The Journal has an ongoing series of articles on Facebook/Instagram that are pretty good.
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In addition to the problems I spotted with that “research” it turns out there was a far bigger problem–they’re off about 25x. The paper has been withdrawn. Of course the right wing isn’t going to mention that part of the story.
a domain register with free speech values was hacked and many of their customers’ personal details revealed.
But online, data revealed by the massive hack of Epik, an internet-services company popular with the far right… The information was included in a giant trove of hundreds of thousands of transactions published this month by the hacking group Anonymous that exposed previously obscure details of far-right sites and launched a race among extremism researchers to identify the hidden promoters of online hate.
Heidi Beirich, a veteran researcher of hate and extremism, said she is used to spending weeks or months doing “the detective work” trying to decipher who is behind a single extremist domain. The Epik data set, she said, “is like somebody has just handed you all the detective work — the names, the people behind the accounts.”
After Alayon’s name appeared in the breached data, his brokerage, Travers Miran Realty, dropped him as an agent
This is another example in what seems to be a recent trend where cybercrime goes unpunished as long as it targets the political enemies of the left. Like the IRS leaking tons of rich people’s full tax returns, or various free speech / conservative social network platforms like Parler, Gab and GETTR getting hacked, it seems anything goes when you can expose those who support opposing views.
Once leaked, the leftist media or activists can selectively promote examples of bad behavior (like Parler users talking about the Jan 6 capitol protests, despite way more of that happening on Facebook) to pressure employers of the individuals or business who provide financial or technical services to the platform to cancel them.
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My question is, who the hell funds such “research”?
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The Southern Poverty Hate Mongers have raised over half a billion. Hate pays!
https://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/philanthropy-magazine/article/some-people-love-to-call-names
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Such hackers are almost never caught, Epik isn’t being singled out for a lack of prosecution. The only thing special about this case is how amateurish Epik’s security was.
And why do they not want their names associated with what they are promoting???
You can give any name you want. I just signed up “Loren at FragileDeal” for running the site “Trans People Suck.com”. I am in the process of forwarding this to your employers HR department for review in creating a hostile workplace. Well, I guess I could leave that job to the person who would get promoted to your job if something unfortunate for you happened to get disclosed.
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How many of the guys who got doxxed in this hack were victims of ID theft from their enemies creating fake accounts in their name on Epik platform? How many of these personal nemesis went on to register extremist-sounding domains, hoping all along that Epik gets hacked down the line and it comes back to harm the innocent people who had no idea their good name was abused like this? Come on.
Much much more likely, the people doxxed were not victims of ID thefts like you described, and the ones who brought this onto themselves. They thought they could register any offensive domain they wanted anonymously and that it wouldn’t get traced back to them. Accountability sucks sometimes…
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I wouldn’t be surprised if the FBI did as part of counter terrorism effort against domestic threats. Getting names of participants on far right or antifa sites sounds like something they’d be interested in knowing.
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I’m old enough to remember when your employer had no business concerning itself with your views that didn’t affect your work performance. It was such a terrible time to live. I am so glad that those times are over. We are so much better off now that we can no longer feel safe that we can make a living if we express viewpoints different from our employers, regardless of whether it affects our job performance.
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As long as your employees’ views don’t affect your bottom line, sure. But in a business where reputation is a pretty big deal, if it was rumored that their realtor agency was associated with antisemitic extremists (even wrongly so), that could cost them a bunch. Much easier to sever contact with the potentially radioactive employee than having to deal with the bad PR.
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This has more often than not just been used as a scare tactic and doesn’t actually affect employer’s bottom lines anywhere near as much as they worry it will. Thanks to the internet, lots of things that aren’t actually news can become news. But thanks to the internet, people aren’t famous for 15 minutes when they’re in the news anymore. It’s more like 15 seconds. It’s amazing how quickly people move on from the story about the night manager at the local bed bath and beyond posting pepe memes. Just as amazing that it is even something worth hearing about. In 99 out of 100 stories that trend on twitter or make it on the local news where non-famous John Doe did something “wrong” and, oh-by-the-way he works for Williams HVAC Inc, Williams will barely have to deal with a few days of 1-star google reviews from people 2000 miles away and that’s it. Almost no one actually considers the viewpoints of a company’s employees when deciding if they should patronize that company for something apolitical. Since (in almost all cases) there is no significant financial loss when an employee is outed as a Jan 6 attendee, a suspected arsonist at a BLM rally, a shout-your-abortion participant, or a pregnancy resource center supporter, employers shouldn’t be concerned (in almost all cases) with anything non job-related their employees do outside work hours.
And what do you mean when you say “(even wrongly so)”?
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I’ve still never understood why I should be held accountable for what someone else finds offensive?
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I meant if it was only the appearance of the realtor agency being associated with antisemitic extremists while they really had nothing to do with them. Whether their realtor was actually the one who registered the offensive domains or not, they just did not care to have any association with him for fear of impact on their business. Firing him removes them from having to answer more questions about him and serves as PR proof that they’re not at all connected with the views alleged to the realtor who got doxxed.
And I would not dismiss the reputation damage either. If the first thing that comes up in an internet search about your realtor agency is the fact that one of your employees got in the news for registering antisemitic/white supremacist domain names, and you were fine with it, that’s probably a quick hard pass for many home buyers. You are very much who you associate with these days.
Because you’re employed at their leisure and them finding your views offensive is not considered employment discrimination (political views are not a protected class).
Wait. Hang on. You support businesses firing people for being “antisemitic extremists” when the accusation of antisemitism is false?
I must be missing something. You don’t want innocent people fired, right?
But stories like that don’t usually say that the business is fine with it. They just say that John Doe posted mean things on his facebook wall and he works at ACME, Inc. Only people like you that are looking for any reason to harm people you don’t like assume that a business that could employ such a person must be okay with his viewpoints. People like you are in the minority. Normal people don’t assume that employers know and agree with the viewpoints of all their employees.
The silliest part of your demented viewpoint is that, by advocating that people with the “wrong” viewpoints are not able to work and earn a living, you are further polarizing our country and further entrenching people on the right in their views. Before being cancelled, they may have just disagreed with you. Now that you supported their firing, they hate you and will do anything they can to see that you pay for your views too. Your tactic will only work as long as all your views line up squarely with the majority. And I’m not sure if you’re a student of history, but you are taking quite a risk if you think you’ll always be safe in a culture like that. Not only that, all you’re doing is driving their discussions underground. You’re not changing hearts and minds. In fact, you’re creating more sympathy for these people. For every guy who is fired for the wrong view, he has a dozen (at least) people around him that don’t agree with his view, but know him personally as decent guy and know he didn’t deserve to be fired. Do it enough times and you’ve turned off a whole lot of people from voting with you that otherwise would have.
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Thats a big part of the whole problem - people buying a cake based on if the baker agrees that gender is a choice, rather than based on the cake tasting good. Or hiring/keeping a landscaper based on their views about illegal immigration, rather than their ability to do landscaping. If you cook a really good burger, your (or your waitress’s) views on racism has no part in my deciding to grab lunch at your restaurant.
To an extent I don’t blame businesses for their reactions, it’s the idiocy of the rabble-rousers that often leaves them with little choice.
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In the beginning, I agreed with this. But now it is time for business owners to have a backbone. History shows that boycotts don’t work, and often, they backfire. It’s one thing if you are the owner and you take a principled stand on a controversial issue - your business will be affected. But the random story about how your staff graphic designer posted “Trump 2024 - Arizona AUDIT proves he won” will not actually affect your business. You just have to weather the storm for a week and then people move on. You might need to pay for some search engine optimization to get your website to come up before the news article in searches, but that’s the price businesses should be willing to pay to stand up to the people out there who create nothing and only attempt to destroy what others create because they are jealous and have no discernable skills themselves.
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That’s because you don’t know their views. But what if you did? What if instead of being published somewhere (anonymously or not), the cook or the waitress had a swastika tattoo on their forehead? Would you still eat there? And more importantly, do you think it’s good for business?
If I’m hungry and want good food, I couldnt care less what the person serving it thinks or believes since it’s none of my business. Unless they believe in undercooking the food they’re serving.
Is it good for business? Probably not - but that’s because of the a-holes so hellbent on imposing their self-righteous moral superiority on everyone by threatening to firebomb (literally or metaphorically) this hypothetical place in ‘protest’ of them being a productive member of the local economy.
It is rather amazing how the ones so quick to denounce judging people are the ones who are so quick to judge people.
I miss the days when only sticks and stones broke bones.
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No, it’s bad for business because many (if not most) people would not want to do business with the kind of person that would keep a swastika tattoo on their forehead. I provided and asked you about a very specific example – there’s no need to generalize to demonstrate this point.
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