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raviposting · 4 years ago

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Okay so I’ve seen a lot of conflicting responses to Buddie this episode, from it being clear to people that they’re getting together, to thinking the writers have unintentionally messed things up to thinking it’s purely queerbait.

And I get the different responses, I do - tbh I’m somehow in two camps, where I simultaneously believe it’s a slowburn but I also think it’s bait. And those are two very different opinions to have and it got me thinking about why we have these different responses as fans to the possibility of a queer ship (namely two men who would presumably be bi/pan) being canon.

While people talk about how it’s just people wanting two characters to kiss or entitled fans - sure, that’s existent in every fandom, but I think there’s also a very real fear from queer fans who don’t want to get their hopes up and I d on’t love how the conversation has shifted to calling queer fans stupid for having hope, so I kind of wanted to break it down into 3 aspects that I’ve noticed:

How writers portray bi characters and why that makes fans hesitant to have hope

What queerbait actually means as a concept

How much “slowburn” has changed in procedurals

1. How writers portray bi characters

Something I’ve thought about a lot are the bi characters I’ve seen on TV - Darryl (CEG), Sara Lance (Arrow), Lucifer (Lucifer), just to name a few. These are great characters imo and I think you’d have a fun time watching but a thing to note is that all these characters were established as bi within the first season of their respective shows and they all fairly quickly fell into a clear romantic ship as well (with the exception of Sara as she spanned multiple shows). It may have taken time for them to say the word bisexual, but it was still clear these characters were queer fairly quickly on. You could maybe argue that Lucifer was a slowburn, but then (while it does not take away from him being bi/pan so do not use this as an excuse to be shitty about him) it’s a m/f ship which is still not the point of my post, to find a m/m or f/f ship that has that same treatment.

Some writers have done it - like for Valencia in CEG, or Petra in JTV - when they saw that fans read them this way, but trying to find those characters were few and far between, and when I looked at popular queerbait ships (whether or not they actually are queerbait) it’s usually ships where the characters are largely viewed as bisexual. A lot of times this also comes with pushback from both straight and to be frank, other queer fans as well. Straight fans don’t always see the signs that queer fans do, so to them a queer character who hasn’t been explicitly clear from the start comes out of nowhere. And what I’ve seen from certain queer fans are concerns that people aren’t appreciating the canon queer characters in a show - and I think there is a conversation to be had about that, but I don’t think the response should also be about then demanding less representation for people either.

If we go back to 911, people talk a lot about how it has canon queer characters, which it definitely does - Michael, Hen, Josh, Karen, and David are all canonically gay/lesbian and that’s awesome, and we absolutely should talk about fans (white fans in particular) ignoring these characters. It also does not change the fact that none of these characters are bisexual and that is the representation people are looking for. Both of these things are true - these characters are often under appreciated in canon AND people deserve bisexual representation. They don’t contradict each other and to act like one negates the other does a huge disservice.

And even if a character was made bisexual in the canon text we don’t get that slowburn. This may be true for things like Leverage, or LOK, but there’s also a real fact of censorship that affected these shows and the fact that general audiences may not understand the queer text tjat the writers intended. It doesn’t make the writing any less wonderful or the ships any less poignant or beautiful or important, and there’s ofc shows like She Ra that made this more obvious (or the.....mess that was Supernatural that made it. Half true?) but these are still real things that should be acknowledged on why people are so hesitant to call it slowburn - because it’s something most queer fans haven’t SEEN DONE, because m/f ships will get that care for slowburn when it’s done but it’s not done for m/m or f/f ships in that same capacity.

2. What queerbait is

This one’s fun because I don’t think many people understand what it is, but queerbait is very dependent on the intentions of the writers/creators/etc. - which tbh can be hard to gauge, because a genuine intention that ended up not happening or someone baiting fans or someone trying to support all ships and not be rude all have very different intentions but to a fan who only sees bits and pieces of this person on social media, it can be hard to gauge.

Honestly with how much the 4th wall gets broken because of social media now I’d personally say we’ve probably moved into a different definition of queerbait - unintentional vs intentional - because we’re at a point where a show knows what ships are popular and at what level of excitement fans are for it - but that being said, there’s still a clear spectrum of intent. And imo? I don’t think 911 has that intent of queerbait - whether it’s a slowburn or they have a different vision for buddie that I (probably) won’t agree with remains to be seen, but this show usually treats its storylines with care. Are they perfect at it? No, definitely not, I definitely think that they’ve dropped the ball a few times (especially with just how many characters they have lmao), but they also clearly do their storylines with earnest and with genuine care for these characters.

Is 911 getting them together? I want to say yes. I don’t think this was always the plan, just something that they decided along the way, but I also don’t think that changes anything about the ship. A lot of people point to Tim Minear being vague about the ship, or the actors and their interpretations, but 1. We have no idea what they’ve been told about Buddie moving forward and 2. No show runner is going to spoil their show that much. 911 may be keeping quiet because they have a different plan for buddie, sure, but also maybe because they’re still figuring out how exactly they want to do this and/or they want to make this slowburn and don’t want to give it away.

3. Slowburn in procedurals

I feel like this is something that procedurals have started shying away from, but slowburns used to be very common - Bones, Castle, their ships didn’t get together for literal years, but that’s just not something that many shows do nowadays, even for m/f ships. Even things like Deckerstar will have the characters get together after ~3 seasons and explore the relationship onwards, whereas a few years ago, y ou’d pr obably be watching a sh ow and it’d take them 7 seasons to get together. My assumption for this is that shows are afraid of getting canceled, but there’s been a pretty big shift in getting a couple together after say, 6 seasons to now getting them together about halfway through the show. I don’t think either one is bad or good - in good writers’ hands, either can be amazing - but that shift has made it so that a lot of younger fans in particular, I think, don’t fully recognize slowburn when they see it.

911 as a show tends to run pretty fast - it kind of has to with its depth of characters they have - but when they do have slower running storylines they really do make use of that as well. Bobby’s addiction is something that’s always going to be present in his character, May’s suicide attempt was brought up again front and center after 3 seasons, even Chim’s dynamic with the Lees was brought up again and it was reinforced again that they’re his family. There are certain storylines that have to be continuous and aren’t a one and done type of thing, and that includes Buck and Eddie, especially if you want to establish them as queer to a general audience who doesn’t think about these things.

And honestly, despite my fears, I think they are laying groundwork there. We have Buck learning to be more confident in his relationships, we have Eddie ready to date and learning to follow his own heart, we have Buck and Eddie both establishing that Buck is family and will always be there for Christopher. These are pretty big steps to do for a ship and we’ll obviously have to see how the show goes forward but they’ve already insinuated Eddie and Ana are breaking up, I’m sure Taylor and Buck may last a season and be over, but we do have to see what this next season brings. Do I think they’d say this? No, definitely not.

tl;dr:

911 is a show with good viewership, but there’s always a possibility they can’t continue with their season and then their promises would feel like a lie. Or they may still be hammering out the details as this season hasn’t been written. Or they may just simply not want to spoil their show, or they don’t want people criticizing a story before it’s finished, all of these could be reasons. The showrunners, writers, actors, ultimately they owe nothing to us as a fandom to potentially spoil their series, or do something, change it or their schedule for it, and get accused of bait.

But it also doesn’t change why fans are wary of this storyline either, and I wish people would have more nuance and compassion for fans who are worried about queerbait (whether they think it’s not queerbait and dislike people worrying about it or if they do and are calling people idiots for believing it). There’s a lot of reasons why fans are wary and don’t want to have hope, and it’s not necessarily about 911 specifically as it is a pattern of writing seen in other pieces that have fans worried. These things can all coexist and I wish we as fandom in general could acknowledge that, because pretending that they don’t and criticizing each other/people’s intentions or knowledge when they have certain expectations also doesn’t do much to help.

#warning this is long so if you read this bless you #but also i wrote this forever so maybe give a read?#it gets into buddie more specifically at the end so bear with me lmao #buddie #911 fox #fandom #queerbait #janie overthinks media #buddie meta #911 on fox

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mejomonster · 4 years ago

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It seems like we have to stop waiting for Hyx because it got delayed. The official account of Caibao (Xue Meng's mom's cat) has posted this weibo.cn/status/4623729428793851? So, at the end, this spring we won't have the drama, we'll have to wait until summer ends. At least, it's nice to know it rather than being speculating until autumn or winter.

i heard that and i’m gonna choose to be hopeful lol ToT

i heard a youtuber do a translation of what they wrote, and while that youtuber has a lot of good updates on when shows are starting filming and wrapping up, there’s usually pictures and actual press releases for that stuff. they also do videos on when actors have chemistry or might be dating, so its kind of fun to just have heard about this weibo post at all. they translated it and it more or less referenced 2ha and how ‘spring is whenever the blossoms bloom’ and ‘waiting is fine for the blossoms.’ but that doesn’t necessarily mean the show is delayed. just that there’s an acknowledgement, from this person, that fans have been waiting a long time and should be patient as the characters in 2ha waiting for the blossoms. i think the quote may also have referenced ‘autumn’? and if its from the novel that may be just as likely why.

that said, i’ve heard scattered rumors on weibo of air dates on 4/15, 4/20, or else July or August. So if it is going to air july or august, this isn’t the first rumor. (the other rumor i literally only saw on one random weibo post though so idk where They got the month guess from, since it was prior to this post).

chinese star news video: https://youtu.be/RKUZxAEZibo

he mentions many people assume 4/8 or 4/15 will be the air date.

also ‘its highly probable it will not be broadcast in april, a blogger posted a long post - “chu wanning is not in a hurry, don’t be in such a hurry, mo ran used to be impatient but his experience tempered his patience, chu wanning practiced solitude and no one knew when he’d wake up, we should learn to be patient and live our lives while waiting, xue meng asked ‘will the crab apple miss spring?’, chu wanning said for people who like blossoms, the day the flower blossoms is the beginning of spring.’

just me contemplating random stuff under cut

to me that kind of sounds like it could be ‘don’t be mad until it airs, chill out’ and is kinda regardless of when it airs. doesn’t really say an air date or anything specific.

What kind of sucks? cdramas air WHENEVER, and we are not likely to get any official updates at any point. the day it airs, we’ll get the first ep (and probably the trailer) and that’s when we’ll know lol. i doubt there’s even going to be official news from the show if it is delayed. i haven’t seen bls ever say if there’s issues (i’m not sure if regular dramas ever communicate, but Rattan delayed like a week and said nothing lol). usually the only thing to go by is that once you’ve heard censorship board approved, and seen some posters drop, it might be out in the next several months. both of those happened with Immortality so it could release.. whenever. now, later, whenever. (i remember hearing some show got released 2 years after it was shot? i don’t remember if that was Killer and Healer but it might’ve been...)

summer this year has limitations on certain genres like xianxia airing, so it would be shaky to decide to try to air then when it could easily be told ‘actually nope not letting you’? Also if they wait til the last part of the year, they’ll be competing with A League of Gentlemen (I forgot if this is literally another bl TENCENT is doing but it might be awkward releasing 2 bl’s and your own stuff competing with you... which that show is the bl I heard might be airing in summer if one does). And then also Sha Po Lang - which if they’re worried about competition with Word of Honor right now, the thing is once Sha Po Lang airs if it happens to get attention for being another priest adaptation, its gonna drag attention in anyway (its also generally been said to be chinese reader’s Favorite priest novel! whereas Faraway Wanderers - word of honor’s book - is one of priest’s older books). So SPL is Going to get attention - both for being the most loved novel being adapted, and because it being another priest adaptation means people who happened to like any of the other adaptations may check it out hoping for another show they like. Airing around SPL could just as easily be a risk... whereas again... I think if they aired now, with no other airing bl, they could drag attention in from the hype word of honor got (if they engage properly, and if their show is decently good).

#replies #anonymous #ask #immortality #hyx #thank u for the update hun #if there's any more rumors talking about july/august then maybe lol #i would like to be optimistic ToT still #i mean upside we'll know when aprils over if its airing now or not lol #and if its not? im gonna chill and wait until fall #cause honestly trying to release in summer sounds kinda... difficult?

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kingedmundsroyalmurder · 6 years ago

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Taaaam please write and Immortal Bahorel and Ghost Jehan fic pleaaase it sounds amazing:D

So here’s the thing. For a while, nothing really changes. Oh, sure, they’re both devastated by the outcome of the ‘32 uprising, devastated personally and devastated politically, but Bahorel has a lifetime of devastations behind him. He knows how to keep moving, knows how to mourn and howl at the moon and rend his clothes in grief and then keep going. He gets blind drunk and vows to tear the King and his men apart with his bare hands and commits some targeted property damage with the help of Gavroche’s momes, and then he picks himself back up and goes to find some of the cells that survived the uprising and starts rebuilding the movement.

And Jehan, well, Jehan is wispy (even more so now that he is truly translucent) and dramatic, blushes and hides when pretty girls look at him, spends hours contemplating the beauty of daisies while tears roll down his cheeks, and is surprisingly, deliberately resilient. He haunts the homes of those who did not answer the call, pours his grief and his anger into terrorizing the rich and the powerful who were more afraid of losing what they had than they were eager to give to those who had nothing. He amuses himself, with a sharp, black humor that Bahorel did not realize he had in him, in delivering portents, omens of doom and messages from Beyond signalling the Gods’ displeasure.

So they keep going. Jehan flits around, haunts cemeteries when he’s feeling despondent and the medical school when he’s feeling playful, inhabits, each in turn, every cathedral in Paris, spends some time sulking and terrorizing everyone who moves into his former dwelling until Bahorel accuses him of being petty and then haunts Bahorel instead. Bahorel takes this in stride, continues failing to attend his classes and succeeding in learning to circumvent the law despite this. For the first few years, the only thing that really changes is that Jehan now takes delight in being able to go through walls. He dictates poetry, which Bahorel duly transcribes until Jehan learns enough about his new state of existence to manipulate a quill, writes about the beauties of death’s embrace and the tragedy of seeing a beautiful woman who will never, ever return your gaze and, when he’s feeling melancholy, about the crushing hopelessness of finding yourself adrift and unable to explore the afterlife. Some of it gains a modicum of acclaim, some of it goes ignored, some of it is mocked by his critics for being so caught up in the business of death and its beauties and its horrors that the poet might well be dead himself.

But the world keeps moving. Time marches on, dragging progress with it, and slowly they find their dreams being realized. The republic arrives, falters, stands strong. The steam train makes the world smaller, the Trans-Atlantic telegraph even more so. It’s not so much that the world leaves them behind – they are, both of them, flexible enough to keep up – but that after a certain time they find themselves increasingly in need of new hobbies, new causes, new directions in life and unlife alike.

They travel, take advantage of new technology to make journeys in weeks that would, in their time, have taken months. They go East, spend years exploring what that part of the world has to offer, develop new tastes and cling ferociously to some old ones. Time is different, when eternity stretches before you. They spend an entire decade exploring every tiny cranny of Medina and think nothing of it, vanish for months into deserts and jungles and cities and emerge as though it had only been a few weeks. Bahorel has long perfected the strategy of being so utterly at home in his skin that it never occurs to onlookers to question any part of him, and Jehan by now has mastered the art of phasing into and out of view at will. Their eccentricities are chalked up to being young and foreign, and the ready supply of cash that Bahorel always manages to keep on hand quiets most who would ask odd questions of them.

Still, even they can’t travel forever and, inexorably, Paris calls them home.

Bahorel has to admit, there was a part of him that was expecting Paris to notice their return. Not a parade or a fanfare necessarily, although he wouldn’t have refused, but something. Jehan hadn’t bothered with the train for the last part of the journey, just raced on ahead, riding the wind like the incorporeal Romantic he is, and so Bahorel steps out alone onto the platform of a train station, the same one he left from, so many years ago, but so changed that it might as well have been entirely new. He collects his baggage, takes a moment to collect his bearings, signals for a porter and asks for directions to a hotel. He is French, he tells the man, but has been away from home for a long time. The porter looks him up and down, takes in his mostly ageless face, his clothes bought in the east and so out of fashion here, smirks a little, nods. Bahorel is given directions to an establishment catering to students and poorer intellectuals, the type who care more about enriching the mind than satisfying the flesh. He stays there for a few days, long enough to determine how much the social zoning of the city has changed since he was last there, then finds himself more permanent accommodations not far from where he once lived, nearly a century before. He hasn’t seen Jehan since arriving. He doesn’t worry too much. Jehan lives between two worlds, unmoored first by death and then by decades of exploration. He’ll return, in his time. He always does.

Bahorel settles in. He makes contact with his family, finds them as hale as ever, meekly submits to a scolding for being away so long by an old woman whom he once introduced to his friends as his youngest niece, meets the new children and distributes sweets to young and old alike. He has barely begun to find a routine, it feels like, when the war comes and swallows his country whole.

When Jehan reemerges, Bahorel is neck-deep in political resistance groups, pulling out skills he hasn’t used in half a century and adapting them for modern times. It feels almost like home, this world of subversive activities and censorship, of watching his back for spies and government agents, of fighting for what is right, not what is legal or what is fashionable. He finds Jehan working in a sister cell, one that always manages to escape just before the authorities get wind of them, or who find overly inquisitive visitors being delayed just long enough to hide any incriminating materials. Bahorel is not surprised to learn that this cell focuses on helping children escape, and on hiding those who can’t. Bahorel himself is already hiding one refugee in his home; Jehan, he learns, has three.

They fight. Darkness encroaches ever further, eats away at hearts and at streets. Places that were safe to meet one day are traps the next, men who could be trusted to turn a blind eye go to the police instead, some with regret in their hearts, some with only bitterness. Tanks drive through the country, tear up the fields and sow mines where once there had been grain. Jehan weeps ghostly tears for the desecration all around them and ensures that his friends always stay one step ahead of the law. He spies, turning himself invisible and sitting in on meetings, reads documents and transcribes them from memory by candlelight in his apartment. Bahorel organizes and encourages, draws attention to himself so that others might pass unnoticed, holds his nose and studies the updates to the legal code in order to wring as many ration cards out of the authorities as possible. He forges signatures, copied from examples Jehan liberated from offices in the dead of night, and whispers pass through the resistance of Paris that his is a door to knock on if you are in need.

Through it all, they continue living. Jehan pens poems, sitting cross legged on nothing at all, pen and paper held by invisible hands as he loses grip on his visible form, swept away by the words in his mind. He slips out by moonlight, easily evades the soldiers and their checkpoints, rambles the outskirts of Paris that were once so familiar to him, mourns the loss of wildflowers and dances in the rain. Bahorel joins him, sometimes, but he has always preferred the company of men to the company of flowers, and so spends his evenings drinking wine and bolstering hearts. His indomitable spirits are legendary; when asked how he does not lose hope, with the darkness and the despair crushing down on them, he only laughs, pours a drink, says with a smirk that he’s older than he looks and he knows the sun will always find a way to rise again.

And rise it does. Slowly, painfully, a messy process of liberation that leaves some more wounded than before, but still the darkness lifts. Bahorel’s housemate, the lanky former student who, by the end, hadn’t seen daylight in months, steps out of the apartment and blinks into the morning sun. Jehan’s three children sit still, too still, on his balcony with eyes wide open and hope on their small faces.

That’s not the end, of course. They have a country to rebuild, a people to heal, a war’s worth of scars to map and come to terms with. Buildings have to be rebuilt, cities have to be repaired, countrysides have to be coaxed back to fruitfulness. Jehan takes up writing furious letters to the newspapers about the demolition of old buildings to make way for new constructions. Bahorel takes the more direct route of becoming an architect, returns to university yet again and sets up a practice of his own, wields a hammer and a drafting pen like weapons and single-handedly confronts anyone who would argue that the past is not worth remembering.

They rebuild. Jehan publishes a volume of poetry that, while well received, is eventually the subject of a dissertation comparing it to the works of an obscure poet from the mid 19th century. It’s a scathing comparison, one that accuses Jehan of profiting from this poet’s obscurity rather than coming up with ideas of his own. Jehan sulks for months upon learning that he has been accused of plagiarizing himself. Bahorel laughs for days and offers to challenge the author to a duel, providing Jehan tells him whether he is to be defending the honor of the living poet or the dead one. (Jehan wants to know which of them, after so long, is which. Bahorel has no answer.)

And the world moves on. Their friends grow up, grow old, and Bahorel and Jehan continue as they are, eternal, part of the world and yet outside of it, an immortal and a spectre doing their best to provide for the living and the mortal while they can. They laugh, they cry, they travel, they fall in love with women, with men, with cities, with neighborhoods, with each other. They fight, for the future, for the kind of progress that will never be achieved and yet is always worth striving toward, for the memory of those they’ve lost and the promise of those they’ve yet to meet. They live.

#pilferingapples #audience participation #this is not the direction i thought this was going to go #but this is the direction it went #sorry if you were expecting hi-jinks and ended up with hopepunk #this fcking book though

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scifimagpie · 5 years ago

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Political Oroboros: Why Marx Is Not Enough

First of all, I realise the title of this piece is inflammatory, so let me lay out some caveats.

I am absolutely not conservative. (One of the first things to know about leftist fighting and discussions online is that 'liberal' has two different meanings; the broad sense in which conservative commentators use it, and the more specific and technically correct sense that leftists sometimes use it - as well as the tertiary sense of, "anyone who isn't quite radical enough.')

I wouldn't necessarily call myself a liberal in the sense of condoning a capitalist system; I do find the most common ground with proponents of democratic socialism. However, some elements of communist ideology do seem solid, although I tend to like many of the ideas I've seen from anarcho-syndicalists more.

Confused by those terms? You're not alone, but some of the hippest trends among the youth of today are not just trap music and street wear - it's political and philosophical discourse. Different streams of communism and anarchism and debating the concepts of idealists through the ages is pretty great, but treating those ideas as a firm road map and, perhaps, the only acceptable solution or map, is not so excellent.

After several weeks of careful surveillance and investigation, I also came to some unsettling and unsavory conclusions.

Source

There's a weird and disconcerting mix of progressive and regressive ideas in this new wild west of a political movement; using "gay" and "retard" as insults in this year, and talking about second-wave feminist gender concepts (Penis = man! Vagina = woman! are not scientifically validated ideas anymore, even if they have held sway for a long time) as though they're based on reality is...a special kind of confusing, frankly. The person mentioned below isn't actually the "leader" of Antifa (antifacism is a general belief and approach, not an organization; the Black Bloc is something different) but the points they're making shouldn't actually have to be made. And yet, here we are. (To clarify: this person's opinion is, as far as I'm concerned, correct, because it's a summary of historical facts.)

We can try to tweak the perspective on things and change the way someone is seen, but facts have this tendency to assert themselves. And when those facts take the form of thousands of dead bodies, politely covering them up or scootching them out of the way is a bit harder. In the case of leaders such as Winston Churchill, it's been easier to laud their successes and forget the death toll because they were victorious, but it doesn't erase his contributions to the Bengal Famine and his decision to test gas weapons on Kurdish villagers.

Yet even when we debate the value and leadership of dictators, history tends to reassert itself.

“History isn’t like that. History unravels gently, like an old sweater. It has been patched and darned many times, reknitted to suit different people, shoved in a box under the sink of censorship to be cut up for the dusters of propaganda, yet it always—eventually—manages to spring back into its old familiar shape. History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it. History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve.” ― Terry Pratchett, Mort

Nobody is good enough

Of course, just because someone agrees with history (!) and is willing to unflinchingly consider mass murderers as guilty of their crimes doesn't mean they'll avoid participating in the cannibalistic discussions of leftist politics. A particularly difficult issue has been criticism of the Youtuber Contrapoints, who has both been lauded for her very real effects in de-radicalizing extremists, and criticized for fumbling her way through understanding non-binary genders (and struggling to deal with the flood of online criticism afterwards.) But merely liking a figure who is problematic (or worse, Trash, if they have failed one time too many) can be grounds for a friendship breaking up or the sort of extremely tense, stressful discussion that keeps one awake for hours afterwards.

As I said on Facebook one night, "Whiny comment of the night: it would be easier to unite the left if the radicals weren't so dead-set on everyone just converting to their beliefs as much as possible.And Seems like you can learn about Marxism, cultural history, feminism, and all of that...but it's impossible to unlearn American cultural hegemonic approaches and seeing violence as the default/best option." But to clarify, this isn't speculation without sourcing. I did a bit of an investigation into a few leftist pages, and it was really unnerving to see the number of pro-gun and "eat the rich" and "fetch the guillotines" sorts of remarks and posters. The thing is, we've all done that dance before, and it's going on in other countries at the moment. Riots and protests are excellent when they work, but sometimes, they don't - and we don't talk about what happens when they don't.

The risk of small government

At the risk of sounding like a cranky old lady, smaller governments are still governments. People who think some military junta of kids with guns can replace all the architecture and organizational levels of "the state" are welcome to try working in a city planning office as an admin assistant some time. Having done that myself, I would welcome anyone who wants to just replace and rewrite all those land laws, which by the way exist for reasons, to maybe take a civil engineering course or two.

And if you DON'T want to replace all that architecture, just get rid of the bad stuff - congrats, that's actually just reformism, which is still a far cry from "just accepting things the way they are."

As a fan and casual scholar of cults, I've had many opportunities to see examples of small, ideologically-driven communities turn rotten. Frankly, I wouldn't trust my own town to just secede and govern itself, even though I'm very pleased with our mayor's decisions. I know too much about white people and sociology and Christianity (as well as other religions and groups) to trust that small, self-governing, autonomous groups will be fine on their lonesome. We're kinda in a globalized society with many, many supply chains. If you don't like that, get working on a time machine.

Yet even if one were to travel back in time, we've always had international trade and whatnot, and isolationism has never worked especially well. Also it's how you get fascism in the first place, so...history says it's how you make the exact monster you're trying to fight. Worst of all, these defenses of fascists and murderers do nothing but divide us along sectarian points of conflict.

Sometimes I worry the Revolution will just be online and never actually get offline

— 🏴🛡Justin🛡🏴 (@sharkle82) July 19, 2019

What do we do?

Honestly, my approach lately has just been to ignore Leftbook and debate spaces and not engage. Trying to discuss theory and concepts has led to some arguments over the applications of violence that have, honestly, made me stop trusting and just lose certain friends altogether. One otherwise brave and locally committed person said, "violence is neither good nor bad. It's a tool." Although I agree that self-defense actions are not exactly violent, I just don't think we should glorify aggression, or be eager to shed blood. It tends to lead to bad results, and it's uncomfortably similar to the stance we're opposing. My take?

Personally, I don't trust anyone who thinks the problems will all be fixed if we just kill a few of the right people.

The people who sit around day-dreaming about 19th century revolutionaries aren't necessarily the ones helping to, say, actually fight the battles that need fighting here and now. It may seem ridiculous to say, "hey, watch out for this," and also, "but you can basically ignore it," but frankly, that approach has worked extremely well for me in real life.

The key is this. What do you want to accomplish, in practical terms? Forget about "praxis" and "theory"; what are the concrete, fundamental changes you want to see, and the results you want in society and your community? Every change comes incrementally. Evolution is unavoidable. However, we have an existing system that we can use - and dare I say it, that we can apply our strength to if we're determined enough.

How to change the world

Writing actual letters to politicians in my city, province, and country, engaging in the community fight for preservation of a local Safe Consumption Site, signing petitions for various environmental protection causes, and applying pressure to politicians, as well as keeping an eye on actual local white supremacists, fascists, and extremists has done more and had a greater impact than anything in my decade or so of arguing with people on the internet.

My only regret is that I didn't start using my skills in the real world much, much sooner. It turns out that all the people who insist that those in power won't listen to "us" are, unequivocally, wrong. And while I do have white and cis privilege to thank for some of my results, I would also argue that we on the left must not presume our own helplessness and confine ourselves to training arenas online. Get out there. Talk to politicians. Stay up to date on the news and follow multiple sources, rather than reading 150-year-old essays. And above all, embrace the power of both individual actions and solidarity.

I have more to say about this topic, but instead of creating another series, a few essays may be cropping up. Until then, however, I have real work to do, both in the political world and out of it. For one thing, books aren't going to finish themselves!

***

Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer and editor. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partner-in-crime and Max the cat. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and learning too much. She is currently working on other people’s manuscripts, the next books in her series, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible.

Find her all over the internet: * OG Blog * Mailing list * Magpie Editing * Amazon * Medium * Twitter * Instagram * Facebook * Tumblr * Paypal.me * Ko-fi

#politics #discourse #tactics #leftism #liberal #how to #debate #activism

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theconservativebrief · 6 years ago

Link

Tumblr announced Monday that it would be banning many categories of adult content across its platform, including “photos, videos, or GIFs” displaying explicit material, as well as “illustrations that [depict] sex acts.”

The controversial change will take effect on December 17; existing posts flagged by Tumblr’s censors as violating the new policy will be automatically set to private, meaning that no one will be able to see them other than the blog’s creator.

Debate is raging about what Tumblr’s userbase will even look like at that point, given how much of the community involves erotica and the use of explicit imagery. Discussion of the ban consumed social media throughout Monday evening, and Tumblr users responded with a mixture of outrage, worry, and hilarious memes.

On the one hand, it’s easy to see why Tumblr, now in its 11th year as a social media platform known for “reblogs” and image-heavy content, made this move: it seems very likely that its hand was probably forced by Apple. In November, Apple banned Tumblr’s official app from the IOS store because of reported child pornography on the platform. This led to a sitewide crackdown on pornography that left many users complaining that their NSFW blogs had been unfairly purged in the sweep.

Yet despite last month’s initial purge, the app has still not been restored to the IOS store, in what seems to be a clear ‘fix this or else’ ultimatum from Apple that has almost certainly prompted the current crisis. As Motherboard wrote on Monday in its breakdown of the Tumblr situation, “Apple has repeatedly leveraged its unprecedented power over millions of smartphones to sanitize the apps that are available on iPhones.”

In an email response, a Tumblr spokesperson directed Vox back to the staff announcement, including the staff’s acknowledgment that “filtering this type of content versus say, a political protest with nudity or the statue of David, is not simple at scale. We’re relying on automated tools to identify adult content and humans to help train and keep our systems in check. We know there will be mistakes, but we’ve done our best to create and enforce a policy that acknowledges the breadth of expression we see in the community.”

But on the other hand, many users are outraged over what they see as an attempt to disrupt the entire culture of Tumblr and its community, where erotica and NSFW artwork and storytelling have thrived and flourished — and where marginalized communities who have built safe spaces may now be newly vulnerable.

“According to marginalized and vulnerable people, this change in policy will directly hurt them,” wrote geek icon and power user Wil Wheaton, in a reblog of an inappropriately flagged post which featured nothing more offensive than shirtless men kissing. “And that’s indefensible.”

What’s at issue is not only the question of whether Tumblr can survive its own purge — it’s the question of who Tumblr’s core users are, and what will motivate them to continue building their communities on a platform that seems to be devaluing them and their vital contributions to building Tumblr culture.

Though Tumblr was born alongside most other modern social networks, it’s long been associated with a certain countercultural deviance. Founder David Karp launched it in 2007 when he was just 20, and his much-vaunted hoodie-wearing ethos helped give the site a permanently youthful attitude — even an air of “millennial narcissism.”

Tumblr’s younger, digital-savvy denizens made Tumblr into a center of internet culture, churning out memes and cultivating subcultures from fandoms to study bloggers to digital art collectives. But despite all this, the site has long been plagued by an unfairly dismissive cultural reputation that reduces the entire vibrant platform to a vast repository of porn, and not much else.

The association of Tumblr with porn is part of a longstanding media narrative that has perpetually dismissed the site and its userbase for its relative youth, its progressive politics, its fandom leanings, and its predominantly queer and feminist userbase.

“Every time I make the mistake of opening Tumblr at work I end up seeing a stray boob,” Akila Hughes joked in Splinter News.

This reputation further reduces the community that gave us “Tumblr activism” — the disruptive but progressive political force that grew into a loud generation of real-world activists — down to that of a bunch of women who are only there for porn.

And even the porn itself gets mischaracterized. The fact is that the erotic and NSFW imagery on Tumblr includes everything from fanart to sex education, and is a vibrant and much-valued part of the community. And while data analysts have uncovered that, yes, there is a lot of porn on Tumblr, it’s coming from only a tiny fraction — about a tenth of one percent — of the site’s creators.

And the producers of this pornography are not active members of the Tumblr community. Most of the producers of pornography on Tumblr are pornbots, automated accounts set up to specifically generate NSFW content, much of it designed to lure users to third-party paid content sites.

Still, because pornbots don’t always stay in their lane, it’s easy for users reading random “normal” tags to be exposed to them. The site has tried multiple times to deal with porn in its midst. Users have even tried to help, organizing spontaneous organic pornbot-banning campaigns. But the site’s efforts haven’t been enough to keep it from running into trouble with third parties — most notably, Apple, which, in its ban of anything “overtly sexual,” is not attuned to the blurry lines between porn, erotica, and other types of racy content.

Tumblr has long sagged under the weight of doubt regarding its longterm sustainability. The site plateaued its growth in 2016 at just 23 million users, less than half that of Twitter at the time and a third that of Instagram, which has since ballooned exponentially.

Since the exit last year of its longtime chief David Karp, and the sale of the site to Verizon, rumblings that Tumblr is finally finished have abounded. Meanwhile, Tumblr users have been increasingly at odds with Tumblr’s corporate side, as the business tries to balance potential money-making opportunities with its unruly yet thriving corner of internet culture. Unfortunately, the short-term solution seems to be a pivot away from that grassroots culture towards more rigidly controlled content — which opens the door to a whole new set of problems.

One of the biggest questions on the minds of Tumblr users is whether Tumblr can effectively carry out this policy without nuking everything in its path. The consensus so far, based on both past experience with Tumblr as well as other algorithmic censorship attempts, as well as the abundant reports of posts that are already being inappropriately flagged under the new change: not a chance.

Welp, my Tumblr blog is marked NSFW, bc I curse like a sailor and occasionally I reblog fanart, fine art, and protest art that contains nudity. (Yes, including FEMALE-PRESENTING NIPPLES.) So I guess my Tumblr blog will be on the chopping block too.

So where we goin’ next, y’all?

— N. K. Jemisin (@nkjemisin) December 3, 2018

It’s important to note that Tumblr is attempting to explicitly draw a dividing line between its users’ creative content and the more hardcore stuff. Tumblr’s new policy defines “adult content” as “primarily includ[ing] photos, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples, and any content—including photos, videos, GIFs and illustrations—that depicts sex acts.” That doesn’t necessarily include many types of erotica, which may be sexual and evocative without explicitly depicting sex. And Tumblr is only banning “photos, videos, or GIFs,” not text-based erotica or artwork — except when that artwork portrays sexual acts.

The platform is also trying to differentiate between explicit porn and non-sexual nudity — a tricky bit of semantics that led the site to go with language banning “female-presenting nipples” while protecting “exposed female-presenting nipples in connection with breastfeeding,” among other things. The new policy also specifies that nudity for the purposes of sexual education and other contexts is okay. That should be comforting to the thriving community around sex work on Tumblr, as well as to those who are concerned about its increasingly important role as a de facto sex education site for millions of its users.

But all of these attempts to separate the wheat from the porny chaff raise the question of whether Tumblr will be able to accurately police along these dividing lines without committing overreach and becoming censorship-happy, thus silencing many vital blogs and users.

In the wake of the passage of FOSTA, the anti-sex trafficking bill that has raised internet-wide concerns about censorship, many Tumblr users have spoken out about their anxiety that Tumblr will become a platform of broad and ill-defined censorship which will silence some of the most important parts of Tumblr. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time; in 2013, Tumblr attempted to ban NSFW tags and wound up censoring queer content before backtracking.

And how does anyone, let alone Tumblr’s automatic censors, draw the line between illustrations that depict sex acts and illustrations that simply “feature” nudity?

These questions have alarmed many Tumblr users. Many fanartists and original artists create explicit art alongside non-explicit art as a matter of course; some, like the well-known artist Siij, whose NSFW blog was banned in the November purge, have already been targets of Tumblr censors.

In addition, some users have reported that entire tags are currently being scrubbed of content and hidden from Tumblr’s search; for example, searching for the NSFW tag no longer generates any content. And users who’ve already started receiving emails about their flagged content under the new policy are reporting that their content is being flagged incorrectly.

One Twitter thread compiling reports of incorrectly flagged Tumblr posts collected everything from benign art and fanart to cave photos, safe-for-work vintage photos of black women, and even a reblog of Tumblr’s own announcement:

On a superficial level, this is all hilarious — and, to many of us, hilariously familiar. (More on that in a moment.) But on a deeper level, the giant outcry over this decision reflects a larger anxiety from users — a fear that Tumblr is cracking down, not just on porn, but on the very essence of Tumblr culture: unruly, unsanctioned, and in many ways, united by the very spirit of deviance that Tumblr is trying to kill.

“The reality is that for a lot of the LGTBQ+ community, particularly younger members still discovering themselves and members in extremely homophobic environments where most media sites were banned (but Tumblr wasn’t even considered important enough to be), this was a bastion of information and self-expression,” wrote one Tumblr user in a widely reblogged post. “For a lot of artists too, this was a great place to come and post NSFW work and get traction that became Patreon pages that became honest jobs.”

What’s frequently lost in the reductive equating of Tumblr with porn is that, as on LiveJournal before it, much of the platform’s erotica is community oriented — and essential to the vibrancy of that community.

For instance, entire fanart traditions have sprung up around cheeky erotic illustrations and the frequently NSFW artists who produce them. Tumblr also birthed the phenomenon of popular fandom blogs featuring porn stars who look like various fictional characters, peddling erotic content specifically through the lens of shipping. Modern-day Tumblr artists have entirely revived the long-dormant tradition of professional-quality fanzines, many featuring subversive queer content and explicit content.

Then there are the many, many queer and genderqueer and marginalized users who found in Tumblr a positive, identity-affirming community space that simply doesn’t exist on most other social media platforms. As Tumblr users grappled with the news, many spoke out about the degree to which the banning of explicit content could impact untold numbers of individuals who lack the ability to safely explore their identities and their sexualities, on other websites or in real life.

“This is a mistake,” wrote Tumblr user caitercates in a widely-distributed response to the Tumblr staff post. “You say you’re all about “sex positivity” while banning all adult content of any kind? … You are actively deleting a majority of your account base. … your solution is to bleach your site until it’s unrecognizable.”

Not to mention the countless artists and writers who are about to lose their viewer/readership. I understand erotica will still be allowed – but what about the relationships that are fostered between artists and writers? There are so many of us who make fanart of our favorite fics, and a lot of the time that involves smut. This ISN’T A PROBLEM. This is creativity at work, and sex positivity, like you claim to support.

Change this.

EDIT your site. Make positive changes that we as the community have asked for – don’t blanket-ban the content that, tbh, most of us are here for at least in part.

It’s extremely significant that Tumblr users are fighting for Tumblr to walk back this change, because Tumblr has traditionally had a primarily harmonious relationship to its userbase, despite its users increasing distrust of its motives and interests. With the exception of Reddit, which is mainly community-run, Tumblr has given its users more freedom than any other platform in shaping and making the site into what it is.

This is partly due to the fact that Tumblr was never intended to be a grassroots haven for the misfits of the rest of the internet. But that characteristic is part of what has made Tumblr uniquely quirky and offbeat among social media spaces — and it may be the trait that saves it.

There’s a legitimate argument to be made — and one that I, as a longtime Tumblr user, would admittedly like to be true — that people who think banning porn on Tumblr will kill Tumblr really don’t know that much about Tumblr’s core users. Despite the mainstream media narrative, Tumblr has never, ever, been about porn.

Tumblr was built around community, around fandom, around viral absurdist meme blogs and street fashion bloggers. What other social media platform annually sends amateur bloggers to Fashion Week? It was grown from arty hipster landscape photos whose wistful aesthetics were deposited straight onto the collected works of the Chainsmokers. Tumblr has given us feminist art galleries and digital art collectives pushing online art movements like vaporwave, seapunk, and glitch art while showing off, bar none, the best GIF artistry on the planet.

Tumblr’s deliberately hyperbolic language fueled everything from “all the feels” to the rise of One Direction. It’s been called the progenitor of Neo-Dadaism, the wellspring of a vast amount of absurdist millennial humor that’s pushed out of its niche Tumblr basement to hit the mainstream corridors of the internet. Mic shamelessly built its brand by exploiting Tumblr’s politics while Buzzfeed shamelessly built its brand by piggy-backing off Tumblr’s content. It’s the place where angry feminist clapbacks and “your fave is problematic” exist alongside hungover owls and “Mmm Whatcha Say?” — that is, it’s as marvelous, and marvelously frustrating, and deeply surprising, as the internet itself.

It’s tempting to argue that while core Tumblr users will grumble about the site-wide crackdown on porn, they’ll recognize that while they can get the porn from other sites, it will be impossible to replace everything else that makes Tumblr what it is.

That said, the very quirky nonconformity of Tumblr’s users may, in fact, push them to leave. Some users see the site’s push to ban adult content as echoing the downward spiral of LiveJournal, the once-popular early blogging platform which was highly admired for its open-source ethos, its laidback moderation style, and its positive sense of community.

In an infamous pair of 2007 incidents that became known as “Strikethrough” and “Boldthrough,” LiveJournal famously destroyed the trust of its userbase overnight when its own attempt to ban certain types of explicit content resulted in a ban on fanart and other innocent and creative types of content.

The relationship between the site and a userbase that had, until then, been ride-or-die, never fully recovered. In the wake of LiveJournal’s steady overtaking by Russia, many of those users migrated to Tumblr, where they joined the much-larger stream of millennial and Gen Y and Z users who have relied on the site’s user-friendliness and openness to many types of erotica as they built their communities.

A side effect of the ban involved a renewed appreciation for the Archive of Our Own, (AO3), a nonprofit, censorship-free website run by fans which is explicitly set up to archive fanworks in the event of major content crackdowns like this one. Among the other more serious responses to the ban has been a litany of fandom history and advice posts being shared for the benefit of younger Tumblr users and others for whom the overnight implosion of their digital home was a new experience. Especially prominent have been recommendations for alternative sites to Tumblr.

Many users, desperate to recapture the deep sense of community that once existed on LiveJournal, have been advocating for a retreat to a new social platform called Pillowfort, a site which very overtly attempts to combine the best characteristics of LiveJournal and Tumblr with a more laidback old-school approach to fandom and content moderation. That platform, which is currently in beta, is currently down for planned security upgrades. On its Tumblr in response to the news about the Tumblr ban, Pillowfort stated that it plans to “allow NSFW content with very few restrictions.”

Still others looked to Dreamwidth, a blogging platform built on LiveJournal’s open-source code that was originally built in 2008 in response to LiveJournal’s demise. Its owners, too, were ready to welcome the Tumblr diaspora with open arms, just as it welcomed the LJ diaspora a decade ago. Other sites like MeWe also responded to the news by welcoming potential Tumblr refugees.

For many Tumblr users and onlookers, however, the simplest solution seems to be a return to the spirit that built Tumblr culture: when all else fails, make memes.

It was inevitable, for example, that there’d be at least one reference to DashCon, the notorious 2014 Tumblr fan convention that turned into a viral disaster, typified by this famous forlorn image of the “DashCon ball pit:”

At the top of the list of agenda items was the phrase “female presenting nipples,” which received the lion’s share of hilarity from Tumblr users.

free the female presenting nipples. robbieross/Tumblr

Of course, all of this won’t really help answer the larger question of what’s next for Tumblr. But ironically, in response to the news, Tumblr’s userbase has reminded us all exactly what a valuable and irreplaceable role Tumblr has played in the evolution of modern internet culture.

All of the wry humor, the trenchant memes, the progressive social commentary mixed with genuine care for Tumblr’s marginalized communities that Tumblr users have deployed in response to the adult content ban — all of that is a unique combination that’s grown out of Tumblr culture. When it’s gone, there’s no guarantee it will return on another website in the same form. And it definitely won’t be accompanied by the same fabulous GIFs and fanart.

Still, there’s no guarantee that Tumblr’s profit-driven side will prioritize keeping that culture sustainable, even if it does somehow manage to ban adult content and retain its core membership. If that’s the case, then it’s a loss not just for Tumblr users, but for the entire internet. Like Vine before it, another irreplaceable cornerstone of our online world that should have been better appreciated all along, Tumblr might be fated to be loved best only after it’s gone.

Original Source -> Why Tumblr’s adult content ban is about so much more than porn

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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linabrigette · 6 years ago

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When Blockchains Go Down: Why Crypto Outages Are on the Rise

Berniesanders (not to be confused with former presidential candidate and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders) is an institution on blockchain-based blogging platform Steemit.

Steemit allows content creators to earn crypto – at least, crypto that’s native to the Steem blockchain, of which there are three – for popular posts. While recent successes include waffle recipes, romantic fiction and crypto punditry, berniesanders gets a pretty steady paycheck (about $30 at a time) for his single sentence, self-described “shit posts.”

A recent sampling: “Are you having fun? I’m having fun.” ($60), “I’m on a boat!” ($31), “Show me your shoes.” ($30) and “How many comments can a shit post get?” ($263 and 319 comments).

But for a few hours on September 17, the Steemit community was deprived of berniesanders’ wisdom.

On that day, Steemit became unavailable when Steem suffered an outage and stopped adding new blocks. The blockchain and the apps on top of it had gone dark.

Steem’s outage, the company explained, was related to an upcoming hard fork update. The code for the fork was being run by some nodes in advance, and as such, these nodes split off onto an incompatible chain when certain safeguards failed. The nodes accidentally hard forked the network early, and as a result, the nodes couldn’t come to consensus on new blocks.

“The blockchain was the piece that was halted in this case,” Ned Scott, the founder and CEO of Steemit, told BTC News Today. “But it caused a ripple effect, a domino effect on all the apps built on top.”

For the Steem blockchain, that’s 400 applications, according to Scott.

And several of those applications likely had confused, worried and sometimes angry users wondering why they couldn’t interact with their favorite blockchain-based tools. Case in point, once the Steemit network began functioning normally again, berniesanders returned with a post tagged “testingshitsteem,” “amateurshitdevs” and “deadchain.”

That’s perhaps a bit harsh.

Sure enough, other users weren’t quite so critical. A Steemit user going by “alphasteem” (she of the waffle recipes) said:

“I guess that’s the way things work with new technology.”

The only problem is, that’s not how things are supposed to work with this particular piece of new technology. One of the most frequently cited advantages of blockchain networks is that they suffer zero downtime – or close to it.

For example, there’s a website dedicated to tracking bitcoin’s uptime since its launch in January 2009: 99.992559576 percent, at the time of writing. And the Ethereum Foundation describes the network’s applications as running “exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third-party interference.”

In recent months, though, major blockchain networks have seen downtime, and the trend has some people wondering, WTF?

More outages

The incident on the Steem network is not the only recent example of a blockchain going down (in fact, it’s not the only time Steem has gone down in recent months).

In March, Neo’s blockchain was temporarily halted. This can happen, the project’s senior research and development manager Malcolm Lerider initially explained, “when a consensus node gets disconnected during the consensus.”

In response to pointed criticism – to the effect that, if just one of only seven consensus nodes on the Neo network can pause the chain by going offline, Neo is highly vulnerable – Lerider stepped that response back a bit. He said Neo could handle the loss of a consensus node, and that the circumstances leading to the incident were more complicated.

A few months later, the EOS blockchain also saw the production of new blocks halted for nearly five hours.

According to Thomas Cox, who at that time was the vice president of product at Block.One, the company behind the EOS protocol (he’s since left the company), the deferred transactions weren’t being checked correctly, which led to a “weird state” and “prevented further blocks from being created.”

This incident occurred just a couple of days after the EOS network went live in June.

Federated and delegated

These examples raise the question of why, nearly a decade into the existence of blockchains, the promise of zero downtime is starting to show cracks.

The answer may have to do with the emergence of new ways of achieving consensus: the process by which all the participants in a blockchain system come to agreement on the state of the network.

In bitcoin, ethereum and other proof-of-work (PoW) systems, the way consensus is achieved makes it extremely unlikely that a network will come to a halt – even if a high number of nodes drop off.

Speaking to this, Riccardo Spagni, project lead at monero (a proof-of-work cryptocurrency), told BTC News Today:

“PoW can handle things like the network partitioning and coming back together after some time. It’s incredibly robust.”

In contrast, a newer method – versions of which Neo, EOS and Steem all employ – designates a certain set of specialized nodes to determine the state of the network. Rather than “mining,” these nodes come to agreement through quicker and less energy-intensive processes, enabling faster and cheaper transactions than bitcoin or ethereum.

These systems are broadly known as federated or delegated protocols, with more specific labels applying based on the exact cryptographic methods involved: delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance (dBFT) for Neo and delegated proof-of -stake (DPoS) for EOS and Steem.

Neo’s Lerider disputed the idea that federated blockchains are more susceptible to downtime in general. “Different consensus algorithms may be used in a federated chain,” he told BTC News Today, and “to know which ones that have potential to go down,” it’s necessary to look at the specific implementation.

Broadly, though, delegated consensus has brought something new to cryptocurrency: the potential to scale enough to accommodate use cases that only centralized providers were previously able to handle. For instance, Steem and EOS can support millions of transactions per day, according to the website Block’tivity.

Yet, at the same time, these new protocols have reintroduced a foible of centralized providers to the world of blockchain: downtime. When key nodes in a federated system go down or fall out of sync, the entire network can grind to a halt.

Accessibility or consistency?

That’s not to say these systems are necessarily inferior to traditional proof-of-work, however.

There is an important tradeoff at work, according to Eric Wall, blockchain and cryptocurrency lead at the Swedish fintech firm Cinnober.

“All distributed systems are fundamentally limited by the CAP theorem,” he told BTC News Today.

According to this theorem, which is often cited in discussions of blockchain networks, a given system can only optimize for two of three characteristics: consistency, availability and partition tolerance (hence the acronym “CAP”).

Although, in reality, the range of choices is narrower. Partition tolerance – the ability to run a blockchain over a network that loses some messages, as the internet does – is “non-negotiable,” said Wall. So engineers can either favor accessibility, as in bitcoin and ethereum; or favor consistency, as in EOS, Steem and Neo.

Wall described what these options look like in practical terms, saying, “Many federated systems will simply halt in contingency situations, often requiring manual intervention to start running again. Bitcoin, on the other hand, will typically not halt, but instead bitcoin forks into two blockchains for a short period of time a couple of times a month.”

In other words, from the user’s perspective, the bitcoin network may never go down, but there’s no guarantee that a user hasn’t found themselves on a fork that will eventually be abandoned in favor of a canonical chain.

Most of the time, Wall continued, bitcoin’s lack of consistency isn’t a big deal. The network “does have eventual consistency,” he said, “which comes from the fact that the forks resolve themselves automatically after a short while.”

He added, “So while Bitcoin is not a true CAP system, it’s practically as good as one.”

Then again, certain incidents have shown that favoring availability over consistency can get blockchains into trouble. Steemit’s Scott pointed to an incident in March 2013, when bitcoin forked in what Vitalik Buterin – then a journalist – called “one of the most serious hiccups that we have seen in the past four years.”

Echoing that, Wall suggested that such incidents may be an argument for consistency-favoring “CP” systems over accessibility-favoring “AP” ones:

“Two conflicting forks are a much bigger danger to the network than a single halted one.”

Showing off scars

What might seem notable here, though, is that bitcoin hasn’t suffered a similar incident since 2013, while younger networks continue to experience “hiccups.”

“The reason why these bugs have been more prevalent in federated systems than in PoW-based systems recently boils down to the fact that the Bitcoin codebase is more battle-tested, more stringently vetted and of superior quality than its federated counterparts,” Wall said.

Indeed, when the oldest dPOS blockchain, Bitshares, launched in 2015, bitcoin had already been live for more than six years.

But the younger networks might well catch up. “Steem is now a very battle-hardened blockchain,” Scott said following the recent outage.

“I don’t look back and say there weren’t bumps in the road,” he continued. “I look at those bumps and bruises as testament to our strength and resilience and our drive for innovation.”

Steem still plans to go ahead with the planned hard fork update – its 20th – on September 25.

It is also notable that, grizzled veteran though it may be, bitcoin narrowly avoided terrible consequences from a severe bug discovered this week, which could potentially have taken down large swathes of the network for a relatively low cost.

Speaking to this, Zooko Wilcox, founder and CEO of the Zcash company (zcash, like bitcoin, is a proof-of-work cryptocurrency), told BTC News Today that at the end of the day, no network is perfectly safe.

He concluded:

“There is a risk of software failures taking down any software system, including any blockchain such as Bitcoin, Ethereum or Zcash.”

Light image by Artur Matosyan on Unsplash

The leader in blockchain news, BTC News Today is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. BTC News Today is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

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click2watch · 6 years ago

Text

When Blockchains Go Down: Why Crypto Outages Are on the Rise

Berniesanders (not to be confused with former presidential candidate and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders) is an institution on blockchain-based blogging platform Steemit.

But for a few hours on September 17, the Steemit community was deprived of berniesanders’ wisdom.

On that day, Steemit became unavailable when Steem suffered an outage and stopped adding new blocks. The blockchain and the apps on top of it had gone dark.

“The blockchain was the piece that was halted in this case,” Ned Scott, the founder and CEO of Steemit, told CoinDesk. “But it caused a ripple effect, a domino effect on all the apps built on top.”

For the Steem blockchain, that’s 400 applications, according to Scott.

That’s perhaps a bit harsh.

Sure enough, other users weren’t quite so critical. A Steemit user going by “alphasteem” (she of the waffle recipes) said:

“I guess that’s the way things work with new technology.”

In recent months, though, major blockchain networks have seen downtime, and the trend has some people wondering, WTF?

More outages

The incident on the Steem network is not the only recent example of a blockchain going down (in fact, it’s not the only time Steem has gone down in recent months).

A few months later, the EOS blockchain also saw the production of new blocks halted for nearly five hours.

This incident occurred just a couple of days after the EOS network went live in June.

Federated and delegated

These examples raise the question of why, nearly a decade into the existence of blockchains, the promise of zero downtime is starting to show cracks.

The answer may have to do with the emergence of new ways of achieving consensus: the process by which all the participants in a blockchain system come to agreement on the state of the network.

In bitcoin, ethereum and other proof-of-work (PoW) systems, the way consensus is achieved makes it extremely unlikely that a network will come to a halt – even if a high number of nodes drop off.

Speaking to this, Riccardo Spagni, project lead at monero (a proof-of-work cryptocurrency), told CoinDesk:

“PoW can handle things like the network partitioning and coming back together after some time. It’s incredibly robust.”

Neo’s Lerider disputed the idea that federated blockchains are more susceptible to downtime in general. “Different consensus algorithms may be used in a federated chain,” he told CoinDesk, and “to know which ones that have potential to go down,” it’s necessary to look at the specific implementation.

Accessibility or consistency?

That’s not to say these systems are necessarily inferior to traditional proof-of-work, however.

There is an important tradeoff at work, according to Eric Wall, blockchain and cryptocurrency lead at the Swedish fintech firm Cinnober.

“All distributed systems are fundamentally limited by the CAP theorem,” he told CoinDesk.

He added, “So while Bitcoin is not a true CAP system, it’s practically as good as one.”

Echoing that, Wall suggested that such incidents may be an argument for consistency-favoring “CP” systems over accessibility-favoring “AP” ones:

“Two conflicting forks are a much bigger danger to the network than a single halted one.”

Showing off scars

What might seem notable here, though, is that bitcoin hasn’t suffered a similar incident since 2013, while younger networks continue to experience “hiccups.”

Indeed, when the oldest dPOS blockchain, Bitshares, launched in 2015, bitcoin had already been live for more than six years.

But the younger networks might well catch up. “Steem is now a very battle-hardened blockchain,” Scott said following the recent outage.

“I don’t look back and say there weren’t bumps in the road,” he continued. “I look at those bumps and bruises as testament to our strength and resilience and our drive for innovation.”

Steem still plans to go ahead with the planned hard fork update – its 20th – on September 25.

Speaking to this, Zooko Wilcox, founder and CEO of the Zcash company (zcash, like bitcoin, is a proof-of-work cryptocurrency), told CoinDesk that at the end of the day, no network is perfectly safe.

He concluded:

“There is a risk of software failures taking down any software system, including any blockchain such as Bitcoin, Ethereum or Zcash.”

Light image by Artur Matosyan on Unsplash

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

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zipgrowth · 6 years ago

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‘Prohibition Will Get You Nowhere’: Writer and Activist Cory Doctorow’s Message to Schools and Educators

It’s not unheard of for an instructor to tee up a YouTube video for a lesson, only to have the content blocked by the school or district’s censorware. And while administrators might have good intentions when they decide to use censorware, censorship is often only effective for those who play by the rules.

It’s one reason why writer and activist Cory Doctorow thinks schools and educators should rethink their approach to surveillance and censorship. In science fiction novels like “Little Brother,” he has explored the implications of mass surveillance, and on the popular blog Boing Boing, he has written on topics such as net neutrality, open access and user privacy.

EdSurge recently sat down with Doctorow in San Jose, Calif. at Worldcon, a science fiction convention, to get his take on everything from surveillance in K-12 schools to open access publishing in higher education.

To listen, you can subscribe to the EdSurge On Air podcast on your favorite podcast app (like iTunes or Stitcher). Or, you can read highlights from the conversation below, which have been edited and condensed for clarity.

EdSurge: Schools today expose students to technology in a variety of ways, be it through Minecraft or an iPad. Do you think that the way schools are exposing kids to tech is helping them be creative, or are those ways too stifling?

Doctorow: The promise of technology is its ability to provide individualized interactions for the people who use it, and education is clearly not a one-size-fits-all activity. One of the crises of education, especially tech education, is that we try to walk this line between the things that we are afraid of kids doing, and the things that we hope they’ll do. And it requires, or it results, at least, in a high degree of control.

So, I don't know that I have any great answers about creativity. When I think about electronic media and pedagogy, though, the thing that I worry about is how our systems of protecting kids from the real dangers of the internet revolve around surveillance. And [schools] normalize surveillance, so [students] are necessarily incompatible with any kind of self-help measures to understand surveillance and to eliminate or moderate the amount of surveillance [they’re] under.

So, if you are a student whose school is completely reliant on surveillance tools to stop you from seeing genitals or whatever it is they're worried about, then anything you do to learn about how that system works and how to stop it ends running against the school's own core defense mechanism.

We really do need kids to understand and be literate about surveillance. We're in this great global conversation about social media and what Shoshana Zuboff calls "surveillance capitalism," and kids are perfectly capable of understanding that stuff. If there's anyone who understands what it means to be manipulated by people who think they have your best interest at heart, it's kids. And I think we need to re-think the whole program because it can't be grounded in surveillance if we are also going to produce good citizens who understand and resist surveillance.

There's an argument being made these days that there's a need for more surveillance in schools. Where do you stand on that issue? How much surveillance do you think is appropriate?

The reason the debate is hard is because we are talking about short-term instrumental goals and long-term strategic goals. So, obviously, a school's purpose is to produce well-rounded, self-actualizing, self-starting, full-fledged citizens who are capable of participating in a democracy, and being in the workplace, and having good interpersonal relations.

If you took another domain like interpersonal relations, you could say, "Well, bullying is a problem." Bullying is a problem. The problem of bullying could be prevented by just not letting kids talk to each other. That would be a short-term instrumental goal that would absolutely take a real bite out of bullying, but we can understand immediately why it's not a good one.

And so, normalizing surveillance for kids on the one hand ill-equips them to be literate about surveillance in the world. But on the other hand, it means that a lot of the things that we hope that they'll learn to moderate on their own instead gets moderated by extrinsic motivations. Instead of having good interrelations with other people because good interrelations are fulfilling and produce good outcomes, your good interrelations exist as a formal exercise that you engage in for fear of reprisals.

Whenever we talk about education, we struggle with intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. We want intrinsically motivated students, but extrinsic motivation is powerful. It's quick, and it achieves instrumental goals.

So, at a certain point, we say, "Well, we don't care if the reason you're not bullying the kid next to you is because you've realized that bullying is wrong, or you're afraid of being punished for bullying; what we care about is that the kid next to you isn't bullied.” And that is a totally legitimate argument, but it also produces someone who, as soon as the fear of reprisal goes away, may return to bullying.

If we are going to use surveillance of kids to achieve some instrumental goal, it has to be as a wedge to open a space in which we can teach kids to achieve the same goal without that extrinsic threat of retaliation.

You’ve written a lot on the issue of net neutrality, which was recently reversed. How do you think that reversal is going to affect higher education institutions?

It affects higher education institutions as a subset of the way it affects all of our lives because, of course, the internet is like the nervous system that binds together everything we do in the 21st century. Everything we do now involves it and everything we'll do shortly from now will require it.

Allowing cable operators and phone companies to act as gatekeepers means that all the things that we rely on pluralism or competition to promote, are endangered. It's not like they'll be killed, but they'll be harmed, and there's a kind of spiral where the rich will get richer, and the poor will get poorer. The people with a lot of eyeballs will get more eyeballs, and the people with fewer eyeballs will have a harder time getting a foothold on an eyeball. I guess that's kind of a weird metaphor.

I think [reversing net neutrality] is catastrophic for all human endeavor. But I also think it's a mistake to think of net neutrality as being won or lost.

Do you think that higher-ed institutions will be at the forefront of that struggle?

Well, they have been. You have things like WiscNet in Wisconsin, where there are statewide fiber networks—really, really good next generation networking—being done through a combination of an academic project and a kind of self-help measure because Wisconsin is very rural. You have these state institutions that are really spread out. I think that there are lots of educational institutions that are de facto [internet service providers].

I wanted to ask you about OERs. It seems like open educational resources are something that people always think are about to take off, but they never really do take off. Why do you think that is? Why do you think they haven't had their lasting moment?

Well, I think that they have [taken off] in the sense that the fight is over about Wikipedia. Any educator who says, "Don't use Wikipedia," instead of teaching their students how to use Wikipedia is an idiot. You're just doing it wrong at that point because even if you hate Wikipedia, your attitude should be harm reduction—because prohibition will get you nowhere.

In terms of open access [journals] like [Public Library of Science]… they're leading edge. Nobody anymore says, "Oh, a PLOS isn't a real journal." They may say, "Well, in my discipline, I am much more likely to get tenure if I'm publishing in a, you know, Springer Journal." But nobody is like, "I'm going to look down at you because you're in PLOS ONE." Being in PLOS ONE is a big deal.

I think the short-run of open access has been less successful than its most enthusiastic boosters would have hoped. But its long-term trajectory is really obvious because we have such a broadly-indexed set of [articles at the pre-publication stages].

What else should our audience know about the work you’re doing?

I always meet students. When I go and do young adult tours, and I go to secondary schools, I meet students who've read Little Brother, and they're like, "How do I hack my school's censorware?"

I always say, ‘Don't do that,’ because if you do that, you could get expelled. Or you could even be charged criminally under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. It's really risky…. What you need to do is do ethnography. Go and ask your fellow students and teachers about over-blocking and under-blocking. And then, ask them about their circumvention methods because the other thing we know is that these tools don't work. They only block people who are playing by the rules, but it's not hard to defect from playing by the rules. So, document the ways in which these are inadequate to the purpose that they're set for.

Then, learn how to use the Freedom of Information Act to find out how much your school board has paid for this censorware. Then, learn how to use stock market filings to figure out who is behind your censorware because they're the dirtiest companies in the world—their primary customers are not corporate America, and they're not schools; their primary customers are repressive regimes in the Middle East, and Asia and sometimes in autocratic African states. And they repackage stuff that's used by dictators to spy on their population to help corporate America and educational institutions spy on their stakeholders, their users. So, find out who the war criminals are who get to see all of your data, who get to offshore every click you make.

And then present it. Present it at the PTA. Present it at the board meeting. Call up local journalists and say, 'Do you know how much my school district paid out of your tax dollars to buy inadequate software from war criminals that everyone knows how to get around, and interferes actively with our education, while letting us see eye-watering pornography that none of us want to see?’

And that, I think, is an exercise that teaches real media literacy and also has a chance of affecting change. Even if it never affects any change, those kids will leave the school understanding how to think in the round, holistically about the economic, technical, social and market forces that surround the technologies they use.

‘Prohibition Will Get You Nowhere’: Writer and Activist Cory Doctorow’s Message to Schools and Educators published first on https://medium.com/@GetNewDLBusiness

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nothingman · 7 years ago

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CDC Director Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald at the agency's headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, on Tuesday, December 5, 2017.

reader comments 73

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fired off a series of tweets Sunday to try to quell fierce backlash from a Friday night report that the Trump administration had banned the agency from using certain terms in budget documents, including “science-based” and “diversity.”

“I want to assure you there are no banned words at CDC,” Director Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald‏ tweeted at the top of a thread Sunday morning, which is currently pinned.

Instead, several sources have tried to clarify that the language changes were merely suggestions to help make the agency’s budget more palatable to some Republicans and ease its passage.

The Friday report that sparked the firestorm was from The Washington Post, which said that the Trump administration had outright prohibited the CDC from using the seven following terms in its budget documents for next year: “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” and “science-based.” In some cases, CDC policy analysts were given alternative phrases and ways of, essentially, writing around the terms but conveying the same meaning. For instance, instead of “science-based,” the agency could write: “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes.”

The CDC, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), was not the only agency to get such a list, according to a second report by the Post on Saturday. Another HHS agency was banned from using “entitlement,” “diversity,” and “vulnerable” and was told to use “Obamacare” instead of “ACA.” Meanwhile State Department documents now refer to sex education as “sexual risk avoidance,” the Post added.

The Post’s reports were largely based on an anonymous policy analyst, who took part in a 90-minute policy briefing with senior CDC officials, and an anonymous HHS official. Other outlets, including The New York Times and STAT, have since confirmed with other sources parts of the Post’s reports, notably that such lists and term swaps exist. But, the HHS and other sources say the Post’s reports misrepresented the language changes, which were not bans.

Strategy or self defeat?

In a media statement, the HHS said: "The assertion that HHS has 'banned words' is a complete mischaracterization of discussions regarding the budget formulation process. HHS will continue to use the best scientific evidence available to improve the health of all Americans."

Unnamed officials told the Times that the language changes were not bans but recommendations to basically “ease the path toward budget approval by Republicans.”

One unnamed former federal official laid it out for the Times by saying:

“It’s absurd and Orwellian, it’s stupid and Orwellian, but they are not saying to not use the words in reports or articles or scientific publications or anything else the CDC does. They’re saying not to use it in your request for money because it will hurt you. It’s not about censoring what CDC can say to the American public. It’s about a budget strategy to get funded.”

An unnamed HHS official echoed that explanation to STAT, saying: “There are different ways to say things without necessarily compromising or changing the true essence of what’s being said.”

Meanwhile, the Post’s reports sparked a firestorm online and among health and science advocates. Many were quick to denounce what they viewed as muzzling the HHS, self-censorship, and interference with the agency’s mission.

Rush Holt, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), immediately released a statement to the media Friday night, saying:

"Among the words forbidden to be used in CDC budget documents are 'evidence-based' and 'science-based.' I suppose one must not think those things either. Here's a word that's still allowed: ridiculous."

Others worried that even sliding language in a budget document could push the activities of the HHS overall. Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told STAT:

“So of course the administration and its defenders are going to argue that this is only about what goes into the budget. But we know that the signal to the agency is much stronger than that. And it’s going to change behavior of people who work there. And that’s much more damaging than any direct censorship.”

As Ars has reported before, the CDC has a history of changing its activities ostensibly in accordance with politics, including abruptly canceling a scientific conference on climate change and health shortly after Donald Trump’s election.

via Ars Technica

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weblistposting-blog · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on Weblistposting

New Post has been published on https://weblistposting.com/states-introduce-doubtful-anti-pornography-law-to-ransom-the-internet/

States Introduce Doubtful Anti-Pornography Law to Ransom the Internet

Greater than a dozen state legislatures are thinking about a bill known as the “Human Trafficking Prevention Act,” which has nothing to do with human trafficking and all to do with one guy’s crusade against pornography at the expense of unfastened speech.

At its heart, the model bill would require tool manufacturers to pre-deploy “obscenity” filters on devices like cellular phones, pills, and computer systems. Consumers would be forced to pony up $20 in keeping with a tool with a view to surf the Net with out country censorship. The Regulation is not best technologically unworkable, it violates the first Amendment and substantially burdens Consumers and organizations.

Perhaps Greater stunning is the invoice’s provenance. The using force behind the Law is a man named Mark Sevier, who has been using the alias “Chris Severe” to touch legislators. According to the Each day Beast, Sevier is a disbarred legal professional who has sued most important tech companies, blaming them for his pornography dependancy and sued states for the right to marry his laptop. Newshounds Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny exposed a lengthy felony history for Sevier, which include an open arrest warrant and stalking convictions, in addition to proof that Sevier misrepresented his very own experience working with anti-trafficking non-earnings.

The invoice has been brought in a few form Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming (list here). We recommend that any legislator who has to take into account this bill study the Day by day Beast’s research.

But that’s not why they have to vote towards the Human Trafficking Prevention Act. They need to kill this Regulation as it’s just undeniable, awful coverage. Obviously, each version of the Rules varies, However here is the general gist.

read EFF’s competition letter towards H.3003, South Carolina’s new release of the Human Trafficking Prevention Act.

Pre-hooked up Filters

producers of Net-related devices could pre-install filters to dam pornography, along with “revenge porn.” agencies could also must make certain that each one infant pornography, “revenge pornography,” and “any hub that facilitates prostitution” are rendered inaccessible. Most iterations of the bill require this filtering era to be turned on and locked in the on function, by default.

This is terrible for client choice as it forces humans to purchase a software product they don’t necessarily need. It’s also horrible totally free speech because it restrains what you could see. Due to the threat of prison liability, companies are much more likely to over-censor, blocking off content with the aid of default instead of giving web sites the gain of the doubt. The proscriptions also are technologically unworkable: as an instance, a set of rules can hardly ever decide whether or not an item of pornography is “revenge” or consensual or whether a site is a hub for prostitution.

To be clear, unlocking such filters might now not just be about accessing pornography. A user can be seeking to improve the overall performance of their pc through deleting unnecessary software. A determine may need to put in top class toddler safety software, which may not play nicely with the default software program. And, of the route, many users will truely want to freely surf the Net without the time and again being denied get admission to sites mistakenly swept up within the censorship net.

A Censorship Tax

The model bills could require Consumers to pay a $20 rate to release every in their gadgets to workout their First Change rights to study criminal content material. Consumers could become paying a small fortune to liberate their routers, smartphones, drugs, and desktop computer systems.

Facts Series

Everybody who desires to liberate the filters on their devices could position their request in writing. Then they’d be required to reveal Identification, be subjected to a “written caution regarding the ability dangers” of disposing of the obscenity filter out, after which might have to sign a shape acknowledging they were proven that warning. Meaning shops could be retaining personal records on anybody who wanted their “Human Trafficking” filters eliminated.

The Censorship System

The invoice might pressure the businesses we depend upon to make certain open get admission to the Net to create a big censorship apparatus this is without difficulty abused.

Beneath the invoice, tech groups would be required to function name centers or on-line reporting facilities to reveal lawsuits that a particular site isn’t covered in the filter or proceedings that a website isn’t being properly filtered. no longer only that, but the invoice mainly says they need to “make sure that each one baby pornography and revenge pornography is inaccessible at the product” placing large strain on businesses to aggressively and preemptively block websites to avoid legal liability out of worry of just one unlawful or forbidden photo making it beyond their filters. Social media sites might simplest be immune if they also create a reporting center and “remain reasonably proactive in getting rid of the reported obscene content material.”

It’s unfortunate that the Human Trafficking Prevention Act has gained traction in so many states, However, we are pleased to peer that some, which includes Wyoming, have already rejected it. Legislators have to do the right issue: uphold the Constitution, guard Purchasers, and not use the problem of human trafficking as an excuse to sell this character’s agenda in opposition to pornography.

Creating wealth At Domestic on the Net

The Net can turn out to be a remarkable source of profits for the young adults as well as for the residence mothers who need extra money But can not work outside the house. The 2 fundamental requirements are a stable Net connection and a personal computer. Then you could earn a lot of profits as you would by using running out of doors. The most effective difference is that on-line jobs are inexpensive and do no longer require tons bodily paintings.

Advertising is a technique via which sellers are capable of getting clients to whom they sell their products and earn money and that they have found Net to be the greatest imply of Advertising and marketing their products. Everywhere in the global people discover it better to purchase things online as opposed to going to exceptional shops and spend countless hours in choosing a product. With the assist of the Net facility, they are able to take a seat at Home, locate their desired merchandise and buy it. This saves quite a few time and money.

For this reason, this Advertising and marketing may be a supply of earning money for lots of individuals who want to work on-line. so that you can attract Extra buyers, the dealers need increasingly more customers no longer only in just their areas However additionally around the sector. She or he can’t get that a good deal interest on his or her very own that is why they need other people to boom the commercial of their product and subsequently growth their income. The marketers can then get their shares from the earnings the sellers will earn.

Making online sales is not simply only confined to particular merchandise. people can even percentage their expertise, recipes, recommendations, etc which are treasured for different human beings. The Greater people will go to your websites which you have made where you sell your merchandise or know-how the More income you’ll generate. online jobs are of many types However they interlinked with each other and that is why human beings have converted it into a method of having extra income.

But, you want to be very cautious in finding jobs over the Internet. Because of the reality that hundreds of thousands of humans need to earn money online, there are numerous scammers present on the Internet that earn money through duping different people. They make fake websites and while human beings attempt to buy their products they or work for them, they scouse borrow their money and in no way contact them lower back. Therefore, you cannot consider on each internet site you find over the net telling you numerous methods to earn money thru which you can earn fantastic ransoms. most effective work on those websites which you come to understand from a friend so that there are not any doubts about its authenticity.

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