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Angola's Wikipedia Pirates Are Exposing Loopholes in Zero Rating
Reader Jason Koebler quotes a Motherboard article: Wikimedia and Facebook have given Angolans free access to their respective websites, but not to the rest of the internet. So, naturally, Angolans have taken to hiding pirated movies and music in Wikipedia articles and are also sharing links to these files on Facebook, creating a totally free and clandestine file sharing network in a country where mobile internet data is extremely expensive. It's undeniably a creative use of two services that were designed to give people in the developing world some access to the internet. But now that Angolans are causing headaches for Wikipedia editors and the Wikimedia Foundation, no one is sure what to do about it.
Split rar files. /uploads directory that's misconfigured to allow downloads as well.
Rename extensions.
Write a little script that renames them all and extracts along with a helper executable that features some cool music and graphics from your pirating group
Dump them in your favorite public FTP site's
I keep having to remind myself that kids today didn't grow up in the 80s and 90s.
What's old is new again.
Pretty much, yeah.
And it just seems so patronizing ... oh, look at these poor backwards Angolans without the interwebs ... we should give them Facebook and Wikipedia so they can uplift themselves from their savagery.
Meanwhile "the poor backwards Angolans" have said "what, you think we're idiots? Screw you, we want movies, porn, music, and picture's of Nicki Minaj's ass (apparently), just like everyone else on the interwebs."
I don't see this as misuse. I see this as flipping the bird to the patronizing attempts to give them a tiny bit of the internet and expect them to be all "thank you boss" about it.
I think this is hilarious, and I applaud them for doing it.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Facebook and wikimedia are disgusting to exploit the poor in this way
Giving free service to the poor is exploiting the poor? Or do you imagine Facebook is making millions from that lucrative advertizing market for poor Angolans? And wikimedia's going to clean up from all the donations?
I think both companies are a bit shady in general, but I don't see any problem here.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Kids these days don't even remember the arguments over UUencode vs yenc, RARs and PARs, the lengthy toolchain needed just to get a binary file out in the same shape it went in, or the other joys of the early years. Damn kids on my lawn!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.