sokpuppette 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Boys In Blew: Australian Cops Caught Faking 258,000 Breathalyzer Tests

    sokpuppette ( profile ), 06 Jun, 2018 @ 06:40am

    ^^^^ This

    The quotas probably were not reasonable (although that may not be the reason for the faking).

    You could process this as cops doing what they could to protect the public from insane tough-on-crime bullshit. It would be unsupported speculation... but so is the idea that the cops were just lazy.

  • On the post: Judge OKs Class Action Status For Illinoisans Claiming Facebook Violated State Privacy Law

    sokpuppette ( profile ), 04 Jun, 2018 @ 05:10am

    actual harm suffered by these users, of which the company claims there is none.

    The creatures making that argument shouldn't even be treated as human.

    different users could make different claims of harm, impacting both the fines and outcomes of their claims.

    That's been true in every class action ever. The big problem with class actions is that they usually get settled for pennies. What judges need to do is to stop approving settlements that don't really compensate people and only pay lawyers.

    If the fines run between $1000 and $5000, then great, let's average that and fine Facebook $3000 for each template created, each photo tag collected, and each attempted facial match. At a minimum, every match attempt is obviously a "use", so they shouldn't get away with just getting fined per template.

    We've had our problems with class actions suits in the past, but it shouldn't be pushed aside that this case has the potential for huge damages assessed on Facebook.

    Good. If it puts Facebook out of business, that will be a good thing for the world.

    Furthermore, it would be good if there were individual liability for any user who ever "tagged" anybody in a Facebook photo without the "tagee's" explicit consent.

    Let's not forget that the whole photo tagging and facial recognition thing is a fundamentally rotten thing to do, and that's obvious to anybody who's not an amoral piece of shit. Prison time for the people who built it would not be out of line.

  • On the post: The GDPR: Ghastly, Dumb, Paralyzing Regulation It's Hard To Celebrate

    sokpuppette ( profile ), 26 May, 2018 @ 07:29am

    Techdirt's just totally captive to the "platforms", isn't it?

  • On the post: Amazon Joins Google In Making Censorship Easy, Threatens Signal For Circumventing Censorship Regimes

    sokpuppette ( profile ), 04 May, 2018 @ 07:52am

    Peer. To. Peer.

    This is what happens to you when you have a centralized, brittle, pressurable, surveillable server-based architecture.

    I see Briar has a release candidate on Google Play...

  • On the post: Turns Out Lots Of People Want To Play The CIA's Card Game

    sokpuppette ( profile ), 27 Apr, 2018 @ 06:45am

    You guys gonna buy a beer or something for whoever originally invented the game?

  • On the post: Federal Backpage Indictment Shows SESTA Unnecessary, Contains Zero Sex Trafficking Charges

    sokpuppette ( profile ), 10 Apr, 2018 @ 12:02pm

    I have in the past said that nobody had presented any credible reason to believe that Backpage actually contributed to creating prostitution-related content, and in fact mentioned that the last "Backpage indictment" had clearly failed to allege that. The most I'd seen anybody willing to specifically claim was that Backpage had automatically bounced ads with specific keywords and perhaps told the users why.

    For the record, I appear to have been wrong. This indictment has a bunch of very detailed, presumably verifiable allegations of very specific activity that clearly amounted to Backpage editing content, including giving specific, detailed instructions on what to change as well as manually modifying the text of many ads.

    That's a different kettle of fish. Whatever you think about whether prostitution or advertising for it should be legal, if what's claimed in this indictment is true, then Backpage was participating directly. And (out here in the court of public opinion) there's no reason to disbelieve such detailed claims, since it's not credible that anybody would make such claims if they didn't think they had evidence that would hold up at trial.

  • On the post: Court Shows SESTA Is Not Needed: Says Backpage Can Lose Its CDA 230 Protections If It Helped Create Illegal Content

    sokpuppette ( profile ), 31 Mar, 2018 @ 07:24am

    "Actions the site had ALLEGEDLY taken", please

    There are a bunch of people out there pushing the narrative the Backpage created this sort of content, or at least actively edited it. There's no credible evidence that it ever happened, and a lot of reason to expect that it did not.

    The claim showed up in a Senate report... without evidence.

    The claim is trumpeted all over media stories... without evidence.

    And now you're repeating it... without evidence.

    The judge said that there was a "modicum of support" for the possibility that Backpage had done that, so the plaintiff would have the right to present further evidence and argument.

    I'll happily bet you that no convincing evidence will be forthcoming in this or any other case... because it didn't happen. All Backpage ever did was refuse to accept ads with certain keywords in them. Period.

  • On the post: Techdirt Podcast Episode 160: Overreacting To Facebook's Mistakes Won't Solve Anything

    sokpuppette ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2018 @ 02:20pm

    Bah.

    Breaches like that are intrinsic to Facebook's entire business model and Facebook's entire technical architecture... which is the same business model and the same technical architecture that all the other "platforms" have.

    If you collect the data in a central place, and let other centralized actors have access to them, then you WILL have failures like that. If I can give your "app" permission to process my data, and if your "app" can simultaneously have permission to talk directly to you or to any third party, then my data WILL eventually get misused.

    That's independent of the good will or lack thereof of the people operating it, by the way. It just plain WILL fail constantly. It's broken by design. It can never work right.

    The correct reaction is to completely dismantle the entire "platform-based" structure of social networking. All of it. Shutting down Facebook would be a good start.

    I suspect that the things you're calling "overreaction" are a lot less extreme than that correct reaction...

  • On the post: Hey Mark Zuckerberg: Don't Lock Down Everyone's Data, Open It Up To Services That Give Your Users More Control Over Their Data

    sokpuppette ( profile ), 23 Mar, 2018 @ 01:56pm

    Hey Mark Zuckerberg

    Don't collect it in the first place.

  • On the post: Cable's Top Lobbyist Again Calls For Hyper Regulation Of Silicon Valley

    sokpuppette ( profile ), 10 Mar, 2018 @ 07:05am

    Customers frustrated by Facebook's bad behavior can vote with their wallets, something most Comcast customers can't do.

    Most Comcast customers can go to the other member of the local duopoly. Pretty much ANY Comcast customer can go buy their own right of way and run their own cable to a NAP.

    That's just about as practical as most Facebook users abandoning Facebook.

  • On the post: Court Moves Business Owner One Step Closer To Getting Paid Back For Vehicle DEA Destroyed In A Failed Drug Sting

    sokpuppette ( profile ), 10 Mar, 2018 @ 06:07am

    Sure, it's not the DEA's fault its drug sting fell apart and resulted in vehicle damage and the loss of life.

    It sure goddamn well is. It was an obvious risk of the DEA's habitual use of irresponsible tactics. It's happened before, it's happened again, it's not justified, and it's not acceptable.

  • On the post: German Court Says Facebook's Real Names Policy Violates Users' Privacy

    sokpuppette ( profile ), 21 Feb, 2018 @ 06:17am

    This article operates from a child's understanding of consent and coercion.

    If I say "My great grandfather had the biggest club, so he got all the farmland, so suck my dick or starve", that's not a choice and your doing it doesn't imply any real consent. And if everybody you need to interact with has been manipulated into using my "platform", or even just chosen to use my platform, then saying "Give me your real name or go be isolated" isn't a choice either.

    And let's talk about this "come in and tell a company" business.

    Facebook. Is. A. Creation. Of. Government.

    Governments aren't "coming in" to Facebook's affairs. People "came in" and asked governments to create the company in the first place.

    A corporation doesn't exist at all except as a matter of law. It's not a person. It has no natural rights (and no mind, so it couldn't exercise natural rights if it had them). By chartering such an entity, the government actually RESTRICTS the rights of natural persons, most famously the right to individually sue people who act in concert to do them damage.

    Issuing charters like that has side effects. No actual person could operate at that scale without some similar kind of charter. The existence of Facebook's "platform" requires the government to recognize fictional entities. And scale is a big part of the reason there's a problem.

    There is absolutely no reason governments shouldn't put any restrictions those entrusted think appropriate on gifts like the "right" for a total fiction to be treated as a legal entity or the "right" for its owners and employees to avoid accountability for their actions.

    It's not even like Facebook is a vehicle for its owners to exercise their rights to free speech. Facebook is a vehicle for selling advertising, period.

    Don't pretend that massive institutions are beings with rights. If you want a "free" system, then decentralize the technology and eliminate these fiefdoms.

  • On the post: Theresa May Again Demands Tech Companies Do More To Right The World's Social Media Wrongs

    sokpuppette ( profile ), 02 Feb, 2018 @ 08:06am

    Re: Re: We can fix her problems right here, right now.

    Would it make it OK if we gave Donald Trump a set, too? I'd chip in...

  • On the post: After Basically No Debate, And No Opportunity For Amendments, Senate Votes To Expand NSA Surveillance

    sokpuppette ( profile ), 17 Jan, 2018 @ 07:39am

    How's Feinstein surprising? She's been a spy lover since the beginning of time. Way before Trump was a thing. She only gets mad at the spies if they lie to her personally, and then not for long.

  • On the post: For The Second Time In A Week, German Hate Speech Laws Results In Deletion Of Innocent Speech

    sokpuppette ( profile ), 12 Jan, 2018 @ 04:25pm

    The story here is that Twitter doesn't have the guts to just pull out and geoblock Germany, and continues to kiss their dictatorial asses.

  • On the post: Dear Al Franken: Net Neutrality Is Not A Magic Wand You Can Wave At Any Company

    sokpuppette ( profile ), 10 Nov, 2017 @ 12:00pm

    What is with Techdirt and the huge blind spot around "platforms"?

    There is no "competitive social media market", because network effects favor concentration.

    It so happens that I do "choose not to visit Facebook" (and others), and I suffer serious negative effects from the resulting social isolation. Meanwhile, people are still discussing me and probably tagging photos of me, on those platforms.

    Obligating them to distribute "foreign propaganda" sounds fine to me. I don't know where anybody got the idea that free speech stoppedat a border. And I'm perfectly capable of rejecting Putin's bullshit, and so will other people be once they stop kidding themselves that they can depend on others to filter it out for them.

    At this point I'm about ready to root for SESTA and all the other stupid, jackbooted government assholery, just out of the hope that it will force these companies to degrade their services enough that competition from truly decentralized systems is actually possible and something better can emerge.

  • On the post: Google Removed Catalonian Referendum App Following Spanish Court Order

    sokpuppette ( profile ), 23 Oct, 2017 @ 05:56pm

    And, indeed, there are competing app stores -- but the general argument around them (with the possible exception of Amazon's competing Android app store) is that if you want to keep your device secure, you'll only download via Google's app store.

    Yeah, that's the argument generally made by Google's PR flacks and their dupes. It never has made any sense at all, mind you.

    Google's checks aren't particularly effective, and Google Play is the number one distributor of Android malware just like it's the number one distributor of all Android software.

  • On the post: How To Avoid Future Krack-Like Failures: Create Well-Maintained 'Fat' Protocols Using Initial Coin Offerings

    sokpuppette ( profile ), 23 Oct, 2017 @ 05:44pm

    Oh, yeah, yeah right, great idea...

    ... worked great for Ethereum with the DAO.

    All that code review from people putting real money into the thing kept anybody from draining $100M out of it for like a whole week! Almost like every "investor" expected to free ride on the review of others...

    And it's really, really hard to pull the artificial grafted-on toll out of a protocol, thus removing the "fat" aspect...

    Just more idiocy from ICO morons. The market does not fix everything.

  • On the post: Wireless Carriers Again Busted Collecting, Selling User Data Without Consent Or Opt Out Tools

    sokpuppette ( profile ), 19 Oct, 2017 @ 05:53am

    Re:

    They're offering "live" data to anybody who fucking comes in over the Internet. That's "live" and "public" enough for me, thanks.

    In a sane legal system, deliberately putting that information out there would get you a prison sentence, "demo" or no "demo". And even letting it outside of a closed billing system into a larger corporate system would be grounds for damages. Let's set the damages by statute at the same as the damages for sharing a pop song: $150k per record.

    And "partners" are third parties. That's just what pieces of shit like to call the particular third parties they happen to be working with that week, as part of the various cons they're running.

    Corporate toady.

  • On the post: Australia's National Rape Hotline Run By Insurance Company, Who Demands All Sorts Of Private Info

    sokpuppette ( profile ), 17 Oct, 2017 @ 06:42am

    Re: Ah... so typical of government...

    Usually the reason this stuff gets farmed out to private contracts is that a bunch of "government can't do anything right" ideologues have forced it to be.

    Just saying...

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