Slashdot Mirror
Y2K Movie Followup: The Slashdot Effect Gone Wrong
Addition: 11/30 by michael : I thought I'd chime in here, since I started the fracas.
Blaming the ISP is sometimes appropriate, and sometimes not. Huge national ISPs have legal staffs to evaluate whether something should or should not be pulled. In general, they display an astonishing lack of backbone in defending customer sites, because even minor hassle from law enforcement just isn't worth it to them, and they don't have much excuse when they knuckle under. Small ISPs are a much different matter. No legal staff, facing the loss of your entire business if you guess wrong. Let's say he stood up for this guy and refused to pull the site, and the FBI seized the ISP's computers. Would all you flamers have stood up for him, sent him money to fight the good fight, talked to his other customers and begged them to stay on even though their sites were down? Yeah, sure you would. He made the best business decision available to him. The difference between this guy and one of the national ISPs is that they wouldn't have put the site back up again at all.
And if Wired has it right and you people are writing to the ISP's other clients, that's just sad. Save your anger for someone who's actually done something wrong. You want to get pissed off, give the FBI a call and ask them how their "investigation" is going.
The best way, IMO, to handle problems like this was what I (among several) suggested as the most direct solution: Mirror the site in an area outside FBI jurisdiction. As recent times have shown, once something is released to the 'net, it's pretty damn hard to get it off again. Throw up a couple mirror sites and that information is forever guaranteed to stay in circulation.
Well, maybe not forever, but at least until people get bored of it. ;)
<sarcasm>Save the flame wars for something useful, like the linux vs. bsd "Fork!", "Spoon!" debate.</sarcasm>
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
There are many many arguments surrounding this whole issue... but in my opinion the 2 main ones are:
1) Nothing is effective unless it is constructive, this goes for criticism, conversation, relationships *anything*. Flaming is a pointless excersize and a complete waste of energy. Think of it from a simple point of view, surely it is so much better for both sides if the energy put into the argument was of a positive nature rather than negative. Not to mention the simple aspect of respect. - It's all be forgotten about on the web, primarily IMO because you are faceless and it's very unlikely you will get any comeback. Unlike IRL!
2) Dumbing down.... are we really getting more stupid??? Are we unevolving into chimps who don't understand subtleties anymore. Where satire and humor is lost totally? After all it was a satirical movie and if people decide to get scared about it then what are we to do. Is pulling it really the answer?
It's a strange situation, but one which is happening everywhere. TV, politics, almost everything has been dumbed down for the masses. It's a disturbing trend.
I have no easy answers, but the whole thing worries me deeply. It has such far reaching consequences not just to do with privacy and rights, but on a much more basic human interaction level.
Well, well. So it did work. People have complained that the ISP didn't stand for freedom of speech and it gave them a spine. Frankly, Weiger is trying to play the victim here. Saying stuff like, 'Oh, but we're just a lil' company, it wasn't our fault.' Yeah. But it's never anybody's fault when freedom of speech is concerned. You pull content from a website, and you're claiming you're just paying the rent. What you're doing next is approving of massive censorship in the name of passivity.
How do you think the Nazis pulled it off? Not one worker ever killed Jews en masse: the only thing they did is pull a lever, drive a locomotive, show the Jews to the gas chamber. I'm not saying genocide and censorship are of the same scale; I'm saying that in both cases, institutions promoting them hope everyone involve will say, 'Well, I didn't really do anything.'
Like I said, flames is never the solution. But making your voice heard is. In the light of the conclusion of this story, the Slashdot effect, civilised or not, did have a positive effect. I'm not endorsing it, but... Well, you gotta wonder.
I propose a new modding category:
"What the..."
Question is, do you make it a positive or negative mod? Either way, that's what I'd have to mod this. It's definitely the strangest post I've seen on Slashdot yet. It'd be a shame to mod it down, but it kind of deserves it (it's offtopic, after all).
Um. So you think that some of the people who ranted on the ISP for caving in instead of standing up to the authorities did so in part because they would rather do that than risk standing up to the authorities themselves?
Hmmm. You know, I wouldn't be surprised.
I didn't send an e-mail.
Though with a site like Slashdot, given the amount of people who read it, I'm not surprised that people did. I'm sure that some of the e-mail was well-written, thought out arguments for why the person should have kept the site up. I'm also sure that the majority of the e-mail wasn't of this form at all.
I'm a bit optimistic when it comes to the slashdot populace. I think most people here are of above average intelligence, and are capable of rational argument. I think what happened in this case was that these people did what I did. Nothing. I didn't have all the facts, and I knew it. I wasn't going to take it upon myself to mail this person and tell him to do something that I myself might not have done. I think the majority of clearheaded slashdotters thought the same way.
But there are a lot of people on slashdot, and not all of them are exactly clearheaded. There are flamers for all types of wars (KDE, Beowulf, Emacs, pick your favorite holy war), and those who are simply abusing slashdot for their own bizzare reasons (petrified posts, anyone?). Most likely, it's these people who are flaming and using the Slashdot Effect for ill. That's what I'd like to think.
Personally, there's not much I can do about it. I could flame the flamers, but then I'm at their level (some would say that's exactly what I'm doing here). I certainly don't advocate the canceling of slashdot accounts. The only action I see as being fair is to push the positive side of the slashdot effect more. It can be done. Some positive things that slashdotters have done in the past include the Mass mirroring of deCSS and helping to critique and rewrite for Jane's Intelligence review. Those on slashdot who are well-spoken, intelligent and can actually get their point across without the caps lock key could help turn our failing reputation around.
-Denor
Oh, well. Hopefully nobody found my site too slow this weekend. It felt neat to see "http://moxy.wtower.com/mirrors/timesq.ram" mentioned all over the net, though.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
It's not going to do one bit of good. It *can't*. Because in any crowd, there's always going to be *some* flamers writing nastygrams. It's not because Slashdotters are particularly rude, it's simply because the huge number of responses means that even a vanishingly small percentage of flamers will still produce enough of them for a news article or a section on a web site. If Wired *wants* to run a story about nasty flamers, they will, even if the flamers are only 0.01 of all the replies--you can't stop them. The media likes to sensationalize.
Telling people here not to be rude, in an attempt to avoid situations like the Wired article, is like getting a bin of ten thousand apples and expecting there not to even be a single bad one. It doesn't work that way.
All right, so quite a few crusaders around here went off half-cocked and blamed the wrong man. Also a number of inappropriate assumptions were made that might cast certain Slashdotters in the role of buffoons.
On the other hand, I hasten to point out the obvious redeeming characteristic of this mass action: Hello! It worked!
What did the flamers accomplish apart from gratifying their egos ("laid my life on the line" - please!) and offending a number of inoffensinve people? Well, for one thing they riled up Wired, a cool-wannabe but nonetheless mainstream media publication, to run a story about the violation of a man's rights. For another, they provided Wieger with a glimpse of the boiling vehemence of thousands of people who - although they were insulting him - were also expressing their support for his rights in their own emotionally strangled fashion. Do you think Wieger will back down from his rights a second time without an explicit written court order signed and in triplicate? I doubt it - he is now all too aware that he is not alone.
Did you read his final quote at the end of the Wired story? "I'm going to tell the FBI, 'Fuck you! You've probably cost us our business, you assholes!'" Now a man who might have backed down timidly has the defiance of a fucking lion.
Suppression tactics work by cultivating a sense of isolation in the victim. The government works to portray artists as exhibitionist misfits. The christian right works its damndest to instill the idea that people who enjoy pornography or drugs are freaks and loners. The liberal left demonizes christians as a tiny and irrational sect working to install pews in every classroom. Eventually the ostracised target accepts the lesson, begins to believe that he or she is really all alone, and capitulates.
Wieger won't do that. He can't. He's been taught the opposite lesson in a most unforgettable manner. I won't say there are no negatives to flame - I've had more than my share of lost hair due to it myself - but I also reject the contention that it is useless and immoral.
Something to ponder.
-konstant
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
In a suffiently large group of people, there are idiots. Some are true idiots, some are half idiots tipped over the line for a momemnt, and some are just ok people who happened to have a bad day or overeact to a story and act stupidly. Most of us try to control ourselves and think things over before we say them, but some people are better at that then others.
In my opinion, Michael jumped the gun the other day when he started painting id and John Carmack out to be evil, when in fact the lack of documentation on the disabling of the hardware string was just an oversight. He wasn't flaming profanities by any means, but I would assume that him writing for slashdot must mean somebody thinks of him as a rather levelheaded and thoughtful dude. And if even the most levelheaded of us can overeact on issues we are emotional about, should we really be surprised that there are others who do so more often, and with less grace?
I'm sure there isn't a reader here who hasn't overeacted and flamed someone unecesarily at one time or another. A few years ago I made a vow never again to send an email while I am angry because of trouble that had gotten me into. Its a good rule that I try to apply even today (though older and wiser), but not even it is foolproof.
Now onto my real point: given the size of the Slashdot community, and compared with other communities I have taken part in on the Internet, the flames emerging from us have been rather benign. We have been through this with somebody posting the examples of horrible mails they have recieved from Linux users and Slashdot readers a number of times now, and my surprise has always been at how mild the flames actually are. In my Usenet days I once had a person I had been arguing with over some pitiful subject post hundreds of messages to a popular group with subject lines containing explicit sexual insults about me. Just an idiot, they happen, and I certainly did not attack or blame the majority of the subscribers of the group.
The nature of free expression is that stupid things are said. The redeeming quality is that the smart things are more plentiful, more provocative, and more important.
-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
However, there is also no excuse for Wired and these guys posting those flames. If I posted every "bad" e-mail I got, the 'net would
/.'ers to harass this poor guy in the name of him standing up for free speech, it's also okay for Wired to excercise that same free speech and write a story about it. Welcome to the brave new world. Sucks to be on the other side of the fence doesn't it?
have run out of bandwidth long before now. We don't need to air other people's dirty laundry or our own.
Sure there is. Wired is excercising their free speech. If it's okay for
-Rich
I know what you mean.. There is a comforting feeling to get that dose of 'Petrified/Grits' along with the regular commentary. Kind of like the moronic poking/prodding/slapping bit the Three Stooges did; Moe always won, Curly always got it the worst, and we always laughed.
I must say that 'Mr. Petrified' has gone above and beyond his usual effort for this one. He's moving beyond the standard one-line 'xxxx xxxxx NAKED AND PETRIFIED'. Either that, or we're seeing a new 'Mr. Petrified'.
Keep up the good work!
.sig: Now legally binding!
So the more over-reactionary elements of slashdot have over-reacted
(again) sent useless flames Wieger instead of well-informed
objections to the FBI.
This article nearly overwhelmed me with deja vu.
Now, now people. We are all familiar with slashdot. We are all
familiar with how easy it is to be immature on the Internet. We all
know how easy it is to misunderstand these things and get mad at the
wrong party.
I think the most likely chain of events was became obvious when the
original article was posted on slashdot.
We all knew this was going to happen
What I don't know is why wired thinks this is news.
After I read that wired article, I (once again) wished I hadn't given
wired's hit counters one more little boost that (a) they don't
deserve, and (b) will encourage them to become still more
sensationalist, continuing their transformation from a typical lousy
computer magazine to the Enquirer of the net.
It is certainly regrettable that these things happen. It is worth
pointing out that slashdot at least tries to apologize and convince
its more over-reactionary members to be better behaved next time.
But news? Come now. This happens all the time.
Slashdot can be forgiven for posting a link to this article because
they are trying to apologize (A Good Thing(tm), even if it doesn't
change the behavior of slashdot's more reactionary readers).
Oh, btw the way, if share my opinion, moderate me up. If you don't,
moderate me down. Encourage like-mindedness.
Go ahead and moderate this one down if you want, but I think it needs to be said.
/. has done an awful lot of posts that are just fanning the flames, and what's really wrong is that this is generally done without looking into the issue at all.
/. has grown, and grown huge, and with the growth should really come some responsibility.
/. started, it was perfectly reasonable for Rob to just post some pointers to stories on other sites; it was more of a personal thing, like sending e-mail to friends. But now slashdot has really become a news service, but still refuses to adopt the responsibility that news services should have; the responsibility to at least try to independently verify a story before publishing it.
/. had tried to contact the people involved before posting the story. And in many cases, the commentary on the /. posting has turned out to be plain ol' wrong.
/. (at least I don't), but a minimal re-checking of the source is a pretty reasonable expectation.
Lately,
/. used to be a small site, that basically gave 'sightings' rather than stories. But
When
The last few weeks have seen a lot of stories that would have read very differently if
It's easy to blame the flamers for getting out of control, but at some point slashdot has to accept the responsibility for what is posted here by the staff. When somebody like CNN posts a story without checking the facts, everyone here gets very upset. Slashdot has grown to the point where they should begin adopting the same kind of journalistic integrity they insist from others.
Nobody expects a full private investigation into stories from
EFF, the Electronic Freedom Foundation, is one of the most respected advocates of "electronic civil liberties" in the United States. This includes the freedom to communicate, and the freedom to protect your communications from unwanted interlopers. You can suppport your continuing right to use data protection tools-- which Administration oficials are working to remove-- by supporting the EFF.
EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, concerns itself with publicity, lobbying, and court challenges, in the continuing battle over personal privacy in the Information Age. How much of your private business and personal habits do you want to be freely available to corporate and government busybodies? If your answer is anything less than "I don't care, let them have it all," you probably want to support EPIC.
And what's the crap about a "rogue government agency"??? If such an agency existed and produced a video, why shouldn't it be put on web sites?
As usual, it seems like the FBI is going way overboard in their zeal to "protect" us. Welcome to the police state.
It can be good for a company's bottom line to lie to cheat and steal from consumers. Does that make it right?
I am one who has had multiple accounts cencelled by multiple ISPs, not for breaking their rules but for getting complaints from too many people because they didn't like what I had to say.
(While I'm at it, Tim Gaiches from Telerama likes to suck big dicks!Ý)
If the FBI couldn't get a warrant to pull the site WHY would anyone be concerned with the FBI confiscating their computers? In case you didn't know it does require a court decision to deprive a person in the US of property.
This ISP pussied out, plain and simple. The FBI asked and the FBI got. I'd be wary about spending any money with these people in the future. It's because of spineless actions like these that threaten to turn the internet into the largest infomercial that the world has ever seen. If opinion is punished, denied and censored, commerce is all that will remain. Controvercial ideas are the reason why the first amendment was written. If we are all homogenous, then why do we need protection?
I say that this is the correct response to this IS a nice slashdotting. Clogging a company's e-mail server with 10 thousand complaints about their practices is a GREAT way to get their attention.
I also think that informing a company's customers of their actions is a great way to force a company to re-examine their business practices. If their customers agree with those actions, then they'd be more likely to stick with that company and not defect to others, but if they're unhappy that company will pay a definate financial penalty for their actions.
From the standpoint of the Swiss banks it was the right business decision at the time to hold the stolen assets of expatriated european Jews. Was it the right thing to do? From a business standpoint it was. After all SOMEONE would have taken the money, why not them?
For Microsoft it's always a good business decision to stomp out competition before they get a chance to mount a serious threat to the corporate bottom line.
I could go on for years citing example like this.
My point is this, just because it's the best "business decision" is no more valid an excuse than the "Just following orders" excuse of Nazi war criminals.
I say WAY TO GO SLASHDOTTERS! You're on the way to becoming one of the most powerful forces of change on the 'net. Lest I remind you all of that peope PC commercial? "Strength in numbers my friends." It is people like us who built the internet, it must be people like us who fights against the commercialization of the net where "the bottom line" is always the most important motivating factor.
LK
ÝI don't have any personal knowledge of Tim Gaiches as it regards to his penchant for sucking dicks (big or small), I'm just venting.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Some aspects of the message were funny. But I found them completely overshadowed by the scary sexual overtones of being able grope unwilling females held in permanent bondage. I don't doubt that the whole thing was a joke. I just find it in very poor taste.
"Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."