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captain-cathers · 1 year

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What’s happening to Reddit, and why should I care?

TL;DR: An unreasonable API price increase is going to kill third-party Reddit apps, destroying important moderator and accessibility tools. Many popular apps have announced they're shutting down on June 30. The admins/site leadership aren't backing down. Most of Reddit is going private on June 12-14 in protest.

Unreasonably dense explanation under the cut:

What is Reddit?

Reddit is a social news aggregation site that is made up of millions of individual boards/forums, called “subreddits.”

Each of these subreddits has a topic (baking, Borderlands, hentai, pictures of cats wearing hats, etc.) and users can submit related posts to these subreddits (images, text, videos, links, etc.).

Every subreddit is moderated by a team of unpaid volunteers, and can have anywhere from 10 to 10,000,000+ members.

The current CEO of Reddit is Steve Huffman, or spez. He was one of the original co-founders in 2005, left in 2009, and returned to Reddit in 2015 following the Ellen Pao fiasco. (TL;DR: she was the scapegoat for several unpopular changes made to Reddit and site policy.)

What’s going on?

Reddit announced that they are going to start charging money for their API, when API access had previously been free, à la Twitter. Also like Twitter, they’re charging an exorbitant amount for it, which will essentially drive all of the third-party apps and tools using it out of business.

Reddit did not have an official app for a long time, but it did have a free API, which allowed developers to access Reddit data and posts and make their own Reddit apps. Several of these third-party apps became extremely popular. (AlienBlue was the most popular iPhone Reddit client, before it was bought by Reddit in 2014 and then shut down and replaced with the official Reddit app in 2016.) To this day, millions of Reddit users use these third-party apps, accessibility tools, and moderation suites that rely on the Reddit API.

What’s an API?

An API (Application Programming Interface) is essentially a toolkit that allows different apps and websites to interact with each other. A third-party Reddit App, for example, uses Reddit’s API to allow its users to view subreddits, post comments, upvote posts, etc. For a non-technical explanation, see this comment.

The bullshit that’s happening (in no particular order)

The new API prices were announced on May 31 and are going to take effect on July 1. That gives developers 30 days to figure out what they’re going to do with their apps – nowhere near enough time to rework an entire monetization scheme and get it approved. In addition, the new API prices are completely outrageous. Everyone clowned on Twitter for setting an absurdly-high price for their API, and then Reddit went and did the exact same thing. (Keep in mind these third-party app dev teams are extremely small – Apollo, which has millions of users, is developed by one person.)

Blind people cannot use Reddit without third-party apps. (Reddit is claiming they’re going to make an exception for accessibility tools, but there has been no communication on how they define accessibility-focused apps or how they would get approved.)

Moderators cannot effectively moderate their subreddits without third-party apps. All subreddits are managed by an unpaid, volunteer mod team, who keep posts on-topic and fight spam and abuse. Many of the tools and bots they use to keep subreddits running smoothly are at risk with the new API changes, and historical promises from Reddit that new moderation tools are coming have always been fruitless. Many subs are moderated by just one or two people, and this change will be the final nail in the coffin.

The new API blocks NSFW content – while this is a bummer for NSFW content creators/viewers who use third-party apps, more significantly it makes it difficult for moderators to effectively police NSFW content and spam. (This could also point towards a future Tumblr-esque porn ban, but Reddit recently expanded desktop support for NSFW uploads so this is unlikely.)

The CEO of Reddit, Steve Huffman (spez) accused the developer of Apollo of blackmailing/extorting Reddit. Good thing the Apollo dev recorded the phone call and revealed that spez was lying. (Fun fact: spez was caught editing users’ comments without their knowledge back in 2016.)

Reddit claims these changes aren’t intended to kill competing apps, but they’re also testing turning off the mobile website and directing users to their app instead. It seems like Reddit’s moving towards the official app being the only way to access Reddit on mobile.

Reddit’s trying to go public and is laying off about 5% of their workforce.

Reddit admins are inviting users to newly-created German-language subreddits full of badly-translated content stolen from English subs for… some reason? (Maybe to make their site look like it has more of a global presence ahead of a potential IPO? Or to replace old and established non-English-language subs with new ones and new mods?)

Spez is hosting an AMA (Ask Me Anything) tomorrow, June 9 (but no time is listed in the post…)

Apollo, Reddit is Fun, and Sync (among others) have all announced that they will be shutting down their apps on June 30th.

(Fun side note, Apollo was actually namedropped and shown multiple times by Apple at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference this past week.)

To protest the impending API pricing changes, hundreds of subreddits are taking their subs private from June 12-14 (some indefinitely). Reddit has said they’re “open to postponing the API timeline to launch mod tooling, if [mods] agree to keep their subreddits open.” The mods aren't backing down, and as of 6/8 the protest is going forward as planned.

Why should I care?

Reddit is a mixed bag of a website, only as good as its individual subreddits. On one hand, the site is a breeding ground for hate, amplifying movements like Gamergate and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. On the other hand, Reddit is home to countless communities, works of art, hobbies, support groups, and political movements that provide both knowledge and support that can’t be found elsewhere. There’s a reason why searching anything + “reddit” is an effective search query – Reddit’s one of the few indexed and searchable places left on the Internet that hasn’t been completely enshittified yet – a place where you can get a question answered by real people.

The Internet is increasingly driving toward individual walled gardens, where genuine connection and information is harder and harder to find. (Remember when all the wikis got eaten by Fandom? Or how every website destroyed the chronological feed and added stories to become the same? Or just everything about Twitter?)

Anyway, there’s no call to action here, just general despair. At the very least, we’ll be eating well on Reddit drama for the next couple weeks.

#reddit #news #current events #internet #twitter #psa #long post #please for the love of god if i got something wrong tell me and i'll fix it asap #reddit blackout

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busterbanana · 2 years

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Gta v glitch 2 franklins

Gta v glitch 2 franklins for free#

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Glitches that haven't been patched as of June 2020 in GTA: Online With that in mind, let's take a look at glitches in the game that are yet to be fixed. The r/gtaglitches subreddit regularly posts a list of GTA: Online glitches that haven't been patched yet. However, this isn't necessarily negative for players, as the craftiest ones in GTA: Online have for years exploited glitches to their advantage.

Gta v glitch 2 franklins for free#

Peek-a-boo Other subreddits you might like: someĬlick To Submit A Subreddit To Our Sidebar! Ever read the reddiquette? Take a peek! Join the revolution.Also read: GTA Online: How to get Shitzu Hakuchou for free We have spoiler tags, please use them! /spoiler, #spoiler, /s, #s. Mod posts Old Questions PSA posts Megathread Glitches Unfilter Do you have ideas or feedback for GTAGlitches? Submit to /r/IdeasforGTAGlitches. Tags to use: Use a post tag to designate your post as a PSA (Public Service Announcement) thread. Commenting on posts complaining about the post, how it shouldn't be posted here, how they're "ruining the game", etc or flaming OP for posting it will not be tolerated. No Flaming Other User's Posts (Including GodMode Posts)Īll GTA Glitches are allowed here in r/GTAGlitches and are 100% welcome. Multiple violations of any of these rules will result in a ban. The moderators reserve the right to remove any posts and/or comments that they feel are breaking rules or unnecessary. Rude, harassing, or otherwise unnecessary remarks in the comments (or as a post) will result in a removal of the content. Doing this is simply self-promotion/promotion and is not allowed. Use the flair for any glitch post you have shared that isn't over 2 weeks old.ĭo not post content or link to your own YouTube channel and/or someone else's without giving a proper text tutorial. Further offenses could to lead to a permanent ban. Act II/Bogdan Problem posts (unless in relation to a patch) will be removed and you will receive a 7 day ban. Also, do NOT make posts regarding Act II/Bogdan Problem glitch. The "Question" flair is no longer applicable to posts. Use the Daily or Weekly Questions Megathreads for any questions you have. Make sure to mark your post with the appropriate flair. If you want a specific car duplicated for you, make a post to GTA Dupe. Request people to do glitches with you at Heist Teams. Example: Is the arcade dupe glitch patched?ĭo not request others to do glitches with/for you or get money for you in-game. The SPECULATION flair is NOT for asking questions. Simply claiming, "I did this" with nothing to validate it is not allowed. When submitting a speculative glitch, you MUST include a step by step text tutorial (and any other pertinent information) of what you did to perform said speculative glitch. If you have an improvement to an already posted glitch, mark your post as. This will result in a ban on the first offense.Ĭheck to make sure that the glitch or speculative glitch you are posting hasn’t been posted before. PM a user if you would like to play online with them.ĭo not report any users to any Rockstar source, or discuss doing so. You get one warning, second offense is a ban.ĭo not post a gamertag anywhere on the subreddit. Clickbait titles are NOT allowed.ĭo not ask for a payment of any sort. Please also include any video(s) and the glitch's founder(s) (if possible).

Gta v glitch 2 franklins full#

Please provide a full and detailed, step-by-step text tutorial of any glitch you are submitting. If you see a post that is breaking the rules, please use the report feature. They are for your benefit and everybody else who uses /r/GTAGlitches. Policy Change Information Please read the rules. And The Bogdan Problem/Act II posts are banned altogether. Duping Guide (from SE7) GTA Glitches Chat Room Act II/Bogdan Problem Chat Room Official Scammer List Question posts are banned.

#Gta v glitch 2 franklins

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solacekames · 5 years

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(This is a great serious study with a lot of data, which is the only way to fight this online disinformation shit.

I’m already accustomed to us Japanese-Americans being almost completely unable to have online public conversations because we get trolled to the point of nausea by creepy fetishists, fakers and just plain racist trolls. But it could get worse. It IS getting worse.

While a lot of the article may sound very “water is wet” please don’t be dismissive of it. It’s very important.)

Members of vulnerable groups such as the Latino, Muslim, and Jewish communities are being disproportionately targeted online with disinformation, harassment, and computational propaganda — and they don’t trust big social platforms to help them, according to new research by the Palo Alto–based Institute for the Future’s Digital Intelligence Lab shared exclusively with BuzzFeed News.

Researchers found that online messages and images on platforms such as Twitter that originate in the Latino, Muslim, and Jewish communities are co-opted by extremists to spread division and disinformation, often resulting in more social media engagement for the extremists. This causes members of social groups to pull away from online conversations and platforms, and to stop using them to engage and organize, further ceding ground to trolls and extremists.

“We think that the general goal of this [activity] is to create a spiral of silence to prevent people from participating in politics online, or to prevent them from using these platforms to organize or communicate,” said Samuel Woolley, the director of the Digital Intelligence Lab. The platforms, meanwhile, have mainly met these complaints with inaction, according to the research.

Woolley said he expects strategies like fomenting division, spreading disinformation, and co-opting narratives that were used by bad actors in the 2016 election to be employed in the upcoming 2020 election. “In 2020 what we hypothesize is that social groups, religious groups, and issue voting groups will be the primary target of” this kind of activity, he said.

The lab commissioned eight case studies from academics and think tank researchers to look at how different social and issues groups in the US are affected by what researchers call “computational propaganda” (“the assemblage of social media platforms, autonomous agents, and big data tasked with the manipulation of public opinion” — i.e., digital propaganda). The groups studied were Muslim Americans, Latino Americans, moderate Republicans, immigration activists, black women gun owners, environmental activists, anti-abortion and abortion rights activists, and Jewish Americans.

In one example, immigration activists told researchers that a “know your rights” flyer instructing people what to do when stopped by ICE was photoshopped to include false information, and then spread on social media. A member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said the hashtag related to the organization’s name (#CAIR) has been “taken over by haters” and used to harass Muslims. Researchers who looked at anti-Latino messaging on Reddit also found that extremist voices discussing Latino topics “appear to be louder than their supporters.”

Jewish Americans interviewed by researchers said online conversations about Israel have reached a new level of toxicity. They spoke of “non-bot Twitter mobs” targeting people, and “coordinated misinformation campaigns conducted by Jewish organizations, trying to propagandize Jews.”

“What we've come to understand is that it's oftentimes the most vulnerable social groups and minority communities that are the targets of computational propaganda,” Woolley told BuzzFeed News.

These findings align with other data that reinforces how these social groups bear the brunt of online harassment. According to a 2019 report from the ADL, 27% of black Americans, 30% of Latinos, 35% of Muslims, and 63% of the LGBTQ+ communities in the United States have been harassed online because of their identity.

BOTS

While bots were generally not a dominant presence in the Twitter conversations analyzed by researchers, automated accounts were used to spread hateful or harassing messages to different communities.

Tweets gathered about the Arizona Republican primary to replace John McCain in the Senate and his funeral last year showed that bots tried to direct moderate Republicans to america-hijacked.com, an anti-Semitic conspiracy website. (It has not published new material since 2017.) Researchers also found that Twitter discussions about reproductive rights saw anti-abortion bots spread harassing language, while pro–abortion rights bots spread politically divisive messages.

Researchers used the Botometer tool to identify likely automated accounts, and gathered millions of tweets based on hashtags for analysis. They combined this data analysis with interviews conducted with members of the communities being studied. The goal was to identify and quantify the human consequences of computational propaganda, according to Woolley.

“The results range from chilling effects and disenfranchisement to psychological and physical harm,” reads an executive summary from Woolley and Katie Joseff, the lab’s research director.

Joseff said people in the studied communities feel they’re being targeted and outmaneuvered by extremist groups and that they don’t “have the allyship of the platforms.”

“They didn't trust the platforms to help them,” she said.

In response to a request for comment, a Twitter spokesperson pointed to the company's review of its efforts to protect election integrity during the 2018 midterms elections.

"With elections taking place around the globe leading up to 2020, we continue to build on our efforts to address the threats posed by hostile foreign and domestic actors. We're working to foster an environment conducive to healthy, meaningful conversations on our service," said an emailed statement from the spokesperson. (Reddit, the other social platform studied in the research, did not immediately reply to a request for comment.)

Joseff and Woolley said more extreme and insular social media platforms like Gab and 8Chan are where harassment campaigns and messaging about certain social groups is incubated. Ideas that begin on these platforms later dictate the conversation that takes place on more mainstream social media platforms. “The niche platforms like Gab or 8Chan are spaces where the culture around this kind of language becomes fermented and is built,” Woolley said. “That’s why you’re seeing the cross-pollination of attacks across more mainstream social media platforms … directed at multiple different types of groups.”

Co-opting

Researchers found that several of the communities studied are dealing with hashtag and content co-opting, a process by which something used by a group to promote a message or cause gets turned on its head and exploited by opponents.

For example, immigration activists interviewed for one case study said they’ve seen anti-immigration campaigns “video-taping activists and portraying them as ICE officers online, and reframing images to represent immigrant organizations as white supremacist supporters.”

Those interviewed said the perpetrators are tech savvy, “use social media to track and disrupt activism events, and have created memes of minorities looting after a natural disaster.”

The researchers found that messages initially pushed out by immigration activists were consistently co-opted by their opponents — and that these counter-narrative messages generate more engagement than the original, as shown in this graphic representing one example:

“In all cases but one a narrative was consistently drowned out by a counter narrative,” the researchers wrote.

Another case study about Latino Americans gathered data from Reddit. It found that members of r/The_Donald, a major pro-Trump subreddit where racist and extremist content often surfaces, were hugely influential in organizing and promoting discussions related to the Latino community. By filling Reddit with their content, as well as organizing megathreads and other group discussions, they drowned out Latino voices. Researchers also wrote that trolls have at times impersonated experts “in attempts to sow discord and false narratives” related to Latino issues.

Old Tropes

The specific disinformation identified by researchers was often connected to long-running conspiracies or false claims. The case studies about online conversations about women’s reproductive rights and climate science found that old tropes and falsehoods continue to drive divisive conversations.

In the case of women’s reproductive rights, researchers studied 1.7 million tweets posted between Aug. 27 and Sept. 7 last year to coincide with the timing of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing. The two most prominent disinformation campaigns identified were false claims about Planned Parenthood. One false claim was that the founder of the organization started it to target black people for abortions. This is based on a deliberate misquote of what Margaret Sanger actually said, which was in fact to warn against people thinking the organization was targeting black Americans.

“Recurrence of age-old conspiracies or tropes occurred across many of the case studies,” Joseff said.

Key to the spread of hate, division, and disinformation online is inaction from social media companies. Many of those interviewed for the studies said that when a harassment campaign is underway they have nowhere to turn, and the tech giants don’t take any action.

“There is just so much, it can't be a full-time job,” the director of a chapter of CAIR told researchers when asked about muting or blocking those who send hateful messages.

When platforms do take action, they sometimes end up banning the wrong people. One interview subject who participates in online activism related to immigration issues said that Twitter removed the account of a key Black Lives Matter march organizer last June.

“Subsequently the march was sent into disarray and could have been avoided would major voices of social rights activist organizers have been present in the conversation,” the researchers wrote.

The case studies also identified the fact that algorithms and other key elements of how social media platforms work are easily co-opted by bad actors.

“Their algorithms are gameable and can result in biased or hateful trends,” the executive summary said. “What spreads on their platforms can result in very real offline political violence, let alone the psychological impact from online trolling and harassment.”

#disinformation #all cops are bustards #appropriation

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fightersagainstnarccistic · 4 years

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Jason Barrons Responds to Our Comments, and Our Response Back

Recently in the /wma thread about AD we commented some on Jason’s virtue signaling and own misconduct as part of comments we made about HEMAA officers assisting Valkyrie and abusing positions. These are some of the same criticisms made in this post

https://fightersagainstnarccistic.tumblr.com/post/624699657862381568/additional-narcissistic-abusers-who-assist

I made these comments directly to HEMAA VP Connor Dillon, whom I will at least acknowledge we don’t have any proof he has publicly endorsed or assisted Valkyrie in spreading their claims.

As expected Connor informed Jason about the allegations against him, and Jason decided to write his own public statement about the allegations we made, even though he has not seen the evidence we have presented.

This is, again, what we expected him to do. It is why we made the comments publicly in the first place. We wanted Jason to make a public statement so that we can provide more information he has shared publicly and point out how disingenuous he actually is.

As we are familiar with his personality we expected he would make a comment on something even though he didn’t know the precise nature of the allegations.

Which is a pretty dumb thing to do out of a desperate desire to control the narrative by introducing yet more contradictions in his own actions that indicate he is not telling the full story, and we will point out these contradictions.

In fairness we are presenting his statement here and then we will respond to it, showing how his explanation is contrary to his own claimed beliefs regarding the dating of students at HEMA clubs and other abuses of positional authority that he wrote to condemn AD and support the allegations of Valkyrie.

Let’s start with the the first allegation concerning his role in HEMAA. It does not matter that he recently resigned (even if is true. We don’t trust the HEMAA statements about how they operate anymore, and especially not from Jason). Resigning would be something he has recently done by his own acknowledgement, done after he made all of the comments we have previously attributed to him in the prior post. He was still a director of HEMAA when he took a public stance on these matters and did what we accuse him of doing.

His endorsement of Valkyrie’s accusation and support was done during tenure as an officer (or “director”, however you wish to label it, this is semantics really) of HEMAA, and he has operated as a moderator of the HEMAA FB page for years and was a participant in bannings of people who disagreed with the “HEMA benefits from racism” video that sought to shame Caucasian people and endorse political trends unrelated to HEMA, and bragged about it.

Jason is also moderator of the r/wma subreddit posting as detrio, and participates in banning and censoring of people who are a target of harassment by the cabal he is part of

https://fightersagainstnarccistic.tumblr.com/post/626365181118840832/abuse-by-detrio-moderator-at-reddit-wma-to-help

He is also an active member of the FAR FB group that is highly political and radicalizes people into encouraging violence and participation in mobs that loot and clash with police officers, as we have demonstrated in the prior article concerning that matter. His feelings about these issues are well known and he is sympathetic to these cause, as it earns him virtue points from the cabal.

Here he is saying the violent destruction of private property and looting taking place in the USA is “important and necessary”, and using another person as a prop “who is dear” to him to justify his virtue signaling bullshit.

Additionally let us again examine what he posted about the person he blacklisted and then reported to their employer, which he is spinning to dismiss the allegation.

In his own words, he is referring to someone on a waiting list. This strongly implies HEMAA membership waiting list; why would a club like his require a waiting list? He needs all the students he can get.

Secondly the inclusion statement is something HEMAA recently created as part of the safe space policies they recently implemented, and which there is valid criticism to be had are very contradictory and which if applied objectively to the pubic statements made by Jason and other HEMAA officers are being violated by them as they discriminate against others.

We can’t know what the person said to verify what Jason claims the person did and said, but Jason does acknowledge here in this comment that he treated this person as a “dumb fish to fry” and he contacted the employer, which strongly indicates he wanted the person to be fired. He claims otherwise in his recent comments, that he wanted it to be a “teaching experience” but this is just coded speech.

Jason wanted the guy’s life ruined and impacted for wrongthink and Jason abused private correspondence for his HEMAA affiliated club during his tenure as a director of the HEMAA, and if you honestly believe he didn’t take efforts to ensure that person would be alienated from the wider HEMA community via his cabal then you do not know Jason very well. The guy thrives on bullying people for his own virtue signaling points.

Beyond this, rejecting someone from his club means they cannot become a HEMAA member, the first step to becoming a member is to join a HEMAA club. So even if you take Jason at his own word in the response to the allegation, the fact remains Jason is still the wall to overcome to join HEMAA for this individual, which means Jason did in fact reject an applicant to HEMAA and then used information from the person gained as part of that application process to attempt to get the person fired from their job and harm their personal life -- and he bragged about it to others, using them as a prop for his own virtue signaling glory.

Game. Set. Match.

In the 2nd part of his statement Jason rationalizes how his dating of his student (Heather) is way different than anyone else’s, and makes an exception for the very thing he heavily criticized and virtue signaled about in the original post he made, which we re-post here again so we can point out the specific contradictions in what he says here and what he has recently said now about it.

Plus some additional comments on the matter he said, where he claims to have slept with “zero” of his students, which is a lie.

First of all, right off the bat let’s show the contradictions between what he originally said when it suited his virtue signaling desires, and what he says now in response to criticism of his own behavior contradicting what he claimed to believe.

Jason leaves out important information about how he for years dated a student at his club. It DOES NOT MATTER if he knew her before she joined the club, the fact is she was a student at his club for years and he is the head instructor / owner of the school. He runs it, has the final word when it comes to matters and was also the PRESIDENT OF THE HEMA ALLIANCE and a director for years, in addition to having all of the enormous influence in the community that has brought which he has continued to benefit from for years and can still be shown by all the other sycophants that like and comment and reshare his posts even when he says things that they know are contradictory to his own behavior, indulging him much the same way Randy Packer’s cult feeds his worse traits as well.

This is important to stress, because Jason’s post about dating which he wrote himself, is designed to condemn AD and support to Valkyrie’s crusade. In that post he presented a very black and white, extremely firm and strong beliefs that it is not acceptable under any circumstances, and he preaches about how immoral it all and how the issue is concerning the amount of influence and power the privileged people of positions have over the students. Yet his own conduct demonstrates he does not actually believe it is so black and white, and does not apply to him at his own school as well as the HEMAA as a whole, which Heather is also a member of.

Jason provides himself an exception to this all because he claims that just getting his club members to agree is sufficient, and because Heather had consent. “She wanted it”, right Jason? But Jason as the founder, head instructor and the one with significant sway in the federation every member of his club must belong to, has huge amount of privilege and power over these people so his own statements about why it was wrong for others still apply to him in this scenario.

This is the critical flaw in Jason’s statements; he does not believe anyone else at another school can provide consent to date an instructor without it being an abuse of that instructor’s authority BUT he has different set of rules for when the matter involves himself and what he personally wants to do.

On top of all of this, Jason is much like Kaja a histronic personality type who feigns victim-hood to justify his lazy bullshit and avoid responsibility for any criticism. Below he is posting during his tenure as President, acting like getting 10 to 30 communications a day related to his duties as President is some kind of enormous burden causing mental anguish. When in reality it is something people with officer roles in large organizations would normally consider to be a very light amount of inquiries traffic and a NORMAL part of their duties to deal with.

Jason just wants to be an officer for the virtue signaling points it gets him and position of authority, the privilege of it all, and makes himself a victim (like many other HEMAA officers do when criticized) to deflect personal responsibility away from himself. It is assholes like him who are bringing harm to the HEMA community, wasting opportunities other more qualified people would to use the organizations for more than just his personal platform to gain internet points and feel better. He is emotionally unstable, frequently doing this kind of bullshit.

Another example of what he in his best judgement posted to virtue signal about in order to present how sensitive and woke he must be. Crying over fictional characters in a TV show he binge watched, complete with his head in his girlfriend’s lap to comfort him, like a child. What a twisted relationship dynamic if this is real, which is so absurd that we have a hard believing it actually happened.

Posting something like this indicates a lot of poor judgement and if this actually happened, some rather serious mental issues that means he cannot handle even mild amounts of stress. But he probably thinks it makes him seem very woke and empathetic, but as a narcissist Jason does not realize how absurd it looks to anyone else who is not part of his circle of sycophants.

It is not a normal reaction to events occurring in a fictional TV show, a pretend world with pretend characters. What it shows is not moral virtue, but instead the inability to distinguish fantasy from reality, a symptom of psychological disorders that makes it challenging for someone to be objective, and means they have a great deal of difficulty distinguishing fact from fiction.

If it was a real thing that he did and not just something he claimed for virtue points, it shows he is not the type of person who should be making key decisions about others participation in a community.

Lastly just like Randy, Jason also doesn’t like doctors providing him with good health advice and claims a doctor body shamed him for giving health advice, which is a doctor’s field of expertise and job. Which is just more evidence to support the argument Jason is not an objective, credible person and he shirks personal responsibility in favor of things that make him appear a “victim”, a self-titled status he wields for sympathy to gain influence and virtue signaling points, as per the study on Dark Triad personalities we have previously linked to in past articles.

There is more we could elaborate on but this is probably enough. Jason is a highly influential member of the cabal that has formed and a huge bully in the community but he’s not the primary reason we started this blog.

Back to the front page

https://fightersagainstnarccistic.tumblr.com/

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feralknights · 6 years

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OB64 PTS#6

Unfortunately I didn’t proofread this as much as I probably should have. But, after reading the notes, chatting with folks, getting opinions from others, and having a bit of a rough night I finally decided to put it all down: My feelings and opinions about OB64 and the current direction of Paladins: Champions of the Realm.

So if you've read the fourm post that I'd written, you'd know that at the moment I have a lot to say about Paladins OB64, and very little of it is positive. We're at the 6th iteration of the PTS, with it getting an eleventh-hour push-back another week for more bug issues, card balancing, and now the inclusion of what they're calling a "Classic" mode where the cards will be balanced as they are for Competitive.

Apparently I've garnered something of a reputation with members of the community about my essay-sized feedback; I go on and on with my points, and in almost every post I make sure to highlight and emphasize a few points: I am not a professional player, I am not a competitive player, and I try to play Devil's Advocate with everything that I suggest on any champion or item adjustment in the game, no matter how insane or unreasonable.

Early on, I expressed sentiments to members of the development team-- those I am fortunate enough to speak with-- that I often times like a shake-up of the system. Essence being reverted to gold sat all right with me, though if you remember, I was actually a staunch defender of the Essence system. Yes, it added grind, but it retained a spirit of player agency and decision-making that helped bring me in and keep me in.

Then, the patch notes were released. I spent an hour reading them again, and then again, and then again, trying to figure this out. I actually said out loud, "what is their goal here?" The most vocal components of the community across almost every platform of social media I followed the game on were crying out for a scant few things: Bugfixes, matchmaking, and balance. Vivian and Lex were the two most hated champions on the PC circuit; I was regaled with stories constantly about Skye being an auto-ban in competitive from my nephew, an avid console player.

Instead, we were served up this: Cards Unbound.

We were told that feedback complained about the complexity of a 5-card, 4-point card, 12-point deck system was just "too high" for players. We were told that this would be "more free than ever." Then we also got a really cheeky jab at Battlefront 2's decisions on how to monetize content after being a $60 buy-in game. Having spent a fair share of money on the game in the last year, I can definitely say that that particular comment left a bad, lasting impression on me; I was a Tier 3 founder within a few days of starting the game when they initially offered the pack.

The PTS iterations continued to roll on, leading us up to that 5-- PTS5, where I was hoping that they would provide us with a fair, balanced version of the Casual gameplay or just an announcement that they would scrap the system altogether. Instead, we were left with card changes, balance notes that made absolutely no sense, and a version of the PTS that was so buggy and insane that streamers from pro to casual were remarking on how bad it is. Youtube content creators practically rioting, and conspiracy theories flying left, right, and center.

I really don't want to buy into the conspiracy theories. They breed fear. They breed paranoia. People start connecting dots that aren't there. I do realize that we are in an insane world in 2017 with world leaders that lie and change lies as quickly and easily as they draw breath, but I'm a person that tries really hard to give people a second chance and asks for the data. I want to see the metrics and data; I want to know what's going on.

The things I can see: The bug fourms are riddled with people reporting bugs, but I have yet to see much more than *very faint* praise for the Cards Unbound system. At the time of this writing, the main patch notes thread is currently 122 pages, with scattered pages and posts from fans that are exasperated and tired of fighting Hi-Rez with this. The subreddit is still on fire with people upset with the changes; the OB64 additions video currently sits with an overwhelming 11k dislikes and a petition to have OB64 shelved has broken 7,700 signatures and it's only climbing.

I think this, more than anything, shows that a significant part of the recurring, constant playerbase loves this complexity. They love the depth that Paladins provides versus it's competitors. Personally, I loved throwing down at least five bucks every patch cycle or so, charging into the game and seeing what changes were lined up and how things shook out. I'm a Skye main, so not only am I a rare breed that deals with way too much shit in the playerbase, but I am one that would look at all of these changes with a critical lens, asking myself "how can I get past this one champion's buff? This new champion and this specific card combination?"

I'm not afraid to admit it: Skye is what brought me into playing Paladins in the first place, but I stayed because of the world, the depth, and the complexity. I'm borrowing and paraphrasing the words of Skillup from Youtube as I have in my prior posts, but I believe it bears some repeating:

"It's a statement to the industry that I hope other developers take note of: Gamers aren't idiots. We don't need our hands held all of the time. Complexity and depth should be embraced, not feared."

I've met more people that were intrigued by the 12-point system of Paladins and the open beta experience than driven away from it. Even friends that were afraid of the complexity acknowledged the depth and what it brought to the table in terms of customization and decision-making-- even if they weren't up for playing it, they still admired it. They admired the product, and even folks that felt burned about the Tribes treatment felt that the system was something rich and diverse and good and something that the now-flooded "hero shooter" market needed in order to remain competitive and make a name for itself.

I remember reading the Q&A responses from the subreddit, and how they felt that players that should be in competitive are in casual rather than comp, and how they wanted to encourage and incentivize people to take the step to finally playing competitive. Unfortunately, that's still not me: I don't care about comp. As dramatic as it sounds, and as I've said before, I absolutely despise draft picking with every fiber of my being. I don't care about the competitive experience in Paladins, let alone any other game, be it League of Legends, Overwatch, Team Fortress, Battlerite, or even the few fledging times people tried to make Conclave a thing in Warframe. I just don't care. I've even said as much to Hi-Rez staff members in casual conversation; the only thing that would make me even remotely consider broaching the Competitive queue would be if they added a Skye skin as a seasonal reward. However, considering she is far and away not a meta darling-- and how certain casters react when she was picked, something that still ires me to this day if only because casters should be more professional and objective-- I don't see that happening anytime in the next few years.

I remember feeling almost singled out, and even made a mockup: 'Bring back casual, make an unbound queue.' Boom, done. But even then it wouldn't be what I actually wanted, what actually kept me playing Paladins for so long even as someone that does not play or even particularly enjoy competitive, PVP-driven FPS experiences: That 12-point card system.

PTS6 almost solves that, but it still feels like something of a slap in the face.

I don't mean that to sound dramatic, either, but it feels wholly limited and punishing because I don't want to play Cards Unbound. I won't get those First Wins of the Day chests. I won't get access to Onslaught unless I put myself into Unbound mode. And then rather than simply leaving it branded as "Casual," they made the conscious decision to call this mode "Classic," as though it were the game mode that Paladins fans have known and loved for over a year-- a maneuver that was undoubtedly made for marketing purposes, as folks that come in with the Cards Unbound system would think that this is what the game always was, and what folks would eventually come to accept. Plus, I won't get the same rewards for playing "Classic Mode." Rather than treating Casual as a focal-point experience, it's being treated as a tacked-on afterthought that feels like it's meant to appease people on the fence rather than address the problems that people are having with the system.

But this all comes back to the same thing that I keep grappling with? What is the mission of Cards Unbound?

I wasn't here for the closed beta phase of Paladins. Point in fact, I came in kind of late compared to many people; I came in roughly around OB35-36, well after the era of Skye reigning supreme and champion balance being somewhat insane. Even then, through all of the ups and downs of my favorites, I loved playing the game. I didn't know about the closed beta systems and mechanics, and when I had heard them, it left me stunned that the system started with something that sounded so haphazard and unfocused and managed to sharply refine into something that was so simplistic on the surface, yet so complex as soon as you start digging into it. I understood why the pros grabbed on with both hands, why teams flocked to it, why HRX2017 was such a big deal.

Paladins actually made me give a shit about esports.

CU feels like a bold, drastic step that should have been considered-- or implemented-- during a closed beta phase or even an alpha phase. This is something that should have been done over a year ago, or an iteration of the prior level-as-you-play system from a year ago. This feels like something that should be used in a game that is specifically not Paladins. But, the company is so driven and committed to it that I don't think they're going to heed the vocal playerbase-- and to be fair, it feels like a vocal majority rather than the vocal minority-- that I doubt they're going to pull back from it right now.

I think PTS6 hits a place where I can finally sigh, throw up my hands, and say "I guess." For all it's faults, for everything I feel is wrong with it, it's at least finally offering me a balanced casual experience even if I'm being shortchanged on my rewards and the investment of my time. As a tier 3 Founder, I don't have to worry about buying Champions anymore, so again, the so-called "Classic" mode will offer me the trade of "worse advancement" for "balanced gameplay," though I still have to put the word "balanced" in those accursed quotation marks. For as much as I can say, "I guess," I still don't like it.

I really wish I had a better solution, something that allows Hi-Rez to move ahead with their system. I wish I had that much input or leeway on the company as a fan, a player, an artist, fanartist, and content creator, but I know I'm just one teeny tiny part of the machine. I just keep coming up short; I really don't have a better offering of how to balance the system, or restore trust, or even restore the player agency that a game like this actually requires in order to flourish.

What I can say, though?

Community management and public relations needs to step up. Please don't get me wrong here, either: CMs have an incredibly tough job and they have to deal with a lot of hate, flaming, and bullshit, but they can't be silent day after day. The team needs to be in front of this literally every single day, talking to the community, hosting more Q&A threads, developer livestreams, and actually showing that they're listening to the input. They may be getting positive feedback that is steering the current state of the system, but in large part a lot of this could have been avoided:

The company should have been transparent in their goals and plans for this system months in advance.

2017 has been a turbulent year for gaming and developers. Players are more savvy and less willing, especially in Western markets, to deal with developers that try to do things that they feel are short-changing or otherwise screwing players out of what they feel is a fun, fair, balanced experience. “Transparency” and “trust” are two critical, key components of free to play gaming that I feel are unjustly overlooked or treated as unfeasable. That is not the case at all. As I noted earlier, gamers aren't idiots: Transparency builds trust. Being willing to course correct because you were open and honest with your playerbase creates options, opens doors, and makes your players more willing to trust and invest their time-- and money-- in the company and the game.

The community should have been involved in shaping Cards Unbound.

This is a dramatic change. The community should have had input on how to shape this system over the course of weeks and months, rather than having an ill-conceived, ill-balanced, and frankly ill-executed system being dropped on their lap on a Wednesday afternoon. I am not against the *concept* of a Cards Unbound system, but I feel like the system would have worked perfectly well within the 5-card, 4-point card confines they currently have. I think Legendary cards having points and level values is a mistake. This is a system that, like the Wrecker change, should not have left the PTS cycle. It still should not leave the PTS cycle. Honestly, I do openly implore the development team to just release the art assets in as OB64, then for OB65 heed the needs of the community: Focus on balance. Focus on bugfixes, and be willing to list not just the most pertinent, but all of them.

Seriously. All of them. There are more people than you think that are interested in knowing what and where the bugs were. Allowing the players that level of trust to know where your mistakes are will make them more willing to quickly jump up and report the things that they see on a broader scale, and acknowledging those bugs quickly and effectively would foster a lot of trust with them.

The company should keep the "eject" button on the table for the patch.

I realize that is the crux of my personal opinion, but I feel that this is something that still needs to be reiterated, put on the table, and stated. We don't have the metrics on player retention over the last few months, we don't know what the feedback is actually like beyond a quick glance at the fourms, and most tellingly, I cannot recall the last time that Hi-Rez has sent out a player survey to email boxes or had linked in the game's main screen/UI for over twenty patches. Operating solely on what we can see-- the fourm announcements, a scant offering comment or three subreddit-- people are, bluntly, *pissed*. I realize that Hi-Rez has done a lot to get OB64 ready, and I realize that there's a lot on the line for them to push what they have, but at a certain point there needs to be a willingness to say, "Maybe we should pump the brakes."

So, with all of this, at the end, all I can really say about OB64 comes down to a scant few things: I like the skins. I like the visuals. I'm glad we're finally getting lore. I'm really hoping Skye isn't just a cookiecutter villain or spy cliche. I've heard Mal'damba might be more morally gray and pretty interesting. I just ... look at the rest, sigh, and go, "I guess."

Balance changes that don't make sense. Champions that still have innate caut at ridiculous levels. Skye having her LMB damage reduced unnecessarily while also losing her 25% movement bonus in Hidden without anything to compensate for her kit being hit so hard. "I guess."

I don't want to feel "I guess." I want to have the same feelings I had for the last twenty patches, excited, ready to go, and continuing my hatred for anyone that picks Lex and Vivian. I'm willing to give the patch a go. I want to keep enjoying Paladins, but I don't want to see the playerbase pick up and leave. I don't want to see people hating on the game. I want to see Paladins succeed. I want a Paladins Worlds 2020. I want to be there for the game, as a community creator, commentator, blogger, or more. I love this game, and I've met a lot of amazing people through it. I've had my audience explode because of it, and I value what I've been given through it.

I just... don't want "I guess."

edit 12/14/17: Touched up a little bit of the grammar and some spelling errors, sorry about that. I was having A Night!

#paladins #paladins champions of the realm #palablog #ob64 #rambling?

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cryptofeedzposts · 4 years

Text

Ripple Subreddit Rules, Helpful Links & Answers to Common Questions – READ BEFORE POSTING

You must read our rules before participating in r/Ripple

Helpful links and answers to common questions will be updated frequently so check back often

Please report any post or comment that violates our rules.

There is no exception to the 10 karma/7-day account age rule. Individual comments may still be approved.

Beginner questions that have already been answered will be removed. Use search on the right side.

Number of meme, reaction, and prediction posts will be kept to a minimum.

Speculation posts are not allowed. Promoting false information or perpetuating rumors will result in a ban.

Referral/affiliate links or websites containing them will be banned.

Last but not least, if you have tips and advice for newcomers, please share them here.

Ripple Subreddit Rules

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ripple/wiki/rules

Helpful Links

Ripple Insights – Top 9 Frequently Asked Questions About Ripple and XRP (Jan 18, 2018)

Ripple’s Ultimate Strategy; why XRP will increase in value

Removing inefficiency of international payments with XRP

Reasons to expect XRP to be the most popular bridge asset

“XRP is competitive now in the USD/MXN corridor”

Ripple’s Decentralization Strategy Update

XRP Market Performance

List of Ripple Partnerships and RippleNet Implementations

People to Follow

Ripple on Twitter

Brad Garlinghouse, Chief Executive Officer at Ripple

Yoshitaka Kitao, executive chairman, CEO and president of SBI Holdings, Inc.

David Schwartz, Chief Cryptographer at Ripple | aka u/sjoelkatz

Stefan Thomas, Former CTO at Ripple, Co-creator of Interledger. Founder at Coil

Patrick Griffin, Senior Vice President of Business Development at Ripple

Miguel Vias, Head of XRP Markets at Ripple

Warren Paul Anderson, Product Manager, xRapid/XRP at Ripple

Hodor’s XRP Blog

TplusZero – research & analysis on #XRP

Most Discussed Topics and Answers

● The Case Against BankCoin – Banks need an independent digital asset to enable truly efficient settlement

● Ripple Technology → Fast Payments → XRP → Fast Settlement

● Solving the chicken and egg problem – FI’s bridging payments with XRP & companies saving money by holding XRP

● Banks hold XRP under a contractual agreement | Build liquidity to bridge payments to raise the demand for XRP

● How the global adoption of xRapid (XRP liquidity tool) would affect the value of XRP

● Besides instant cross-border payment settlement, XRP can capture other use cases, value that doesn’t yet exist

● XRP Ledger has numerous technological advantages over blockchain systems that use proof of work

● Ripple is committed to making the XRP Ledger as decentralized as they possibly can

● Quantum-resistant signature schemes – Adding a new scheme is easy and fast

XRP Wallets

You need 20 XRP to activate a XRP wallet. Fees can be changed by the validators through the voting process.

The reserve requirement protects the XRP Ledger from spam or malicious usage.

When you are sending XRP to an exchange, destination tag is very important.

Destination tag is not needed when you transfer XRP to your own wallet address.

● Toast Wallet | FAQ

A free open source XRP Wallet for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac and Linux

● Ledger Nano S | Tutorial | FAQ | Buy Online | Ripple Recovery Tool

Cryptocurrency Hardware Wallet

When you get your Ledger wallet, you must reset it and get a new set of 24 words seed before using it.

● The World Exchange | How to Create a Cold Wallet for Ripple

A free user-friendly and purely client-side wallet

● GateHub | Support | Network Statistics

GateHub XRP Web Wallet

Tools

Check XRP wallet balance – Bithomp | Graph | Transactions

Print raw information about an account, a transaction or a ledger – RPC Tool

Exchanges

The best way to support XRP is to buy/sell XRP directly with your local currency, not with USDT, ETH, LTC, or BTC.

Available XRP pairs – AUD, BRL, CAD, CNY, EUR, GBP, IDR, INR, JPY, KRW, MXN, PHP, RUB, THB, TRY, UAH, USD, ZAR.

You can find the complete list of XRP exchanges and supported XRP/fiat pairs Here.

USD – US Dollar

EUR – Euro

KRW – South Korean Won

JPY – Japanese Yen

Kraken | Bitbank | Quoine | Mr. Exchange

CNY – Chinese Yuan

RippleFox | Ripple China | Fatbtc

TRY – Turkish Lira

Vebitcoin | BTCTurk | Koineks | Sistemkoin | Ovis

INR – Indian Rupee

AUD – Australian Dollar

BTC Markets

THB – Thai Baht

BX Thailand

MXN – Mexican Peso

Bitso

IDR – Indonesian Rupiah

Indodax | Quoine

RUB – Russian Ruble

Exmo | BitFlip

ZAR – South African Rend

Altcoin Trader

CAD – Canadian Dollar

Kraken

UAH – Ukrainian Hryvnia

Kuna | BTC Trade UA | BitFlip

GBP – British Pound

Cryptomate

BRL – Brazilian Real

Braziliex

SGD – Singapore Dollar

Quoine

AED – United Arab Emirates Dirham

BitOasis

PHP – Philippine peso

CX | Exchange

USDT – Tether

ZB.com | Gate.io | Sistemkoin

ETH – Ethereum

Bitsane | Mr. Exchange | CoinFalcon

LTC – Litecoin

Bitsane | Mr. Exchange

BTC – Bitcoin

#Cryptocurrencies #Bitcoin #Ethereum #Litecoin #Ripple #XRP

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coin-river-blog · 5 years

Link

A redditor posted on several Aragon forums to question Meltem Demirors' inclusion as a speaker at the upcoming AraCon conference. After a back and forth with the Aragon subreddit moderator, the moderator deemed the commenter’s responses against community rules and deleted them. Now, a lot of people are calling it censorship.

On Tuesday, January 1, a number of prominent actors in Ethereum have taken to social media to call out Aragon for perceived censorship in violation of Aragon's manifesto.

The debate was prompted when, a few days ago, a pseudonymous redditor, eddavisDFS, posted to a number of forums, including aragon.chat – the Aragon network's native forum – and Aragon's subreddit, to criticize the Aragon team for including Meltem Demirors as a speaker at the upcoming AraCon* conference, to be held in Berlin at the end of January.

EddavisDFS argued that Demirors should be disinvited from AraCon because of her self-identification as a Bitcoin maximalist, for contributing to Ethereum FUD, for unethical investor practices, and for "helping attack Ethereum through Coindesk and ETC."

EddavisDFS' criticism prompted a back and forth with John Light, AraCon organizer and subreddit moderator, wherein Light provided Aragon's justification for including Demirors as a speaker at the conference. Light stated that Aragon doesn't "have to agree with everything a speaker has ever said to want them to speak at our conference," and that Meltem has "interesting things to say about DAOs and governance."

EddavisDFS was not satisfied with this response, and continued posting across various forums. EddavisDFS felt that Light's responses did not address their central criticism: that Demiror's behavior was in violation of Aragon's manifesto, and that she should therefore not be invited to speak at the conference. One of these posts, made by EddavisDFS to the Aragon subreddit, was deleted by Light. The deleted post is pictured below.

Members of the Aragon team responded to acknowledge that eddavisDFS' post had been deleted but claimed that doing so was in line with Aragon's code of conduct and not in violation of the Aragon manifesto. Light cited the Aragon Community Code of Conduct to state that the redditor's post had been in violation of "multiple rules," including:

Light later followed up to emphasize his failed attempts to engage with eddavisDFS.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, eddavisDFS was as unsatisfied with Light's defense of the post deletion as they were with Light's defense of Demirors as an AraCon speaker, prompting them to begin posting across platforms – this time to accuse Aragon of censorship.

The criticism has not gone unnoticed. Scott Lewis, the co-founder of Concourse Open Community and principal at FlatBush Capital, and Evan Van Ness, creator of Week in Ethereum, and others, have been using

Twitter, reddit, and Aragon's forums to signal boost eddavisDFS' complaint against Light, operating under the belief that the deletion did in fact constitute censorship.

Aragon co-founders Jorge Izquierdo and Luis Cuende published responses to the debate on Twitter, siding with Light, against eddavisDFS and their defenders on the subject of alleged censorship, also citing the code of conduct.

To a significant extent, whether or not Light's choice to delete eddavisDFS' post was censorship depends on how you define censorship. Case in point, in response to eddavisDFS' criticisms, Light (not uncontroversially) posted a link to a comic to differentiate between free speech violations and getting banned from an internet community. (EddavisDFS was not banned.) The comic, and by extension Light, argues that the two are fundamentally different because the former necessarily involves violence (or threat of violence), whereas the latter only involves "people listening think[ing] you're an asshole, and … showing you the door."

The debate touches on an evergreen conversation from within and without the Ethereum community: What are the ethical implications of social media platforms moderating user content, and to what extent should this be allowed or encouraged? In recent weeks, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Tumblr have all received a significant amount of flack for their moderation policies. Justifications for content moderation on these platforms include to protect child welfare, to prevent human trafficking, to prevent violence, to prevent foreign attacks on democracy, and other similarly humanitarian reasons.

While most people would agree that murder and pedophilia are bad, critics argue that these moderation policies are antithetical to freedom of speech and have serious unintended consequences. For this reason (among others), one promise dear to many Ethereum proponents' hearts is the possibility of decentralized social media platforms that would allow communities to define and enforce rules at the discretion of the community members, rather than an external, centralized entity.

Aragon, while not specifically a decentralized social media platform, does purport to be working toward community governance, including community moderation of its online forums. While not there yet, it aims to govern the network as transparently and democratically as possible and to operate according to the Aragon manifesto and code of conduct.

In accordance to the Aragon governance model, if anyone believes that Aragon's code of conduct and manifesto are in conflict, or if anyone believes that either document should be amended, those individuals are encouraged to submit an Aragon Governance Proposal for community vote.

This system may work well for community members like Lewis, who spoke up to suggest that Aragon network rewrite its code of conduct to be more specific.

However, that doesn't address eddavisDFS' initial concern: that the inclusion of Demirors as a speaker in the conference stands in contradiction to the Aragon manifesto. In the future, Aragon plans to have a decentralized court system in case a community member believes any members of Aragon One, or anyone else, is not behaving in accordance to the manifesto. But until that happens, it's up to the folks of Aragon One to choose whether or not to heed community criticism.

*Disclosure: I will be a moderator at one of AraCon's panels.

Alison is an editor and occasional writer for ETHNews. She has a master’s in English from the University of Wyoming. She lives with her pooch in Reno. Her favorite things to do include binge listening to podcasts, getting her chuckles via dog memes, and spending as much time outside as possible.

ETHNews is committed to its Editorial Policy

Like what you read? Follow us on Twitter @ETHNews_ to receive the latest Aragon, AraCon or other Ethereum ecosystem news.

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coin-news-blog · 5 years

Text

BCH Microblog ‘Member’ Shows the Future of Reddit-Like Forums

New Post has been published on https://coinmakers.tech/news/bch-microblog-member-shows-the-future-of-reddit-like-forums

BCH Microblog ‘Member’ Shows the Future of Reddit-Like Forums

Since the Bitcoin Cash upgrade in May 2018, software developers have unleashed a slew of microblogging protocols that utilize OP_return transactions. One application called Member is a BCH-based browser that makes use of these types of transactions and the extra space added to the data carrier size. While still in its infancy, the Member platform has matured into a censorship-resistant Reddit but with geolocated posts, reputational ratings, and native BCH tipping.

The Member Client Continues to Grow

Years ago, Reddit was an interesting online place that allowed many groups to connect, share news and content, and discuss in a forum-like atmosphere. These days, Reddit is synonymous with mass censorship and deplatforming as the corporate entity has banned a variety of subreddits this year. The crypto community caught wind of Reddit censorship last year when the company removed the subreddit /r/darknetmarkets. Reddit users can’t even trust the company’s founder and CEO Steve Huffman who was forced to apologize when he got caught altering pro-Trump related thread comments.

Reddit censorship has increased significantly in recent years.

Bitcoin supporters have seen severe forms of censorship on the subreddit /r/bitcoin as the owner and moderator Theymos and his minions deleted thousands of comments from visitors and suppressed the conversation during the block size debate. Last May, a former moderator who worked alongside Theymos told Bitcoin.com’s podcast host Matt Aaron how he was removed from the group of administrators after he failed to toe the line. Censorship like this has driven the BCH community to foster censorship-resistant microblogging communities like Memo. In tandem with Memo, another application called Member could push the Reddit-like forum concept to new heights using the BCH chain.

Member has been around for some time now but the application has matured a great deal since news.Bitcoin.com reported on it last year. The application’s creator, a developer called Freetrade, describes the platform on Github, calling it a BCH blockchain browser. “It reads and allows users to create actions in the Memo/Member protocol — The client is an HTML5/JS BCH blockchain browser app with no outside js dependencies and it can be run from a website, or from a local file system,” Freetrade’s Github repo details. “Currently it connects to the Member server to get content, and uses Bitbox to get utxos and broadcast transactions.”

Member treats topics like subreddits

Getting Acquainted With the Member App

In order to use Member, you need to have an account with the social network and microblogging app memo.cash where all posts are permanently recorded to the Bitcoin Cash chain. You can sign up for Memo here and it’s a good idea to fund your Memo wallet with a small fraction of BCH so you can post on memo.cash and the Member platform as well. To access Member, go to the website and press the “Login” tab at the top right side of the screen. You can also sign up directly from the Member Login page by pressing the “Create New Account” tab.

Creating a new account with a Memo private key.

Member will tell you to connect your wallet address to get started so you can post. After pressing “Ok,” Member will direct you to a page that shows your new BCH address so you can send a small fraction of funds. If you already have an account or started by signing up for memo.cash using the link mentioned above then Member asks you to paste your Memo private key (compressed WIF format, starts with ‘L’ or ‘K’) into the Login window. After these steps are complete, you are free to explore the Member app but also to create posts, upvote, tip people BCH, and initiate a geolocated post.

Creating a new account without a Memo private key.

To create a new post on Member, simply press the “New post” tab on the upper left side of the user interface. The platform will open a window that allows you to customize a new post with a title and text. You can also post a memorandum or post directly to the memo.cash feed. After creating a post, other Member users can reply to the thread just like a traditional Reddit post and they can “like” the post as well. Moreover, you can be tipped bitcoin cash as Member offers a native BCH wallet that allows for tipping users. If you observe Member’s main feed, it’s set up similarly to the front page of Reddit and there’s a large variety of threads and discussions hosted on the feed. Additionally, you can check the most recent posts on the Member feed by pressing the “Posts (new)” tab on the upper left side of the screen.

Creating a new post on Member.

Geolocated Posts, 2,000 Characters, and a Reputation System

You can also tether your location coordinates to a custom message using the Member app. At the top left side of the screen simply press the “Map” tab and the website will take you to a map of the world. Like a traditional geolocation map, your browser will ask you if you want to give the Member map your location coordinates so you can get a visual look at your area. The choice is optional but if you do, you can tie a special message to your location that’s written on the BCH chain. Essentially you or anyone can tether a message to any location in the world for less than a U.S. penny at any time. Just click the map with your mouse pointer to select the message location, write it and post it to the Member map. After a few minutes of exploring the Member app’s features, the platform is relatively easy to understand and use.

Member users can tie a message to a geolocation from anywhere in the world at anytime for less than a penny per message.

Member’s creator Freetrade has been hard at work adding more services to the application like reputational ratings and increased character limits for messages. The software engineer recently made it so Member users can reply with much longer character limits. “Member now allows 2,000 character replies by chaining transactions together — Member also treats topics more like subreddits,” Freetrade told BCH supporters on September 15. This announcement got the /r/btc community on Reddit pumped due to their intolerance of censorship. “Wow, now we’re talking,” a BCH proponent opined after Freetrade revealed the 2,000 character extension. “Reddit is slowly dying because of censorship and abuse from admins — If we could create a decentralized alternative on BCH that would be huge,” he added. In addition to the character extension, Freetrade has introduced a web of trust infrastructure to the Member platform. The new idea allows you to rate other Memo profiles using the Member app by giving them a public trust rating. Freetrade has shown that as the reputation system matures, robust trust graphs could be created.

(Right) bootstrapping memo.cash ratings. (Left) An example of a more mature trust graph initiated by Freetrade’s ratings.

There’s been a lot of development within the BCH ecosystem and Member’s improvements have bolstered a microblogging and censorship-resistant Reddit-like experience. As with most peer-to-peer and decentralized blockchain applications, Member needs to gather more users over time. Memo and Member have seen a lot of lively users since they were created and both have grown a great deal. While projects like Blockpress have fallen to the wayside and are now defunct, the Memo and Member apps have remained strong after the long crypto winter and the blockchain split in November 2018. One difference between the two clients is the Memo protocol browses both BCH and BSV blockchains but the Member app only browses the BCH chain. Freetrade continues to work on making the Member client more robust and has put together a list of certain elements of the project he could use help with.

Source: news.bitcoin

0 notes

biofunmy · 5 years

Text

Extremists Disproportionally Target And Silence Latinos, Muslims, and Jews On Social Media

“What we’ve come to understand is that it’s oftentimes the most vulnerable social groups and minority communities that are the targets of computational propaganda,” Woolley told BuzzFeed News.

Bots

While bots were generally not a dominant presence in the Twitter conversations analyzed by researchers, automated accounts were used to spread hateful or harassing messages to different communities.

“The results range from chilling effects and disenfranchisement to psychological and physical harm,” reads an executive summary from Woolley and Katie Joseff, the lab’s research director.

Joseff said people in the studied communities feel they’re being targeted and outmaneuvered by extremist groups and that they don’t “have the allyship of the platforms.”

“They didn’t trust the platforms to help them,” she said.

In response to a request for comment, a Twitter spokesperson pointed to the company’s review of its efforts to protect election integrity during the 2018 midterms elections.

“With elections taking place around the globe leading up to 2020, we continue to build on our efforts to address the threats posed by hostile foreign and domestic actors. We’re working to foster an environment conducive to healthy, meaningful conversations on our service,” said an emailed statement from the spokesperson. (Reddit, the other social platform studied in the research, did not immediately reply to a request for comment.)

“The niche platforms like Gab or 8Chan are spaces where the culture around this kind of language becomes fermented and is built,” Woolley said. “That’s why you’re seeing the cross-pollination of attacks across more mainstream social media platforms … directed at multiple different types of groups.”

Co-opting

Those interviewed said the perpetrators are tech savvy, “use social media to track and disrupt activism events, and have created memes of minorities looting after a natural disaster.”

“In all cases but one a narrative was consistently drowned out by a counter narrative,” the researchers wrote.

“Recurrence of age-old conspiracies or tropes occurred across many of the case studies,” Joseff said.

“There is just so much, it can’t be a full-time job,” the director of a chapter of CAIR told researchers when asked about muting or blocking those who send hateful messages.

“Subsequently the march was sent into disarray and could have been avoided would major voices of social rights activist organizers have been present in the conversation,” the researchers wrote.

The case studies also identified the fact that algorithms and other key elements of how social media platforms work are easily co-opted by bad actors.

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a-breton · 5 years

Text

How to Use Quora and Reddit to Fuel Your Content Marketing Needs

Sites with user-generated content like Quora and Reddit can be gold mines for referring traffic to your website, boosting brand authority, and reaching niche audiences for your business.

But you better respect what is and is not allowed on these powerful channels for distributing your content and increasing engagement.

Neither Quora nor Reddit suffers fools and spammers lightly – these online communities have their own written and unwritten rules of etiquette and marketers attempting to game the system are quickly flagged and ostracized. Being cut off from the flow of two of the most powerful sources of online traffic can be a huge liability.

#Quora & #Reddit don’t suffer fools & spammers lightly. Follow the unwritten rules, advises @sheadrakephoto. Click To Tweet

Reddit, nicknamed “the front page of the internet,” attracts almost 60 million unique monthly visitors from the United States alone to its eclectic mix of news, weird links, and highly trafficked hubs of geekdom.

Launched in 2010, Quora has excelled in Google rankings for a wide variety of topics because the site does a fantastic job of satisfying user intent through answering questions. Building authority allowed Quora to hit 300 million monthly users in 2018 and made it a one-stop shop for advice and recommendations. Quora can be an invaluable resource not just for marketers who want to increase traffic but also for companies trying to connect to their customers and get honest feedback.

If you’re looking for the next step to boost your business or brand online, Reddit and Quora should be on your radar. Here’s what you need to know about these popular platforms to tap into their traffic potential.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 12 Expert Ideas to Improve Your Content Marketing for Better Leads

Understand the platform

Before you delve into Quora or Reddit, assess your content marketing goals to identify which platform might better satisfy those needs. While Reddit may be a great way for potential customers to stumble across links to your product or services, Quora provides more opportunity for building brand authority within your industry. As Nicolas Straut, an SEO specialist from Fundera notes, “Reddit and Quora are both excellent channels to distribute content and increase engagement with new audiences in your niche. The only catch to both is that excessively self-promotional content can be penalized.”

Before you delve into Quora or Reddit, assess your #contentmarketing goals, says @sheadrakephoto. Click To Tweet

The Reddit community values content through upvotes and downvotes, and popular submissions make it to the front page accordingly. Because of Reddit’s enormous sprawl and frequently updated content, however, it can be difficult to attract attention. The platform is divided into topics called “subreddits,” and your success depends on finding the right one for your content marketing needs:

youtube

While Quora can be a little less confusing to navigate, it’s trickier to plug your content. Using Quora successfully may drive less volume than other channels, but the traffic tends to be higher quality with lower bounce rates. Daniel Ndukwu, CEO of KyLeads, confirms that: “I’ve been a Quora user for years, and to date I’ve gotten over 5 million views on the platform. In addition to that, we’ve used it to drive thousands of visitors to our website and get our first hundred users.”

KyLeads’ @daniel_ndukwu says his Quora responses have earned over 5 million views and drive visitors to his site. Click To Tweet

Once you’ve established a profile and gotten a feel for how to use these platforms, it’s worth lurking for a while and posting on a variety of topics to establish your credibility. It’ll take some time to cultivate your reputation as an authentic user before you can begin to tap into an audience for your content.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Reddit for Marketing? Hell No, Except in This One Case

Find the right audience

More important than the demographics baked into Quora and Reddit is how each of these platforms can be used to find niche audiences. If you don’t customize your Reddit experience, you see only the popular posts on the front page. It can be some weird and wonderful stuff (like cats persistently trying to enter a Japanese art museum), but it’s unlikely to be the kind of content your business is looking to promote.

To find an audience interested in what you have to offer, get actively involved in the smaller subreddit communities. There’s a balance to achieve between larger subreddits, which have more activity, versus smaller, which focus on more targeted, often less popular topics that attract a higher concentration of users who would be interested in your content.

For example, if I’m a chainsaw performance artist (yes, that’s a thing), I might get mild interest from the larger subreddit community of forestry nerds, which has about 7,000 subscribers. The subreddit for chainsaw enthusiasts, which has about 1,000 subscribers, might be a better bet to generate more “buzz” for my chainsaw art.

Likewise, for subjects like content marketing, you can check out r/content_marketing. Below is an example of someone asking a question and the types of responses received. The best – and worst – thing about Reddit is the conversational format that results from questions and comments.

Notice in the right corner that the question received 88% upvotes, which shows how many more are interested in answers than just the original poster.

In this case, someone answered, and a conversation resulted.

On Quora, tackle questions directly related to your industry. Start your search with related keywords and look for recent submissions with plenty of followers. Quora loves personal stories or bulleted lists, and while you can draft a few template answers for commonly asked questions, make sure you freshen up that content often.

Marie Lamonde, a content marketer for DashThis, explains: “What you need to keep in mind while using Quora for marketing purposes is that you are there to answer people’s questions and position yourself as an expert in your field. This is not a billboard to showcase your company. Stay honest and relevant, and you should see great results.”

Quora is not a billboard to showcase your company. Stay honest and relevant, advises @LamondeMarie.‏ Click To Tweet

To see what Marie is talking about, look at this question and a couple of the answers below. One answer clearly helps the original poster learn more about SEO. The other is just selling services.

Whether or not you agree with the following answer, this person gives relevant advice and shares a possibly helpful blog post to the person asking the question.

Here are two types of answers they received.

On the other hand, this answer is really a bad ad. It doesn’t answer the original question and tells the original poster about its more affordable SEO packages. No proof, not conversation, just a copy/paste answer – that’s an ad.

Follow the rules

Like any community, Reddit and Quora have rules to guide the conduct of their users. Sometimes referred to as “reddiquette,” the Reddit code of conduct takes spammy links seriously and not only suspends accounts but bans entire domains. To avoid running afoul of these rules, carefully review Reddit’s FAQs and remember to disclose any relationship you have to the content you’re promoting.

Reddit users are notorious for sniffing out marketing strategies, so following these guidelines will help ensure that your account doesn’t get flagged for suspicious content:

Never submit the same comment to multiple subreddits.

Don’t ask for upvotes or promise reciprocity.

Do share links to content that is not your own.

Amass karma points first before you promote your own links.

A 10% ratio of posting links to your company’s content is a safe rule of thumb, especially while you’re establishing a reputation within the community. As Kyle Kroeger, founder of Millionaire Mob warns, “I actually got banned from Reddit for posting – I hired an individual to help with my marketing, and they promised to get me huge exposure on Reddit. I later found out that they overly posted on Reddit and also created a company-based Reddit username, which ended up getting my entire domain banned.”

Quora has a similar approach to keeping its community spam-free, and many of the same rules apply. The site notifies you if your content is suspicious. Repeated notifications will get you banned from the platform in short order. To avoid this, think of Quora not as a place to continually link to your content but as an opportunity to build your authority within an industry. Use your content and experience to answer questions honestly, and you can avoid being labeled as a spammer.

Think of @Quora as an opportunity to build your authority within an industry, says @sheadrakephoto. Click To Tweet

Market yourself as an industry leader

Reddit and Quora are powerful platforms for marketers, but they are first and foremost communities. Success on both sites depends on your ability to answer questions and supply the content users want. In many ways, it’s the same approach you use to improve Google rankings – it’s less about showing off your product and services and more about showing that you can satisfy user intent.

Scroll through these sites and spend some time browsing keywords on Quora or diving deep into industry-specific subreddits. Find out what users are asking and what kinds of content they look for. Reddit thrives on snarky commentary and quirky links. Quora loves advice with a sincere tone and organized actionable lists. Find questions you can really dig into and create well-formatted, thoughtful responses whose quality the community will recognize and appreciate.

Garit Boothe from Business.org points out, “Quora is a content marketer’s dream. It has B2B niches like LinkedIn. It has B2C niches like Facebook. And it’s long-form content presence works just like blogging. If your target audience is on Quora, you can get millions of views on your answers by writing engaging content and linking back to your site at the end of it.”

And if you’re wondering where to start, it’s as simple as searching for “How do I …?” as seen below:

Once you’re established as an industry expert, users will come to count on your content for knowledgeable answers. By following these strategies, you’ll discover you’ve not only made yourself a valued member of the Reddit and Quora communities but also built loyalty for your brand and possibly a bump in traffic for your site along the way.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Use Social Media Monitoring as More Than a Listening Tool

Dive deep into the topic of content technologist this April in person at ContentTECH Summit in San Diego. Register today.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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shirlleycoyle · 5 years

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Founder of Voat, the ‘Censorship-Free’ Reddit, Begs Users to Stop Making Death Threats

The Reddit clone Voat has reportedly been contacted by a “US agency” about threats being made on the censorship-free website, according to its founder Justin Chastain.

In a post on Wednesday, Chastain (who goes by PuttItOut on Voat) told users they need to “chill on the ‘threats,’” as the platform had been officially approached by an unnamed agency over some of its content. Chastain said he didn’t want to litigate free speech, but that Voat would cooperate with law enforcement and remove “gray area” posts if asked.

Voat users took offense to the perceived curtailing of their ability to post racial slurs and endorse violence.

The first comment on Chastain’s post opened with an anti-Semitic slur and call to exterminate Jews. The Voat user cited a 1969 First Amendment Supreme Court case involving a Ku Klux Klan leader who gave a televised speech targeting certain races, arguing that the court ruled a threat needs to be specific in order to be illegal. The user then gave an example of a specific call for violence against a specific synagogue on a specific day. This comment was still up at the time of writing.

Voat was founded in 2014 as a free speech Reddit knockoff and became an enclave for far-right topics. Many of its users had jumped ship from Reddit, which was beginning to ban vicious communities such as r/FatPeopleHate, r/CoonTown, and one Qanon subreddit, r/GreatAwakening—also coinciding with the advent of deplatforming, which has successfully cut the reach of people like Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopoulos and their extremist ideologies.

“Again, who contacted you? A US agency? Voat’s financier?” one user wrote, to which Chastain replied, “Yes,” specifying that an agency had reached out.

Chastain could not be reached by Motherboard, and it’s also unclear which comments were allegedly flagged as threats.

But in the past, the FBI has taken an interest in online postings by far-right communities and users. Last year, FBI officials infiltrated Gab, another “free speech social network,” to investigate an online acquaintance of Robert Bowers who is accused of murdering 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

The FBI did not immediately respond to Motherboard’s questions about whether it had approached Voat or Chastain.

“We always err on the side of not removing any content (don’t even remember when I last did) but things are getting hot and it’s important we understand this as a community,” Chastain replied to another user.

The future of Voat has been hanging on tenterhooks for several years now. In 2017, Chastain told members that licensing and hosting costs were unsustainable without outside funding which the site was struggling to secure; no longer relying on PayPal donations since the payments platform cut ties with Voat over “obscenity.”

Founder of Voat, the ‘Censorship-Free’ Reddit, Begs Users to Stop Making Death Threats syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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lucyariablog · 5 years

Text

How to Use Quora and Reddit to Fuel Your Content Marketing Needs

Sites with user-generated content like Quora and Reddit can be gold mines for referring traffic to your website, boosting brand authority, and reaching niche audiences for your business.

But you better respect what is and is not allowed on these powerful channels for distributing your content and increasing engagement.

#Quora & #Reddit don’t suffer fools & spammers lightly. Follow the unwritten rules, advises @sheadrakephoto. Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 12 Expert Ideas to Improve Your Content Marketing for Better Leads

Understand the platform

Before you delve into Quora or Reddit, assess your #contentmarketing goals, says @sheadrakephoto. Click To Tweet

youtube

KyLeads’ @daniel_ndukwu says his Quora responses have earned over 5 million views and drive visitors to his site. Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Reddit for Marketing? Hell No, Except in This One Case

Find the right audience

Notice in the right corner that the question received 88% upvotes, which shows how many more are interested in answers than just the original poster.

In this case, someone answered, and a conversation resulted.

Quora is not a billboard to showcase your company. Stay honest and relevant, advises @LamondeMarie.‏ Click To Tweet

To see what Marie is talking about, look at this question and a couple of the answers below. One answer clearly helps the original poster learn more about SEO. The other is just selling services.

Whether or not you agree with the following answer, this person gives relevant advice and shares a possibly helpful blog post to the person asking the question.

Here are two types of answers they received.

Follow the rules

Reddit users are notorious for sniffing out marketing strategies, so following these guidelines will help ensure that your account doesn’t get flagged for suspicious content:

Never submit the same comment to multiple subreddits.

Don’t ask for upvotes or promise reciprocity.

Do share links to content that is not your own.

Amass karma points first before you promote your own links.

Think of @Quora as an opportunity to build your authority within an industry, says @sheadrakephoto. Click To Tweet

Market yourself as an industry leader

And if you’re wondering where to start, it’s as simple as searching for “How do I …?” as seen below:

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Use Social Media Monitoring as More Than a Listening Tool

Dive deep into the topic of content technologist this April in person at ContentTECH Summit in San Diego. Register today.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post How to Use Quora and Reddit to Fuel Your Content Marketing Needs appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

from https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2019/01/quora-reddit-fuel/

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eobot-cryptocurrency-news · 5 years

Text

December 27, 2018 at 07:27PM Chatter Report: Vitalik Doesn’t Imagine in Work Proof, Chris Pacia Discusses Huge Blocks

New

On this new sequence of cryptographic discussions on social media, Vitalik Buterin triggers a debate stating that he doesn’t imagine within the proof of labor. As well as, the developer Rhett Creighton is accused of getting dedicated a felony act within the pre-mining scandal of Bitcoin Personal. Lastly, Chris Pacia clarifies his place on vital block limitations.

Learn additionally: A few of the hottest merchants in cryptocurrency in 2018

Vitalik doesn’t imagine in a proof of labor

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin not too long ago turned heads when he tweeted Bitcoin maximist Giacomo Zucco to let him know that he "didn’t imagine within the proof of labor." ".

I don’t imagine in proof of labor!

– Vitalik non-donor ether (@VitalikButerin) on December 25, 2018

Crypto Twitter broke out with solutions. One commentator, Crypto Domains, emphasised the ridiculousness of Vitalik's remark, evaluating him to not believing "in oxygen". The comment of Crypto Domains has resonated rather a lot, particularly since Ethereum is at present utilizing a proof of labor mannequin.

The Bitcoin neighborhood skeptical of Rhett Creighton

Bitcoin's non-public staff not too long ago launched an official assertion during which it defined that it had no prior information of the OPGT cash that have been secretly created within the vary that gave rise to the venture. As a substitute, they have been misled by the developer airk42, they insist. Airk42 had began innocently by accepting a bonus that the staff had positioned. He then managed to change into a BTCP developer and was promoted to contributor on Github. Nonetheless, when airk42 merged its personal code, it omitted a vital line and a nasty actor exploited this bug, creating about 2 million further items.

Many members of the cryptocurrency neighborhood have been suspicious of the OPGT staff and its official response. In a latest reside broadcast of Tone Vays, a bitcoin dealer, developer Jimmy Tune identified that the previous BTCP developer, Rhett Creighton, had left the venture in a somewhat cryptic method that foreshadowed the hack.

Equally, Vays expressed skepticism about Creighton's sincerity and rapidly speculated that it may need been secretly secreted. The cryptocurrency dealer, Nick Core, additionally agreed with Tone, explaining that scammers are inclined to "depart the initiatives earlier than they’re completed".

Chris Pacia clarifies his tweet in regards to the limitations of Blocksize

Bitcoin commentator u / satoshi_vision 1 not too long ago known as Openbazaar developer Chris Pacia in regards to the subreddit r / bitcoincashSV stating that the Bitcoin software program would begin crashing when the blocks attain about 22 MB. U / satoshi_vision 1 criticized Pacia, whereas Coingeek had operated a block of 64 MB at a peak of 557335.

Chris Pacia informed us that the 22MB blocks wouldn’t work. We don’t have blocks nearly 3 times greater. of bitcoincashSV

Pacia was unable to defend himself on the subreddit as a result of he had been banned from collaborating in R / bitcoincashSV, though he had by no means commented on it earlier than. As a substitute, Pacia relied on Twitter to defend herself, explaining that her tweet was not in regards to the capability to take advantage of a single massive block.

These individuals know very nicely that I’ve by no means talked in regards to the capability to function a single massive block. It doesn’t matter what fool can do this and that proves nothing. The truth that they dip their pants on one giant block exhibits their degree of understanding of how Bitcoin works.

– Chris Pacia (@ChrisPacia) December 26, 2018

Quite than giant remoted blocks, Pacia referred to the opportunity of working a number of giant blocks in tandem. He then identified that the typical measurement of a block measurement over a interval of 1 hour by no means exceeded 7 MB whereas BSV operated blocks of 32 MB.

What do you consider Vitalik's opinion on the proof of labor? Tell us within the feedback beneath.

Photos reproduced with the type permission of Shutterstock.

Do you wish to analysis and examine Bitcoin know-how? See of Wiki of Bitcoin.com for an in depth overview of the modern know-how and attention-grabbing story of Bitcoin.

The post Chatter Report: Vitalik Doesn’t Imagine in Work Proof, Chris Pacia Discusses Huge Blocks appeared first on Eobot.

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news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog · 6 years

Text

How one company reshaped — and kind of ruined — the viral video landscape

It’s Viral Market Crash week on Mashable. Join us as we take stock of the viral economy and investigate how the internet morphed from a fun free-for-all to a bleak hellscape we just can’t quit.

Jukin Media is like an internet mob boss.

With nearly 50,000 videos in their library, it owns a huge chunk of the viral videos on the internet, and it decides who gets to share those clips — and they don't come cheap. Yet you're probably blissfully unaware of the company that's behind the scenes pulling the viral strings.

As a company, what Jukin does is relatively simple: It finds undiscovered videos, buys them or strikes a revenue share from the owners thirsty for viral fame or money. It then licenses the clips for rebroadcast — to everyone from the local news to highlight reel shows on MTV.

On one hand, it's a great service for TV shows looking to find some easy content. Jukin helps connect video owners with broadcasters that have wide reach. But licensing companies like Jukin also play a very disruptive role in the viral video economy.

How the viral sausage gets made

Part of what makes the internet so great is the ability to easily share things you enjoy with your friends, family, and followers. That's the old-fashioned recipe for viral success.

But when licensing companies like Jukin get involved, things can get messy. Jukin actively stops certain websites from embedding videos it has licensed. It also issues DMCA takedowns (which are a common way for copyright owners to remove unwanted reposting of their content from the internet) for things like GIFs and memes.

SEE ALSO: 15 best viral videos of 2018 (so far)

By controlling who can share the video and where, they can limit the potential viral reach of that video. And, to be clear, we're talking here about organic moments captured by normal internet users, or user generated content (UGC). Not whatever's on YouTube's Trending section.

Let's say you shoot a really great video, and you upload it to YouTube. It gets submitted to r/videos on Reddit and starts to really go viral. Then you get a call from Jukin and make a deal. That's where things take a turn. The moment you hand over your rights to Jukin, that video is no longer yours to share, and Jukin isn't going to let a company use it unless it pays a hefty fee.

Sure, working with a third-party licensing company like Jukin can get your video to places it normally wouldn't go and earn you money. But it also heavily restricts where that video can be embedded.

Take Reddit. Rule number eight on the massive r/videos subreddit states that no videos with "third party licensing" are allowed: "Videos that become licensed after they are posted will be removed." You can say goodbye to your place on the front page of the internet.

Getting booted off Reddit may not seem like a big deal, but a video that goes viral on the platform has a huge impact. With 330 million monthly active users, things that take off there have the ability to define conversation on all other platforms and also heavily influence media coverage. That's how people end up on The Today Show and with hefty book deals.

This content is blocked

At Mashable we often cover viral videos, some of which we first find on Reddit. But no matter where we find it, if you've licensed your video with Jukin, we can't embed it on our site (pretty much the only way to make it easily viewable to our audience), because Jukin has effectively shut us out, along with other large media companies.

It's essentially a shakedown. Jukin wants us to pay a large fee in order to simply embed videos from YouTube. Mind you, we aren't even hosting these videos on a native player. These are videos that are entirely hosted by YouTube and any ad revenue from them goes to Jukin.

A YouTube spokesperson confirmed to Mashable that it allows content creators to control which sites can and cannot embed videos. While other social media platforms, like Twitter and Facebook, allow users to control their content by making it private, the option to blacklist specific sites is not common for embedding media.

What you see when Jukin blocks an embedded video.

Image: Mashable screenshot

So why go to the trouble of blocking select publishers from sharing these videos with a wider audience? "We just aren't seeing the monetization on YouTube embeds to make it worth our time for us and our video owners," Jukin's Chief Growth Officer Cameron Saless wrote Mashable in January 2016. While Saless is citing "time" here, blocking a website from embedding likely takes up more time than just leaving it open for all to embed.

In a recent email to Mashable, Jonathan Skogmo, Jukin's founder and CEO further explained their stance on blocking sites.

SEE ALSO: YouTube announces sweeping changes to the way it handles breaking news

"Our goal is to ensure our partners — the owners of compelling amateur videos — receive fair market value for their content, which in the aggregate generates millions of pageviews per month for certain publishers. We like to have a dialogue with publishers, and if they take the stance that, 'we won't pay for videos like this,' even though the benefits of using the content are clear, then we may decide that it's in the best interest of our video partners to prevent sites from using that content for free."

So places like Mashable just can't share Jukin's viral videos with our audience — big deal, right? There's plenty of other fun stuff out there for us to write about. Well, maybe, but it raises a bigger question: Is this good for the internet?

The bigger cost

Jukin protecting its videos and brands so fiercely can limit a video's organic viral spread. The company intensely monitors its content across the internet — and it's not shy about enforcing DMCA takedowns or taking people to court who it believes infringe on its copyrights.

In a blog post about viral videos from 2015, Mike Skogmo, Jukin's VP, Head of Marketing & Communications, explained how certain videos go viral. In it, Mike highlighted this clip from April 2015, in which a silverback gorilla charges a little girl taunting the animal at the Omaha Zoo, breaking the enclosure's glass.

"According to a quick Google search, more than two hundred websites and news outlets covered this story, which accounts for the bulk of those ~20 million embedded player views," Mike wrote, listing BuzzFeed as a top referrer with over 2 million views.

When you venture to that post from BuzzFeed curating the video, it's now blocked on their website. Though Jukin bragged about how many embedded views a good clip could rack up, it has since decided to block one of its biggest referrers.

It should be noted that users can still view the video by clicking through to YouTube, but that's an extra step many readers are unwilling to take.

Image: mashable screenshot

It's especially problematic because Jukin picks and chooses the media companies it blocks from embedding. IFLScience, Daily Dot, and SBNation — all top referrers according to the post — are not blocked. It's unclear if that's because those companies have since struck a deal with the company. According to Jukin a "handful" of sites are banned from embedding its content, and it's based upon "volume of embeds and size of the site."

But blocking a powerhouse like BuzzFeed, a site that's so immensely influential in the viral media space, can clearly influence a video's potential to get its biggest possible audience. The viral stories of the day are often copycatted by multiple outlets, and BuzzFeed, with its large staff and massive audience, often sets the tone and strikes first.

BuzzFeed declined to comment on the block or its relationship with Jukin Media.

Ironically, Jukin even took down YouTuber DevinSuperTramp's video for titling it "People are Awesome." The company owns the copyright because "People are Awesome" is one of its brands, and well, it didn't go over so well. Jukin later apologized for not reaching out to Devin first, but as both parties put it — it was already too late. The strategy of strike now, think later works for most people trying to piggyback and steal content, but it also creates enemies, and can ruin the spread of a video.

@devinsupertramp Hi Devin - Jukin Media here. We're sorry about this. People Are Awesome is the name of one of... pic.twitter.com/XwCmBigWrg

— Jukin Media (@JukinMedia) January 19, 2016

It is not, of course, unusual for a big company that dominates a marketplace to rule with brute force. But it isn't the only way to profit off the viral economy. Viral Hog, another third-party licensing company similar to Jukin, does not block specific websites from embedding its content — though founder Ryan Bartholomew said that wasn't necessarily off the table for the future.

To see how this all plays out in the real world, take the example of Mason Ramsey, or as the internet dubbed him, "Walmart yodel boy." As you may remember, a clip of Ramsey yodeling in a Walmart took off in late March and early April and he became one of the largest "viral video" success stories of 2018.

But the original video, which was licensed and uploaded by Viral Hog only has about 2.6 million views on YouTube and just a meager 300,000 on Facebook.

youtube

That clip of Ramsey didn't catch on for a few days, and when it did a good portion of the chatter was happening on Twitter through stolen re-uploads, memes, and remixes, which were not immediately taken down.

Then on April 1, almost a week after the video first emerged, YouTuber Sonnel official re-uploaded the same clip. That version currently has 55 million views — far more than the original uploaded by Viral Hog. While there's no exact answer for why that video took off, it's likely because the Sonnel video has a more SEO-friendly title. Viral Hog's original title doesn't include the word "yodeling" or "yodel," which Ramsey became famous for.

It's impossible to say for sure, of course, but it seems very unlikely that Ramsey would have become an overnight star if that video had been licensed by Jukin. Sure, Viral Hog does send takedown requests and makes its fair share of copyright claims, but it's not nearly as vicious as Jukin, which has a reputation in the industry for being brutally protective.

In a phone call, Viral Hog founder Bartholomew said that it has claimed Sonnel's copy on YouTube, meaning all the revenue from that clip will be directed to Viral Hog, but the company made the decision to not take the clip down. Viral Hog is losing out on subscribers and giving away control, but this allows the video to grow on the internet in an organic way.

While Viral Hog doesn't love that a bunch of duplicate videos are out there with possibly misleading or defamatory titles, it does have the effect of making Ramsey a much hotter commodity, which in turn leads to even bigger opportunities.

Bartholomew explained, "We're always looking out for our clients first. If you block something too much, it may not go viral and even though if you allow more free use on it ... it may be leeching in a sense that there's no money being made for the client. It can inspire more licenses later. Give away something, make it more popular and then others will purchase it."

SEE ALSO: There's nothing better on the internet today than this kid yodeling in Walmart

With that said, Bartholomew notes that a third party licenser can't "make every video" go viral.

"Ultimately, it's the desire of somebody to share it that makes it go viral. So, the argument against my own statement before would be — even if you block it, if it really is something that wants to be shared it's still gonna get shared ... but at the same time, it's more of a kick start. If something is desirable and you allow it to spread rapidly by not hindering it ... you can affect the virality but you can't really make an unappealing video viral."

Both Jukin and Viral Hog told Mashable that claiming a video's revenue is preferred over takedowns.

The financial upside of licensing

Of course, Jukin's strong enforcement of its licenses isn't bad for everyone on the internet. The company is helping people with good content get exposure — and maybe more importantly, helping to line those people's pockets with that much-desired internet money.

The company boasts it will have paid out more than $20,000,000 to amateur video creators by the end of 2018. (Yes, you read that number right.) The company's CEO, Jonathan Skogmo, says "the majority of Jukin partners will earn somewhere between $500 and $2,000 for one video." Obviously, the payout of a video depends on many different factors — some people have received more than $50,000 from a single clip licensed through Jukin.

For now there are very few ways to make cash off a viral video that don't involve signing over your rights to a licensing company. Earlier this year, YouTube changed the way it lets creators earn money. Now, people aren't able to monetize videos on their channel unless they have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time on their channel within the last year.

Even then they still have to apply to be part of its Partner Program, and that can take time. According to a YouTube spokesperson, the application review process for its partnership program can take nearly a month. With the short shelf life of viral videos in 2018, that time is incredibly valuable to someone with a one-off viral video.

SEE ALSO: Twitter's earning more money than ever, but new users just aren't coming

Outside of YouTube, there just aren't a lot of paths to make money off of a viral video. Twitter allows businesses to add preroll to their videos, as does Facebook, but for normal people with a fun video to share that's not really an option.

So in many ways Jukin and other third-party licensing companies are providing a very necessary service to the economy of the internet. In a world where content is often free and disposable, Jukin puts money into the pockets of users with an experience they'd like to share.

Sure, people with desirable videos could broker these deals themselves, but not everyone has the know how to do that effectively and working with a third-party company makes it much easier.

Jukin also allows companies to license videos that don't really have that viral potential. What if a company wants to make a commercial with some homemade video of kids playing with a puppy? A video like that (while adorable) may never go viral on its own, but it can still generate revenue for both Jukin and the video owner if they place it in an ad.

And in addition to licensing user generated content — Jukin is trying to expand its portfolio.

Jonathan Skogmo said, "We help advertisers strategize and execute creative ad campaigns centered around UGC, and we produce original programming for TV and digital. Our domain expertise in UGC and viral videos has given us a great opportunity to help brands with their content and creative needs."

Ultimately, the reality is if you have a video that goes viral and you don't license the clip, someone else will likely try to profit off of it. It's just how the internet works in 2018.

"If you don't have it represented, it's just going to get stolen openly. Money's still going to be made, but it's gonna be made by people other than you ... it's the lesser of two evils. Somebody's gonna make money. Do you want to control it?" Viral Hog's Bartholomew said.

We're at a weird crossroads in the viral economy. Jukin Media was founded way back in 2009, a pivotal time in internet history. Smartphones equipped with HD video cameras attached to high-speed internet were in nearly everyone's pockets, and the web became inundated with video that looked and sounded great. By that year, 62 percent of Americans visited video sharing sites, compared with just 33 percent in 2006, according to Pew's research.

SEE ALSO: Why aren't you spying on your dog?

Jonathan Skogmo, who was working at the time for Discovery as a TV producer on a clip show, saw a business opportunity. While a few "mom and pop shops with older analog video libraries" were licensing out videos, nobody had really ventured into the digital space to do the same.

As he put it, "We created a marketplace for viral videos where such a marketplace never existed before. When people look back at this period of growth and maturation for online video, Jukin will stand out as a company that was able to properly and accurately put a value on UGC video, which to many people was an afterthought."

And he is right. Jukin forever changed how the internet operates and set the tone during this weird growing phase. But it's also turned viral videos into viral greed.

#_category:yct:001000002 #_author:Brian Koerber #_lmsid:a0Vd000000DTrEpEAL #_uuid:c638f143-7772-35ae-bc90-dc67be274555 #_revsp:news.mashable

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coin-river-blog · 5 years

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On March 23, the Twitter handle @Bitcoin became mired in controversy after BTC supporters complained about the account and attempted to get the profile shut down. The operator of the Bitcoin Twitter profile has also accused the social media platform of manipulating matters by placing restrictions on the account and limiting its overall traffic.

Also read: Bitcoin and the Agora: Every Transaction Outside the Nexus of State Control Is a Victory

The Relentless Attempt to Silence a Twitter Handle

The owner of the Twitter handle @Bitcoin believes the account is being restricted for being critical toward the Bitcoin Core (BTC) network and the Lightning Network (LN). Over the last few weeks, several BTC supporters have advocated having the account suspended or reassigned to a group of core developers.

The dispute arose because the @Bitcoin account shows support for the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network. Hardcore maximalists and LN proponents believe that because the account calls itself ‘Bitcoin,’ it is fraudulently impersonating what they believe is the ‘real’ Bitcoin. On March 15, Twitter user @Moonoverlord opined that the account should be handed to the group of developers known as Bitcoin Core.

“So embarrassing the Bitcoin handle acts like this,” Moonoverlord tweeted. “Should be given back to the bitcoin core team instead of being used to start petty fights and mislead people.”

The @Bitcoin Twitter handle showing how the account’s traffic has been drastically reduced. Its owner suspects Twitter employees of shadow banning.

The former moderator of the r/bitcoin subreddit, a Reddit forum known for rampant censorship, also agreed with the idea and explained the handle could be given to any developers behind BTC. “Doesn’t have to be the core devs — Could be the group of devs @sqcrypto funds with just positive and informative content,” explained the Twitter handle known as ‘Stop and Decrypt.’ Blockstream VP of Solutions, Warren Togami, replied to Stop and Decrypt’s commentary by stating that “It’s better for the name to be frozen forever — The account has been committing fraud for a long time — Surely this is a violation of ToS.”

Twitter Suspensions and Shadow Bans

Following the controversy and people bickering about the handle this week, the @Bitcoin account detailed that it believed it was already being unfairly restricted. “Any journalists want to write about how Jack Dorsey (CEO of Twitter) is restricting accounts that are critical of one of his portfolio companies?” asked the Bitcoin handle on March 23. Twitter has also been accused of censorship and deplatforming for quite some time by many different critics.

The Twitter founder is a publicly known Lightning Network investor and has helped fund the startup Lightning Labs. The Bitcoin account had previous problems with Twitter in April 2018, when the account was suspended for unknown reasons. After the account was suspended, the r/bitcoin community celebrated while others on social media thought the move by Twitter was immoral. For example, cryptocurrency news and research website Coinivore tweeted to Twitter and Jack Dorsey to say that the account “should be restored and allowed to express their opinion on scaling.” Eventually, the Bitcoin account was restored to the rightful owner, but ever since its social reach appears to have been neutered.

The ‘One True Bitcoin’ Debate May Take Years to Settle

Right now the Bitcoin account doesn’t seem to be phased by the harassment and has continued to express opinions that are in opposition to scaling choices promoted by BTC and LN supporters. People who support the @Bitcoin handle expressing itself in any fashion have said that Bitcoin technology and the name are not a designated brand that solely belongs to BTC.

Twitter has censored Alex Jones, Info Wars, and many alt-right conservatives.

In fact, the protocol has been forked roughly 47 times since the notorious split on August 1, 2017, and there are individuals who believe there are many forms of Bitcoin now. The people who believe there is no ‘one real’ Bitcoin are convinced the protocol they support is the “better Bitcoin.” Among the 47 odd forks, groups of people think that there are only three chains that have decent support and it will take years for the market to decide which coin will be considered ‘the one and only Bitcoin.’ Even the amount of proof-of-work (PoW) could change in a 10-year period or another Bitcoin fork could capture the most accumulated PoW as well as the biggest market capitalization. On Saturday, entrepreneur Vinny Lingham expressed his opinion on this manner, writing that BTC is a clear winner and incumbent. Lingham added that “it’s going to take a Herculean effort for BCH and BSV to overtake it.”

“That said, the over-reliance on the Lightning Network for scaling and extreme focus on decentralization with the risk of high fees at any moment is a major limiting factor,” Lingham continued.

Another example that describes the situation perfectly was when independent cryptocurrency researcher Hasu Fly explained the set of circumstances that led to Bitcoin forks in December 2018. Within his memorable essay “Unpacking Bitcoin’s Social Contract,” Hasu noted that usually Bitcoin’s social contract cannot fork and typically only one contract remains after a split. However, the cryptocurrency researcher explained that the BCH fork was a rare and different story.

“Forking the protocol doesn’t equal forking the social contract, so the new token is worthless by default,” Hasu’s essay notes. “In the rare case that the social contract itself splits (like when bitcoin cash split off from bitcoin), you end up with two weaker social contracts—each agreed to by fewer people than the old one.”

Some people believe the ‘one true’ Bitcoin has not been decided upon.

The Sum of All Coins

To many people, the ultimate decision will be made by network participants and the free market in regard to what the ‘better Bitcoin’ is and it may not be decided for a very long time. Also, there are cryptocurrency supporters who hold BCH, BTC, and BSV as a ‘sum of all coins’ investment approach, in order to see which one reigns supreme in the future. People of this opinion believe that the Bitcoin twitter handle should not be restricted or frozen by the whims of the mob and a Lightning Network investor. However, in the crypto community, the oppression of mob rule and censorship has been extremely heavy in recent times. The Orwellian thought process expressed on Twitter shouldn’t be too surprising since forums like r/bitcoin, many crypto thought leaders, and various censorship apologists have promoted the obvious manipulation within the Bitcoin community since 2015.

What do you think about the individuals trying to get the Bitcoin Twitter account suspended? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments below.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Twitter, and Pixabay.

At Bitcoin.com there’s a bunch of free helpful services. For instance, have you seen our Tools page? You can even look up the exchange rate for a transaction in the past. Or calculate the value of your current holdings. Or create a paper wallet. And much more.

Tags in this story

@jack, BCH, Bitcoin, bitcoin cash, Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin Satoshis Vision, BSV, BTC, Censorship, deplatform, deplatforming, Hasu Fly, Jack Dorsey, lightning network, LN Investor, N-Featured, Reddit Censorship, Stop and Decrypt, Twitter Censorship, Twitter Handle, Vinny Lingham

Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open source code, and decentralized applications. Redman has written thousands of articles for news.Bitcoin.com about the disruptive protocols emerging today.

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