Sounds fine; it's their culture and prerogative. Probably a benefit to deter such consumption for as many youth and young adults as possible, given the negative impact on mental health.
No thanks, I’d prefer one state’s extremist religious inclinations not tank liberty for everyone else. They can monitor their own phones and their own computers and leave everyone else’s alone.
We already know what the real goal is. It's theocracy. While I fundamentally believe all religions are true, I don't want to live under any theocracy at all.
And yet, the intention is to deter usage of a product/vice that is a bane on America. Cut the supply is effective at reducing consumption.
Is this really 1A when we are talking about mental health of our children? It's fairly well established that no pornography consumption is a net positive.
GCHQ used to challenge applicants to disassemble a motor vehicle, and reassemble it indoors. Perhaps this inspired Chris and Mitch's revenge prank on Kent (for Kent's phone spying / leaking stunt)?
Disassembling a car and reassembling it in someone's room (or on the roof) was also a classic prank at Caltech, especially back in the 1930s when Model Ts were common.
"The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency was distressed to discover this morning, January 25th, that one of our agents has been using the social media platforms Gab and Parler. We do not condone this activity, and we apologize to anyone who has been affected or offended by this," De Chiara wrote. "The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency has in the past and will continue to ensure a voice of unity, equality, and one that is on the side of social justice."
From the pattern and other things I've seen from employers, it seems likely to be a response to particular content complaints where the specific content is something the employer doesn't want to draw more attention to from anyone who hasn't seen the initial complaint.
Colleen Oefelein's posts on Gab and Parler are publicly available and appear to be nothing more offensive than reposts of her tweets. I don't think that there is any more than meets the eye here. Her announcement that she was using the offending platforms was enough to raise a twitter mob against her to put pressure on her employer. More here:
I signed up for a Parler account when it first opened, just for a bit of curiosity and research. Found it to be a total cesspool, never posted anything.
People should be judged for the actual opinions they express, when taken in the context of the totality of their character. But I definitely wouldn't support the shunning of somebody simply for signing up for a free service.
Heck, as a software developer and one who dabbles in activism, I've signed up for way "worse" sites than Parler. Waaaaaaay worse.
The language follows a pattern I've seen before where complaints were raised about specific content posted on social sites but the employer didn't want to draw additional attention to the detailed subject of the complaints from people who hasn't seen the initial complaints.
The agency statement doesn't mention specific posts, but that doesn't mean they don't exist... Feels like there's /probably/ more here than we're hearing. There's plenty of space to be loudly outraged on the barest shreds of information, though!
Meanwhile: There's presumably a lot of very free* speech in the Parler data dump, connected to people's verified accounts, which could easily be finding its way to employers, who in turn get to decide how they want to handle it.
Right now, on /r/opendirectories, there is a dump of videos and pictures from parler that was hacked. Are there racist scumbags on Parler? Yes. Does that justify the disclosure of family pictures, and presumably a lot of NSFW content that is in every social network?
Speech is speech. Think about the limits you want carefully. Especially if it starts with the thought that a particular ideological or ethnic group excercising speech should result in them "getting whats coming to them"
In this case, as the statement made clear - it's not speech that is the problem, it was that she choose to speak at all, that was the problem.
We people wringing our hands on the internet do not necessarily have all the information to judge what's going on here. We have a very thin article with a tiiiiiny shred of information about people we have otherwise never heard of.
This whole discussion is a great encapsulation of mindless, reflexive outrage on hacker news.
According to the article it appears she signed up and actively encouraged others to join as well explicitly for the lack of censorship.
"In a November 12 tweet, Oefelein invited followers to join her on the conservative social network, which she described as "a great platform with no censorship." Oefelein suggested earlier this month that she may also use the far-right social networking site Gab."
The fired agent also said:
"Well thanks Twitter and @JDLitAgency," Oefelein wrote. "I just got fired because I'm a Christian and a conservative."
Which makes me suspect that she was writing political stuff with her real name on Parler/Gab, since Parler/Gab are not inherently Christian sites. (and theoretically aren't inherently conservative ones either?)
Hard no. If she was literally fired for the social media equivalent of wearing a cross or having a Trump bumper sticker? If so, I think we would agree that's wrong.
However there's quite possibly a lot more to it than that.
Christianity is not inherently evil but (like all major religious texts) the Bible uh... lends itself to multiple interpretations, to put it mildly.
Surely we can agree that a lot of heinous behavior over the years has been justified by the perpetrators in the name of religion. I'm sure those folks felt they were presecuted "just for following their religion" as well.
Of course not, I'm just saying I wasn't aware Parler and Gab were christian, conservative websites, so it doesn't make sense for the agent to claim she was fired for being christian/conservative when the reason provided by the employer was that she was on gab/parler unless she was being political on those sites but not political on twitter or w/e.
Parler, at least, despite initially claiming to not censor anyone/anything, went out of its way to censor/block people in opposed groups.[0] Parler's CEO bragged about blocking trolls, which he identified as those attacking Christians or conservatives.[1]
Of course, the most politically-conservative Christians I know are not on Parler nor Gab, but they're also not Trump supporters, which seemed to be the real reason people went to Parler/Gab. That's an unsupported assertion on my part, but seems consistent with my observations.
She wasn't fired because she's a Christian and a conservative. She was fired because she was active on two sites tied to attempted insurrection. It's a bad look for the agency, but IMO a worse look for Oefelein.
I think it's worth pointing out what a "hot take" that article is. It was written on the day of storming itself, and published at 5:54 PM, before the announced curfew had even started (and before some details about the government response were revealed[0]).
The Naval War College professor being interviewed in the article basically argues that unless the military is involved, it isn't a "coup", by definition. That would make the phrase "military coup" redundant, and contradicts the Merriam-Webster definition[1] which characterizes it as:
> a “sudden decisive exercise of force in politics,” but particularly the “violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group.”
By the professor's logic, even if a president were to explicitly command his followers to storm the Capitol, eliminate his political opponents, and destroy the certifications of the electoral votes he had lost, allowing him to stay in power illegitimately, that still wouldn't be a coup (or a self-coup, presumably).
In any case, another article[2] on the same site makes the opposing case:
> It’s undeniable at this point. The United States is witnessing a coup attempt — a forceful effort to seize power against the legal framework.
Admittedly it was published even earlier than the other article, but it had been drafted in response to discussions which had begun before the protests had turned violent, vindicating the author's position.
I used the word "insurrection," not "coup," but yes, it definitely was an attempt at both. Bad articles notwithstanding, upcoming federal trials ought to make that clear to those who participated.
Just pointing out that snowden's passport was cancelled on 20130622 and that he flew out of hk on 20130623. It's not an unreasonable speculation that he planned to wind up in Russia, putting on a convincing show in the process.
A better hypothesis would be that Russia was one of the only countries that would accept an arrival with a cancelled passport (and could provide a reasonable degree of protection against rendition by US agents).
I don't believe it is possible to fly from HK to South America without passing through the US or New Zealand, whereas Snowden probably could have travelled from Russia to Cuba if Putin didn't find it politically advantageous to keep him as a trophy.
Yes, your hypothesis is a better fit, and makes fewer assumptions. Perhaps the arrangements with Russia were made hurriedly while Snowden was hiding in HK, days prior to departing, as some reports suggest.
However, Snowden had been stealing classified intel premeditatively for a long period of time, and had contact with actors who had the knowledge and contacts to plan such a ruse in advance. Given his high intelligence and exacting personality, haphazardly leaking to the press from HK prior to obtaining asylum seems to be out of character.
I do believe strongly that Snowden would have told elaborate, pre-fabricated lies, if it were to his benefit.
> haphazardly leaking to the press from HK prior to obtaining asylum seems to be out of character.
His original plan, supposedly[1], was to remain in HK and fight extradition to the US. It wouldn't have taken the US government long to notice he was missing from his job and had travelled to Hong Kong without approval, so it was not particularly haphazard for him to start sharing his story openly as soon as he was in HK.
> had contact with actors who had the knowledge and contacts to plan such a ruse in advance.
It's not clear how the deal with Russia was brokered, but it's possible that the Beijing government didn't want to sour relations with the US by letting him stay in HK, as reported by the New York Times[2]:
> “Behind the door there was definitely some coordination between Hong Kong and Beijing,” said Jin Canrong, professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing.
That also makes sense of the ridiculous story about HK rejecting the US arrest warrant request due to the US getting Snowden's name wrong.[3]
Having to arrange travel, on short notice, from HK to a country that could preserve Snowden's safety from US capture, and meet with approval from Beijing, would severely limit his options, even if there were no other concerns, and it is possible that assurances were given to Snowden about the possibility of onward travel, which were later broken. It would certainly have been unwise for Snowden to publicly call out that he had been tricked and betrayed by Putin. Instead, he claims that the US cancelled his passport to deliberately trap him in Moscow, so they could portray him as a Russian spy[4], which also seems to match what we know.
I was once hacked, stalked and targeted by friends of a celebrity who I had just met. I tried pursuing help about it and was threatened with murder. Then, after promising to report the murder threat, I was told by another person in that social circle that if I talked about the previous incidents that my career reputation would be permanently ruined.
The last person told me in the same conversation that Peter Thiel would recognize him. As Mr. Thiel has many interests, there was no reason to believe this person was connected to Palantir. However, Palantir sure came to mind while I processed this last interaction like a deer in headlights.
I can only speculate, but it was during the course of a reference check for someone connected to this circle. So, likely this was done to look into me, demonstrate power over me, and let me know they are "watching".
many celebs have personal protection details. how such protection details behave likely varies widely..
as for your concerns, pay close attention to your cybersecurity posture before engaging with people who will draw attention to you simply by association.
With Larry Fink and hedgies involved, Bitcoin only needs, at most, a couple hundred billion to prop up prices well beyond $20k-$25k. Small market, which Fink noted.
$100k would not be an entirely unexpected milestone sooner rather than later.
What happens when you combine extensive knowledge of a user's most intimate secrets and most painful memories with the ability to algorithmically choose targeted content at will, with the intention to amorally experiment on said user? Can you cause long term psychological damage to a user? Would it be justified if this were deemed to be a form of "digital karmic revenge", also determined using social mining algorithms?
What would happen if such weapons were refined on a user across social media platforms over a multi-decade timeframe? Could you invoke self-destruction of a person intentionally?
