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by jam.fuse » Mon Oct 03, 2011 5:59 pm
Riseup provides online communication tools for people and groups working on liberatory social change. We are a project to create democratic alternatives and practice self-determination by controlling our own secure means of communications.
by undead » Tue Oct 04, 2011 12:02 pm
by Project Willow » Mon Nov 14, 2011 7:23 pm
Facebook Opens Doors To A New Way of Suppressing Information, Activists Constantly Banned
November 13, 2011
By Segway Jeremy Ryan
Suppression of information has existed for quite some time. It used to be easy for the billionaires of society to control the message that got out. You had Fox News on the right and MSNBC on the left, but in reality they were all just a system of controlling what gets out and what does not. This has worked quite well for them…until now. In this day and age, people are switching away from traditional media and into the realm of social network sites like Twitter and Facebook to get their news. Sites like Addicting Info, from which you read this post, can then get the full story and share it and people will actually be able to access it and find it easily. Articles are shared on Facebook as quickly as a press of a button. But this creates obstacles for the people who want to control the message. So what do they do now? Well, in some instances, they take the source of information out.
I started posting videos on March 1st, 2011. At the time nearly everyone was locked out of the Wisconsin Capitol, a handful of people, myself included, remained inside. No one on the outside knew what was going on inside. No one on the inside knew what was going on outside. So I started making videos, soon being the only person in the Capitol posting videos from the inside in almost real time. I would record a video and immediately post it. My videos spread like wildfire, getting thousands of views. But I managed to slide under the radar at first. Then came March, the bulk of the people had left the Capitol. There were days when I would be the only person inside that wasn’t a lobbyist (with the exception of the Solidarity Sing Along, but people didn’t stay real long after the sing along back then). I shamed an old man who said he hopes I drive my Segway off of a railing and after that the legislators knew me. The man, it turns out, was some sort of lobbyist. That week I was called “The Big Bad Wolf” and “Public Enemy Number One” in an interview by Scott Walker. And along came the trolls.
It seemed almost instantly, I was being pegged as a target of the Wisconsin GOP. Online trolls would comment on my posts in flocks. I would post a video and get 50 slanderous comments. They said I was a woman beater, a deadbeat dad, that I lied about my medical issues, that I was mentally challenged, anything and everything they could think of that someone may believe they accused me of. All of these rumors are false, but they say them in the hopes someone will believe them. Tim, Tom, Jim, James, Jimmy, and any other derivative with the last name of Parent, known trolls. Matt Wynns, known troll. Mary T. Goodman, known troll. Jerry Fletcher and Will Jenkins. This is just a few of them. But no doubt, no matter what I posted, they would turn up in flocks, any hour of the day and night. Some are real people, some are based off of real people, some are completely fake. Most come from an IP address not even in this state. All are hired by someone.
This is a job. Post and spam a person’s Facebook articles and posts for a profit. Some get paid up to $20 an hour. There is one individual who has at least fifty fake profiles that he uses to spam Wisconsin activists. It’s not hard to find these services. A quick google search pulled this up real quick. But they seem to have taken an even lower form of low. Trolls are now having activists removed by filing fake Facebook complaints.
by Hammer of Los » Mon Nov 14, 2011 7:38 pm
by Wombaticus Rex » Mon Nov 14, 2011 7:42 pm
by wintler2 » Tue Nov 15, 2011 8:41 am
Co-founder of Facebook alternative Diaspora dead at 22
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/tec ... 1ng3i.html
..executive secretary in the San Francisco medical examiner's office, confirmed Zhitomirskiy died in San Francisco. She would not say how or when he died. ..
by justdrew » Tue Nov 22, 2011 10:03 pm
November 21, 2011
Facebook has moved from merely being a walled garden into openly attacking its users' ability and willingness to navigate the rest of the web. The evidence that this is true even for sites which embrace Facebook technologies is overwhelming, and the net result is that Facebook is gaslighting users into believing that visiting the web is dangerous or threatening.
In this post I intend to not only document the practices which enable this attack, but to also propose a remedy.
by Canadian_watcher » Tue Nov 22, 2011 10:38 pm
by Stephen Morgan » Wed Nov 23, 2011 2:37 am
Canadian_watcher wrote:Ohhhh, boy.
It'd be so easy for all of us to sit back and say who cares, 'cause if you're stupid enough to have made facebook into some sort of go-to place in your life then you deserve to have your privacy invaded. But, that's victim blaming isn't it?. Much like people who are labeling Gerald Celente a deserving loser in the MF Global rip-off since he's a trends researcher who advocates taking physical possession of precious metals. if a pshychic gets hit by a car, should we all point and laugh?
People using facebook have that idealism, I suppose. they've never been thrown in the back of a cruiser for no reason, never had their insurance companies laugh in their faces when they go to make a claim, never heard the phrase 'you asked for it' after returning home after being raped, never been fired for optimistic and unwitting whistleblowing, etc. In short, they truly don't know any better.
it's only after you get royally fucked over that you start getting protective of little things like your privacy, financial security and your right to share information.
by Canadian_watcher » Wed Nov 23, 2011 11:02 am
by Simulist » Mon Dec 12, 2011 9:22 pm
What Insurers Could Do With Your 'Social Media Score'
By Sheryl Nance-Nash Posted 7:00AM 12/12/11 Insurance
Here's yet another reason to watch what you say and do online: Insurance companies are already surfing social media sites to get the scoop about their customers, and what their data-miners find may soon be compiled into a new way to rate you as a risk: a social networking score.
Right now, vendors are building tools to automate the process of searching social media. Such technology would allow insurers and other companies to more easily mine data from Facebook, Twitter and other sites, explains Michelle Megna, managing editor of Insurance.com.
And, just as insurers use credit scores as a factor in assigning you to a risk box, that data could be used to create a social networking score, says Megna.
She isn't alone in thinking the next step may be a social media score. "I think we're going to see data mining companies sweeping the Internet and collating public data about what you like and say and where you go online and use that info to create a social media score that companies can buy," predicts Douglas Heller, executive director of Consumer Watchdog. "And they'll use that to decide how much to charge or whether or not to sell insurance to an individual based on that."
Your digital DNA is gold to insurers. Your online activity -- everything from Facebook Likes, tweets, online searches or membership to a health website -- serves as background to insurers as they're setting rates or claims. "They are using this data to compile detailed dossiers of individuals," says Michael Fertik, founder and CEO of Reputation.com.
He says there is evidence in the media and industry reports that insurers are beginning to use social data to determine rates. "The backbone is in place -- [a massive data industry] to help facilitate the use of social media data and online information by insurance companies."
There is no question that at least some insurance companies already use the Internet and social media as part of their underwriting and/or claims handling process, says Michael Packer, attorney with Marshall, Dennehey, Warner, Coleman & Goggin, which represents insurers.
Proof in Pictures and Words
How can your online presence prove problematic? If you say you've got a knee injury but post photos of yourself crossing the finish line in a marathon, the gig is up.
A life, health or disability carrier who is writing a policy would be interested in knowing whether an applicant engages in dangerous activities such as sky diving, shark diving, an appetite for travel to war-torn countries. If the underwriter sees the applicant's Facebook page has tons of photos of them shark diving off the Great Barrier Reef or doing relief work in the Congo, they might change their mind, says Packer. Similarly, if an applicant says he's a nonsmoker, he might have a problem if his Flickr account has photos of him clubbing in South Beach with a cigarette in hand. And if you "Like" Twinkles and Oreos on Facebook, that knowledge of your unhealthy taste in snacks might give pause to a life or health underwriter, explains Mike Fitzgerald, a senior analyst with Celent, a financial research and consulting firm.
It's not that insurers are nosy: It's just business. "They are using social media for due diligence and to verify information so that a risk is properly and fairly rated," says Packer. It doesn't do you any good to be untruthful in your application. If you later make a claim and then the insurance company finds out the truth, the company will have the right to deny the claim or rescind the policy from the date of the original inception, says Packer.
Online data has also been used to dispute claims. There are numerous cases reported where someone has claimed to be disabled (a back injury suffered on the job, for example), but a social media posting contains pictures of them dancing or engaging in other strenuous, recreational activity," says Fitzgerald.
The reverse is also true. "I have been involved in claims where information I found on Facebook or online message boards have confirmed the validity of a claim," says Packer.
You may not like the idea of being watched so intensively, but there's an upside if you're among the honest. Insurance fraud hurts not only the insurance companies, but everyone, because it adds 10% to the cost of the average policy. If insurers can bust more fraudsters, it could mean that eventually, your policy would take a smaller bite out of your wallet.
Brag on Yourself
The fact that your social media profile is being watched doesn't have to be all bad, though. It also gives you the opportunity to show what a good gal or guy you are. For example, if you "check in" to a health club using a service like Foursquare, it can indicate that you are a good risk, because you're exercising and may have a healthy lifestyle -- good news for health and life insurers. If you blog about winning the office weight-loss contest, or comment about how you traded in your sports car for a minivan, would it help your rates? Maybe.
Regardless, your social media score will be only one measure insurers can use to determine your premiums, whether you qualify for coverage, or whether your claim is valid. Insurers are regulated by state laws, and some dictate which criteria can be used in their decisions. State regulations govern what information insurers can use when setting prices, deciding whom to accept or reject and even how an individual's privacy is safeguarded.
"I have no idea if there are state laws that could prohibit the use of social media content for setting insurance rates, but I'd expect there'd be some sort of debate over this at some point," says Megna.
Nor is it clear if social media snooping will be done routinely or not. "It's most likely to happen if there are red flags involving a claim. Then an investigator will step in and start looking, and that looking will include social media," says Jeanne Salvatore, senior vice president and consumer spokeswoman for the Insurance Information Institute.
Be sure you have proper privacy settings so that only those you want to have access to your online life. Don't forget too, to tell your BFFs not to share your stuff. Who knows how "private" their pages are.
Privacy settings or not, your right to privacy could go out the window if you're involved in a lawsuit with an insurer. "Courts have ruled in some cases that private social media postings are discoverable," says Megna.
Lastly, says Packer, staying out of the spotlight is easy. When it comes to completing your application or filing a claim, "Be honest."
by Twyla LaSarc » Sat Feb 18, 2012 1:33 am
"Mr. Zuckerberg has attained an unenviable record," Moglen said of the founder of Facebook. "He has done more harm to the human race than anybody else his age."
Why? Because, Moglen said, Mark Zuckerberg had harnessed the energy of our social desires to talk us into a swindle. "Everybody needs to get laid," Moglen said. "He turned it into a structure for degenerating the integrity of human personality, and he has to a remarkable extent succeeded with a very poor deal. Namely, 'I will give you free Web hosting and some PHP doodads, and you get spying for free all the time.''
/snip/
A few months after Moglen's speech, the group launched a Kickstarter campaign for a project they called Diaspora*. Diaspora* would be everything Moglen had called for: open-source, respectful of privacy, and controlled by users. Instead of routing all exchanges through a central clearinghouse, Diaspora* users would set up their own nodes, storing their information locally.
The team members quickly raised more than $200,000, plenty to fund a summer in San Francisco and to build the skeleton of their new social network. That fall, they released a "pre-alpha" version, soliciting feedback from other developers. There was plenty of criticism, but most of it was constructive. A year later, last November, the team released a redesigned version that patched the earlier security holes and included a host of new features, many familiar for users of Facebook and Twitter: hashtags, status updates, and "Like" buttons.
Just days later, Zhitomirskiy died suddenly, in what a source close to the company told CNNMoney was a suicide. The loss of Zhitomirskiy—often described as the most idealistic and privacy-conscious member of the group—was a devastating setback, but Diaspora* continues.
Early on, the team recognized that coding a distributed social network might actually be the easy part. It would be harder to persuade users to move from Facebook—the network where all their friends, (past, present, and future) already were—to their new, sparsely populated network.
Their solution was to make Diaspora* play well with others. Sign up for a Diaspora* account, and your posts can easily be imported into Tumblr, Twitter, and even Facebook. In the early stages of its use, Diaspora* can function as a social aggregator, bringing together feeds from various other platforms. The idea is that this lowers the barriers to joining the network, and as more of your friends join, you no longer need to bounce communications through Facebook. Instead, you can communicate directly, securely, and without running exchanges past the prying eyes of Zuckerberg and his business associates.
by Peregrine » Sat Feb 18, 2012 8:15 pm
by Wombaticus Rex » Sat Feb 18, 2012 8:26 pm
Peregrine wrote:I'm happy to say I've been facebook free for over a month. Although I haven't officially deleted the account ( only deactivated it, I gotta go back & get the rest of my photos) I've not had the urge to peek in at the goings on of other folks.
by Simulist » Sat Feb 18, 2012 10:15 pm
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