Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

krebsonsecurity.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 270 posts

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#171

Post by holidayacct »

Pay close attention to social media companies and privately run social networks and forums. I used to work for a major social media network that was growing and eventually stalled.

If you run a social network and it gets popular you're going to run into major problems that no one talks about.

1.) Multiple governments, private organization and luddites send people to your company to compromise the source code.

2.) People eventually find out they can use the social network as a covert advertising platform. They end up trying to make side money using the platform to slip ad campaigns as normal human interactions.

3.) Eventually someone figures out they can control the behavior of people on the social media platform in strange ways. One guy figured out he could create sock puppet accounts and automate the process of bringing women he liked everywhere he went. Don't do this!!! If you start slipping covert advertising in the platform and you get caught you're eventually going to run into organized crime, the govt or both.

4.) And my favorite, people start offering your best employees obscsene amounts of money to try and stop you from starting another social network.

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#172

Post by newacct583 »

varjag wrote: post #153
pwinnski wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this line of thinking is absolutely correct when conspiracy theories are fringe or harmless. You don't believe we landed on the moon? Okay, buddy, have a nice day. Occasionally, though, conspiracy theorists escape the harmless fringe and become actively harmful to society, which is what many of us believe is happening in the USA today. A racist conspiracy theory that posited, contrary to all evidence, that ou…

> …drink the blood of children This is an echo of another conspiracy theory, that culminated in its heyday into a world war.

Exactly. There are limits to the crazy. In moderation, giving people an outlet for frustration is fine. UFO abduction, all that stuff.

But when the crazy gets weaponized for the benefit of actual policy actors, which is what has clearly happened here, we need to start getting it under control.

It's not that Q and adrenochrome and pizzagate and birtherism and even the The Protocols are that dangerous per se. It's that people with power discovered they could use the nuts who believed that stuff to get more power.

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#173

Post by newacct583 »

ALittleLight wrote: post #168
vkou wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has also destoyed families. I know people whose parents have gone down the QAnon rabbit hole, and the outcome is absolutely insane. They can't have a 20 minute conversation without the vast pedophilic conspiracy in Washington intruding (Because the parents cannot understand why their children could possibly be acting in accord with it.) Another one of my friends can't even see his mother, because she doesn't belie…

I haven't (and won't) downvote you for expressing an opinion I disagree with - but I do disagree with you. Whether or not there is value in QAnon is beyond me. There is value in people being able to say what they want, even if it is baseless, or disturbed, or hateful. One example that comes to my mind is the Rotterham child rape scandal[1], which, were it not printed in the most reputable newspapers world wide, would…

The horrors in Rotterham weren't exposed by conspiracy nuts, though. It was exposed by real investigative journalism and law enforcement work.

That's the whole point here: it's not that bad things don't happen, it's that this fact is not sufficient evidence for other bad things happening.

The suppression here is of baseless conspiracy theories about child abuse because they're baseless, not because they're about child abuse.

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#174

Post by jeromenerf »

hutzlibu wrote: post #135
MrMan wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is nothing elevated about HN, that is your brain playing tricks on you. Privacy is an illusion, self is an illusion. smart people are manipulated just as easily as dumb people, by people who have been studying how to do it, and now with mass social media, have the tools to do it.

Well, I would say here on HN at least the general bar is higher. And sure, anybody can be manipulated, but also, with different amount of effort. Tricking my young family teenage members into buying something shiny they don't really need? Not too hard, show a cool ad or pay some influencer to feature the product in a way. Getting people of the HN crowd to buy somehing shiny they don't need? Lets say, the new KI assis…

> Getting people of the HN crowd to buy somehing shiny they don't need? Lets say, the new KI assistance? I would say, that is a lot harder, as most people here understand how (political) marketing works.

Maybe easier actually, but different. Bigger flats, Apple products, travels, cloud services ...

The arguments used may appeal to meaning, sense, evolution, progress ... instead of comfort, fear, luxury ... just as easily and probably more profitably.

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#175

Post by newacct583 »

tptacek wrote: post #92
mistermann wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a lot of words that could be replaced with "I don't understand the phrase 'contrary to all evidence.'" This statement is objectively incorrect. The "lot of words" contained within my comment cannot, in fact , be replaced with "I don't understand the phrase 'contrary to all evidence.'" This is the sort of response that interests me, especially on a high-intellect site like HN. > My long sentence did not in fa…

Two things. First, you know you're on extremely weak rhetorical ice, and also kind of outside the norms of our community, when you start quoting the dictionary as a rebuttal. The person you're debating told you what they meant; what they meant is no longer a part of the debate. Second, it is very much out of the norms of HN to do email-style alternating quote/response the way you are. It's also very difficult to read…

> it is very much out of the norms of HN to do email-style alternating quote/response the way you are.

Counterpoint (with the quote for irony): I find that in politicized discussions like this one, when I want to jump in to correct something, it is horrifyingly common to find that the original comment has been editted to sneak around the point I wrote. The quotes act as protection against bad faith discussion.

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#176

Post by cgh »

Nullabillity wrote: post #167
cgh wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, I wonder about internet ports assigned to dormant or defunct companies. I used to work for a company back in the '90s that had their own IANA port assignment for a proprietary database product. Of course, they don't use it anymore as the company and product are both long gone.

Err, presumably the product still works for existing customers?

This is an obsolete, 25 year old product. I very much doubt there are any existing customers anymore. The company and the product literally no longer exist.

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#178

Post by grawprog »

I'll admit, I spent some time on 8chan both before and after jim Watkins took control. The story behind it all is actually pretty fascinating.

One big thing I did notice though after a hiatus browsing there and going back. Watkins did something to that site.

It was always pretty bad, a lot of the people there were pretty awful, but there wasn't an organized right wing presence pushing Nazi ideals and anti-Holocaust propaganda.

Most of the people there just tended to be misfits who didn't even fit in on 4chan. A lot of people I remember talking to in those early days were pretty normal people who just liked the idea of a censorship free anonymous community.

Don't get me wrong, there were definitely some pretty deplorable people and posts back then, I mean they were the people that got banned from 4chan after all, but it wasn't the same. I even remember a few threads where hotwheels came on and joked around and stuff. Overall it had a more harmless, if a bit sociopathic and hateful, vibe to it.

Fast forward a few years to just a few months before it got shut down, I remembered it existed and went and checked it out again. It was fairly different. Every board got constant spam from white supremacists and Nazis, the content was 99% race baiting type stuff, there was a huge MGTOW presence on there. The hate towards women had sky rocketed. Everyone on there was just angry and totally hateful towards society.

Jim and his son would pop on and off spouting nonsense, the nazis would regularly go unbanned and were allowed free reign.

I'm fairly convinced Jim and Ron purposely led the site that way. Whether by their own decision or maybe even government persuasion.

The fbi had an active presence on there by that point

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20201868

And were even caught out instigating what ended up being and active shooter.

The whole community there and all this saga around it has always kind of fascinated me. The people there came from all places and walks of life with more beliefs and ideals you could shake a stick at.

And it's surprising the kind of actual heartfelt stuff you could find on there filtered between all the shit if you looked.

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#179

Post by novok »

holidayacct wrote: post #171

Pay close attention to social media companies and privately run social networks and forums. I used to work for a major social media network that was growing and eventually stalled. If you run a social network and it gets popular you're going to run into major problems that no one talks about. 1.) Multiple governments, private organization and luddites send people to your company to compromise the source code. 2.) Peo…

> automate the process of bringing women he liked everywhere he went

So what is that exactly? Somehow these women would show up to meetups or something? Or were the sockpuppet accounts 'women'?

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#180

Post by ALittleLight »

newacct583 wrote: post #173
ALittleLight wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't (and won't) downvote you for expressing an opinion I disagree with - but I do disagree with you. Whether or not there is value in QAnon is beyond me. There is value in people being able to say what they want, even if it is baseless, or disturbed, or hateful. One example that comes to my mind is the Rotterham child rape scandal[1], which, were it not printed in the most reputable newspapers world wide, would…

The horrors in Rotterham weren't exposed by conspiracy nuts, though. It was exposed by real investigative journalism and law enforcement work. That's the whole point here: it's not that bad things don't happen, it's that this fact is not sufficient evidence for other bad things happening. The suppression here is of baseless conspiracy theories about child abuse because they're baseless, not because they're about chil…

The victims in Rotterham went to the police and were turned away because the police considered what they were reporting to be potentially offensive. You're right that it wasn't exposed by conspiracy nuts, but that's because it was a real thing and the people with flimsy evidence were ignored. That it wasn't exposed by people with flimsy evidence is my point. In a different context and with different laws they would have the circulated the story and it would have gained attention, credibility, and scrutiny. There is a reason why "Grooming gangs" are common in the UK compared to the US. I think the suppression of speech is one of those reasons.

It's basically gaslighting to praise the work of the government by saying "It was exposed by real investigative journalism and law enforcement work". Absolutely not. Multiple victims reported it to the government and were turned away. The government and journalists ignored it for decades. That's hardly "real investigative work". The government and journalists managed to detect the organized rape of hundreds of children after only 30 years!

The other reason to bring up Rotterham is to point out that conspiracies like this aren't purely fantasy. Sometimes the government is involved in the organized rape of children. Prohibiting people from talking about the possibility because you feel their evidence is insufficient is not a trade off I think should be made.

Post reply on HN