When Angry Commenters Find Common Ground
Photo: Mikemol (CC)
A lot of visitors to disinformation could learn a lesson from these two. Joanna Schroeder, a feminist, and David Byron, an anti-feminist, write at the Good Men Project:
JS: So, David, you and I have a pretty interesting history, don’t we?
DB: I have talked with feminists on-line for years, and been thrown off hundreds of feminist sites. I am always looking for someone I can talk to, but I didn’t think you were a good prospect at first.
JS: Yeah, maybe I wasn’t at first. I have always been open-minded, but I started off pretty righteous.
As far as I remember it, you and I first met online at The Good Men Project in the comments section of a piece I wrote called The (Quiet) FeministRevolution. I was pretty sure I had written something so deeply based in common sense, that the whole world would read it and say, “Oh wow, now I…
No More Taco Bell Until Abortion Ends (Video)
Site editor’s note: if you have been following this political/internet/media explosion you may find this recent story posted to disinfo.com in December as an interesting footnote to the outcome.
These people will enjoy no more burritos until unborn babies are no longer terminated. Until Abortion Ends is a perplexing and to some extent inadvertently amusing trend in which people pledge to give up various things “until abortion ends”. (Although I assume they actually mean “until abortion becomes criminalized”.)
Anonymous’s ‘Black March’ Media Survival Guide
"copyrighted media won't be allowed while internet is censored"
Anonymous and other various Internet freedom groups are calling on people to boycott the corporate media for the entire month of March 2012 in efforts to affect the bottom line of organizations calling for the imposition of The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. ACTA will profoundly restrict the fundamental rights, freedom of expression and communication privacy of Internet users the world over.
For those of you who intend to participate in the boycott, there is plenty of public domain and Creative Commons licensed media that, for now, is freely available for you to download and enjoy, enough for the entire month of March.
The following is by no means an exhaustive list of sources to help you remain entertained while participating in the Black March Boycotts.
Video
- Internet Archive: Moving Images
- Creative Commons Video Section
- OpenFlix
- The Open Video Project
- Public Domain Comedy Video
- Public Domain Torrents
- Public.Resource.org
- Wikipedia list of films in the Public Domain
Audio /…
Anonymous Reveals The Arcane Legal Trick Behind ACTA
Anonymous exposes the nefarious goals of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Thanks to Christopher Neitzert for the tip.
“Greetings, world. We are Anonymous.
We are here to reveal to you an arcane legal trick, which will be used to take away your freedom starting in June 2012…
Silk Road (The Website With Every Illegal Drug Imaginable For Sale) Is Hiring
Adrianne Jeffries notes that Silk Road is one hot startup, for BetaBeat:
No publicity is bad publicity: Silk Road, the illicit online marketplace that came to light after Gawker’s Adrian Chen announced you could buy any drug imaginable there with Bitcoins, has been booming after increased awareness due to a rash of alarmist press coverage.
Drugs! Anonymous currencies! Hackers! Our children! But gradually Silk Road, and to a lesser degree Bitcoin, faded from the stage, largely because most people couldn’t understand how to use them. Silk Road can only be accessed using the anonymous network Tor, and you should probably know a thing or two about encryption before you buy anything.
But as we learned via a few Bitcoining Betabeat readers, Silk Road is doing really well—well enough to expand its anonymous team. “Silk Road is currently hiring a database expert and a customer support team member,” writes one reader. “On top of the ordinary ‘describe…
The 8 Most Obnoxious Internet Commenters
I’m a combination of #8, #5, #6, #3 and #2. Which are you? (Don’t lie now, all Disinfo commenters are at least one.) Via Cracked:
Under every video on YouTube or Break, and under every story on Digg or even right here on Cracked, there is a mini-culture that forms down in the comment section. The hit-and-run nature of the comments means it’s fertile ground for some really annoying personalities to thrive.
These are the eight commenter personality types you’d most like to avoid, but can’t because they’re freaking everywhere.
#8. The Non-Believer
Typical Comment: “FAKE! Did you see how that guy exploded just BEFORE he hit the tree. Fake, don’t waste my time.”
Who Are They? They like to think of themselves as the jaded skeptic in a world full of gullible sheeple, determined to be a flickering light of truth in a dark internet full of lies and fake viral videos. “No one could really fart on…
Warning: This Site Contains Conspiracy Theories
I am sure this question posed by Evgeny Morozov on Slate, “Does Google have a responsibility to help stop the spread of 9/11 denialism, anti-vaccine activism, and other fringe beliefs?” will be quite provocative for readers of Disinformation. As Evgeny Morozov writes on Slate:
In its early days, the Web was often imagined as a global clearinghouse — a new type of library, with the sum total of human knowledge always at our fingertips. That much has happened — but with a twist: In addition to borrowing existing items from its vast collections, we, the patrons, could also deposit our own books, pamphlets and other scribbles — with no or little quality control.
Such democratization of information-gathering — when accompanied by smart institutional and technological arrangements — has been tremendously useful, giving us Wikipedia and Twitter. But it has also spawned thousands of sites that undermine scientific consensus, overturn well-established facts, and…
The Sinister Vision Of Street View
9eyes is one of the best collections of Google Street View screenshots, providing a haunting glimpse of the world we live in, culled from all seven continents and presented without context. Are all of these real? Some of the strangest entries can be confirmed as legitimate.
Lots Of Illegal Downloading Occurring At The NBC, Sony Pictures, Fox Offices
From the pot-calling-the-kettle-black department, via TorrentFreak:
A few days ago we wrote about a new website that exposes what people behind an IP-address have downloaded on BitTorrent.
Armed with the IP-ranges of major Hollywood studios we decided to find out what they’ve been downloading. As expected, it didn’t take us long before we found BitTorrent ‘pirates’ at several leading entertainment industry companies. Yes, these are the same companies who want to disconnect people from the Internet after they’ve been caught sharing copyrighted material.
First up is Sony Pictures Entertainment. This single IP-address alone a wide variety of music and movies have been downloaded. And this is probably just the tip of the iceberg, as YouHaveDownloaded only tracks only a small percentage of all public BitTorrent downloads.
Another Hollywood studio where it’s not uncommon to download music, TV-shows and movies is NBC Universal. The employee(s) behind one of the IP-addresses at the Fort Lauderdale office…
The Internet is a ‘Series of Tubes’; RIP Senator Ted Stevens, Americans Elect These F-ing People …
What Just Happened? Explaining SOPA / PIPA (Video)
From the intriguing Khan Academy (CBS News report here):
Rupert Murdoch’s Late Night SOPA Tweets
Oh dear Rupert, is this how you spend Saturday night these days?
Well now we know where he stands on SOPA, and what a great relationship he has with Google and other leading Internet companies…
Major Media Outlets Supporting SOPA, Have Not Reported On It
The major news networks apparently feel that the controversial proposed Stop Online Piracy Act is an important piece of legislation — the parent companies are all working to ensure its passage. Strange, then, that there has been no on air mention of the bill. Media Matters writes:
Most major television news outlets — MSNBC, Fox News, ABC, CBS, and NBC — have ignored the bill during their evening broadcasts. One network, CNN, devoted a single evening segment to it.
The parent companies of most of these networks, as well as two of the networks themselves, are listed as official “supporters” of this legislation on the U.S. House of Representatives’ website.
New York Times media columnist David Carr, who described the legislation as “alarming in its reach,” explained in a column earlier this week that “digitally oriented companies see SOPA as dangerous and potentially destructive to the open Web and a step toward the kind…
Satire: Democracy’s Most Unexpected Enemy
Nick Meador writes on his blog:
A 2009 study found that people tend to interpret ambiguous political satire according to their own views and self-image. This has enormous implications for satirical programs mocking democratic behavior, produced by media conglomerates that support Internet censorship. (The following is an essay that I was not able to place with a magazine, but still wanted to share with the world. Feel free to re-post on your blog or website, in accordance with the Creative Commons license. Just give me credit and link back here.)
“The revolutionaries of any decade will become the reactionaries of the next decade, if they do not change their nervous system, because the world around them is changing. He or she who stands still in a moving, racing, accelerating age, moves backwards relatively speaking.” – Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising (1)
On Thursday, December 1, 2011, Stephen Colbert addressed the Stop Online Piracy…
God’s Online Dating Service For Christians
Thom Patterson asks “Is God going to hook me up online?” at CNN:
Has God taken an interest in the computer dating business? Does he (or she) have a username and password?
You might think so, if you’ve seen TV ads for the subscription-based dating website christianmingle.com.
The announcer says confidently: “Find God’s match for you.”
Really? Is God going to hook you up online? Cue the blogospheric debate…
Somali Rebels Embrace Twitter Terrorism
El Shabbab, the fundamentalist Islamic insurgency group fighting to control southern Somalia, reject most things Western and/or modern, but ironically have embraced Twitter, garnering thousands of followers. In addition to straightforward updates on battles and territory, the best part is the taunting that goes on between the insurgents and Kenyan military spokesman Major E. Chirchir:
Google Shoot View
The whole world as a first-person shooter game. It’s down at the moment due to a the kibosh from Google, but Google Shoot View allows you to traverse Google Street View will holding an assault rifle, and to fire upon anything (to no effect). It’s quite existentially disturbing. Perhaps, visit your childhood home and unload a few rounds, to symbolize releasing and moving on from the burdens of the past:
Life Would Suck If SOPA Passes
Comic creator David Rees, known for Get Your War On, has put forth Get Your Censor On, an attempt to convey what life may be like under the much-feared Stop Online Piracy Act. If we don’t band together to work to prevent SOPA from coming to fruition in Congress, you could find yourself having conversations such as these in the near future:
