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Stolen Patreon User Data Dumped On Internet

After the personal data breach at crowd-funding site Patreon reported a few days ago, there's some worse news: the information isn't just in limbo any more; Patreon reported Saturday that the compromised information has been leaked in the form of a massive data dump. (The slightly good news is that no credit card information was leaked.)

13 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. data dump link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
  2. Confession by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    The only reason my name is on the list is because I thought it was Ashley Madison.

  3. Gg, sjw? by Noah+Haders · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Can anybody articulate more the motivations behind this hacking all the surrounding drama? I see some comments about gamer gate and social justice warriors, but I don't understand the whole picture.

  4. Re:Expect drama by TWX · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There is a very good reason that for a long time, charity was considered best when it was anonymous. I don't mean anonymous to the world but known between the benefactor and the recipient, but truly anonymous where the recipient did not know who the benefactor was. It protected the benefactor because no one knew who the benefactor was, and to a degree it protected the recipient because the recipient was not placed in a position of having to publicly defer or otherwise kowtow to the benefactor if they should encounter each other in public.

    It might make sense for this to be considered in the future.

    --
    Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
  5. Re:Expect drama by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It makes sense. Thunderf00t made little from his videos until he started spouting bullshit about Anita Sarkeesian.

    What Thunderf00t "spouted" about Anita Sarkeesian was anything but "bullshit". I checked a lot of the stuff in his videos on Anita Sarkeesian and the fact is that pretty much everything he said checked out. And it's easy to see it why it checks out because all he did was take clips of her speaking and played them verbatim.

    You can do the same and you'll likely come to the same conclusion if you aren't already committed to a particular point of view.

    Remember, Anita Sarkeesian is the one who said "EVERYTHING is sexist, EVERYTHING is racist, EVERYTHING is homophobic, and you have to point it all out." That statement of hers is simply not true by ANY stretch of the imagination. Seriously, give me a fuckin' break. Everything is NOT sexist, racist, and homophobic and only a demagogue would say shit like that.

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
  6. Re:Expect drama by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Merely disagreeing with Thunderf00t or Sargon makes you a target of them and their followers. Does that mean they are SJWs? That term seems rather ill defined.

    SJW just means anyone who cares about anything that the person using the term SJW thinks is stupid, or bad, or wrong. If you have the gall to care, even though they are apathetic fuckheads, then you're a SJW. They have to deprecate you because they know they're shitbags and you're making them feel like what they are. And they will happily lump people with sensible ideas in with assholes.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  7. Post your name and address. by khasim · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Who is harmed by this?

    A quick experiment to demonstrate that you have not thought about this ... post your name and address here. Right now.

    If you do not, then your question really was stupid.

  8. Re:Expect drama by ArylAkamov · · Score: 3, Informative
  9. Support of a False Narrative, and "Cyber-Violence" by Kunedog · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Can anybody articulate more the motivations behind this hacking all the surrounding drama? I see some comments about gamer gate and social justice warriors, but I don't understand the whole picture.

    A unethical journalist tried to blame the hack on Gamergate, despite the fact that the apparent hacker has made many anti-Gamergate statements. The journalist then went to a popular pro-Gamergate hub to make a show of doing the due diligence and research he should have done before publishing his inaccurate article, and got deservedly ripped to shreds in the comments.

    The bottom line is the hacker appears to be third-party troll, so you should take any motivations he voices (pro- or anti- GG or SJW) with a boulder of salt.

    Note that both pro-Gamergate and SJW content creators make money from Patreon, but IMO this hack has very little to do with the usual animosity between the two groups.

    Some of the comments that confuse you are probably AmiMojo's, because he is trying to conflate unrelated issues and shoehorn the hack into long-running false narrative that Gamergate is a harrassment campaign against women, so he can justify censoring its voices.

    For those who didn't hear about it a week ago (there was strangely no Slashdot story), a recent event pusshing that narrative was the presentation of the "Cyber Violence Against Women and Girls" report to (by?) an offshoot of the UN (UN Women). The most ridiculous (and most widely publicized) assertion in the report was that "cyber-violence" exists and is similar to actual, physical violence:
    http://time.com/4049106/un-cyb...

    The U.N. defines violence against women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts.” The report notes that cyber violence is an extension of that definition, that includes acts like trolling, hacking, spamming, and harassment. The report also argues that “cyber touch is recognized as equally as harmful as physical touch,” suggesting that online harassment might be just as lethal as domestic violence or sexual abuse.

    It's a such a blatant attempt to redefine criticism and disagreement as harassment and threats, to demonize free speech as a pretense to censorship.

    The report also attacks video games by citing ridiculous sources (all at least a decade old) which say "Nintendo of America, Inc.: Manufactures Pokémon, Game-Boys, and equipment for satanic video games" and references Jack Thompson himself.

    So it should come as no surprise that two of the invited the speakers (Quinn and Sarkeesian) were "SJWs" best known as prominent opponents of the Gamergate movement. Yep, Gamergate, the customer revolt demanding more ethical game journalism, whose criticism of and disagreement with the demonstrably unethical gaming press was mischaracterized as (you guessed it) "harrassment" and "threats" and widely censored in an attempt to protect the corrupt journalists, all because those journalists expressed the right politics.

    Gamergate (and the FTC, responding to Gamergate pressure) succeeded in forcing many corrupt websites to update their ethics policies and start disclosing personal (and financial) relationships to the subjects of their articles, which is why you always see so many disingenuous and corrupt individuals shitting a brick over it. Two outlets that anti-Gamergate was notoriously unsuccessful at shutting down were tweets and youtube videos, which is why you saw Quinn issuing a false DMCA (against youtuber MundaneMatt) a year ago, and Sarkeesian whi

  10. "Focal Point" Rhetoric == Guilt By Association by Kunedog · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It makes sense. Thunderf00t made little from his videos until he started spouting bullshit about Anita Sarkeesian. The first video made him a fair chunk of cash, so he kept doing them. If the profit motive is taken away he will likely lose interest.

    Your premise is faulty. He's made videos refuting creationists and promoting science for years, even though he "made little" money from them. The more likely explanation is that anti-progressivism videos were just a natural extension of his previous pro-skeptic content, especially after he saw "progressive" feminists try to infect atheism through Atheism+.

    It's important because while he only does a bit of mild harassment, his videos and his cause act as a focal point for other idiots who do much worse.

    Merely disagreeing with Thunderf00t or Sargon makes you a target of them and their followers.

    Oh, this is fucking priceless. Got any evidence for that assertion? Here, I'll start (using a different "focal point"):
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    That is direct video evidence of an anti-Gamergate Sarkeesian follower threatening physical violence against Thunderfoot. We unquestionably know exactly

    a) who that guy is (clearly identifiable face)
    b) which side he's on (anti-Gamergate)
    c) what he said ("I will fuck you over for that one of these days if it's the last thing I ever do" and "Thunderfoot's an idiot, and I will punch him dead in the face if I ever see him"), and
    d) who he's talking to (Thunderfoot).

    And it took me less than a minute to turn up the link. But, for some reason, this threat hasn't been reported anywhere. Everyone knows that if your side had evidence anywhere near as damning (i.e. a video of someone supporting Gamergate and threatening Sarkeesian), we would never hear the end of it, ever, across dozens or hundreds of sites--proving, BTW, that such sites are not anti-threats or anti-harrassment; they're just anti-Gamergate (i.e. anti-ethics). But just in case they have all failed to report on such evidence, feel free to post it now.

    P.S. Even so, if you tell me that Sarkeesian isn’t responsible for what that jerk said, and he doesn’t represent her, then I would 100% agree with you (and ask you to put two and two together . . .).

    1. Re:"Focal Point" Rhetoric == Guilt By Association by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Go to Thunderf00t's YouTube channel and look at the view counters on his videos. The anti-feminist ones are by far the most popular. Every time he makes one he gets a big pay day from YouTube and new Patreon subscribers. They are all terrible, far below even his usual low standards, but he keeps crapping them out because they pay.

      He makes a living out of being permanently offended and angry. An SJW, I guess.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  11. Which Side Fought Against Disclosure, Again? by Kunedog · · Score: 3, Informative
    Spinning this hack as bad for Gamergate requires some desperate mental gymnastics.

    Gamergate exposed many undisclosed financial relationships between the gaming journalists and article subjects, forcing their employers to reform their ethics policies and add appropriate disclosures.

    A significant chunk of those relationships were through Patreon, and at least one of the resulting ethics policy updates made direct reference to Patreon. Also note that many gaming journalists "responded" to Gamergate's successful push for greater ethics scrutiny by . . . hiding their Patreon donations by making them private.

    I doubt the hack is good for either side of the "culture war", but anti-GG has a history of trying to hide where the money is coming from (and going to).

    Remember how people reacted to Eich's support of an anti-gay-rights bill.

    Sure do. How the reaction was widely reported in the mainstream tech news media is a completely different matter.

  12. Evidence of Harassment by Kunedog · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Indeed it is. I would have thought it was far worse for people who donate to causes that Gamergate doesn't like. After all, it's Gamergate fanboys who do most of the harassment and doxxing

    You sound confident in that claim, so you must have evidence of it. Do post some, because (as I said elsewhere in the thread) it's become routine for anti-Gamergate folks to portray exposure of corruption and mere disagreement with their opinions as "harrassment," and we know pro-GG folks get doxxed too (not sure about the ratio of pro-GG to anti-GG doxxing victims, and there's definitely no way to know the perpetrator ratio . . . though some do openly support doxxing, like Quinn and Harper and R Watson and Gawker's CEO, etc.). Here's an example of what I'm looking for:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    That is direct video evidence of an anti-Gamergate Sarkeesian follower threatening physical violence against Thunderfoot. We unquestionably know exactly

    a) who that guy is (clearly identifiable face)
    b) which side he's on (anti-Gamergate)
    c) what he said ("I will fuck you over for that one of these days if it's the last thing I ever do" and "Thunderfoot's an idiot, and I will punch him dead in the face if I ever see him"), and
    d) who he's talking to (Thunderfoot).

    And it took me less than a minute to turn up the link. But, for some reason, this threat hasn't been reported anywhere. Everyone knows that if your side had evidence anywhere near as damning (i.e. a video of someone supporting Gamergate and threatening Sarkeesian), we would never hear the end of it, ever, across dozens or hundreds of sites--proving, BTW, that such sites are not anti-threats or anti-harrassment; they're just anti-Gamergate (i.e. anti-ethics). But just in case they have all failed to report on such evidence, feel free to post it now.

    P.S. Even so, if you tell me that Sarkeesian isn’t responsible for what that jerk said, and he doesn’t represent her, then I would 100% agree with you (and ask you to put two and two together . . .)

    Go ahead, post something half as damning (and conclusive) as that pathetic Sarkeesian "fanboy."

    (I use the term "Gamergate fanboys" to avoid the argument about who is inside Gamergate and who is outside.)

    Wow, look at you, admitting up front you can't fulfill c) above. Tell me, why is the tech news sites' reporting of Gamergate "harassment" always so disconnected (in fact, usually the opposite) of what is indicated by the evidence? Must be lots of folks just like you working the field . . .