Slashdot Mirror
Facebook's Absurd Pseudonym Purgatory
An anonymous reader sends a story from a writer whose Facebook account was locked because somebody reported it as using a pseudonym. It doesn't, but Facebook demands a look at identification documents before releasing control over the account. Anyone whose name doesn't sound "real" to Facebook is at risk for this, and the social network doesn't even have a consistent stance on what an "authentic" name is. "Aside from the complexity of identity, the policy is haphazardly enforced at best. At worst, it’s dangerous and discriminatory, and has demonstrably and repeatedly been used to target people who often already are marginalized and vulnerable." Matt Cagle, attorney for the ACLU, says, "By controlling the identity of the speaker with this policy, Facebook has the effect of both reducing speech and eliminating speakers from the platform altogether. This is a particularly concerning move to the ACLU because forums like Facebook serve as the modern-day equivalent of the public square for a lot of communities.
I repeat, do not treat a private service as a public square. That's a horrible idea.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
turkeydance. i identify as a bird.
"...forums like Facebook serve as the modern-day equivalent of the public square for a lot of communities."
Is there a way to identify these communities? Just trying to avoid areas of mass stupidity where Facebook somehow supplanted actual news outlets.
Those who feel Facebook is in the position of being a modern day times square have obviously never heard of a troll before.
Enjoy.
and have it tied to my business account. One thing I discovered Facebook and Especially Google are usless for anything business related with out paying up the ass for likes. Only reason I got a G+ account that I update once in a while is that it lists me higher than the other local businesses in search.
Probably in the next few months I'll abandon both of them usage wise and just keep them for search indexing.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
It's actually Professor Tekno A. Hogg, M.Pupp. (Cantab). Now that you know my full name, I'm sure you will take my opinions much more seriously, because free speech is all about who says something, not what is actually being discussed.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Ahh.. Public Square - the phrase to use when trying to coerce someone into doing something you want.
It's a dumb policy. Don't use Facebook. If people don't care they'll use Facebook anyway. Problem solves itself.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
They should probably just switch to a policy where an account requires a credit card, or valid ID, and you only allow one private and one public account per person.
-Z
Only a fool would put their real name or address anywhere on the internet with the exception of places you buy stuff from.
I always use real sounding pseudonyms (frank johnson, james alexander etc) to prevent accounts being flagged as bot or fake accounts.
I have two Facebook accounts, a real one with with my real info and another one I just use for playing games. I don't want to mix 'friends' from casual games in with my real friends. I used a pseudonym on the second account. Facebook just locked my second account this week and wouldn't release it until I sent in a photo of my driver's license. I consider that a huge invasion of privacy. I had be using the second account for a long time under the pseudonym. After receiving my driver's license they changed the name on the account to my real name (now no one in the games knows who I am) and they entered all of the data from driver's license into the profile. This is just a total mess which is going to cause me to use Facebook even less than I do now.
Fair is fair -- why are celebrities allowed to go by their stage names?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Who the fuck cares about Facebook?
Facebook is a despicable company that doesn't have even a basic level of respect for its users. This has been readily apparent to anyone who has been willing to look for the better part of a decade. You want to be a part of that? Go right ahead. Just don't act all indignant when they arbitrarily lock your account or sell the data they have on you to corporations or the government.
Furthermore, likening Facebook to a public square is just silly. Public squares don't fight for your clicks by targeting you with advertisements. Public squares won't track every move you make on the Internet after you leave. And, most relevant of all, public squares are places where it's perfectly acceptable to remain anonymous through the use of any pseudonym you can dream up.
I say let Facebook do whatever they want. The more egregious the abuse, the more likely another clueless user will wake up and boycott that shit.
People are stupid enough to comply with them when they request documents too. Seriously. I'm pretty sure my dog can live without a facebook account if the account she currently lends me is ever closed.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
My Facebook name is "Dick Gazinya" and it has been such since 2006. Please don't report me.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Dogshit, albeit in some small ways, is useful.
rewriting history since 2109
Dogshit, albeit in some small ways, is useful.
Indeed (Purefinder - a person who picks up dog feces to sell to a tannery, 18th Century Europe)
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I can stand up in any public square the US and give my opinion of whatever topic I want to. I don't have to provide my name to do so.I don't have to show my papers. I don't have to get permission from overnight billioinaires. I can simply tell people what I am thinking, and call myself Silence Dogood.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Facebook is a place where most of the people you encounter have a real-world persona that pretty much matches their online persona, so if you take care to know the people you friend, it cuts out a lot of bad behavior. You have the opportunity, though you can also screw it up with poor choices of friends, to have a community that avoids much of the trouble of random corners of the internet. People are *much* better behaved when their real-world friends and acquaintances can see them.
This is useful. It doesn't serve every purpose, and it isn't intended to. It isn't for everyone, and that's okay. It discriminates against people who would otherwise behave behind a pseudonym, so it's not perfect. Nothing is.
A place without pseudonyms is useful, even if it isn't universal.
Disclaimer: My slashdot name is a pseudonym. My facebook name isn't.
I have an email username "nobody" at one of my own domains that I use for things that I don't want connected to me. It's a perfectly functional normal email account just like the ones I actually use, it just happens to be named "nobody".
When I was forced to sign up for a Facebook account for a development project that integrated with Facebook, I signed up using that email address. Facebook refused with a message that was tantamount to "ha ha no but really, what's your email address?" Fuckers, that IS a real fucking email address...
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Like dog shit, but covering the planet to a depth of 50 feet.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
So glad I never made a facebook account. No facebook, linkedin, pinterest, no twitter, etc etc etc.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
The United States has this wierd thing called free speech zones. If the government doesn't like your message they will try to force you to use them instead of the public square.
Who the fuck cares about Facebook?
Hey! Don't badmouth my self-updating list of contacts.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
So what happens if you send them a (poor) scan of fake ID? You're not impersonating a real person, and you're not interacting with the government, so I don't see any actual legal consequences of this. Do any lawyers out there have any idea on this?
Seriously.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I can stand up in any public square the US and give my opinion of whatever topic I want to. I don't have to provide my name to do so.I don't have to show my papers. I don't have to get permission from overnight billioinaires. I can simply tell people what I am thinking, and call myself Silence Dogood.
Then you should do that. Facebook, a business, is under no obligation to help you with that effort.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Dogshit, albeit in some small ways, is useful.
Just like the old AOL CD's.
Facebook is just the 21st century version of AOL, for that matter.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
All of the people who use it. And that's a lot of people. Let them do whatever they want? That affects a lot of people. Fail to sound the alarm? Then how do you differentiate you vs. the enemy?
Knowing, but not warning, that makes you feel superior? What about knowing and warning?
I say tell everyone you know, and let them decide. I would prefer to let them wrestle in Jell-O, but time is short and I have other priorities.
But if you have links to Jell-O wrestling where this is a solved problem, do share.
Or you could come in the middle of the night covering your face and put up signs and posters saying the same and come morning it will be there.
Let's stop pretending that all public places have no means or anonymity. Someone recently went around placing notes about some KKK group and candy on people's porches in my area. The candy I suppose was to entice children to read the notes if they saw them before their parents I guess.
Of course my porch was skipped. I have a couple very large dogs and signs saying "trespassers will be violated" and "hidden fence, dogs run loose on property".
The writer, Nadia Drake (as listed in the byline at Wired.com), doesn't explicate until almost the end of the article: it's not that FB is misinterpreting her actual name as overly exotic, nor is she using a stage or business name, but her account is registered as "Nads N. Nads". She justifies this by saying that her friends commonly call her "Nads" for short and that she also wants to avoid a stalker. That might be justified, but the fact that she buries it near the end of the article, after a whole bunch of support for actual minority and Native American names, makes it feel just a bit self-serving. I would argue that proper journalistic practice would be to front-load this information in the first or second paragraph.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Who the fuck cares about Facebook?
Like this is going to get you modded down on Slashdot.
The better question to ask is "Who on Faceback gives a damn about Slashdot --- or even knows that it exists?"
The problem isn't unique to the geek forums: almost no one on the net makes the effort to open channels of communication with those outside their own group.
The free speech zones are not about your message being liked or not, it's about your message interrupting others in their message and your message becoming violent and disruptive.
If you don't like it citizen, you can run for office and change it.
It's true if you look at CNC forums and 3D printer forums. The same things keep getting re-invented all the time on both sides.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Clearly you haven't been modded into oblivion, but honestly, this is a dumb question. That's like asking, "Who the fuck cares about Google?"
Literally over a billion people care. And the advertisers care. And the shareholders care. There're a lot of people that care about Facebook.
Whether you like it or not, and whether you use it or not, to many people, Facebook is becoming all they know of the internet. For all intents and purposes, it IS the internet for a segment of the population. There are mobile providers that will sell you a plan that gives you virtually no data for free, but you DO get Facebook access for free. Facebook's Messenger chat service has something like 700 million users and is the single most popular chat application in the USA. We hear stories about the NYT doing a deal for instant loading articles and a share of ad revenue because Facebook is also becoming the place where most people read their news.
So yeah, LOTS of people care. YOU should care, even if you don't use it, because it's becoming the sort of behemoth that warps space around it. I hardly use Google's services at all anymore, but I definitely care about what Google is doing in the world. Most people with PCs and Android phones care about Apple and the influence it brings to hardware and mobile—even if they purport to hate every single change Apple brings to hardware or mobile. People that don't live in the USA definitely care what the USA is up to. There are plenty of reasons to care about Facebook and even weird things like this because they really do serve to show us the state of the internet today and give us hints to the future, or at the very least, what we DON'T want the future to look like.
People have been threatening to abandon Facebook for various minor transgressions every year that it's been around, and it keeps getting bigger. It's not going anywhere for a while.
Your childishly oversimple world view and pissy rant aside...
I have a friend who just got married. Her legal name changed as a result. She's straight, has no agenda, is a bland, white female who believes the TV news because, "Why would they lie?", doesn't ask questions and is perfectly happy being a father-knows-best vanilla citizen. In her mightiest throes of intellectual dissent, discussion topics rarely stray from the kind of drapes she wants in her house and whether to go with public or private schools when she has kids. She'd probably even agree with your infantile position, though your cuss words might upset her.
But FB is giving her trouble over her last name changing, indicating that their rules and enforcement are stoned.
How does that fit into your little tantrum?
Facebook users are the commodity. never forget that. They sell your data to marketing companies and make a pretty penny doing it. They just want to make sure their data is as accurate as possible.
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
As I said, you can have anonymity in the public square, but you have to make sacrifices. Wearing a hood or ski mask tends to raise suspicion in the people around you, and for good reason. There's a trade-off. Sometimes, the trade-off is worth it, but there is always a cost. And despite the bitcoin wishes, the Internet is not a magical place where laws and social norms do not apply.
Being anonymous is different from being anonymous and participating fully in society. If you have to cover your face, it limits your options quite a bit.
You make my point. You don't send out your dogs anonymously. You clearly state, on signs on a property with an address, that dogs are protecting your house. You're house. This way people know which house you don't go trespassing around. It gives you peace of mind and it informs the people around you.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I know someone who's real first name is "Fantasy" and FB wouldn't let her register an account. She had to change it to "Fantasie" instead to get past it.
This is a serious issue for many Native Americans and has been repeatedly "Facebooked" about over and over with little to no effect. Because many Native Americans do not have European names they get their accounts locked out. This is easily exploited by those who actively engage in harming Native Americans and others they do not like because of race.
leather-dog muksihs
Blog: @muksihs
... because Facebook's members waive damned near every right that is on any books anywhere.
The only right we have is to leave.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Too bad people are forced to use Facebook. If they were free to leave then this wouldn't be an issue.
Oh wait.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
"Gazinya" looks plausible, as if it were some ethnic variant of Garcinia , the genus that includes mangosteen and brindleberry trees.
Interestingly, several of the mobile games I'm playing right now have a facebook login feature. This is for the obvious reasons- they want me to spam people for them- but the bigger problem is, most of these games don't have a reasonable way to get BACK my account if something happens to my phone data.
So I'm absolutely considering creating a facebook account for exactly this reason. Since I don't have a real facebook, and don't want one, I've been trying to figure out the odds that someone could get my account locked / deleted (and presumably my game data too).
It's a poor set of choices if you actually want to play these set of games at all.
For the life of me, I don't see why this is suddenly a controversy. So far as I can recall, Facebook has had the "real names" policy the entire time they've been around; all the way back to when they were "The Facebook" and were exclusive to college students. And they've never hidden the policy. In fact, they used to advertise it as a feature to distinguish themselves from the cesspool of fake accounts and trolling that MySpace had degenerated into. The people whining about it now remind me of those people who move into houses next to airports and then complain that the airplanes make noise.
And as far as the drag queens' complaints, Facebook does in fact 0provide mechanisms, separate from individual pages, for promoting your stage name, band, business, or whatever else you consider your brand. So that is also a stupid non-issue.
Imagine all the people...
You sent Facebook your driver's license? What a fucking moron. You do realize that Facebook is owned by the government, and they are using this information to literally plot your death, right? Cue the dumb fuck "OMG @ ur tinfoil hat!" responses from the ignorati of Slashdot in 3...2...
Like everyone else here, I don't want to give Facebook my real information. So when I set up a Facebook page for my business and it demanded a personal account to link to that business, I just made something up. I don't care if they ban / lock my personal account. Or all of my personal Facebook accounts, those mean squat to me, but what happens to my business page if that happens? Does anyone know for sure what happens in that case?
People have been threatening to abandon Facebook for various minor transgressions every year that it's been around, and it keeps getting bigger. It's not going anywhere for a while.
There are other measures that are important, though. Like, more people have probably quit using Facebook this year than started using it in it's first five years of existence.
It can continue to grow bigger and more stupid. People catch on, and when they get a clue they back away. Facebook is probably as ubiquitous now as the National Enquirer magazine. But we all see that magazine at the checkstands when we're buying groceries. Do we pick it up and read it, much less buy it? Part of our job is to make sure Facebook heads to the same place as the National Enquirer.
Mark pseudonym accounts as such. Put the name in a different color of whatever you need to do. That way people who want to use it anonymously don't inconvenience those who want to know who people are.
This space intentionally left blank
Of course my porch was skipped. I have a couple very large dogs and signs saying "trespassers will be violated" and "hidden fence, dogs run loose on property".
It's not social networks you have a problem with, it's being social.
The weird thing is that Facebook tries to act like they are very mainstream and socially normative, but they don't have a mechanism in place for women to change from their maiden to their married name. It's almost like Facebook is based in a weird reality where they don't even know that a woman would ever do something like that.
And about hiding the protestors away so they aren't seen by people deemed important by the state, and so there are no photo opportunities for the press containing both the protestors, and those they are protesting to or about.
Quite amusing when you consider how Americans like to lecture the world about free speech.
You know that the most efficient way of telling everyone you know is on Facebook, right? You could do it in 5 minutes, then not have to worry about it again.
Right. It's not going anywhere for a while. And there's nothing that the open source community can do to change that. Because the FOSS community can only do what they always do: copy, whilst leaving out important bits and making the rest more complicated.
In this case, the vary fact of anonymity destroys the very purpose of a FB type social network. It's all about mirroring real life social networks on the computer, thus making communication with people you know easier. No one wants a FB with anonymous people. The anonymous communication function is filled by forums like this one.
How does this have anything to do with 'Free Speech' (considering the conventional usage of that term)?
The solution is simple: do not use Facebook.
Facebook is evil.
Two very important reasons never to use Facebook:
* Facebook blatantly states in their EULA that they will sell your private information to third parties. In fact, anything you upload becomes their (intellectual) property.
* Facebook does not let you use pseudonyms. Your privacy is your own and it should be up to you to decide whether or not you use your real name and not to some billion dollar company whose primary goal in your participation is to sell your private information to third parties.
And on the Eighth Day, Man created God.
Anonymous Coward got locked out of Facebook ... twice!
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
... because the name facebook doesn't sound real to me.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Most news sites use Facebook for posting comments. The country I live in is into a lot of political turmoil right now and not only is my name unique but muy workplace lists me very fondly, so anyone wishing to find me and break my face could do it.
We all know about the teams whose job is to swing political opinion by means of fake accounts with real sounding names. It would seem like nothing is being done against those. On the other hand, many of my friends have fiddled with their screen names and pictures to the point of becoming irecognizable by their contacts out of fear of being harrassed or tagged in a defamatory post.
When I joined /. all those eons ago (after lurking for years) it asked me for a username for login. As my university username was just an encoded course and student number (that, incidentally, was a bitch to remember) I saw no reason to put my real name in that box when a short name I didn't mind being referred to as existed. Same thing with IRC, although I used a different one (and the nature of IRC demands a nick - it's when called that - of 9 chars or less, which my real name wouldn't fit into). In any case, these names are something I choose to be referred by, because I can call myself anything I want.
For "official" purposes, like paying tax, those that need it have my "official" name. Everybody else gets to call me what I want because they aren't the arbiters of my identity.
You posted as AC, hypocrite. I have always posted under a specific name, meaning there is a verifiable trail.
APK /s
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You can do just fine on Facebook. You can easily register an account as "Silence Dogood". You can post your rant on your page, and share the post on various groups (many of which are open access). It may even work better (be safer for you personally) than a random public square, as there's less chance for being arrested for stirring up trouble, in case you're proclaiming hate against certain people or so, and people don't get to see your face with it.
Sure the account may get blocked later, but what'd you care? The message is out already, and that's what it's about. Messages older than a few days are effectively expired on Facebook - not many people browse that far back in their news feed. Too many other messages appearing.
What if someone uses a real name that is not their own? Someone made a new account with a friend's maiden name using a scantily clad photo with her face photoshopped on and started sending friend requests to all her friends (her friend list was public at that time). It took weeks for FB to react to her and all of her friends flagging the account as fake.
Simply putting three characters in every post means nothing, as any AC could do the same pretending to be you. Like I care, or it matters.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
The writer, Nadia Drake (as listed in the byline at Wired.com), doesn't explicate until almost the end of the article: it's not that FB is misinterpreting her actual name as overly exotic, nor is she using a stage or business name, but her account is registered as "Nads N. Nads".
She comes to it in the third or fourth paragraph. It's not exactly buried, or at the end, and comes before any mention of Native American names. Then, it seems you were modded up by people who didn't RTFA at all.
I don't see why her reasons for pseudonymity are any less legit than anyone else's. Everyone on FB ought to be using a pseudo, simply because of the whole spy game FB is running. Then, there are all the other reasons.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
"She comes to it in the third or fourth paragraph."
Totally false. Search for "Nads Nads". This appears for the first time in the 32nd paragraph ("The last name on my account was not Drake. I started out as Nads Nads.").
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
You can thank the Democrats (DNC - 1988) for that. I am not a Republican, I am further left than most elected Democrats, actually. The FSZs are a horrific idea.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
How about those of us who have a username that can be easily tied to our identity? Mine, for one example, has been the same since the 80s during my later college years. I have used this name since then (we could only enter five characters as a username) and use it everywhere I post. I would also mention that you are posting anonymously and using the name APK which, I assume, is not your real name. That makes me wonder about the validity of your concern.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
because forums like Facebook serve as the modern-day equivalent of the public square for a lot of communities.
We allow private corporations to become "the public"
bickerdyke
And what about those people who have "moon unit" as their actual given, real, and not made-up name? (or rather made-up dreamed-up or hallucinated-up by their parents)
bickerdyke
APK is an acronym of his real name, Alexander Peter Kowalski. He doesn't fear his real name being attached to his posts and has a tendency to write angry comments if you miss pieces of his name when spelling it out, particularly when you credit his 'award winning' text file generator
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Well, now I know what your name is and that you use your initials to mark your posts. I suppose somebody could mimic your writing style and pretend to be you but someone could just as easily hack your account and pretend to be you if you had a registered account.
Anyhow, you did not really address my question which is what about those of us who can be tied to their real name (at least I assume I can) when they have used both for a very long time? It is, by virtue of the constant use, pretty much the same as my real name. I have met people in real life who knew my KGIII moniker and they have often jokingly referred to me by my moniker. (It is amusing to hear the varied pronunciations.)
Also, I hate posting AC. The only time I post AC is when I am limited by the number of posts. Slashdot, bless their souls, is a strange company. They get mad if you post more than 50 posts in a day. I am available at varied hours so my 24 hour period overlaps at times so I have fun afoul of this rule a number of times. Usually I will just not post but, alas, I am sometimes compelled to reply in a timely manner so I will post as an AC if I must.
As for my comment history, I have no idea what is in it. I surely have a large number of comments over the years. Fortunately I just read the site and comments for a long time before opting to join and comment on a Microsoft article (I think that is when I first posted). I am not sure why it would end up missing but it does not surprise me that something has gone bonkers considering the changes being made here.
Finally, they gave me mod points again. I do not tend to use them and for a while they had stopped giving them to me (even though my posts and whatnot get the same general points, my karma is excellent, and I metamod frequently). I wonder if they have made some underlying change to the code. That shouldn't but may be the reason something has gone missing. I have no control over such.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I did not know this. He is a bit eccentric and has a, seeming, need to express his delight with the hosts file. To be honest, using the hosts file in this manner is nothing new and is rather effective and efficient. I am not sure how much benefit will be gained, for instance, with the 0.0.0.0 vs. 127.0.0.1 but it likely saves some minuscule amount of CPU time and some file size time. So no, I do not mind him. I had actually not noticed his posts for quite some time and was curious where he had gone off to but he popped back up. I admit that I was relieved to find out that he was not dead or anything like that.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I am afraid your post does not make a great deal of sense no matter how I parse it. It does not seem to actually respond to anything I said though I suppose I may have lacked clarity with my response.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
How did you go from having contributed to currently using - use is present tense? I do not, unfortunately, currently make use of the hosts file on any systems that are used regularly. I probably should, it would be less resource intensive than my use of adblock. Mostly I have become weary and do not take the time to maintain it properly which is unfortunate as it is a great way to block unwanted connections or to push certain URLs to a specific IP address.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
*sighs*
Do try to re-read my post. I state that it is effective and efficient. It is quite clear. It is not like I have gone back and edited it. Perhaps you mis-read it?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
No, I read it. It just does not make any sense - much like my other response where I figured out that you must have mis-read my post. (I did not, for example, call the hosts file inefficient - I said it *was* efficient.) I suspect that, perhaps due to your zest, you are used to folks attacking your posts and your ideas. I, however, have not done such. I do not post online to argue, such is futile, I post to learn.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Using adblock is absolutely far more wasteful in terms of compute cycles and RAM. I have found it easier than maintaining my own hosts file and I have never found a hosts file, from someone else, that suited my needs properly. I do not even trust the motives of the MVPs, some of them I know personally from my time involved with the MVP program, but I digress... I should add that I do not distrust them, more that I trust my own judgment for what I want to block and for what I want to see. Doing this with a handy interface right in the browser has saved me time and some of my own brain's "compute cycles." I do wish I took the time to maintain a hosts file, it would be better in the long run.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I don't stalk you APK and I don't harass you any more than you harass me and others. You did however tell me once to Google you and were quite unhappy with what I turned up, which made me wiser to some of your claims. You've made a reputation for yourself and you've done it with your real name. The repercussions you've had surprisingly has had little harassment. When I got doxed for implementing a piece of software to detect copyright theft software in a game, I had death threats in the form of comics and letters sent to my home address. Then again, I don't think people get that emotional about hosts files, present company excluded of course.
I am genuinely surprised that after all this time, trolling groups haven't discovered you and started some obsessive Wiki about everything you do similar to what they have done to Chris Chan. I am somewhat concerned you do draw the attention of these people, while you do say some ridiculous things and have an ego, your interests are not typically nefarious (outside of maybe 'winning arguments').
I've already told you, you have reading comprehension issues in our previous threads. You constantly think you have won an argument when you post until the other person stops responding, you haven't won, that's just argumentum ad nauseum. I'll admit when I believe I'm wrong (most of the time), the fact you haven't got me to admit it, means I genuinely don't believe I am wrong in this matter.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
In that post you link, I point out some good reasons, such as, you harassing people's ISPs. If I were to provide my real life details to you, it doesn't seem unlikely that you would harass me in other ways. Do not fret though, I have delivered numerous commercial solutions and I know from experience, that showing you evidence of any work delivered just ends up being ignored through one of your many excuses. After all, I was kind enough to show you one of the open source projects I am involved in that didn't have have my work's usual NDA stuff (because it's not a work related project). It isn't surprising though that you wouldn't know about such things.
As displayed in the linked thread, you weren't too interested in being shown otherwise. I'm sure you would find a mired of excuses to not accept anything shown to you.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Remember how your original argument years ago was evidence about programming something significant and I provided, now it's changing to selling commercial code. You do like changing the argument when it suits you, don't you? Of course, you will do your usual spiel of dismissing things that don't agree with your 'proof'. This by the way, is why I am not too fussed about proving anything with you any more.
I could provide the evidence, but, what difference does it make when this argument is really just an off topic attempt to dismiss me because you have more 'worthy credentials'?
It's absurd that after all this time, you have still failed to address key points I have made in the past such as blocking entire domains (I even generated giant hosts files to do it and in turn it broke parts of the operating system in the process to (dis)prove the reality of hosts files being 'more efficient'), the vulnerabilities you mention are a non-issue for the DNS server setup I have and don't seem to have any notable difference in electricity supply through wattage monitoring when the DNS daemon/service is turned on verses not.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
No discernible increase in power usage was detected at all in my wattage meters. The system I run DNS off for my LAN is still taking only 20watts average, even after turning the DNS server on. On my own PC, the a similar is true (no discernible difference) when turning on or off a DNS daemon/service as well. No discernible difference is seen either when using DNS requests, even when doing a simple loop in DNS resolution like:
http://pastebin.com/gP3QSc9K
This could be true for a specific entry, but not true where you stick a massive hosts file in, where you had to generate every single possible subdomain to a domain in order block the whole domain, assuming you even had the space for over one terabyte worth of entries to do so verses a very simple zone file to block an entire domain in DNS.
How about, I don't observe any issues with my setup. The DNS server never crashed, the DNS server went down on me, the DNS server never started resolving something I specifically blackholed.
If we're in the situation of blocking malicious domains, I would rather use DNS than hosts files where it takes over 1 terabyte of entries to just fully block one domain (as you have to generate every possible subdomain combination for a domain in the hosts file otherwise).
God damn this lameness filter, can't write posts now.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
they require your realname
they may ask you to prove it (hey, what site should be allowed to see any id documents? None!)
they may block you
you may use a pseudonym and feel clever, they can stop you anytime.
Do not use it. else your create a dependency. Lose all your contents / contacts or provide a real name? Good thing, i told all my contacts, how to reach me, without having facebook. So facebook cannot block me from contacting them.
and in facebook you have a profile picture. so you point is ...?
My profile picture in Facebook is a picture of you.
When I go into the public square, my face is my face.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yes, that other system is my router. Without it, I would have no Internet at home.
I've already told you, I'd rather block the entire domain owned by malware operators.
Why don't you promote your solution on FurAffinity right now? The user base are having a crisis with the advertising, see comments on:
https://www.furaffinity.net/jo...
They have already done numerous changes with site updates that works around 'fixes' people keep coming up with.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I think you're confusing my use of 'server'. In this context, it was in regard to 'server software', not 'server hardware'.
Indeed. Mine is however heavily customized, but that's just because I like to tinker and do a whole slew of interesting things to me personally.
You might want to take at Mikrotik router boards (Linux based routers that run a custom userland), you can custom build routers to do as you like. You might want to take a look at a pre-build one like the CCR1009-8G-1S which has 1GB memory. When comes to building these boards yourself, they're generally not even close to the pricing of routers from companies like Cisco or Juniper (affordability is based on the specs you choose, they're much cheaper than building a full blown PC to do the same task here).
And numerous circumstances, it's obvious that certain domains are entirely malware ridden and shouldn't be trusted. I'm not stating that we should block relatively rare dyndns service provider domains that often have a few subdomains on blacklists.
So, are you going to go about and provide a solution to the users of FurAffinity? I would be interested to see how 'current' your solution really is.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
My router is not unlike a custom setup you would get in a medium or large organisation. It works well on my network and for the users and devices of my network.
You're mixing complexity arguments. Regardless, my router which is running 24/7 is not showing any particular wattage differences when the DNS server/daemon/service (whatever you want to call it) is turned on or off. Nor is my personal PC when toying around with a local DNS server on it. This is the point that you're trying your best to ignore.
So, how is that wondrous solution working out for the FurAffinity users?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Of course it isn't, most people don't fiddle around with their own DNS servers.
Not really, blacklisting entire domains doesn't work without generating multi-terabyte hosts files (of which I wasn't even able to fully test because I ran out of disk space). I also setup a cname record for every .onion record to point to an IP address that has proxypass to tor client setup to access onion URLs. I have something similar for hulu.com, adultswim.com and a few other domains to point to another LAN IP that routes those connections through a VPS I have located in the US. This is all transparent to the browser connecting to these sites on my network. As for efficiency, for black listed domains, I return NXDOMAIN, no browser even tries to connect to establish a connection to 127.0.0.1 and fails which in my experience is more instantaneous and more efficient due to the browser not bothering to even try to allocate a socket to make a connection.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I mentioned I could do a similar setup on some crap DD-WRT router.
I don't try to do what you do, which is make things resolve to an IP address to block sites. I actually announce NXDOMAIN, there is no IP address.
127.0.0.1 was an example. The browser will still allocate a socket in order to attempt to connect to 0.0.0.0, even if the OS rejects it immediately. With NXDOMAIN, it doesn't even bother.
I don't need large files to use DNS to block whole domains, unlike with hosts.
No loading for any computer on my network, it's all handled by the router.
Your claimed there was more electricity usage, my wattage measurements showed otherwise. You need to update your metrics.
No, the fact it was perpetuating the urban legend (people just using 20% of their brains) was a turn off for me.
Easy come back: I don't need a 50 move head start.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
If physical memory is an issue, setting up swap isn't an issue, Linux is particularly good at storing memory that doesn't get changed frequently on swap.
Resorting to ad hominem attacks is genuinely the sign of someone who isn't able to handle a discussions.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
DD WRTs? They're just consumer routers.
No. There are devices in my home that do not provide access to a hosts file, such as the Logitech harmony, PS3, Wii, Wii U, the 3DSes, unrooted Android and iOS devices we have here. Do they all benefit from my DNS setup which redirects certain traffic through US proxies to get access to US-only content? Yes. Do they benefit from my DNS setup which blacklists certain really 'bad' advertisements and malware sites? Yes.
Pretty certain these other devices exist with numerous other consumers too.
And, they take up more memory than my solution. I have a TTL of 1 minute for blacklisted domains and they don't need to pre-loaded into all the PCs on the network, therefore reducing memory consumption on all systems involved. There isn't even setup effort at all involved for any system connected, any guest on our network automatically obtains these benefits.
Nope, see what I'm doing with DNS. I don't need to waste memory or CPU of multiple systems in my house to pull it off.
Yes, your method actually breaks parts of windows that you have t turn off to make it function again, you can't deny it.
An ad hominem attack involves deviating from the current argument by attacking the person's character, rather the content of their arguments. That is exactly what you were doing with that point.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Post 1/2, stupid lameness filter:
DD WRT is just a free opensource firmware firmware for a good chunk of Linux based consumer routers that numerous consumers likely already own, often providing better firmware than the original firmware.
I'd rather block entire domains that I know are under the control of malicious entities, risking them creating a new subdomain seems pointless considering how trivial it is with DNS.
There are actually less rules because I set the domain (or subdomain) in question to have an invalid zone file, so the DNS server won't even store any information about it and just returns NXDOMAIN since it doesn't have any zone data at all. I don't need multiple entries for multiple subdomains if I cover an entire domain as well, thanks to the hierarchy nature of DNS.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Post 2/2, stupid lameness filter:
It's still resulted in a broken part of the OS.
You know, one of the few cases where I would genuinely consider using hosts file blocking is on a device that moves around a lot, across different networks like a laptop (and this is because some hotspots prevent doing DNS lookups outside of using their DNS server). However, breaking the DNS cache is a no go when you have to deal with connectivity issues of various wireless networks and mobile phone signal issues.
I don't think 'transparent' can be defined as a colour.
If I really wanted to get a rise out of you repeatedly, I could go on about how I noticed you seemed to have no responses regarding the other devices in my house hold that can't use hosts files, I also noticed you didn't have a response regarding the efficiency points I had. Nor have you acknowledged that there is no issue nor provided any data to counter what I found.
But, I don't need to in the course of this conversation, because I am not attempting to do so and I already know exactly why you haven't.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
yep. you're on your facebook profile, you're on a public place. So what?
Oh, you needed the full pseudo to get the point? My bad. Probably would've been smarter to use a realistic-sounding pseudo, but I don't see how it makes any material difference to the story. Nevertheless, this sentence comes at the first break:
I’ve been going by the first name “Nads”—a nickname my friends, family, and colleagues all use, but does not exist on any official paperwork.
That's seven short paragraphs down. Again, what difference does it make what pseudo she used? It's not like Facebook saw that and thought, "Hmm, looks like a fake name". One of her trolls snitched her out, so it wouldn't have mattered how "realistic" her pseudo was. Yet, you make it sound as if she were being dishonest, somehow. Then you accuse her of conflating the separate issue of Native American names, as if she were trying to ride their coattails. She's simply pointing out that there are a number of reasons, all legit, that one would want to use a pseudo. Her particular issue, as she makes clear, is stalking and trolls.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped