#anonymous google employee

[dysaniadisorder]

guys what do u think asunaro employees called fake hinako before bc i personally think she genuinely didn't have a name

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

I must, in my capacity as a professional perpetual buzzkill, note that Myrtle is just encouraging the OP to break their facility's rules, not commit Turtle Crimes (TM).

As funny as this story is, that's not actually how the Endangered Species Act works with regards to captive animals - and that distinction is surprisingly important for lots of complicated legal and political reasons. More importantly, I am physically incapable of letting any error regarding federal wildlife laws pass my dash without commenting, so let's learn about why this is "just" a firing offense, not a felonious one.

(As always, I must emphasize up front - this is not shade on the OP or their facility. This shit is complicated, and it's easy for information to get misconstrued or misremembered. I'm just here to teach!)

So, a quick ESA overview. The law protects species that have gone through a bureaucratic process and been officially listed as endangered by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (this is different than a species' IUCN Red List status, which is a scale from Least Concern to Critically Endangered). The law prevents anyone from "taking" a listed species. "Take" or the act of "taking" is defined by USFWS as "to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct." Take can be intentional or incidental, but you're responsible for the result all the same. Harass, importantly, has been additionally defined by USFWS as "an intentional or negligent act or omission which creates the likelihood of injury to wildlife by annoying to such an extent as to significantly disrupt normal behavior patterns which include, but are not limited to, breeding feeding or sheltering."

Enough definitions, the turtles are glaring at us ominously from their tanks. So, if you went to go scritch a wild sea turtle? Absolutely an ESA violation. All six species of sea turtles found worldwide are listed as endangered in the United States (the seventh species is also endangered, but only found in Australia). However, scritching said sea turtle wouldn't be a felony. Intentional taking of an endangered animal is a Class A misdemeanor - and while that might sound "better", it can still result in a year of imprisonment and/or a fine up to $100,000 (and that's just criminal penalties! there can be civil ones too). Don't bother endangered animals, kids.

Where this gets interesting, though, is when endangered species are in captive settings. USFWS has formally acknowledged that managing animals in human care could run into issues under the harassment statute, since it "disrupts normal behavior." Y'know, because sometimes you have to restrict food or movement or bother an animal for veterinary care. They've solved this problem by adding what is often unofficially called a "captive take provision" to the definition of harassment:

"When applied to captive wildlife, [harassment] does not include generally accepted: (1) Animal husbandry practices that meet or exceed the minimum standards for facilities and care under the Animal Welfare Act, (2) Breeding procedures, or (3) Provisions of veterinary care for confining, tranquilizing, or anesthetizing, when such practices, procedures, or provisions are not likely to result in injury to the wildlife."

What that means, practically, is that just touching endangered animals isn't inherently a violation of the ESA. As long as it's done in a manner that USDA deems appropriate and is part of normal animal care practices, it's okay. The ESA and related regulations don't go into detail on who's allowed to do what: they're broad rules and facilities are expected to understand what constitutes compliance. From a practical point of view, facility staff need to be able to touch endangered animals in their care - and not just the keepers! Vet staff, maintenance works, and many other professionals (including volunteers) might end up in a position in which they're asked to assist with handling, restraint, enrichment, etc. The ESA captive take exemption also applies to the public in specific situations. Anyone who has ever participated in an encounter where they got to touch or feed any species of rhino, any elephant species, grey wolves, African penguins, Bactrian camels, or Galapagos tortoises has participated in a program utilizing this exemption; encounters are normally set up so that you're basically participating in normal husbandry practices. (Lawsuits over things like cub petting occur when encounter are not normal practice or AWA compliant). With this context, a staff member touching a captive green sea turtle in this very specific situation should be fine, legally.

I originally wondered if maybe there were other strictures on captive sea turtles that might have been conflated with the Endangered Species Act here. All non-releasable sea turtles that live in captivity are under the jurisdiction of USFWS in perpetuity, and it turns out there are some additional rules; facilities are prohibited from letting visitors touch them, for one. But that only applies to guests, not staff, and also? Myrtle isn't actually subject to those rules! She's thought to be somewhere between 73 and 90 at this point, putting her possible year of birth at or before 1950. The ESA wasn't passed until 1973, and green sea turtles weren't listed until 1978. Myrtle is a wild-caught turtle, not a rehabbed animal, so she was in human care for decades before her species was protected. So while the ESA still applies, she's not subject to the USFWS rules about non-releasable rehabbed turts.

What does this mean? Can the OP, in good faith, now commit what is no longer considered to be turtle crimes? Sadly, no. There are still lots of good reasons that the OP is making the right choice by not giving Myrtle the shell scratches she so clearly demands.

First off, it's clearly against facility rules. The OP notes that they're not allowed to have contact with her because they're not an aquarist who works on that habitat, a vet, or a tank diver (all people who are allowed). One of the biggest rules of working at an animal facility? Thou shalt not touch animals without permission. Even if you work with other animals. Even if you've been trained on that animal previously. Touching animals without permission can quite literally be enough to get you fired. It is, quite simply, a safety issue. Animals can be unintentionally injured by your contact, or by trying to escape from it, not to mention they can get sick from a chemicals or bacteria/viruses on your skin; in the other direction, animals can intentionally or accidentally hurt people, as well as possibly share parasites, zoonotic diseases, and infections. Animal care staff are injured all the time by the collections they care for, and they've got proper training and experience - the chances are not good for people who don't work with an animal they want to pet coming out unscathed. In the best case scenarios, nobody dies (but think of how many news stories you've heard where man tries to pet animal, animal is shot to save man).

So aside from the professionalism aspect, other reasons to no touchy the turtle include her hurting the OP, the OP impacting her health, and of course the possibility of the OP falling into the tank. Older green sea turtles are huge and their beaks can do pretty serious damage. They stated Myrtle is able to shake the dive platform pretty substantially when she bumps it, so if you're leaning out over the edge to reach her... it's an awkward way to take a swim (and lose a job).

The OP also made a really good point in a subsequent reblog: when you're on public view in an aquarium or zoo, your actions are constantly observed and the example they set matters. Humans are super visual creatures, and no matter how many times you say "don't go bother endangered species," if they see people randomly petting the sea turtle, they're going to walk away with the impression it's okay to do. Zookeepers and aquarists constantly have to think about what example they're setting for guests when they interact with animals in front of the public. Even if it was allowed by their job, OP would be making the right choice to abstain.

Now, I don't know exactly why the OP has been told it's illegal to touch Myrtle. I don't know if someone misspoke or if there's an error in training materials, or what. That's okay! It helps reinforce a protocol that's appropriate for many other reasons. And, again, not a ton of non-management folk are familiar with the intricacies of the ESA, because it's not stuff they need to know to do their jobs. I broke it all down because the post is really popular, I have a deep and unabiding need to attempt to correct information on the internet, and I happen to think animal law is almost as cool as tree law. I didn't write this up because I think the facility is doing anything worth criticizing them for, so don't give the OP any negative feedback for it, please and thank you.

This concludes today's spontaneous deep dive into US endangered species management law! I will conclude by noting that, if a sea turtle did ever successfully encourage Crimes, it would absolutely be Myrtle.

one of my favorite things about my job that i can say to people that sounds utterly ridiculous but is technically 100% true is that one of our sea turtles keeps trying to get me to commit a felony on her behalf and gets SUPER cranky when i won’t do it

[probablyasocialecologist]

Ex-Meta employee Madelyn Machado recently posted a TikTok video claiming that she was getting paid $190,000 a year to do nothing. Another Meta employee, also on TikTok, posted that “Meta was hiring people so that other companies couldn’t have us, and then they were just kind of like hoarding us like Pokémon cards.” Over at Google, a company known to have pioneered the modern tech workplace, one designer complained of spending 40 percent of their time on “the inefficien[cy] overhead of simply working at Google.” Some report spending all day on tasks as simple as changing the color of a website button. Working the bare minimum while waiting for stock to vest is so common that Googlers call it “resting and vesting.” ​ In an anonymous online poll on how many “focused hours of work” software engineers put in each day, 71 percent of the over four thousand respondents claimed to work six hours a day or less, while 12 percent said they did between one and two hours a day. During the acute phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, it became common for tech workers to capitalize on all this free time by juggling multiple full-time remote jobs. According to the Wall Street Journal, many workers who balance two jobs do not even hit a regular forty-hour workload for both jobs combined. One software engineer reported logging between three and ten hours of actual work per week when working one job, with the rest of his time spent on pointless meetings and pretending to be busy. My own experience supports this trend: toward the end of my five-year tenure as a software engineer for Microsoft, I was working fewer than three hours a day. And of what little code I produced for them, none of it made any real impact on Microsoft’s bottom line—or the world at large. For much of this century, optimism that technology would make the world a better place fueled the perception that Silicon Valley was the moral alternative to an extractive Wall Street—that it was possible to make money, not at the expense of society but in service of it. In other words, many who joined the industry did so precisely because they thought that their work would be useful. Yet what we’re now seeing is a lot of bullshit. If capitalism is supposed to be efficient and, guided by the invisible hand of the market, eliminate inefficiencies, how is it that the tech industry, the purported cradle of innovation, has become a redoubt of waste and unproductivity?

[lemotmo]

Hulu comment. Let's all spiral with glee 😀

Q. We see you fan girling, Hulu! We see you!!

A. Haha, okay I received a ton of asks about this but I'm only going to post the one because you all get the gist of what the questions were like. Technically the Hulu account moderators, much like the 911 moderators, are employees of Disney, but usually moderators are given pretty free reign to post, comment, and 'like' as they please. As long as they're not being problematic or inappropriate. So I would caution that the comment doesn't necessarily mean anything. I will however say that the fact they felt comfortable enough to publicly comment on a video that is in direct contrast to the current canon probably doesn't bode well for said current canon. Because at minimum it's confirmation that there are no regulations in place for them to push the current canon. Which is probably not a good sign as far as anything long term goes. They would need to push it fairly hard to try and move the needle from an audience perspective so they would absolutely discourage Buddie encouragement. And that's clearly not a directive anyone has been given, so far anyway. We will probably get a clearer picture in the coming week or so. Embargos have to be close to being lifted, if they haven't already, which means we'll start to see more and more engagement from the media that covers the show.

I want to take a moment in this post to address several asks I received raging about how Buddie fans were the reason the show didn't release a full trailer. You all continue to prove you haven't been here longer than 80 something days. This is how the show always does things. They always start with a teaser. Last season was a hand on a ship rail, I believe. The season before that was the blimp. This has always been the way they do things. I know show history is irrelevant to you all but you should at least maybe Google something before jumping into blogs and raging.

Thank you so much Nonny!

Yep, I agree. Last season the show was heavily promoting Buddie. And it seems they have subtly began doing that again, while completely ignoring the canon relationship. But we do have to see if they will keep it up. I expect they will though.

This Hulu intern might just be a Buddie fan, but in the end they still commented using the Hulu account. They would have known it would be noticed and shared, but they still didn't delete it, which means that it was posted deliberately. They didn't just forgot to sign out of their professional account.

The comment talked about Buck deserving to be happy. Which basically implies that he isn't there yet right now. He still hasn't found his true happiness.

I realise that this is just a small thing and it might not mean anything, but to me it's definitely a subtle nod to signal that something has shifted.

And yeah, the promo always starts with a small teaser that has none of the characters. It has always been like this.

I do think that last year it was a hand on the round window of a ship, instead of on the railing. Do correct me if I'm wrong though. 😋

This has me excited though! I wonder what else they have in store for us this month. I'm looking forward to it! 😁

IMPORTANT! Please don't repost this ask and/or a link that leads straight to my Tumblr account on Twitter or any other social media. Thank you!

Heads up! For anyone who is giving me the shifty eyes for reposting Ali's updates instead of reblogging. Read this.

Remember, no hate in comments, reblogs or inboxes. Let's keep it civil and respectful. Thank you.

If you are interested in more of Ali’s posts, you can find all of her posts so far under the tag: anonymous blog I love.

[rentalboos]

Watcher has lost almost 100 thousand subscribers

Hi babygirl, thank you for your 6 new messages, I love that you think my opinion is this important, though I genuinely don't quite get it. I'm not even a Watcher fanaccount, like, I have maybe two followers who even know the channel. What beef do you have with me lmao Since you're so interested in it though, I'm going to give it to you! FOR FREE! Since that's so important to you!

Here's the tldr: You're on anon sending hate, so you already know you're in the wrong and everyone else knows it too!

Great. Now that that's covered, here we GO! My precious opinion that you value so much! For free:

I'm sorry it offends you that I have the 5,99 to pay them and am doing it, but like. Do you do this with everyone? Do you go into people's DMs (no of course not, you only hate anonymously, wonder why that is!) to yell at them about subscribing to Twitch streams? Spotify? Youtube membership? Patreons?

What about this offends you so? That a bunch of youtubers had to make a tough choice between "we have to stop creating the art we want" and "we could try and keep creating the art we want, but we'll need to get paid for it" and chose to try and get paid for it? Is the offense, to you personally, that other people will still get to enjoy the content they like, opposed to absolutely no one getting to? It certainly can't be that you, personally, can't access their content anymore, because, quite frankly, I doubt you actually like it very much.

As for your five billion questions for why this makes you racist: You singling out Steven makes you racist. They founded this company together and they doubtlessly made this decision together and the narrative that is currently spun of "Shane (the white dude) would never, his evil non-white co-workers are forcing him to!" is .... extremely parasocial, and wildly random and coming out of nowhere.

Except for all the parts it's not, because of COURSE. Of course the evil guy and the guy who creates content "no one wants to fund" and who now everyone calls "boring" and who now has viral hate tweets saying he's "dragged Ryan and Shane down", is the asian guy who's pushed for diversity on the channel from the very start.

Like, he's well aware that his shows are the least popular. There's a reason for that, sweetie, and I promise you, it has to do with the fact that they've focused on diversity and quality rather than shittalking in front of a camera. And I'm not even a Steven girlie, I'm a Ghost Files ride or die, baby!

But this narrative that he's "homophobic and racist" because he said in a podcast once that he chooses to stay friends with people who sometimes sprout ignorant views, that's like- Get a fucking grip. I know y'all haven't reached adult life yet, it is painfully apparent, but there comes a time in life where you'll have to realize that sometimes the people around you aren't as socially aware or educated as you, but in their nature good eggs, and you can, of course, choose to drop their asses, if you don't happen to be otherwise connected to them in an adult environment, where jobs and friend groups often overlap or they're part of your family or family's circle, but the far, far better choice is to be their friend and educate them. Because that's the best way the ignorant views become less ignorant. That's literally what he's been saying in that podcast ep, by the way. I don't need to "google" that and I don't need your twitter links, I was there when that episode dropped. I listened to it as I did the dishes. I was applauding Steven for putting in the time and effort and energy to DO that with people, because I oftentimes find myself too scared to have the conversations he is having.

Watcher has donated to queer charities. They sell queer merch. They have queer employees. Their fanbase is mainly queer. He's not homophobic, y'all are insane. If any of that would go against his values, he'd a) not be in a company with Ryan and Shane, because they wouldn't be having it and b) wouldn't stand up for, employ and cater to queer people. He'd be out with the homophobes, telling us how Jesus died for our sins or whatever.

He's also not racist which- duh. Before I even knew Steven Lim, I already knew this is something he is incredibly(!) sensitive about, he literally hates racism (And I don't know if you noticed. But he's very often the target of it, you absolute bufoon) and specifically went into Watcher to be able to help marginalized voices have a platform. That was his goal for Watcher that he couldn't properly fulfil in Buzzfeed. I know that. Because I was there from the start and actually listened to them talk. And it was stated and proven many, many times.

Y'all so eager to jump on a hate train and take shit out of context, it's pathetic. And "homophobic" good God, he had a book on his bookshelf. Wow. I have Harry Potter in three different editions on my bookshelf, I've learned reading with them. They have tear stains on the pages where Dumbledore died. You're gonna say I'm a transphobe if you see them in a photo? Gonna go ahead and call me, a trans guy, a transphobe now? Knock yourself out. Because I'll care about that about as much as I care about how many angry little kids are unsubscribing from Watcher rn: Not even a little bit.

You're whining like little bitches in random fan's inboxes, are throwing insults, false accusations and racism around to stirr the pot, you're coming for Steven as if Ryan and Shane aren't literally HORRIFIED by y'all doing this in their name to someone who's their close friend. As if Watcher would even exist without him, when he saved it from going bankrupt in their first year, when Ryan and Shane couldn't be arsed to step up and figure out how to run a company.

You weren't paying them anyway. I'm subscribed to their Patreon at the highest tier, because I know good art doesn't come free and I knew they were gonna struggle on Youtube views alone and I enjoy their content and want to help them keep making it. I don't expect anyone to be able to do that - And they don't either. They also don't expect everyone to pay or be able to pay for their streaming services. They're currently working on responding to the feedback and make things more accessible. They certainly didn't handle this perfectly and they certainly didn't want to make this choice if they had another one. Neither of the three.

You won't pay for it. That's fine. That's literally all there is to it. There's no need to sling this shit around, but you're doing it anyway. Not because you care, but because you're having fun with it. Well, go ahead. The more hate you send, the more I know I'm standing up for the right people.

[originalleftist]

Musk hired spies to surveil his critics and girlfriend.

Highlights:

"One of those critics is Vernon Unsworth, who sued Musk in 2018 for calling him a "pedo guy" on Twitter. A new Tortoise investigation reveals that the scale of surveillance used against Unsworth was greater than previously known: Musk used at least two sets of private investigators, both of which used deception to try to gather information."

"Musk deployed private investigators to follow a Tesla employee "24 hours a day". A former security operative at Tesla alleges the company also hacked into the employee's phone. Other whistleblowers also allege that they were followed."

"Unbeknownst to Unsworth, Musk's tam then paid about $50,000 to a private investigator called James Howard-Higgins to dig up dirt on Unsworth. Howard-Higgins promised that he would go through Unsworth's bins, pose as a charity worker to get information, and infiltrate his partner's Facebook page.

No due diligence. A Google search would have revealed that Howard-Higgins was a fraudster, jailed in 2016 for stealing from his own company. As the US trial, which Musk won by portraying his Twitter comments as a joke, his team portrayed Howard-Higgins as a one-off. In fact another investigation firm called Orion was also tasked with getting information on Unsworth. Emails show how Orion emailed one of Unsworth's friends, telling him, incorrectly, that they were "working on behalf of Vernon"."

"Musk allegedly placed his former partner Amber Heard under surveillance in Australia having become suspicious that she was cheating on him.

Around the same time a local newspaper received an anonymous tip that an Aussie Rules footballer was "spending many nights at Amber Heard's house" and "leaving early in the morning looking like the cat that swallowed the canary".

The paper traced the message to SpaceX, one of Musk's companies.

When one of its reporters spoke to Musk, he accepted that someone close to him had sent the tip but claimed it was done without his knowledge.

"My personal belief is that [Musk] definitely sent it," says the reporter, Sally Coates."

I've seen other outlets claim that Musk used infrared technology to spy on Heard's home and detect any movement inside, but can't confirm this from a source I consider credible.

Anyway, reminder that Muskrat is a serial domestic abuser and sexual predator as well as a fascist, that his supposed support for "free speech" (as always with the Right) just means "freedom for me to say whatever I want with no consequences, and no one else has freedom to disagree with or criticize me", and that how he conducts himself in his private life and in his businesses is mirrored in his goals for society as a whole.

Also, that this "genius" is so incompetent that he couldn't even use Google for two minutes before hiring a convicted con man.

(Addendum: I know a lot of people have accused Tortoise Media of being part of some grand Right-wing/transphobic conspiracy, but so far as I've found that's mostly desperate Neil Gaiman fans trying to make out that the accusations against him by multiple unconnected women, that he partly admitted to and others in the industry corroborated, are a vast Conservative conspiracy to frame him for being pro-trans. In other words- ridiculous and misogynist. Tortoise has some credibility issues of being fairly new, without much of an established track record and, like many major media outlets, having big business money behind it. But also, far Right psy-op outlets probably aren't inclined to write detailed exposes on Elon Musk and the Saudi Royals.)

[so-much-for-subtlety]

Speaking of advertising in 2015 I worked at a tech startup advertising startup that used cookies (digital ones) to track individuals (doesn’t matter if you used a VPN) and they had a way to “inject” ads right into videos bypassing adblockers. It was very creepy tbh. The company was bought by Google and we all got two years of pay before being let go. I honestly hate it. So yes. Advertising executives are scum.

It has changed a lot over the past decade, but there used to be a perception that tech companies were generally progressive and for the benefit of their users. Google used to have “don’t be evil” as the core of their employee code of conduct but they officially dropped that in 2018 (which coincidentally was the same year that GDPR became enforceable and gave people in EU countries some decent rights for privacy).

In the United States we just don’t have equivalent federal legislation to protect citizens (California, Virginia, and Colorado do have some state-level protections).

the bottom line is that tech companies are owned and operated by extremely wealthy individuals who have a vested interest in being able to profit though digital tracking and advertising.

We’re entering the 4th era of digital surveillance:

1st era was IP address tracking (VPNs provided protection for this)

2nd era was cookies and ‘super cookies’ (a range of techniques that serve the same purpose as cookies but are harder to clear from your browser)

3rd era is fingerprinting - possible since 2005 but I think became common in practice only since ~2015 and is a method which uses a bunch of metadata and pinpoints you as an individual based on your unique set of attributes.

I think that a lot of people are still under the misconception that using Chrome incognito mode gives you some privacy

Google's Chrome browser does not provide protection against trackers or fingerprinters in Incognito Mode.

4th era is coming soon and enabled by similar technology that enable LLM and will be able to identify you by the unique way you interact with technology (e.g. the style/tone of my writing in this post has characteristics that are unique to me, and also very hard for me to avoid!).

the 4th era for me is horrifying- imagine your employer being able to take a sample of your writing (from emails or company chat) and be able to identify content you’ve posted online that you thought you were posting anonymously?

—

btw, if anyone is curious about seeing where you stand in terms of digital fingerprinting here are some online tools you can use to get an idea - both are free, no login/signup and take just a few seconds to run:

[dreaming-in-seams]

Y’all know the sick cat scam going around on tumblr? I’ve seen a lot of advice —good advice!— on how to not fall for one of those scams

But

I also know a lot of my mutuals are good people with big hearts who easily feel guilt-tripped into believing someone’s seemingly heart-felt story.

So idk if my two-cents are any help, but as a veterinary receptionist I think I have a solution on how to approach a convincing“Sick Cat” plea:

Offer to make a donation on their behalf directly to the vet clinic!

Idk about every vet clinic around the world, but I know amongst the many clinics I have worked for/with, none of them would EVER turn down an anonymous donation to someone’s account for their sick pet! I take many of those calls. We LOVE them! Any money towards helping a pet get better is welcome money. I’ve taken $5 donations, $50, $1000 —I even dropped in a $20 from our spare change bucket once.

Think about it: the vet clinic doesn’t want this animal to suffer. But they also can’t do a procedure or treatment for free because they have hard working employees to pay, and veterinary care (in the US) is privatized (it’s the sorry reality but until HUMAN health care improves, animal health care just is where it is in this country)

Does the vet clinic care where the money for the procedure is coming from? NO. They don’t care if it’s your grandma’s credit card, $6000 in cash, or a bunch of random people calling to put $10-100 dollars on some random person’s account. Money is money to an office manager, and whatever is there to cover expenses for a sick animal is a weight off EVERYONE’S shoulders. (I may just be a receptionist, but even receptionists hurt when an animal passes away.)

So. If you have someone on your dash or in your inbox asking you to donate money to their Venmo or PayPal for their sick cat/dog/ferret, and you really don’t know if it’s legitimate but don’t want to blow them off in case it is…

Ask them the name of their vet. Look it up on google. And call.

The receptionist will ask for the owner’s last name and the pet’s name. If the “owner” is legitimate, they probably will give you some identifying information for the pet or the account. If they don’t want to (for internet safety) there are ways for the receptionist to narrow it down. I.e. the procedure, age of the animal, when their last appointment was, their doctor. And especially if it’s a pricey procedure that the owner has had difficulty finding funds for, SOMEONE at the clinic will know!! If the person in your inbox is legitimate, then they will probably WELCOME you calling their vet to make a donation!

(Tbh, if people call to donate for an animal, it makes a stronger case for the vet to cut costs on the procedure because it PROVES the owner is making a sincere effort to pay)

DON’T just take the phone number of the vet from the person asking for money without verifying it. The phone number could be theirs or a friend who is just gonna take your card info and run off happily into the sunset with it. Verify (via the internet) that the vet is real. If the info they gave you about their sick pet checks out on the vet’s end as all being true, DING DING DING it’s not a scam!!! Donate away!!!

But if it IS a scam, the scammer will probably try to convince you it’s easier to give money to their Venmo (it’s not), or that their vet doesn’t take donations (they do). If they are avoiding this option, and the other signs of scam hold up, then block them and walk away.

TLDR: if you’re not sure if it’s a “Sick Cat” scam, offer to call their vet and make a donation!

[musicalhell]

So, I say this as someone who's been following the Vivienne Medrano hoopla for years, but take what @unicornmantises has to say with a grain of salt. There's been an open hate campaign against Medrano ever since her Zoophobia days. The majority of accusations against her have been revealed to be either based on a misunderstanding, minor things she's apologized for, things she had zero control over, or straight up fabrications. Not to mention there was a Google document claiming to have evidence from ex-Spindlehorse employees against Medrano, only for it to, surprise surprise, turn out that the accusers had lied about pretty much everything. This is not to say that Medrano is a perfect little angel who has done nothing wrong, but she also isn't the anti-christ like her hatedom portrays her as.

For what it's worth, I haven't seen the Hazbin Hotel series and don't know if I'll ever have time. Maybe it'll be good. Maybe it'll be bad. Who knows? But at least I have a life outside of hating a random woman I don't personally know.

I can assure you I have spent far less time thinking about Viziepop--let alone hating her--than you have going into people's asks and posting anonymous rants in her defense.

[mariacallous]

In early 2022, two Google policy staffers met with a trio of women victimized by a scam that resulted in explicit videos of them circulating online—including via Google search results. The women were among the hundreds of young adults who responded to ads seeking swimsuit models only to be coerced into performing in sex videos distributed by the website GirlsDoPorn. The site shut down in 2020, and a producer, a bookkeeper, and a cameraman subsequently pleaded guilty to sex trafficking, but the videos kept popping up on Google search faster than the women could request removals.

The women, joined by an attorney and a security expert, presented a bounty of ideas for how Google could keep the criminal and demeaning clips better hidden, according to five people who attended or were briefed on the virtual meeting. They wanted Google search to ban websites devoted to GirlsDoPorn and videos with its watermark. They suggested Google could borrow the 25-terabyte hard drive on which the women’s cybersecurity consultant, Charles DeBarber, had saved every GirlsDoPorn episode, take a mathematical fingerprint, or “hash,” of each clip, and block them from ever reappearing in search results.

The two Google staffers in the meeting hoped to use what they learned to win more resources from higher-ups. But the victim’s attorney, Brian Holm, left feeling dubious. The policy team was in “a tough spot” and “didn’t have authority to effect change within Google,” he says.

His gut reaction was right. Two years later, none of those ideas brought up in the meeting have been enacted, and the videos still come up in search.

WIRED has spoken with five former Google employees and 10 victims’ advocates who have been in communication with the company. They all say that they appreciate that because of recent changes Google has made, survivors of image-based sexual abuse such as the GirlsDoPorn scam can more easily and successfully remove unwanted search results. But they are frustrated that management at the search giant hasn’t approved proposals, such as the hard drive idea, which they believe will more fully restore and preserve the privacy of millions of victims around the world, most of them women.

The sources describe previously unreported internal deliberations, including Google’s rationale for not using an industry tool called StopNCII that shares information about nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII) and the company’s failure to demand that porn websites verify consent to qualify for search traffic. Google’s own research team has published steps that tech companies can take against NCII, including using StopNCII.

The sources believe such efforts would better contain a problem that’s growing, in part through widening access to AI tools that create explicit deepfakes, including ones of GirlsDoPorn survivors. Overall reports to the UK’s Revenge Porn hotline more than doubled last year, to roughly 19,000, as did the number of cases involving synthetic content. Half of over 2,000 Brits in a recent survey worried about being victimized by deepfakes. The White House in May urged swifter action by lawmakers and industry to curb NCII overall. In June, Google joined seven other companies and nine organizations in announcing a working group to coordinate responses.

Right now, victims can demand prosecution of abusers or pursue legal claims against websites hosting content, but neither of those routes is guaranteed, and both can be costly due to legal fees. Getting Google to remove results can be the most practical tactic and serves the ultimate goal of keeping violative content out of the eyes of friends, hiring managers, potential landlords, or dates—who almost all likely turn to Google to look up people.

A Google spokesperson, who requested anonymity to avoid harassment from perpetrators, declined to comment on the call with GirlsDoPorn victims. She says combating what the company refers to as nonconsensual explicit imagery (NCEI) remains a priority and that Google’s actions go well beyond what is legally required. “Over the years, we’ve invested deeply in industry-leading policies and protections to help protect people affected by this harmful content,” she says. “Teams across Google continue to work diligently to bolster our safeguards and thoughtfully address emerging challenges to better protect people.”

In an interview with WIRED, a Google search product manager overseeing anti-harm work says blocking videos using hashes is challenging to adopt because some websites don’t publish videos in a way that search engines can compare against. Speaking on condition of anonymity, she says Google has encouraged explicit websites to address that. She adds that there’s generally more for Google to do but refutes the allegation that executives had held up the work.

Advocates of bolder action by Google point to the company’s much tighter restrictions on searching for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) as evidence it could do much more. Typing “deepfake nudes kids” into Google prompts a warning that such content is illegal and ultimately directs users to news articles and support groups. Google also finds and blocks from its results almost 1 million new CSAM-containing webpages annually.

A recent Google search for “deepfake nudes jennifer aniston” yielded seven results purporting to offer just that. The search engine offered no warning or resources in response to the query, despite nearly every US state and many countries having criminalized unpermitted distribution of intimate content of adults. Google declined to comment on the lack of a warning.

The product manager says comparisons to CSAM are invalid. Virtually any image of a naked child is illegal and can be automatically removed, she says. Separating NCEI from consensual porn requires some indication that the content was shot or distributed without permission, and that context often isn’t clear until a victim files a report and a human analyzes it. But the manager wouldn’t directly answer whether Google has tried to overcome the challenge.

Adam Dodge, founder of advocacy and education group Ending Tech-Enabled Abuse, says that until Google proactively removes more NCII, victims have to be hypervigilant about finding and reporting it themselves. That’s “not something we should put on victims,” he says. “We’re asking them to go to the location where they were assaulted online to move past the trauma.”

Google started accepting removal requests for search results leading to nudity or sex in 2015 if the content was intended to be private and was never authorized to be published, according to its policy. That went largely unchanged until 2020, when the company added that being in an “intimate state” qualified.

A New York Times column that year triggered Google executives to dedicate resources to the issue, organizing projects, including one codenamed Sparrow, to help victims keep content off search for good, three former employees say. The product manager confirmed that executives at times have pushed teams to improve Google’s handling of NCEI.

Google made its takedown form friendlier to use, understand, and access, the sources say. The search giant axed legalese and outdated use of the term “revenge porn,” since porn is generally viewed as consensual. The company added instructions on submitting screenshots and greater detail on the review process.

The form became accessible by clicking the menu that appears next to every search result. Requests rose about 19-fold in one early test, one source says. A second source says that it has become among Google’s most-used forms for reporting abuse and that, after the edits, a far greater percentage of requests resulted in removal of results. Google disputes these figures, but it declined to share comprehensive data on NCEI.

Government-mandated transparency reports show Google has removed most of the nearly 170,000 search and YouTube links reported for unwanted sexual content in South Korea since December 2020, the earliest data available, and nixed nearly 300 pieces of content in response to 380 complaints from users in India since May 2021. The limited data suggest Google is finding more reports credible than its smaller rival in search Microsoft, which took action in 52 percent of the nearly 8,400 cases it received globally for Bing and other services from 2015 through June 2023.

Launched in late 2021, the StopNCII system has amassed a database of over 572,000 hashed photos and videos and blocked that media from being shared more than 12,000 times across 10 services, including Instagram and TikTok. Google hasn’t adopted the tool to block content from search due to concerns about what’s actually in the database, according to three sources.

To protect victims’ privacy, StopNCII doesn’t review content they report, and hashes reveal nothing about the underlying content. Google is worried that it could end up blocking something innocent, the sources say. “We don’t know if it’s just an image of a cupcake,” one of them says. The sources add that Google also has opted against bankrolling a system it considers better, despite internal suggestions to do so.

The Google spokesperson declined to comment on StopNCII, but in April the company told UK lawmakers who questioned Google about its decision not to use the tool that it had “specific policy and practical concerns about the interoperability of the database,” without elaborating.

Internally, Google workers have come up with some bold ideas to improve takedowns. Employees have discussed booting explicit websites, including porn companies, from search results unless they are willing to assure that their content is consensual, according to four sources. The idea hasn’t been adopted. Google’s search unit has shied away from setting rules on a thorny and taboo subject like sexual imagery, three sources say. “They don’t want to be seen as regulators of the internet,” one former staffer says.

Because Google sends significant traffic to explicit websites, it could force them to take stricter measures. About 15 percent of image searches and up to half of video searches among the billions Google receives daily are related to porn, says one former staffer, figures the company declined to comment on. “Google holds the keys to the kingdom,” the source says. Meanwhile, few others are stepping in. US lawmakers haven’t passed proposed legislation to impose consent checks on online uploads. And some popular services for sharing explicit content, such as Reddit and X, don’t require users to submit proof of subjects’ consent.

Porn producers, who collect identity information from performers as required by US law, support the sharing of a consent signal with search engines, says Mike Stabile, spokesperson for the industry trade body Free Speech Coalition. “Major adult sites already monitor and block NCII much more aggressively than mainstream platforms,” he says.

The Google spokesperson declined to comment on the consent idea but points to an existing penalty: Google last December began demoting—but not blocking—search results for websites that come up in “a high volume” of successful takedown requests.

The Google product manager and the spokesperson contend that the search team already has taken big steps over the past three years to ease the burden on survivors of image-based sexual abuse. But WIRED’s investigation shows that some improvements have come with caveats.

A system Google introduced that tries to automatically remove search links when previously reported content resurfaces on new websites doesn’t work on videos or altered images, and two sources say Google hadn’t dedicated staff to improving it. “It absolutely could be better, and there isn’t enough attention on how it could really solve victims’ problems,” one says. The spokesperson says staff are assigned to enhance the tool.

Another system called known victim protection tries to filter out results with explicit images from search queries similar to those from past takedown requests, the two sources say. It is designed to not disrupt results to legitimate porn and generally reduces the need for victims to stay vigilant for new uploads. But Google has acknowledged to South Korean regulators that the system isn’t perfect. “Given the dynamic and ever-changing nature of the web, automated systems are not able, 100 percent of the time, to catch every explicit result,” the company writes in its transparency reports.

In one of its biggest shifts, Google last August abandoned its policy of declining to remove links to content that included signs that it had been captured with consent. For years, if Google determined from the imagery and any audio that the subject knew they were being recorded without any signs of coercion or distress, it would reject the takedown ask unless the requester provided ample evidence that it had been published without consent. It was a “super-mushy concept,” one of the former employees says.

That same source says staff persuaded executives to update the policy in part by describing the importance of letting people who had become adult performers on OnlyFans out of financial necessity to later revoke their consent and shred any ties to sex work. The Google spokesperson didn’t dispute this.

The Washington, DC-based National Center on Sexual Exploitation, an anti-porn group that’s become an authority on image-based sexual abuse, argues that even after the revision, Google is falling short. It wants Google to automatically honor all takedown requests and put the burden on websites to prove there was consent to record and publish the disputed content. The Google spokesperson says that potential policy updates are constantly considered.

In the eyes of advocates, Google is being nowhere near as resourceful or attentive as it could or should be. Brad Gilde of Gilde Law Firm in Houston says he came away disappointed when his client won a headline-grabbing $1.2 billion judgment against an ex-boyfriend last August but then couldn’t get Google to remove a highly ranked search link to a sexually explicit audio recording of her on YouTube. The upload, which included the victim’s name and drew over 100 views, came down last month only after WIRED inquired.

Developing a reliable AI system to proactively identify nonconsensual media may prove impossible. But better keeping an ear out for big cases shouldn’t be too complicated, says Dan Purcell, a victim who founded removal company Ceartas DMCA. Google employees had a proposal on this issue: The company could establish a priority flagger program—as it has for other types of problematic content, including CSAM—and formally solicit tips from outside organizations such as Purcell’s that monitor for NCII. But staffing to administer the idea never came through. “​​Google is the No. 1 discoverability platform,” Purcell says. “They have to take more responsibility.” The Google spokesperson declined to comment.

DeBarber, the removal consultant who spoke with Google alongside his clients victimized by GirlsDoPorn, did a search for one of them this month while on the phone with WIRED. No links surfaced to videos of her, because DeBarber has spent over 100 hours getting those pages removed. But one porn service was misusing her name to lure in viewers to other content—a new result DeBarber would have to ask Google to remove. And through a different Google search, he could access a problematic website on which people can look up videos of his client.

Harassers regularly text that client links to her NCII, a frustrating reminder of how her past has yet to be erased. “They want to be out of sight and out of mind,” DeBarber says of his clients. “We’re heading in the right direction.” But he and survivors are counting on Google to help knock out the offenders for good. "A lot more could have been done by Google and still could be."

[thedistantshoresproject]

TDSP WEEKEND UPDATE

The Captain & The First Mate spent their weekly meeting discussing the podcast, and what has been done with the project. Here is the news on that.

-All walkthroughs for Ed and Ollie are done

-Walkthroughs of chapters 1-9 for Charlie are done

-Ollie route is formatted to go into the hands of our phenomenal programmer @shionch

Walkthroughs will be posted in PDF format on our Google Drive when the chapters are released. How you will get those PDFs are still in the works.

As for the podcast, The Captain & The First Mate are scheduling a day to record, so you still have time to ask us questions about TDSP that they will be answering. All names will be kept anonymous.

The Captain & The First Mate will brush up on that former employee review.

The Captain has learned through bitter experience that when it comes to providing what the hell is wrong with PB, it is best to provide solid proof from them, instead of relying on word-of-mouth from the fanbase.

This review counts as proof from PB.

[bocceclub]

this is hysterical

All those peaks and parabolic ceiling sections apparently aren't great for Wi-Fi propagation, with the Reuters report saying that the roof "swallows broadband like the Bermuda Triangle." Googlers assigned to the building are making do with Ethernet cables, using phones as hotspots, or working outside, where the Wi-Fi is stronger. One anonymous employee told Reuters, "You’d think the world’s leading Internet company would have worked this out."

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in SAN DIEGO (Feb 22, Mysterious Galaxy). After that, it's LA (Saturday night, with Adam Conover), Seattle (Monday, with Neal Stephenson), then Portland, Phoenix and more!

#15yrsago Tonga Room, San Francisco’s magnificent tiki bar: doomed? https://laughingsquid.com/will-the-tonga-room-be-a-casualty-of-the-fairmont-condo-plans/

#15yrsago New Zealand’s terrible copyright law suspended, may be dead https://web.archive.org/web/20090317045724/http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/86D681292534A2CCCC25756600143FD1

#10yrsago Ukrainian president Yanukovuych flees Kiev as opposition seize the palace https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/22/ukraine-crisis-uncertainty-after-yanukovych-signs-deal-live-updates

#10yrsago Cossacks horsewhip Pussy Riot at Sochi https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26265230

#10yrsago Pussy Riot use footage of cossack horsewhipping in new music video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjI0KYl9gWs

#10yrsago Austin cops violently crack down on scourge of anonymous jaywalking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6ugqW7fFmk

#5yrsago Whatsapp abused the DMCA to censor related projects from Github https://memex.craphound.com/2014/02/22/whatsapp-abused-the-dmca-to-censor-related-projects-from-github/

#5yrsago Blockbuster Gizmodo investigation reveals probable masterminds of the massive anti-Net Neutrality identity theft/astroturf campaign https://gizmodo.com/how-an-investigation-of-fake-fcc-comments-snared-a-prom-1832788658

#5yrsago This is bad: the UAE’s favorite sleazeball cybermercenaries have applied for permission to break Mozilla’s web encryption https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/02/cyber-mercenary-groups-shouldnt-be-trusted-your-browser-or-anywhere-else

#5yrsago Google ends forced arbitration contracts for workers after googler uprising https://www.wired.com/story/google-ends-forced-arbitration-after-employee-protest/

[palant1r]

This is probably dumb bc I have no experience in journalism so sorry in advance! But I do want to be a better reader and had a couple q's about things in the rusty quill article that pinged my radar

1. Under section 5 I believe, the author listed their and their colleagues' contact details as a way for former RQ employees to reach out for potential employment, surely they should have straight up not done that, especially with the real/perceived conflict of interest?

2. Was using TMA character names as pseudonyms a legitimate flag or just a lil weird? To me it seemed petty to use names from their biggest work, but again I'm not well versed in journalism and for all I know using names related to the subject is a normal thing

3. Is it normal to have so many leading questions hinting at but not quite stating the conclusion they wanted readers to reach? The sheer amount really jumped out at me but again im not sure if that's normal!

Massive thank you if you choose to answer, I have no idea what I might need to google to get answers haha

Thanks so much for the ask! No such thing as stupid questions, and you point out a lot of good things here.

Yes, absolutely, that's a conflict of interest. Should have been a tweet after the fact, if anything.

For me, the issue with the names is that many TMA characters were named after RQ employees. In my experience, anonymous sources usually don't have names unless there are enough of them that it would be confusing to refer to them by their role, which is certainly true here. I don't have experience of knowledge of the standard industry practice. But personally, it does seem like a red flag — explicitly naming central characters after people you know your readership has a personal positive connection to is not going to make for an unbiased story.

Nope. Absolutely not. Good unbiased investigative journalism lets the readers reach their own conclusion, with facts and quotes so hard-hitting and indisputable that you already know what the conclusion is going to be anyway.

Thanks so much for the questions! You're absolutely spot on with flagging these issues.

[goshdangronpa]

When I'm not writing Danganronpa fan fiction, I moonlight as a professional content/copywriter. All the fresh discourse about plagiarism is reminding me of some formative experiences in my work life, and certain people I've met ...

My first job was with a fast-paced marketing company. The in-house writing team maintained weekly blogs for a bunch of clients, and each writer had to write two 1000-word blog posts a day. That's tough, especially for someone who was still pretty fresh in the field. We were salaried rather than hourly (!), so there was no incentive to staying late ... but that also meant the company didn't have to fret about overtime pay, so we could stay late if we needed it. I'd regularly be the last one in the office, still pumping out words in the struggle to meet deadlines.

Much of my time was spent on research. I knew little about the subjects at hand, which were sometimes highly technical, so I couldn't just BS my way through assignments. I even requested and received permission to take one client's worker education course, just so I could know what the heck I was writing about. It didn't seem at all remarkable to me. It was a job. My job. Although I could've been better, or at least faster, I simply did what needed to be done.

I learned that others took a ... different approach.

One supervisor was on sabbatical for the first couple of months I worked there. I respected them as my superior. Then I was assigned to peer-edit one of their articles, something we did with everything we wrote. One uncited claim led me to Google ... where I found a nearly identical article already published. Supervisor did the ol' switcheroo of amending sentence structures and swapping words for poorly chosen synonyms. I brought it up with them, saying I wouldn't report the incident but urged them to not do that. I can't recall what happened next, other than not trusting Supervisor anymore.

After three months passed, I was up for employee review. The bosses liked what they've read - yay! And then they said, "Here's why we're not giving you a raise." My stomach dropped. Apparently, they checked how many articles everyone wrote. I was behind on a quota I knew nothing about. If I wanted more money, I should take a page from the writer in the lead. Champ had somehow written 60 articles in the past month. Amazing! My employer set a goal much humbler than what my work friend had surpassed. If Champ could do that much, surely I could do this little.

Reader, I did my best. I stayed at the office later and later, especially as the date of my next employee review drew near. Due to my salaried status, I wasn't even paid for that overtime, but I put in the time anyway. It was all for nothing. Just a week before the next meeting, where they would've decided whether I deserved a raise or not, they laid off virtually the entire writing department. Apparently, underpaying freelancers who don't get benefits was easier.

Only one person from the crew stayed. If it was gonna be anybody, it was golden goose Champ, who maintained their insane pace. I wished them well.

Anyone wanna guess the secret behind Champ's prodigious output? It's the same reason they got fired just a few weeks later.

The reveal was a betrayal. We were friends, Champ and I, getting each other through the grind of the content mill with sarcastic humor and deep conversations. They encouraged and motivated me to keep up, all the while hiding some dirty tricks that eventually helped them stay in the race while I spun out. I was shocked to discover that I had zero empathy for them. But they deserved none, the filthy plagiarist. Haven't spoken to them since finding out.

This may not be as sordid as everything H. Bomberguy discusses in his brilliant new video. My coworkers and I were literally anonymous, with no clout to speak of, let alone abuse. Our clients were small businesses with little platform, which is why they contracted a marketing agency in the first place. Still, it hurt the hell out of me, and I wasn't even the one being copied! Plagiarism is a curse word in my household, lowest of the low (without getting into, like, actual atrocity).

And you know what? Years later, what I wrote for that company still holds up in my eyes. Those old blog posts aren't exactly the Great American Novel, or even on par with what I'd write as I gained more experience, but I put the effort into writing high-quality and original stuff. I worked hard. I still work hard. As self-deprecating and even self-loathing as I can be, I'll always pride myself on this. May you writers out there be able to pride yourselves on this, too.

[psychic-refugee]

OK, so I don’t give money to garbage articles, I’m mostly pulling from what I can remember seeing people post about it. Some things to look out for when trying to disseminate information over the internet. 

First off, be very weary of “anon” sources for gossip. PHW isn’t Richard Nixon, and this isn’t Watergate. There’s no need for anyone to be anonymous if they’re stating facts or speculating/giving an opinion. Tim Burton isn’t Kevin Feige, who employs cloak and dagger tactics for an 8-episode tv series only on one streaming network and will never be syndicated.  

NDA’s might be part of employment contracts, but they’d be hard to enforce, especially if part of the alleged information had already been leaked by a third party. If this person did have “insider” information worth anything, then their paycheque and job benefits are worth more than anything some rando clickbait gossip site could give them. Even minimum wage jobs aren’t worth risking in order to gossip about a C+ and rising star.

Secondly, beware of incredibly vague descriptions such as “Netflix Insider.” According to google, Netflix employs 12,800 people. I don’t know if this counts people they contract out to, such as people who do closed captioning or ratings wrangling, but this could range from the CEO to sanitation staff, to make up artists and PAs on sets of their movies/series.  

Or could it be an independent contractor that works for Netflix, so not technically a Netflix employee.

Or it could be some guy who has a Netflix account.

We don’t know what job this person has or from whom they heard this gossip from. Hell, it could be some rando who wandered “inside” of Netflix HQ. WHO KNOWS?!

If there is no legally regulated definition of something, then anyone can slap that label on anything and be done.

They keep it intentionally vague to bypass anyone claiming they actually said anything.

If some dumbass uses the article as a reference in a defamation suit or say to harass someone on Twitter, then the writers can say “well, we technically didn’t say that or mean it in such a way, so don’t get us involved or blame us in any way.”

Thirdly, if there is CYA (Cover Your Ass) language, just assume they’re pulling everything out of their ass. If the “insider” wasn’t vague enough, then they simply tell you “this hasn’t been confirmed by…” and they generally put this at the end, where they assume after you read the juicy stuff, you’ve stopped reading. Or they’re counting on you not caring because you just want something that confirms your bias.

Either way, they muddied the waters of whether or not they are for sure standing behind anything they wrote. They’re basically saying “We’re claiming this sensationalist drivel…but don’t quote us on it.”

Remember, any asshole can create a website and sell ad space to create a gossip site. Literally. Just because it's online, doesn’t make it actual news.

Like with the accusers, these rag sites are normally not worth going after even if they post the biggest lies because 1) they don’t make any actual money to cover attorney fees much less punitive damages. 2) No serious or reasonable person takes them seriously, only gullible dumbasses.

So @heyharoldsboo is correct. Do not click on these pages, don’t give them money, or encourage them to write more with your internet traffic.