that Trump does in fact represent the "real" America? Why or why not?

Somebody at Google said "hey, we could abuse our power for good!" and management came back saying "it's still abuse, so we're not doing it", and that was the end of it.

We can't be so sure, and it's generally unwise to consider only the company's word for this. But you have to read more news beyond this story to understand the debate over the issue. Ironically, you'd have to read stories that we're told aren't so easy to find if you depend on Google to bring them to your attention.

According to RT, one of the adversely affected parties:

Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google's parent company Alphabet, says the company will "engineer" specific algorithms for RT and Sputnik to make their articles less prominent on the search engine's news delivery services.

"We are working on detecting and de-ranking those kinds of sites -- it's basically RT and Sputnik," Schmidt said during a Q & A session at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada on Saturday, when asked about whether Google facilitates "Russian propaganda."

Google later wrote "a letter to Russia's media watchdog saying despite Eric Schmidt's recent comments about "de-ranking" RT and Sputnik, he referred only to "efforts to improve search quality." The company claimed it doesn't "re-rank" individual websites."

But RT isn't alone in this claim. RT also reports that other sites have experienced similar de-ranking.

It is not just Russian sites that Google is de-ranking either. The corporation which enjoys almost complete monopoly over the internet has already been criticized for censoring left-wing, anti-war websites like Alternet, Democracy Now, Truth-out.org, Counterpunch and Truthdig. Some of those websites have reported huge drops in traffic since changes were made to Google's search algorithms to combat "fake news". Nothing could demonstrate more clearly that Google is a cheerleader for American militarism and a loyal partner to war profiteers both in the arms industry and in Congress. Yet the corporation still enjoys a widespread reputation as a benign arbiter of truth.

Black Agenda Report has also raised this as an issue. This simply isn't as clear-cut as your summary would claim.

Somebody at Google said "hey, we could abuse our power for good!" and management came back saying "it's still abuse, so we're not doing it", and that was the end of it.

We can't be so sure, and it's generally unwise to consider only the company's word for this. But you have to read more news beyond this story to understand the debate over the issue. Ironically, you'd have to read stories that we're told aren't so easy to find if you depend on Google to bring them to your attention.

According to RT, one of the adversely affected parties:

Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google's parent company Alphabet, says the company will "engineer" specific algorithms for RT and Sputnik to make their articles less prominent on the search engine's news delivery services.

"We are working on detecting and de-ranking those kinds of sites -- it's basically RT and Sputnik," Schmidt said during a Q & A session at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada on Saturday, when asked about whether Google facilitates "Russian propaganda."

Google later wrote "a letter to Russia's media watchdog saying despite Eric Schmidt's recent comments about "de-ranking" RT and Sputnik, he referred only to "efforts to improve search quality." The company claimed it doesn't "re-rank" individual websites."

But RT isn't alone in this claim. RT also reports that other sites have experienced similar de-ranking.

It is not just Russian sites that Google is de-ranking either. The corporation which enjoys almost complete monopoly over the internet has already been criticized for censoring left-wing, anti-war websites like Alternet, Democracy Now, Truth-out.org, Counterpunch and Truthdig. Some of those websites have reported huge drops in traffic since changes were made to Google's search algorithms to combat "fake news". Nothing could demonstrate more clearly that Google is a cheerleader for American militarism and a loyal partner to war profiteers both in the arms industry and in Congress. Yet the corporation still enjoys a widespread reputation as a benign arbiter of truth.

Black Agenda Report has also raised this as an issue. This simply isn't as clear-cut as your summary would claim.

Somebody at Google said "hey, we could abuse our power for good!" and management came back saying "it's still abuse, so we're not doing it", and that was the end of it.

We can't be so sure, and it's generally unwise to consider only the company's word for this. But you have to read more news beyond this story to understand the debate over the issue. Ironically, you'd have to read stories that we're told aren't so easy to find if you depend on Google to bring them to your attention.

According to RT, one of the adversely affected parties:

Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google's parent company Alphabet, says the company will "engineer" specific algorithms for RT and Sputnik to make their articles less prominent on the search engine's news delivery services.

"We are working on detecting and de-ranking those kinds of sites -- it's basically RT and Sputnik," Schmidt said during a Q & A session at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada on Saturday, when asked about whether Google facilitates "Russian propaganda."

Google later wrote "a letter to Russia's media watchdog saying despite Eric Schmidt's recent comments about "de-ranking" RT and Sputnik, he referred only to "efforts to improve search quality." The company claimed it doesn't "re-rank" individual websites."

But RT isn't alone in this claim. RT also reports that other sites have experienced similar de-ranking.

It is not just Russian sites that Google is de-ranking either. The corporation which enjoys almost complete monopoly over the internet has already been criticized for censoring left-wing, anti-war websites like Alternet, Democracy Now, Truth-out.org, Counterpunch and Truthdig. Some of those websites have reported huge drops in traffic since changes were made to Google's search algorithms to combat "fake news". Nothing could demonstrate more clearly that Google is a cheerleader for American militarism and a loyal partner to war profiteers both in the arms industry and in Congress. Yet the corporation still enjoys a widespread reputation as a benign arbiter of truth.

Black Agenda Report has also raised this as an issue. This simply isn't as clear-cut as your summary would claim.

increase lethality by enhancing the ability to detect, decide and engage before the enemy

Yeah, yeah... Meanwhile, Ukraine's participants in the ongoing joint military exercises have just managed to capture the American participants' Headquarters and "kill" 32 personnel — "losing" only 2 of their own. Although the unit is, probably, among the best-equipped in Ukrainian army, they have none of the Americans' fancy stuff...

(RT's is the only piece I could find about this, that's in English — the Russians' comments under the RT's article are quite exhilarating.)

> Or creates a climate of intimidation and fear over wearing the "wrong kind of shirt" like with Matt Taylor.

Indeed.

Man, Matt Taylor: Philae lander spacecraft in space for 10 years; lands it on a comet.
Woman, Katie Mack: Ignores what the man just accomplished; complains that him wearing his *birthday gift* shirt DESIGNED by a woman, is sexist. Ignores Kim karTrashian nudes.

Nobody believes the fake news anymore. Nothing but a bunch of haters hating on our beloved President. https://www.rt.com/usa/429956-...

Be fair here with the press.. He obviously likes the attention and loves to poke the press bear. It's a strangely mutually dependent relationship where he gets to control the issue of the day and they get to decry his position and sell advertisements because of the controversy.

Simply not true but who cares any more, no one is listening and it has all become rather boring. Russia is now a technocracy at federal level and that is now spreading down to state and local level at quite the pace.

Licensing all bloggers as censorship system only really works in countries with a specific genetic characteristic, has to do with a certain scoring system where the average is 100 (I am humouring myself with empty political correctness). In those countries there are a very limited number of people can can produce blogs and forums, most can not, more along the line of an ignorant mob consuming and absorbing what ever belief is the flavour of the moment, from albino witches to having sex with a virgin as a cure for aids.

So how will it affect democracy in those countries. Honestly, truly honestly, democracy only really works above a certain intellect, below that and you are too subject to the vagaries of empty beliefs to make sound decisions about a whole range of subject, including who to vote for (you know the crud, I voted for them because of the way they talked, I voted for them because of their religion, I voted for them because they looked good, I voted for them because I was told to or the inevitable I voted for them because they are going to make us 'ALL' rich, even when that is factually impossible, you can not have minority rich with majority poor).

Tanzania does something weird with the internet this week, meh, I sure they'll do something weird with chickens or witches next week https://www.youtube.com/watch?.... Perhaps they have just confused blogging with witch craft, must be that idiot Pompeo's fault https://www.rt.com/usa/384667-..., they thought the internet must be full of demons and witches, the US government said so.

free speech reforms

Hahahaha, yeah we'll get right on that after we're finished locking up every random twitter user who's ever tweeted something disparaging about a muslim.

You don't need the qualifier.

free speech reforms

Hahahaha, yeah we'll get right on that after we're finished locking up every random twitter user who's ever tweeted something disparaging about a muslim.

The problem I have with your argument is that all of your sources are from monsanto.

A 2 second web search provided tens of articles, here is six:

monsanto-sues-farmers-seed-patents
monsanto-sued-farmers-16-years-gmos-never-lost
monsanto-patents-sue-farmers
the-enemy-of-family-farmers
monsanto-wins-lawsuit
seeding-fear-the-story-of-a-farmer-who-took-on-monsanto
All of which tell a different story.

So we have to compete with China in creepiness?

Of course since the average american and person in capitalist society is unaware how extreme wealth inequality is. So all the rulers are at full blown war against their publics. That's why the spying is there, to make sure you have the "correct" free market, corporation worshipping thoughts and not notice the end of the rule of law, endless copyright laws which equals total domination of government by the rich.

See it in this speach by former national security adivisor of the United states:

Elites fear political awakening of the globe

The Citibank memo

Citigroup memo

US distribution of wealth

https://imgur.com/a/FShfb

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

These links will take a while to digest, but if you want to understand what's going on in the world, you owe it to yourself to become informed about the true state of the world. Realize that business and the wealthy is hostile to your interests.

Testing theories of representative government

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf

Aka the rich (big business) vs the rest of mankind.

The grand chessboard

The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives

Grand chessboard user review

Stratfor and social media like reddit to monitor / influence and control public opinion.

Reddit and intelligence agencies

  Wikileaks -- Reddit and intelligence agencies

"Intended as an internal document. Good reading to understand the nature of rich democracies and the fact that the common people are not allowed to play a role."

Crisis of democracy

Crisis of democracy - PDF

http://www.amazon.com/Crisis-D... ">Crisis of democracy - BOOK

Education as ignorance

Education as ignorance

  Overthrowing other peoples governments

Overthrowing other peoples governments, the master list

Interference in other states when the rich/corporations dont get their way

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mxp_wgFWQo&feature=youtu.be&list=PLKR2GeygdHomOZeVKx3P0fqH58T3VghOj&t=724

Lets no lie, want to solve homelessness, it is all to easy, you just have to spend money. Social support should all be done on a federal basis and not by the state or local communities. Problem with states and local communities attempting it is, well, psychopaths, rather than trying to solve problems they just use law enforcers to drive people out and force them on other communities and on the tax base and social support services, overloading them, a real cunt act, no better way to put it.

So done on a federal basis, consider homelessness and mental disorder and pick those people up and put them in protected housing. Generally monitored and controlled one person studio style apartments, a controlled environment, where you can assist them with their problems or based upon their problems provide more controlled care and rehabilitation in an institution.

So the problem is solvable but be honest in the US, you don't want to really solve the problem, it feeds the ego of those better off to look down their noses at people in poverty, lets the better off pose before those in poverty, this kind of stuff https://www.rt.com/usa/403097-... is not a negative in the US economy, it is clearly seen an ego burnishing benefit. Poverty in the US because most Americans do not want it to end, they want to grind being a loser into the faces of the losers, that want the poseur opportunities and be honest, they want to do worse things than they already are.

Why do you think that doing this thing on a federal level will solve the problem of psychopaths exercising power they shouldn't have and royally fucking taxpayers and homeless people alike? If your problem is with systemic abuses of power then you should be calling for further localisation, more charity, and less coercion.

Lets no lie, want to solve homelessness, it is all to easy, you just have to spend money. Social support should all be done on a federal basis and not by the state or local communities. Problem with states and local communities attempting it is, well, psychopaths, rather than trying to solve problems they just use law enforcers to drive people out and force them on other communities and on the tax base and social support services, overloading them, a real cunt act, no better way to put it.

So done on a federal basis, consider homelessness and mental disorder and pick those people up and put them in protected housing. Generally monitored and controlled one person studio style apartments, a controlled environment, where you can assist them with their problems or based upon their problems provide more controlled care and rehabilitation in an institution.

So the problem is solvable but be honest in the US, you don't want to really solve the problem, it feeds the ego of those better off to look down their noses at people in poverty, lets the better off pose before those in poverty, this kind of stuff https://www.rt.com/usa/403097-... is not a negative in the US economy, it is clearly seen an ego burnishing benefit. Poverty in the US because most Americans do not want it to end, they want to grind being a loser into the faces of the losers, that want the poseur opportunities and be honest, they want to do worse things than they already are.

In March, I met a lawyer named Anas Joudeh, who took part in some of the 2011 protests. Joudeh no longer considers himself a member of the opposition. I asked him why. “No one is 100 percent with the regime, but mostly these people are unified by their resistance to the opposition,” Joudeh told me. “They know what they don’t want, not what they want.” In December, he said, “Syrians abroad who believe in the revolution would call me and say, ‘We lost Aleppo.’ And I would say, ‘What do you mean?’ It was only a Turkish card guarded by jihadis.” For these exiled Syrians, he said, the specter of Assad’s crimes looms so large that they cannot see anything else. They refuse to acknowledge the realities of a rebellion that is corrupt, brutal and compromised by foreign sponsors. This is true. Eastern Aleppo may not have been Raqqa, where ISIS advertised its rigid Islamist dystopia and its mass beheadings. But as a symbol of Syria’s future, it was almost as bad: a chaotic wasteland full of feuding militias — some of them radical Islamists — who hoarded food and weapons while the people starved.

And, deliberately revealed that:

[PHOTO of a bombed hospital]
The roof of the Aleppo Eye Hospital, which rebels used as a military headquarters.

smugfunt: It is undeniable that the White Helmets and the Syrian American Medical Society are western funded yet operate only in jihadi held territory.

And one would wonder why there is no White Helmets in Yemen, why no Western funded "NGO" has ever operated in Yemen and/or is deliberately frequently promoted in MSM like White Helmets.
Everyone who question the role, motive, credibility of White Helmets, no mater who they are, they were/are/will be immediately labeled as problematic/propagandist/misinformed, as if only Russians run fake news:
https://medium.com/@caityjohns...
https://www.rt.com/news/424078...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Also, it's so easy to debunk the rescue videos of White Helmets: no first aid, all are dramatical runnings, the victims are either without or with very little dirt, bruises, etc.

https://www.independent.co.uk/...
http://www.politifact.com/pund...
https://www.rt.com/usa/374292-...

Here's a troll for you, https://heavy.com/news/2018/04... from the article, "Tammie Jo Shults is the pilot who bravely flew", 'er' why is she brave, I mean American love celebritising everything, real fetish for it, fill news with junk but being brave is having a choice and in spite of your fear, doing your job. So did she have a choice, could she say, "nahh bugger this, I'm bloody gettin' out o' here, let some other drongo do it", or did she have no choice and was fighting to save her own bloody arse, not the plane, not the passenger, landing so she did not die.

Now there is a real kick in the pants of celebrity fetish reality for you and it is a bit Trollish, more Aussie than Russian though (just for you https://www.rt.com/news/424434...), happy ;).

And since in today's America it's almost required, a couple of links for you from RT:

The West? Trolling foreign states for over a decade â" former MI5 agent Pentagon bots in your comments? US Army wants AI tool for social networks

Regardless, let us take what is likely true. These are the parts that are right there in the open literature, what the US tells people they are doing.

It is hardly a scandal that the evilz 'Murricans are looking for people that can speak, translate and read foreign languages of countries that are of interest. And that's been going on since Benjamin Franklin went to France in the wayback.

Apparently in Trump's America, Intelligence gathering is a really bad thing, that only other countries are allowed to perform.

Are they like the Russian Trolls?

Beats me, I've never met one. But considering the Pentagon's gargantuan budget, I'd bet our trolls are paid far better than than Russian trolls.

I'm still waiting to see the evidence of American Troll farms. So far, I haven't. What these links describe is simple reading of public postings.

And since in today's America it's almost required, a couple of links for you from RT:

The West? Trolling foreign states for over a decade â" former MI5 agent Pentagon bots in your comments? US Army wants AI tool for social networks

Regardless, let us take what is likely true. These are the parts that are right there in the open literature, what the US tells people they are doing.

It is hardly a scandal that the evilz 'Murricans are looking for people that can speak, translate and read foreign languages of countries that are of interest. And that's been going on since Benjamin Franklin went to France in the wayback.

Apparently in Trump's America, Intelligence gathering is a really bad thing, that only other countries are allowed to perform.

Are they like the Russian Trolls?

Beats me, I've never met one. But considering the Pentagon's gargantuan budget, I'd bet our trolls are paid far better than than Russian trolls.

I'm still waiting to see the evidence of American Troll farms. So far, I haven't. What these links describe is simple reading of public postings.

And since in today's America it's almost required, a couple of links for you from RT:

The West? Trolling foreign states for over a decade â" former MI5 agent
Pentagon bots in your comments? US Army wants AI tool for social networks

There. Now if anyone wants, feel free to trash me with McCarthy-era red-baiting about how I'm a Russian troll or bot. /s

Are they like the Russian Trolls?

Beats me, I've never met one. But considering the Pentagon's gargantuan budget, I'd bet our trolls are paid far better than than Russian trolls.

And since in today's America it's almost required, a couple of links for you from RT:

The West? Trolling foreign states for over a decade â" former MI5 agent
Pentagon bots in your comments? US Army wants AI tool for social networks

There. Now if anyone wants, feel free to trash me with McCarthy-era red-baiting about how I'm a Russian troll or bot. /s

Are they like the Russian Trolls?

Beats me, I've never met one. But considering the Pentagon's gargantuan budget, I'd bet our trolls are paid far better than than Russian trolls.

Busted another big CIA/NSA/Mossad op

https://www.rt.com/news/422030...

On March 9, the leading Russia-based cybersecurity company reported their research on a program it called Slingshot, which used a highly sophisticated approach to infect computers with malware through infected routers. The operation had targeted computers throughout the Middle East and some parts of Africa since at least 2012, and required a lot of money and expertise from its creators. A report by an industry news publication, CyberScoop, claims Slingshot was run by the Special Operations Command (SOCOM).

The people behind Slingshot also took serious measures to protect their malware from being detected. For example, it can shut down its own components before being exposed by anti-viral software. It also runs its own file system to remain hidden from the computer-operating system, and blocks disc defragmentation to avoid being damaged by the process.

Kaspersky Lab said it has found around 100 victims of Slingshot and its related modules in Kenya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya, Congo, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia and Tanzania. Kenya and Yemen accounted for the majority of the cases. Most of the victims were individuals rather than organizations.

The company said they could not attribute the threat to a particular actor, but believed the people behind it to be âoehighly organized and professional and probably state-sponsored.â Text clues in the code suggested they were âoeEnglish-speakingâ.

The news report quotes unnamed former and current US intelligence officials, who said that Slingshot was an operation of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), a component of SOCOM. Kaspersky Lab âoeburnedâ the program, which is believed to have been an anti-terrorist operation, leaving the American military without a valuable tool and potentially putting American lives at risk, the officials claimed.

âoeSOP [standard operating procedure] is to kill it all with fire once you get caught,â CyberScoop quoted a former intelligence official as saying. âoeIt happens sometimes and weâ(TM)re accustomed to dealing with it. But it still sucks⦠I can tell you this didnâ(TM)t help anyone.â

CyberScoop says that Cahnadr and GollumApp are associated with hacker groups widely believed to be the NSA and the CIA respectively in the cybersecurity community. The report implies that Kaspersky Lab should have expected Slingshot to be a US operation.

Busted another big CIA/NSA/Mossad op

https://www.rt.com/news/422030...

On March 9, the leading Russia-based cybersecurity company reported their research on a program it called Slingshot, which used a highly sophisticated approach to infect computers with malware through infected routers. The operation had targeted computers throughout the Middle East and some parts of Africa since at least 2012, and required a lot of money and expertise from its creators. A report by an industry news publication, CyberScoop, claims Slingshot was run by the Special Operations Command (SOCOM).

The people behind Slingshot also took serious measures to protect their malware from being detected. For example, it can shut down its own components before being exposed by anti-viral software. It also runs its own file system to remain hidden from the computer-operating system, and blocks disc defragmentation to avoid being damaged by the process.

Kaspersky Lab said it has found around 100 victims of Slingshot and its related modules in Kenya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya, Congo, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia and Tanzania. Kenya and Yemen accounted for the majority of the cases. Most of the victims were individuals rather than organizations.

The company said they could not attribute the threat to a particular actor, but believed the people behind it to be âoehighly organized and professional and probably state-sponsored.â Text clues in the code suggested they were âoeEnglish-speakingâ.

The news report quotes unnamed former and current US intelligence officials, who said that Slingshot was an operation of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), a component of SOCOM. Kaspersky Lab âoeburnedâ the program, which is believed to have been an anti-terrorist operation, leaving the American military without a valuable tool and potentially putting American lives at risk, the officials claimed.

âoeSOP [standard operating procedure] is to kill it all with fire once you get caught,â CyberScoop quoted a former intelligence official as saying. âoeIt happens sometimes and weâ(TM)re accustomed to dealing with it. But it still sucks⦠I can tell you this didnâ(TM)t help anyone.â

CyberScoop says that Cahnadr and GollumApp are associated with hacker groups widely believed to be the NSA and the CIA respectively in the cybersecurity community. The report implies that Kaspersky Lab should have expected Slingshot to be a US operation.

Interesting how closely your false equivalence matches the Russian government's official propaganda message.

Almost like you are a Russian stooge

Back in America, Facebook and the Trump / Russia crime family are facing investigation crimes against the people of this country, and a foreign sponsored information war which is protected by a traitor and foreign agent.

Donald Trumpski belongs in prison, and you should stop spreading Russia's misinformation and supporting their propaganda campaign.

It's been five years since former US spy chief James Clapper lied to Congress about the NSA's giant surveillance program, and the statute of limitations for his crime is coming to end, guaranteeing him a peaceful retirement.

On March 12, 2013, Clapper, then director of national intelligence, knowingly lied to the US Select Committee on Intelligence, when he was asked by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) whether the National Security Agency collected "any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans."

"No sir. Not willingly," Clapper said.

The full extent of Clapper's unabashed dishonesty was revealed to the world just three months later, when NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked troves of documents to Wikileaks detailing the agencyâ(TM)s vast, warrantless surveillance of American citizens.

In 2009, professional baseball player Miguel Tejada pleaded guilty to lying to Congress after giving false testimony about performance-enhancing drug use in Major League Baseball.

"He admitted to lying to Congress and was unremorseful and flippant about it," Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) told the Washington Examiner. "The integrity of our federal government is at stake because his behavior sets the standard for the entire intelligence community." Massie was referring to Clapper, not the baseball player. Just to be clear.

In other news, an unprecedented number of former CIA agents are running for office in 2018 as Democrats. Once in the CIA, always in the CIA. They will always represent the Agency's interests, no matter what walk of life they progress to. Get out there and vote, people. Bring a couple of friends to vote. It's the only way we'll get our country back.

Hell, government officials can commit perjury and get away with it

Ex-spook Clapper celebrates 5yrs since lying to Congress, as statute of limitations expires

Yeah, the choice of RT.com was deliberate - I'm trolling RUSSIA! RUSSIA! RUSSIA! fake-news fanatic BeauHD

Why isn't this on Slashdot?

Trolls crash Apple devices with âkiller symbolâ(TM) from South Indian language

Published time: 17 Feb, 2018 11:01

Apple users are once again under siege from unscrupulous trolls who are using a Unicode-based bug in a south Indian language to instantly crash iPhone and Mac apps en masse via social media.

The latest bug causes application meltdown when it tries to render two characters in Telugu, a language from south India. Telugu is the countryâ(TM)s third most-spoken language, with roughly 75 million native speakers, and the fifteenth most-spoken language in the world.

READ MORE: Apple downgraded over âdramaticallyâ(TM) slowing iPhone X demand

While many can simply avoid using or viewing the symbols, the problem arises when an unscrupulous troll sends the symbols directly to devices, effectively triggering a notification bomb that locks up the phone. âoeRead this to log off instantlyâ and âoeretweet this to crash anyone using an Apple device,â wrote several such online deviants on Twitter. The crash bug can also be deployed in a Twitter userâ(TM)s â@ repliesâ(TM) or in their handle, meaning it can be pushed out through âlikesâ(TM) or mentions on the platform.

This forces users to reinstall the app from scratch. One security researcher reportedly added one of the âweaponizedâ(TM) symbols to his Twitter handle as an experiment, before attempting to request an Uber. âoeI suspect a crashed phone means you get routed to the next driver⦠who gets crashed too. Like an Uber routing worm,â he wrote.

I keep requesting a ride but all the drivers in the area seem to no longer be on their phones or accepting rides pic.twitter.com/bed5O3h6GV
â" MG (@_MG_) February 15, 2018

Software engineers at Aloha Browser initially discovered two Unicode symbols in Telugu that crashes any Apple device using the default San Francisco font which includes iPhones, iPads, Macs and watch OS devices with text-displaying screens. Apps such as Mail, Twitter, Messages, Slack, Instagram, Facebook, and in some instances Chrome have confirmed vulnerability to the bug.

#iPhone source code leaked online could mean payday for hackers https://t.co/2dlVllpNG7
â" RT (@RT_com) February 8, 2018

It can also wreak havoc when deployed as an SSID (service set identifier) in a WiFi network. For instance, if a user were to input the offending Unicode symbols in their SSID and then use their device as a WiFi hotspot, they could, theoretically, flash crash all Apple devices within range that had their WiFi enabled.

SSID crashes the networks app pic.twitter.com/0KnxZBGNln
â" Bobby 'Tables (@info_dox) February 15, 2018

âoeFrom some experimentation, this bug seemed to occur for any pair of Telugu consonants with a vowel, as long as the vowel is not à± (ai),â Mozilla engineer Manish Goregaokar wrote in an in-depth blog post on the south Indian language bug.

Apple confirmed that there is a âoedot updateâ fix coming soon, though declined to confirm if it would be iOS 11.2.6. Apple noted that the bug is fixed in current betas of iOS, tvOS, macOS and watchOS.

Getting reports from [redacted] that setting it as your SSID on an open hotspot will crash a variety of passive Apple devices if they have WiFi enabled.

Definitely nobody do this on your phone and walk into an Apple store. Definitely.
[cc @SwiftOnSecurity@internetofshit] pic.twitter.com/umUZjGFzzO
â" Fake "Unicode." â(TM) (@FakeUnicode)

Come on then, I'll play, where should we get our facts from?

There's this: https://www.rt.com/
and this: https://www.infowars.com/

Is America a truly modern country without universal healthcare or paid time off for illness?

"American decline: Open pools of raw sewage in the richest country in the world"
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/41857...
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEv...

Actually communication directly via twitter makes no sense what so ever, defiantly no spy vs spy. What you do is encrypt the message going from other people to other people and just listen in. So not from 1st party to 2nd party but from 3rd party to 4th party and in return from 5th party to 6th party and you just listen in. You read from listening in and you send via the 3rd and 5th parties, who a pretty secure because they do nothing and it is just a temporary contact with you, say at a regularised location, say food place, or public transport. Now that's spy vs spy. Other sneaky stuff to like embedding stuff in ohhh ahhh RT https://www.rt.com/ and you decrypt the bits they publicly broadcast, sending a message still tricky frequent comments or any would like bad, so really a bad idea.

The smartest now is a localised wireless digital connection, that forwards on. Say an extra wireless chip in a custom made phone, that connects to wireless networks at an eatery or near public transport access points and away you go, higher data transfer. That spy vs spy stuff, the profession of being professional paranoid, so many ways to do so many things, a real head fuck nowadays keepings security is so much fucking harder than breaking it, no comparison. Of course living in a large apartment block creates all sorts of digital methods for communication.

Via direct tweets has to be the stupidest thing I have heard but apparently arrogance always provides (the above the law attitude).

Doesn't mean they aren't after you. There is Radio Free Europe that has been broadcasting into Russia since Cold War. It would be naive to think that its programs have been unbiased. At the same time, Facebook has bazillions of advertisers and domestic political advertisers are trolls too. Maybe it's marginally better to have competition from foreign trolls. However much they lie, they will also expose whatever truthful information suits their needs. You can see Russian propoganda in action for yourself. No doubt biased, but isn't there still something useful to learn from a different perspective?

'Russiaâ(TM)s all we talk about but voters don't care': CNN reporter admits network's obsession on air

This is exactly what the Russians are thinking.

There was a US Air Force jet which lingered for hours off the coast near the areas where the attack occurred. Russian sources have openly talked about the plane possibly relaying data for the drones. Putin himself has said Russia has intelligence on this, and clearly hinted that the US was responsible for the attack.

But shucks, everyone knows our gov't would never do something like that... /s

They would probably move to Belarus> https://www.rt.com/business/41...

And Russia is on the same track:
https://www.rt.com/news/414107...
Damn it.

"If Theresa May is certain Russia is ‘meddling’ in British democracy she obviously knows some seriously cheap advertisers. It just emerged Russia spent 73p ($0.97) on ads to influence the Brexit referendum. How much influence can you buy for 73p?"

"Well, for a start, probably not a lot because the Facebook ads were about migration and the wider European context – and not Brexit. And then there’s the fact less than £1 was spent." link

Your room and its contents says a lot about you. This data can be used by databrokers to update thousands of reputation scores about you. Deep learning algorithms could seek correlations with (mental) health, poverty, ambition, etc by comparing your room to that of others whom they know more about.

It doesn't matter that these are spurious correlations, or that they are wrong a lot of the times. As long as it allows some risk to be managed, then their clients will happily pay for these 'opinions' about you, which they will treat as fact.

The same thing goes for your face. They will claim they can read your BMI, sexuality and even if you're a criminal from just your face.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.031...
http://www.bbc.com/news/techno...
https://www.rt.com/news/368307...

As a Google CTO put it in 2012: "all data is credit data, we just don't know how to use it yet".

RT pumps out conspiracy theories on an industrial scale. For example, here is a compilation of 50 of their 9/11 conspiracy theories: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Granted, Fox like a good conspiracy too, but even they can't match RT's dedication to manufacturing bullshit. They have reposted material from Infowars and had uber-conspiracy nut Alex Jones on many times. This story is a good example, this being the Infowars original.

I'm looking at RT.com's front page right now. Everything looks semi-normal, no glaring "FAKE!" story, at least stories that go completely counter to what Western media is spouting. Taking a particular piece, about Lebanon's Hariri and the whole "quitting from Saudi Arabia" debacle of the last week :

https://www.rt.com/news/410561...

Comparing said story with the Washington Post's story on the same event shows near identical facts being stated by both outlets :

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

So... what's the issue with RT.com's coverage ? Only the fact that it's state sponsered ? But by that token, so is PBS, BBC, CBC, ABC (the Australian ABC, not the American one!)... This all seems rather unfair and lacking any actual substance. It seems to be ... actual anti-Russian propaganda in a way. Maybe if Alphabet were a bit more transparent about their findings that led up to this decision. I mean, surely they're not just doing this based on the "Russian meddling" narrative, that's based on a report from a private firm like Crowdstrike... or worse... the Steele Dossier that's been proven false in many regards. And why are they not blocking Buzzfeed news ? Let's be real. Buzzfeed.

Part of the fun of this (so long as this is limited to talking about twitter.com) is seeing how the hamfisted censorship-based commentary works. What's okay with corporate power today? Who are media corporations trying to placate today? Nobody needs twitter.com or any of these other single-point-of-failure censorship havens (including /.), so if they go away or one's account is eliminated virtually nothing of value is lost. There were other venues for discussion before they arrived, there are others that co-exist with them, and there will be others when they die.

But it's a different matter of far greater importance when Americans face something similar with their government as is the case with RT (Russia Today) right now. See RT's stories on how the US Government has made RT America & Sputnik register as a "foreign agent". This is particularly interesting in light of Twitter's about-face (aka flip-flop) on RT—Twitter went from offering them a highly lucrative ad package to censoring RT (likely at the behest of the US Government) in order to go along with that government's 'Russiagate' narrative (which itself is protracted baseless distraction coupled with a casus belli for war with Russia). It's difficulty to live up to Noam Chomsky described as supporting freedom of speech ("Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you're really in favor of free speech, then you're in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you're not in favor of free speech.") particularly when you "believe that everyone should have the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers" like Twitter claims to!