Yahoo Blocked Emails About Wall Street Protests

itwbennett writes "People trying to email information about the Wall Street protests on Monday using Yahoo mail, found themselves on the receiving end of messages from Yahoo claiming 'suspicious activity'. ThinkProgress.org has a YouTube video of users trying to send emails that mention the 'OccupyWallSt.org' web site, which seemed to be the magic phrase to get your email blocked. Via Twitter, Yahoo announced the blockage was now fixed, but 'there may be residual delays.'"

Comments

No censorship on youtube

[brian0918]

Check out the footage of the tens of thousands that showed up for the Day of Rage at Wall Street.

Re:No censorship on youtube

[Tsingi]

and the markets are currently down... where should the people go to show their rage at the people disrupting the markets?

Organize a protest, part and parcel of how a democracy is supposed to work. Of course in a Fascist society, communications get blocked...

Re:No censorship on youtube

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

"Unless the people benefit, economic growth is a subsidy for the rich."
-- Richard Falk
"Post-Mubarak Revolutionary Chances", Aljazeera English 22nd Feb 2011

Re:No censorship on youtube

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Ursula LeGuin:
" Then there's Social Darwinism - bankers red in tooth and claw, surviving fitly, while small vermin live on the blood that trickles down... This metaphor, based on a vast misunderstanding of evolutionary process, hits its limit almost at once.

" In predatory competition, bigness is useful, but there are endless ways to get your dinner besides being bigger than it is. You can be smaller but smarter, smaller but faster, tiny but poisonous, winged... you can live inside it while you eat it... As for getting a mate, if combat were the only way to score, large size would help, but (despite our battle-fixation) most competition doesn't involve combat.

" You can win the reproductive race by dancing gracefully, by having a bluegreen tail decorated with eyes, by building a lovely bower for your bride, by knowing how to tell a joke...

" As for living space, you can crowd out your neighbors by outgrowing them, but it's cheaper and just as effective to corner all the water in the vicinity, like a juniper tree, or to be toxic to sea-anemones who aren't closely related to you...

" The competitive techniques of plants and animals are endless in variety and ingenuity. So why are we, clever we, stuck on one and one only?"

http://blog.bookviewcafe.com/2011/09/19/clinging-desperately-to-a-metaphor/

Re:No censorship on youtube

[cobrausn]

No, he also uses "you're completely pathetic", "you're an ignorant hypocrite", and "slashdot = stagnated".

It's somewhat funny, actually.

Re:No censorship on youtube

[AliasMarlowe]

Communist! Everybody knows that, in a truly free society, the people who can't compete are ground into the dirt, and justly, by their own hand. And anybody who thinks this treatment is unfair is some kind of moral defective.

I know you're just being sarcastic (or maybe just facetious), but here's a nice quote:
"Every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require." – Theodore Roosevelt
Now if only the public welfare actually meant something these days...

Re:No censorship on youtube

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there such a thing as economic growth where only the rich benefit?

Yeah, it's what we have now, or anything resembling "trickle down economics".

It's why Republicans believe that if only we cut the taxes on the rich, their largesse and spending will make the rest of us richer by magically freeing up money the rich would otherwise be spending to avoid paying taxes. (Despite the overwhelming evidence this has never actually worked.)

It's why corporations cut the domestic workforce and send the jobs to 3rd world countries.

It's why asshat CEOs make multi-million dollar bonuses by screwing thousands of workers out of the same amount of money.

It's why corporations are dictating laws to politicians which strip us of our rights while entrenching their own.

It's why when a corporation does something flagrantly illegal or dangerous, they spend years only to pay a small fine and do a public service announcement where you and I would have been hauled off to jail right away.

It's why corporations now have the notion of "free speech" which trumps the rights of actual natural people, and why they can influence elections more than you or I could.

It's why Libertarians say that people should be free to pay for their own social services, and not pay if they don't want to -- which basically is another way for the rich to opt out of paying for society and leaving everyone to fend for themselves.

At its core, Capitalism is all about screwing everybody else over to get your own way. Since the "guiding hand" is busy masturbating most of the time, it doesn't ever really produce these wonderfully hypothetical outcomes everyone ascribes to it. Unchecked, the guiding hand gets turned into a fist to be wielded by the privileged.

If you seriously believe there isn't a situation in which the rich increasingly get more of the pie, and the rest of us get screwed over ... you're either a blind idiot, or you're so slavishly tied to an ideology about how money works that you're not willing to look at reality.

It's basically the most brutally Darwinian system there is ... and people act like it's a kind, friendly puppy dog that will always find the best solution. In reality, it's mostly about how you can try to give yourself an unfair advantage over people and proceed to royally fuck them over.

There's literally thousands of years of examples of economic growth being a subsidy for the rich. Because that's how it works in practice.

Re:No censorship on youtube

[jahudabudy]

At it's core, capitalism is that you own your own labor and your own product (if you produce something)

Until I take it from you b/c I have a bigger army. What's that, the government should prevent that from happening? So you think government should provide the services YOU want (protect your property and wealth), of course by taxing people. But government definitely shouldn't provide any services to anyone else that you disapprove of, b/c then taxation is theft.

I never said that the rich aren't getting a larger portion of the pie. I said that the pie is (has been) growing and everyone's portion is larger.

Except everyone's portion ISN'T getting larger. Proportionally, the middle class's portion is getting smaller, and the super-rich's portion is getting larger. How long do we have to wait until we complain about this? Until their larger portion has grown to 75% of the pie? 80%? 90%? As long as the rest of us has a subsistence level of existence (which not everyone does now)?

and I'll be damned if I let some lazy bastard with an entitlement complex demands I share because I have taken an unfair advantage.

Why is it that anyone that feels our current system is unfair must be a lazy slob that simply can't compete? Maybe I feel the system is unfair and that simply working harder to make sure I get mine would be contributing to a system that, again, I disapprove of. Maybe any system that has some people living in luxury while others literally die for lack of resources strikes me as immoral.

As for your assertion that capitalism is responsible for the overall better lifestyle (some) people enjoy, that's laughable. Technology has improved our lifestyle. Capitalism has supported some technological development, sometimes it has inhibited it. Government has supported some technological development, government has inhibited some.

Re:No censorship on youtube

[SuricouRaven]

Photoshopping is a genericised trademark. As Scuba said. Point the camera at the edges of the group. Or find small protest groups seperate from the main body to focus on. Or small groups on their way to/from the protest. Or lie about the time - take your photos right at the start before everyone arrives or right at the end after everyone has left.

Re:No censorship on youtube

[ElectricTurtle]

Clarity is in fact achieved by using the most appropriate words to both denote and connote a full spectrum of meaning. Anything less leads to oversimplifications and misunderstandings. If readers/listeners are inadequately educated to absorb the conveyance of all the details, the onus is on them to rise to that level of understanding, not the speaker to lower himself to pander to their shortcomings. That is unless he is a politician. (Ha ha!)

Further, while not all arguments by analogy are considered fallacious, the ones which are not are essentially those for which no other argument is possible (those things which are so abstract or poorly understood that hard facts either don't apply or don't yet exist, respectively). Arguments about such topics are usually nothing more than metaphysical pissing contests between sophists, so for those areas for which a significant amount of real information exists, arguments by analogy are usually to some degree fallacious.

Whether societies or markets are like or unlike evolution and natural selection is at most a tool for understanding models of behavior, not a justification or validation of actions within either the physical reality or its abstraction through said models. If conservatives "proved" that society was just like evolution, or liberals "proved" that it wasn't, neither would actually demonstrate which mode of action is more "right" or "moral" because evolution itself is an amoral natural phenomenon. Nature is full of brutalities, and the argument from nature is a fallacy.

If you send spam, that's what happens

[Anonymous Coward]

Mail containing the same URL hit a bunch of spamtraps and caused a lot of complaints. That's the sort of thing that gets your mail blocked.

Nothing to see here, no grand conspiracy of censorship, just spam filters doing what they do.

Re:If you send spam, that's what happens

[wierd_w]

I was going to ask how this url got blacklisted by the spam filter, but it it was unsolicited and mass mailed, then by definition it WAS spam, and the black listing happened automagically when users flagged it as such.

This scenario makes me wonder if a crowdsourced disruption campaign could disrupt email from major corporations intended for end user inboxes ("special offers" ahem...) simply by having the participants mass email each other a bulk list of urls relating to the target, then have them all report the chain letter as spam.

That would get a large number of corporate urls blacklisted for suspicious activity. (Assuming there aren't any sweetheart deals in place to specifically whitelist such web addresses, of course.)

Re:If you send spam, that's what happens

[fifedrum]

all our sweetheart deal whitelists are IP based. Still an interesting opportunity for spammers, if they could own a box in that address space, they could send quite a bit of junk before being shutdown. The only issue is that even whitelisted IPs are bound by 550 error count checks, i.e. too many bad destination addresses in a short period of time blocks the IP.

Yahoo mail?

[Synerg1y]

This sounds eerily similar to the British monitoring twitter for riots... block the method of communication for the protestors and the problem will fix itself!
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/08/cameron-considers-blocking-facebook-twitter-after-riots.html
http://technology-corner.com/british-police-will-use-twitter-to-monitor-protests.html

I'm not sure if Yahoo did it intentionally (would be quite the coincidence), but if that is the case, a Yahoo account might not be the best thing to have for anybody with views of the government.

Re:Yahoo mail?

[geekoid]

It hit a spam trap. No conspiracy, no shadowy people preventing you from yahooing. Not big afroed white dude following you around.

So that's what all the fuss is about

[kervin]

I guess that's what I get for getting all my news from Slashdot.

I work in the Wall Street Area and for the last few days there's been literally dozens of cops, barricades, and they've blocking the subway stop ( at least the "J" which I use ). Coming to think of it, I did see a demonstration go by and a few people holding signs. But there are always demonstrations in the Wall Street area. It's just a common place for the cops to give demonstration permits in Manhattan I think.

If that what that was, I hate to break it to you guys, but the movement was a huge failure. At least so far. Besides the Authorities toughening security, it was business as usual

Re:So that's what all the fuss is about

[0123456]

I hate to break it to you guys, but the movement was a huge failure.

That's obviously because no-one knew about it due to Yahoo blocking their emails :).

Re:So that's what all the fuss is about

[StillNeedMoreCoffee]

The media did the same thing with the demonstrations in Wisconsin against the Anti-Union law that was hastily passed. Thousands of demonstrators but little coverage, but how strange, any little Tea Party gathering of 20-30 people got national coverage. I guess the rarity of that type of demonstration makes it News (or for the racist and defamatory signs)., whereas large demonstrations against corporate greed are more commonplace and not worthy of note. Or the liberal media really is now the corporate media.

Re:So that's what all the fuss is about

[dkleinsc]

The example I typically bring up in these kinds of discussions: In 2003, in anticipation of the start of the Iraq War, peaceniks worldwide organized protests that involved (depending on which source you believe) 5-10 million people, meaning that something like 1 out of every 1000 people in the world were protesting that day. These protests are nearly forgotten. Similarly unreported were the facts that public polls on the Iraq War favor immediate withdrawal by a 20% margin for 5 years, and more recently have developed a similar pattern on the Afghanistan War.

Noam Chomsky isn't right about everything, but on the idea that corporate-owned media leads to pro-corporate biases he's right on the money. Particularly when the most "liberal" of the major news outlets is owned by General Electric, which profits handsomely from defense contracts.

Re:Talk about hypocrisy

[geekoid]

Since when is Yahoo a government agency?

Dumbass.

Only if you had Yahoo's spam protection enabled

[stox]

Accounts which did not have Yahoo's spam protection enabled did not have this blocked.

In related news...

[arielCo]

My corp antivirus is blocking OccupyWallSt.org:

Trend Micro OfficeScan Event

URL Blocked

The URL that you are attempting to access is a potential security risk. Trend Micro OfficeScan has blocked this URL in keeping with network security policy.
URL: http://occupywallst.org/
Risk Level: Dangerous
Details: Verified fraud page or threat source

Yay

Re:Talk about hypocrisy

[milbournosphere]

I'm also referring to the general communications blackout going on at this protest. Agreed, I guess yahoo can do whatever the fuck they want. But all the big media networks are conveniently looking the other way and ignoring protests up 10k + people. And people on the ground are getting arrested, cameras are being seized, and I've already seen several video accounts of police brutality. Yahoo may not be a government agency, but there are blatant violations of civil rights going on here, and the government doesn't seem interested in protecting peaceful protestors against those violations.

Spam filter - Not censorship

[Sqr(twg)]

Before everyone starts crying "censorship" consider this, far more likely, scenario:

Among protesters there are always a number of morons. One of these morons thought it would be a good idea to use a few of his Yahoo mail accounts to send out thousands of emails promoting the OccopyWallSt website. This triggers Yahoo's outgoing spam filter, and OccupyWallSt.org is placed along with CheapViagraForYourPenis.net on the "100% certain spam" list. Any email trying to promote this website is blocked.

All webmail sites that offer free signup without any ID check must implement something like this, or they will be overrun by spammers.

The one responsible for the "censorship" is the moron who decided to send out the spam in the first place.

(Of course it is theoretically possible that it was somebody opposed to the protests who sent out the spam to trigger the blocking, but I find that scenario far less likely.)

As if Yahoo were big enough to have any effect

[Timmy D Programmer]

I doubt they would knowingly censor emails (other than if it had the earmarks of spam). Why bother I'm sure the percentage of those protesters that use Yahoo as their email is quite small. So blocking them would have little to no effect.

Re:Talk about hypocrisy

[SuricouRaven]

An argument could be made that when a company grows to a position of such power that it has a level of control close to that of government, then it should be subject to the same constitutional controls as the government. Yahoo, however, is not even close to that level of power. Even at their height, they wern't.

Facebook, perhaps. They do control a mass-surveillance system and data mining operation that would be the envy of most governments.

Re:Talk about hypocrisy

[circletimessquare]

the USA is a corporatocracy.

The corporations are its government.

Yahoo is a de facto government agency in this regard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy

Empty Gestures

[morari]

I have yet to see any real protest come from this. You don't change policy by willingly confining yourself to the "free speech zones" that the police have set up. You don't change policy by going limp and zipping your mouth when confronted. You certainly don't change policy by loitering around a park eating pizza all weekend.

Instead of disrupting Wall Street, this group has done little more than create a weekend spectacle. They've largely played by the rules, and while that's great at making cops look like bullies, it doesn't actually achieve anything beyond a brief morning headline.

We need real protest. We don't need empty gestures and symbolic marches. We need action. We need rioting, and yes, even outright violence. The system is hostile toward us, why not repay the favor?

Re:Empty Gestures

[dkleinsc]

We need real protest. We don't need empty gestures and symbolic marches. We need action. We need rioting, and yes, even outright violence. The system is hostile toward us, why not repay the favor?

Here's the problem with that sort of approach: Rioting and violence makes it easier to portray the protesters as a bunch of anarchist malcontents who will happily invade your home and take your stuff. And it doesn't even take a huge percentage of protesters to create that impression - during the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle approximately 1000 people at most engaged in violence and looting, and yet that is the popular memory, if there is any memory at all, of those protests.

The reason Egypt and Tunisia worked, and to some degree Wisconsin worked, were because the protesters were not prepared to continue protesting, all day, every day, until their demands were met. The Occupy Wall St effort was a 1-day affair - it happened, everyone went home, they could be safely ignored. Much harder to ignore is thousands of people protesting every single day from 7 AM to 7 PM.

So this is what's actually needed, if you want to really get things going in New York and elsewhere:
1. Wait for Washington to force unemployment benefits to run out, as the Republicans seem intent on doing.
2. Offer free food and shelter to anyone coming to New York to protest at Wall St (or Washington DC to protest at the Mall or the Pentagon).
3. Wait for the crowd of malcontented, malnourished, homeless unemployed people to show up. Give them signs, demands, chants etc to start off with.
4. Sustain the effort for as long as it takes.

Re:Talk about hypocrisy

[LWATCDR]

Umm... I think not http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2439254&cid=37470742
Sorry but I doubt that any news channel would not show 10,000 protesters on Wall Street. Since the food committee only has $14000 that comes to a buck forty per person. https://www.wepay.com/donate/99275
Yea sure there is this massive secret protest going on.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/ doesn't even see it worth covering. I found a few news stores about it. Let me sum it up for you. Tiny, fringe, crackpot, protest.

My Yahoo account gets blocked fairly often.

[couchslug]

Nothing to see here. The spam filtering even on my spamdump Yahoo account has been excellent for the eleven years I've used it.

Re:"Fixed" ???

[WraithCube]

Yes, people send out a bunch of emails to let people know about some new website OccupyWallSt.org (to a computer easily substituted with ch34pm3d7.com or other spam website) and a large percentage of the recipients click that little "mark as spam" button. The spam filter sees a bunch of messages it thinks are spam all containing the same website and decides that its a spammer's website. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Please don't assume everyone agrees with the cause or even if they do there are a lot of people that could care less about politics and think any political messages sent to them are spam. Speaking of which I still can't find anything that actually says what these protests are trying to accomplish besides saying they hate corporations.

Re:How much was this URL spammed?

[scot4875]

If you think there is any real difference between the (R) and (D) besides flavor of bs at election time WAKE UP.

The last time they told us there was no difference between the (R) and the (D) we got Bush instead of Gore. I don't think we want to fall for that again.

Not that Democrats are angels, but I believe they'll at least lube up before they fuck us.

--Jeremy