Queer✨Anarchist Anti-fascist
I think it would be funny to normalize wearing bloc in order to retain privacy. It’s why some people might wear accessories they normally don’t wear, such as beanies and sunglasses at protests, even if they aren’t in full bloc, covering hair and eyes (in addition to a surgical mask) can make it really hard to doxx someone.
No. Of course not. I put it in quotes since I was being sarcastic.
but Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, can’t even get the mental health services he obviously needs
Lmfao
I’d rather get healthcare at all. I’ve been too poor to afford any medical care at points in my life, I’d settle for even some low quality care as opposed to none at all and hoping that this new weird pain either is insignificant and goes away without issue, or it gently takes me out in the night.
I’m excited to see where pirate medicine goes. I’ve met a trans woman who told me that her DIY HRT was life changing in the best possible way, and I can only dream of what would happen if people started making their own Insulin or T or whatever
I fucking love pirate medicine. Fuck the US healthcare system, what good is having the “best healthcare in the world” if you can’t even afford mediocre healthcare?
I’m not familiar with taoism, and I do not understand the point you are trying to make. I’ve read the chapter on this site.
I think you are talking about this paragraph:
Therefore when Tao is lost, there is goodness. When goodness is lost, there is kindness. When kindness is lost, there is justice. When justice is lost, there is ritual. Now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion.
I don’t get what you are trying to say. Are you saying that Li is Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_(neo-Confucianism)), or in the quote I have, ritual? Are you saying I’m an advocate for Justice in the sense of this quote? I think you are either misunderstanding me (I know I am not understanding what you are saying since it is unclear), or ascribing a set of values to anarchism that doesn’t line up with what I’m arguing in order to dismiss my argument.
To be fully clear, I’m going to elaborate on what I’m saying. I’m giving a simple cause and effect statement here, not some moral justification. When there is a liberatory movement that threatens the power structure that enforces hierarchy that oppresses people, those in power will use their position to make the movement, threatening tactics/techniques of, or other things done by the people of the movement illegal, necessitating breaking the law to continue. Working within the shifting bounds of law is insufficient.
Yes, but since most people for whatever reason believe that you can fight the state only by the rules the state makes, you won’t be able to do anything about it.
I agree. As an anarchist, I do not think following whatever rules the state makes will ever be sufficient for achieving any liberatory goals.
They are doing this pretty intentionally. Tomorrow is always different from today. People have been complacent, while some other people perceptive of the future in a bad way have made plans for taking unprecedented power over societies.
This is why I advocate for decentralizing power (and the dissolution of all hierarchies and hierarchic power structures). The last thing I want is a despot using the current mechanisms of power and centralize everything, and have such an absurd amount of power.
You are saying this [cut quote about my advocacy of decentralization] as part of a discussion, but they are not discussing this with us. Public opinion won’t stop them. Only force will.
I agree. Every single movement that has gone against a component of the government required either violence, or backed, credible threats of it. The government will never reduce its power to the benefit of the people, even if that policy is popular.
You are absolutely correct, I’m just worried about one less barrier.
FOIA is great and all, and so are public records laws and disclosure laws.
But the state is gonna state, and when push comes to shove, social media will be another tool to manufacture consent, break up movements, and preserve itself over the interest of the governed.
I’m not concerned about the ability to FOIA shit about Twitter or Facebook’s algorithm, as much as I’d like to know about how it targets the content slop to its users. I’m concerned about how it will consolidate power into fewer hands, and how state sponsored social media will be abused. And I don’t think FOIA would ever reveal that if it happened.
Fuck nationalization of social media. Honestly, this is one of the worst ideas I’ve heard.
The idea that giving the government a monopoly on the biggest data hoarders is somehow better than having the capitalists own it is mind-boggling.
The government doesn’t need a warrant to search through its own data.
The last thing we need is to give the state more power over our lives, more insight into our lives, and more control over the narratives we learn.
Every time humans have centralized more power into fewer and fewer hands, nothing good comes from it. We need more decentralized forms of media, not more centralized forms.
Well, microsoft chooses bing for you sometimes
If whataboutism is reframing the question in a different light that includes what we were talking about and not simply deflecting with a what-about, then I guess I did a textbook whataboutism. I guess I did the classic whataboutism bit where I said tiktok wasn’t censoring, even though I swear I said they were, and instead I said what why do we give social media the power to censor shit like that I was saying tiktok wasn’t censoring and whatabout other social media. 🙄
Whataboutism is when you don’t defend your point or argue against the original point and just change topic. Ex: “Oh you are saying that tiktok is censoring anti-ccp thought? What about facebook and twitter doing shit like banning XYZ political commentators???”
What I said is a bit more complicated than that, so I’ll boil down my points into something a bit more simple manner
Look man, you can’t claim someone is doing a fallacious argument tactic when they aren’t doing it. If someone argued something, fucking respond to it or don’t, it genuinely doesn’t matter. But if you are gonna just be a cunty smuglord instead, you’re a dick and I wish you the worst.
Now, i’m gonna disregard your shit-slinging and go back to taking your comments in good faith. I have a serious question for you. You seem to have a problem with my points, but what about it do you disagree with? I’m literally agreeing with you in a few places and just calling the framing flawed. If you’re gonna respond to that, don’t take me out of context.
If I could do an analysis like this, I would. But I don’t have the technical know-how to do so. Being like “Why don’t you do [complex activity] rather than comment on an existing study” is a shitty mindset that attempts to shut down conversation and doesn’t build upon it in any meaningful way.
Further, I think you completely missed the point of what I said. You presented an article that showed tiktok is biased towards CCP positions, and that isn’t really surprising. I said that I don’t think Instagram is any more trustworthy simply because it is American owned, and I think the framing of that view is flawed. I don’t think it invalidates the data, I just think it places a huge amount of trust in a social media company that has been in constant controversy for its entire existence. The point is why is the problem the fact that a social media company is using their power to promote CCP viewpoints, rather than the fact that social media companies have such power with such little oversight.
You seem to be claiming there’s a fire without even seeing any smoke while simultaneously ignoring the flames in front of your face.
I think you can only say that when you are intentionally misinterpreting what I said to the point I think you are trying to stuff me in some little box I don’t belong in. I acknowledge that TikTok is a problem. If the problem is algorithmic bias with social media, why are we stopping with the foreign company that has opposing interests? Why aren’t we angry that a single company can hold so much power and have such little accountability?
the only issue with Meta is how they refused to take down offensive stuff from high-profile conservatives due to political backlash
I wish I lived in a world that this was the only issue meta had.
I bet I’m missing a ton, but these things quickly came to mind.
I skimmed the article and I see your concern, but my skepticism remains because of the inherent assumption that instagram is trustworthy and not already tinkering with their own algorithms. Just because the company is American owned doesn’t make it any more or less trustworthy in my opinion. I think the framing is flawed, but that doesn’t discount the concerns with things that are pro-taiwan having such a small presence
I do think a big reason why tiktok is now being held to the flame is the fact there is so much dissent on it. Younger Americans are becoming increasingly anti-israel and more critical of the US’s stance on foreign policy.
Instead of reacting hastily and banning tiktok I think a better action would be placing the same criticisms on domestic companies. Instead, I think we should make companies much more transparent in how they use their algorithms and filter content. Instead of getting upset that one company is censoring, and making them sell to a US company, we should instead prevent censorship more broadly.
edit: made point a bit more clear
Its worse in the best way IMO.
The main reason I buy vinyl is for the other reasons you mentioned, but the imperfections of vinyl gives it a less robotic and sterile feel. It’s like listening to digital drums vs acoustic drums.
There’s also the ritual of playing vinyl that’s real satisfying
Wait, people trust corporate benchmarks?
apparently you don’t read TechDirt
I don’t read TechDirt
the NSA has … been leaking stuff to the FBI
Oh, I know about this, I thought you were talking about local law enforcement offices, which is not something I’ve seen.
As far as the unconstitutionality of the NSA’s actions, I fully agree with you. From the perspective of of an anarchist, I don’t exactly see any alphabet agencies or the branches of government in a good light. I fully expect the NSA to be involved in shenanigans, just as I expect the FBI or CIA to do so.
the FISC has always been a rubber stamp court so it shouldn’t be necessary for law enforcement to circumvent warrants for NSA information, but it turns out it’s just easier using the NSA backdoor access
If you are talking about the FBI when you saw law enforcement, the FBI has it’s own malware it uses, such as Magic Lantern historically, and certainly others that are not public. There is also some info about them possibly using the NSO group’s Pegasus spyware, which is obscenely hard to detect, and has, at times, been 0-click, meaning you don’t need to take any actions, and it has cleaned up evidence of tampering. Since the FBI has to make sure their evidence is admissible in court, they do need to make sure their evidence is gathered in such a way that it does not violate laws.
However, I have listened to interviews with people who argued their case was built on unconstitutional evidence, and claimed that the feds told them “if you try and attack the case like this, we will tack on more charges,” so I’m not saying they always deal with admissibility in court when starting investigations.
The only gripe I still have is the your statement about the NSA’s lax security, since the breaches I’ve read about have all been done by nation state actors, which tend to be the most capable groups in the world.
My experience with the NSA, as someone who works in security, does not indicate they have lax security. From their leaked tools (I <3 ghidra), to their security guidelines, to their malware like stuxnet, to their public tools like SELinux (and eventually ghidra), their security capabilities seem solid.
I don’t want this to come out as me liking the NSA, since I hate a lot of what they do. But as someone who is a huge security nerd and malware enthusiast, I find their tools fascinating, and do have some respect for them from that perspective, in the same way someone might like Kanye’s music and respect his talent, but hate his guts for being a nazi.
If there are any good techdirt articles, please send them my way, I’d love to read them
the NSA’s information security is lax and outdated
As someone who has read the unclassified reccomendations on infosec written by the NSA and CISA, no, it isn’t. The NSA has some sophisticated security infrastructure, and if stuxnet or eternal blue has shown us, their infosec capabilities are incredible.
we’re pretty sure Russia and China are unofficially privy to any data they want.
I have literally never heard anyone say this before and this goes everything I know about cybersecurity, intelligence, and geopolitics.
The NSA ECC bullshit was to support surveillance, not to weaken their own security. The theoretical vulnerability lies in the usage of the suggested parameters of their curve, not ECC itself. Making surveillance easier is something that the NSA has historically supported.
at this point NSA leaks stuff to other law enforcement
I genuinely have never seen anything to support this that is substantial.
Holy shit I cant believe you’ve made an anarchist defend the NSA but this is so damn wrong.
Learning about norway made me a prison reformist, learning about the US prison system made me an abolitionist. I’m skeptical that the leviathan of the prison-industrial complex can be reformed.
Our system is so fucked up its insane. Inside, it’s terrible. Outside? Good luck getting a job with a criminal record. It’ll force you to steal to live, then you’ll be thrown back in.
Eric King is an ex political prisoner who has just recently been released, and he has been on a ton of leftist and anarchist podcasts in the past two or three weeks. His interview with The Final Straw Radio gives good insights on how halfway houses suck, and his interview with IGD is a good eye inside prison.
Fuck prisons, fuck cops, this shit sucks.
The main way criminals are caught is when they transfer their crypto to an exchange so they can convert it to cash. Law enforcement will subpoena the exange and ask “Hey, who exchanged 0.7886 bitcoin for cash on this date?” and they will get their identity. Using the public ledger, they will be able to trace the transactions done and show that this person sent money to an address advertised as belonging to a trafficking site, an illegal market, or recieved money from the bad wallet address.
The address owner is anonymous until there is a source of data that ties information the wallet, and often transactions can be used to do that, just as any way to advertise a wallet belongs to you can, or any way to exchange crypto to cash can.
In most cases there isn’t much you can do to fool the government without a lot of prep time such as scouting routes to find cameras, destroying them, or being really good at changing into bloc in the middle of a crowd and not getting caught.
But the important thing is threat modeling. The past dozen or so protests I’ve been at haven’t had the government as a big threat, it has had fascists as the primary threat. While a fascist cop would be a problem, it is much less likely than fascists combing through protest footage to try and doxx people, or a fascist at said action trying to get good photographs. That’s why I masked up.
The last real dicey action that I went to I still masked up, even knowing that the government could still try to track me if needed because I knew it would be time consuming to do so, and that they would only go through the process of doing that if I make it worth their while. Bloc is still effective, but quite hard under this heavily surveillanced police state.