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Gab Has Been Breached

troyhunt.com

91–100 of 194 posts

Re: Gab Has Been Breached

#91
post #61

This is a pretty non-political rundown from Troy, and a great read as always. It's not always easy to find trustworthy people, but he's one of them. If anyone is offended by supposed political leanings in this article, I'd suggest separating Torba's political views from his words. Blaming a data breach on "mentally ill tranny demon hackers" (his words, not mine) is not a sane or rational thought. The most realistic s…

> Blaming a data breach on "mentally ill tranny demon hackers" (his words, not mine) is not a sane or rational thought.

I still think it's overly sensitive to get caught up on it. People say a lot of things when they're in distress, or angry - so what. Grow some skin (I would say balls but someone might get offended :rolleyes: (oops I forgot I might offend people without skin)).

Re: Gab Has Been Breached

#92
post #91
post #61

This is a pretty non-political rundown from Troy, and a great read as always. It's not always easy to find trustworthy people, but he's one of them. If anyone is offended by supposed political leanings in this article, I'd suggest separating Torba's political views from his words. Blaming a data breach on "mentally ill tranny demon hackers" (his words, not mine) is not a sane or rational thought. The most realistic s…

> Blaming a data breach on "mentally ill tranny demon hackers" (his words, not mine) is not a sane or rational thought. I still think it's overly sensitive to get caught up on it. People say a lot of things when they're in distress, or angry - so what. Grow some skin (I would say balls but someone might get offended :rolleyes: (oops I forgot I might offend people without skin)).

He's at least 60% right though

Re: Gab Has Been Breached

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, he's the worst. I knew him in YC, and actually liked him. But I watched him spiral as he wasn't able to raise money for his startup, including starting to go to Trump rallies "out of curiosity". His FB posts began to include worse and worse rhetoric. It was crazy to watch him get radicalized in realtime. It ended in him harassing some (minority) YC founders who said they were scared by saying we should "Build t…

He got expelled from YC for saying we should build a border wall? Really?

I understand this comment was made before the edit. However, is it really that surprising that “build a wall” narratives and racism to hand in hand?

(It’s not as if the border wall makes any logical sense, since the southern border is too long to wall off, and the majority of illegal immigration is visa overstays anyway (https://apnews.com/article/48d0ad46f143478d9384410f5ae3d38b))

Re: Gab Has Been Breached

#94
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not a gab user, a Republican, or even an American for that matter. But it strikes me that what the situation seems to call for is more compassion and constructive discourse, but you seemingly wanted to harass people online under the guise of free speech. I think I understand why that would lead to being banned just about anywhere. It doesn’t serve anyone in any useful way. I don’t believe they should allow advoca…

> i don’t see how it’s much different from what you’re criticizing. it's different because it's an intentional jab at the hyprocracy - free speech, yet bans those who don't agree with the site's concensus.

Give me a break. Free speech means you don't get banned for talking about violations to election laws or a politician's dirty laundry or FBI crime stats or even a well referenced book highlighting differences between races. All of these are bannable offenses on current social media sites. In Gab's case, if you wanted to debate why you disagree with any of these issues, you'd not be banned if you were arguing in good faith. This is quite contrary to many leftist tech platforms these days.

Free speech is not outright trolling or spamming get rich quick schemes or pumping meme stocks, as is popular of late. And it never has been. Though censorship has gotten out of hand - mostly from the left- few sites have ever allowed this type of stuff, and most worked hard to keep it off their sites.

Re: Gab Has Been Breached

#95
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, he's the worst. I knew him in YC, and actually liked him. But I watched him spiral as he wasn't able to raise money for his startup, including starting to go to Trump rallies "out of curiosity". His FB posts began to include worse and worse rhetoric. It was crazy to watch him get radicalized in realtime. It ended in him harassing some (minority) YC founders who said they were scared by saying we should "Build t…

I'm a minority, and I feel really fucking stupid that I have to say that so I don't get banned, but how on earth can anyone get expelled for saying they support the policy of the US government? That is insular to the point of caricature for out of touch democrat staffing aids, not people trying to make money.

According to Techcrunch [0]:

> Torba had also tweeted a screenshot of another founder’s Facebook comment (the founder’s name was removed) that “being a black, Muslim or woman in the USA is going to be very scary” with his own comment: “Build the wall.” Then, in another thread, a YC alum alluded to Torba’s behavior without mentioning him by name, prompting him to jump in: “Say my name when you talk about me, coward. Build the wall.”

He wasn't just publicly supporting Trump's border wall policy, he was doing it in an assholeish way, and directing that towards other YC founders. If he'd cut out the assholeish manner and the direction towards fellow founders, and just kept the publicly supporting Trump's policies part, I doubt YC would have responded in the same manner. That's consistent with Kat Manalac's email quoted in the same article – he was banned for behaving in a hostile way, not purely for his political beliefs.

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/12/pro-trump-ceo-gets-booted-...

Re: Gab Has Been Breached

#96
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the demonic trannies part. Unfortunately he's not wrong...

Are you completely tone deaf, of below average intelligence or are you really this much of a bigot?

Are you really in that much of a bubble reality

Re: Gab Has Been Breached

#97

It doesn't seem right that the big players like Facebook and Twitter enjoy much better security. Is there really no open source offering that just gets this stuff right? A Twitter-in-a-box, like WordPress is a blog-in-a-box, but secure this time? Apparently Gab used Mastodon. Is Mastodon intrinsically hard to secure?

SQL injection that was used for the breach was introduced after the fork. We know that for sure because the source code was public, as is required by AGPL Mastodon uses.

Specifically, this was the commit (from a mirror of the repository): https://git.rip/gab/gab-social/-/commit/6e42e3b1eca73c306db1...

Re: Gab Has Been Breached

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps ironically his comments strike me as those of someone mentally ill. They make me feel sorry for him.

It's a severe disservice to non-bigoted, non-toxic people who struggle with a myriad of mental health issues to reduce a description of that specific person to "he must be mentally ill". Though undoubtedly it's entirely possible to be a cancerous individual and also have mental health issues simultaneously.

One of the wisest things I ever heard from a mental health professional:

"There's a normal range of asshole, beyond that, it's mental illness"

There is an entire range of diagnosable mental illnesses, below that there are entire clusters of personality disorders that don't quite raise to the diagnosis of the others.

When it comes to personality disorders, especially, the current consensus of the psychiatric community (for better or worse) is that they're made and formed in childhood. Essentially, many of these people are acting out things that were done to them; quite possibly through no fault of their own in their early development.

Of course the results of their unacceptable behavior is what it is but there is some credence to the theory that these people are suffering in their own right. We're miserable just digesting their thoughts one tweet at a time. Meanwhile they walk around with that all day everyday.

Re: Gab Has Been Breached

#99

Gab is a joke. I got banned for making a post asking how are all the domestic terrorists Trump supporters doing after the capitol riot. I guess that is ban-worthy on their free speech network while advocating for assassinating public officials is a-ok.

Obvious troll is obvious.

Re: Gab Has Been Breached

#100
Troy has a fair take. Ultimately the Gab breach is interesting, good material for an analysis like this one, and won't matter particularly in the future.

At a guess, the people on Gab are there because they feel like they are under sustained political attack. This breach will be interpreted as further evidence that they are under sustained political attack. It won't make anyone behave differently - although I hope Gab hires a security expert.

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