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June 3, 2019: Joseph Menn, author, "Cult of the Dead Cow"

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This week: Joseph Menn, author, "Cult of the Dead Cow"

‘Fire Zuck’ projected onto location of Facebook shareholders’ meeting, TechnoLAG (May 30, 2019)

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Links:

• Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World, by Joseph Menn

• KnowYourMeme: "Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) is a computer hacking group that is most well known for coining the term "hacktivism" and creating the Back Orifice remote administration tool (RAT), which gains remote access to machines running the Microsoft Windows operating system."

• Exclusive: Beto O'Rourke belonged to major hacker group as a teenager (by Joseph Menn for Reuters, March 15): "O’Rourke belonged to the hacking group known as the Cult of the Dead Cow... [he] wrote online essays under the pseudonym 'Psychedelic Warlord.'"

• The Hacking Supergroup That Counts Beto O’Rourke as One of Its Own (NYT Book Review, June 2)



• Above, Washington Tiananmen vigil attracts first-timers for 30th anniversary (by Nectar Gan in the South China Morning Post, June 3): "Biggest turnout in years for candlelight commemoration outside Chinese embassy. For many, it is the first time they have spoken of the events of June 4, 1989."

• My thread on today's Apple commercial, including this thought: "Now if we could just get more people to attach Apple things onto their arms, into their ears, implanted in all their orifices, and thus walk around half-distracted all the time - THEN, my friends, THEN we'd be on our way to building a just & equitable society" ... also this - "It's quite a tech industry where the slogan "we're not as bad as the stalker spreading conspiracies and child-abuse for profit" is a winner."

• On YouTube’s Digital Playground, an Open Gate for Pedophiles (Max Fisher and Amanda Taub in the New York Times, today, June 3). Max Fisher adds: "Each video might appear innocent on its own, a home movie of a kid in a two-piece swimsuit or a nightie. But each has three common traits:
  - the girl is mostly unclothed or briefly nude
  - she is no older than age 8
  - her video is being heavily promoted by YouTube’s algorithm"
...and then...
"We talked to one mother, in Brazil, whose daughter had posted a video of her and a friend playing in swimsuits. YouTube’s algorithm found the video and promoted it to users who watched other partly-clothed prepubescent children. Within a few days of posting, it had 400,000 views."

• And from a recent guest on Techtonic, Roger McNamee's NYT op-ed today (June 3): "Why it is legal for service providers to comb our messages and documents for economically valuable data? Why is it legal for third parties to trade in our most private information, including credit card transactions, location and health data, and browsing history? Why is it legal to gather any data at all about minors? Why is it legal to trade predictions of our behavior? Corporate claims to our data are not legitimate and we must fight back."

• Other Big Tech news: DOJ starting antitrust investigation of Google, FTC starting antitrust investigation of Amazon, and the first Attorney General case hits Facebook.

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