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Flock and Cyble Inc. weaponize “cybercrime” takedowns to silence critics

haveibeenflocked.com

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Re: Flock and Cyble Inc. weaponize “cybercrime” takedowns to silence critics

#111

Post by FireBeyond »

greyface- wrote: post #10

If Flock truly believed that the domain name infringes on their trademark, they would file an ICANN UDRP complaint instead of Cloudflare and Hetzner abuse reports. But they don't, because the former would require them to perjure themselves, and the latter just requires them to lie to a hosting company.

> But they don't, because the former would require them to perjure themselves, and the latter just requires them to lie to a hosting company.

Doesn't stop anyone with DMCA... DMCA is coming up on almost three decades of being a law, and requires statements made under penalty of perjury.

However many millions (likely billions) of DMCA takedowns issued, who knows how many false/bad faith... I wonder how many have led to prosecutions for perjury, even when filing tens of thousands, en masse...

No need to wonder, the answer is simple. Starts with a "Z" and ends in "ero".

Re: Flock and Cyble Inc. weaponize “cybercrime” takedowns to silence critics

#112

Post by FireBeyond »

jeroenhd wrote: post #72
greyface- wrote: post #10

If Flock truly believed that the domain name infringes on their trademark, they would file an ICANN UDRP complaint instead of Cloudflare and Hetzner abuse reports. But they don't, because the former would require them to perjure themselves, and the latter just requires them to lie to a hosting company.

Knowingly filing false DMCA claims will also perjure them. However, ICANN has a whole procedure they follow where complaints are fact-checked, whereas DMCA takedowns put an unreasonable burden on hosting providers that requires immediate action, and many hosting providers will take such action automatically to protect themselves. I doubt they care about perjury. They care about results, and the DMCA gets them exactly…

Not one single person in the history of the DMCA has been prosecuted for perjury related to filing a DMCA claim.

Re: Flock and Cyble Inc. weaponize “cybercrime” takedowns to silence critics

#113

Post by mapontosevenths »

tptacek wrote: post #110
mapontosevenths wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only places IQ tests are done in any significant numbers in those places. > It's a fertile field and people are coming at it from multiple angles One of these things must not be 100% accurate. Do you know of any real dataset thats based on actual testing? I can't find one for the life of me. I've looked. If someone just... tested people we would have numbers. They aren't. Its been 30 years since the bell curve…

No, those statements aren't in tension at all! The idea that there would be reliable data for country-by-country or even state-by-state IQ comparisons is an extraordinary claim. Think about the amount of work that would go into generating representative samples. Globally? Forget about it. It does not follow from the intractability of that problem that nobody's doing intelligence or behavioral genetics research. Plent…

I dont think the problem is intractable at all. We have the internet now and can just test people. We don't.

Yes, that would be less accurate than a test administered in office by a professional, but it would also be more accurate than basing it on educational attainment or standardized tests intended for other purposes.

With a little effort the tests true purposes could easily be disguised. These very clever researchers know this, they just won't.

Re: Flock and Cyble Inc. weaponize “cybercrime” takedowns to silence critics

#114

Post by FireBeyond »

nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote: post #60
CamperBob2 wrote: post #4

This is a Y Combinator company? https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety dang/tomhow, does Y Combinator have a code of ethics that comes into play when one of your funding recipients does something unethical and/or illegal like this?

VC system with multiple investors means YC can't tell their company what to do. No mote than you can tell Google what to do because you have $100M in shares.

There are economies of scale. But if one of your investors owns even a single digit percentage of your company and calls you to comment on direction or strategy, if you're wise, you pick up the phone.

Re: Flock and Cyble Inc. weaponize “cybercrime” takedowns to silence critics

#115

Post by tptacek »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #113
tptacek wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, those statements aren't in tension at all! The idea that there would be reliable data for country-by-country or even state-by-state IQ comparisons is an extraordinary claim. Think about the amount of work that would go into generating representative samples. Globally? Forget about it. It does not follow from the intractability of that problem that nobody's doing intelligence or behavioral genetics research. Plent…

I dont think the problem is intractable at all. We have the internet now and can just test people. We don't. Yes, that would be less accurate than a test administered in office by a professional, but it would also be more accurate than basing it on educational attainment or standardized tests intended for other purposes. With a little effort the tests true purposes could easily be disguised. These very clever researc…

I don't know what to tell you about reducing this problem to an online survey and hoping for the best. There are people doing actual science --- including with modern IQ tests --- working on these problems. I think the bigger thing here is that, outside of message boards and Twitter, there just aren't that many people interested in a global country-by-country inventory of "average IQ".

Re: Flock and Cyble Inc. weaponize “cybercrime” takedowns to silence critics

#116

Post by FireBeyond »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #106
tomjakubowski wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cameras at schools, I can see how that could be concerning. But what's wrong with ticketing drivers on Sundays?

Nothing, I guess, but don't try to tell us it's about "safety" when school-zone speed limits are enforced on Sundays when school is out. That said, I don't think Flock has anything to do with speed cameras in school zones or anywhere else.

Hah, about a decade I had a cop try to pull that one on me, pulled over for speeding in a school zone on a Saturday morning.

"Even if you can't see kids at a school you should assume they're around".

Judge had about as much patience for that argument as I did. Dismissed.

Re: Flock and Cyble Inc. weaponize “cybercrime” takedowns to silence critics

#117

Post by mapontosevenths »

tptacek wrote: post #115
mapontosevenths wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont think the problem is intractable at all. We have the internet now and can just test people. We don't. Yes, that would be less accurate than a test administered in office by a professional, but it would also be more accurate than basing it on educational attainment or standardized tests intended for other purposes. With a little effort the tests true purposes could easily be disguised. These very clever researc…

I don't know what to tell you about reducing this problem to an online survey and hoping for the best. There are people doing actual science --- including with modern IQ tests --- working on these problems. I think the bigger thing here is that, outside of message boards and Twitter, there just aren't that many people interested in a global country-by-country inventory of "average IQ".

> there just aren't that many people interested in a global country-by-country inventory of "average IQ".

Thats also a fair theory to explain the lack of real data. Given the frequency with which I've had similar conversations it feels off to me, but that may just be my bias.

It certainly seems to be a very interesting problem to researchers. Thirty years later it is still cited frequently enough that Elsevier is having to hunt and destroy papers that cite it.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/dec/10/elsevier-rev...

Re: Flock and Cyble Inc. weaponize “cybercrime” takedowns to silence critics

#118

Post by tptacek »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #117
tptacek wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what to tell you about reducing this problem to an online survey and hoping for the best. There are people doing actual science --- including with modern IQ tests --- working on these problems. I think the bigger thing here is that, outside of message boards and Twitter, there just aren't that many people interested in a global country-by-country inventory of "average IQ".

> there just aren't that many people interested in a global country-by-country inventory of "average IQ". Thats also a fair theory to explain the lack of real data. Given the frequency with which I've had similar conversations it feels off to me, but that may just be my bias. It certainly seems to be a very interesting problem to researchers. Thirty years later it is still cited frequently enough that Elsevier is hav…

Again: there is active science being done at some of the largest research universities in the world on the questions you're talking about. What there isn't is a global country-by-country survey of representative samples of people to generate "average IQ", not because such a thing would be forbidden knowledge (we're awash in data that would be equivalently "forbidden"), but because the cost of such a project likely swamps any utility it might have. It's an idee fixee of message boards.

The data discussed in the Guardian article you cited there is fraudulent. They're hunting it down because it's bad data. It's exactly the same impulse as the Data Colada and Retraction Watch people, which is celebrated on HN. But now the wrong ox is getting gored, and people are uncomfortable with it.

Re: Flock and Cyble Inc. weaponize “cybercrime” takedowns to silence critics

#119

Post by mapontosevenths »

tptacek wrote: post #118
mapontosevenths wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there just aren't that many people interested in a global country-by-country inventory of "average IQ". Thats also a fair theory to explain the lack of real data. Given the frequency with which I've had similar conversations it feels off to me, but that may just be my bias. It certainly seems to be a very interesting problem to researchers. Thirty years later it is still cited frequently enough that Elsevier is hav…

Again: there is active science being done at some of the largest research universities in the world on the questions you're talking about. What there isn't is a global country-by-country survey of representative samples of people to generate "average IQ", not because such a thing would be forbidden knowledge (we're awash in data that would be equivalently "forbidden"), but because the cost of such a project likely sw…

> But now the wrong ox is getting gored, and people are uncomfortable with it.

I'm not mad the ox was gored, just that nobody replaced it after they were done sacrificing it. Bad science deserves to die, but in my mind it should always be replaced with better science. Not just left as an empty gap.

> Again: there is active science being done at some of the largest research universities in the world on the questions you're talking about.

I wish I could find it. Neither Google, Kagi, ChatGPT, or Gemini could point me towards anything relevant. They just keep spitting out the old discredited hogwash. Maybe that's more a failing of the search engines than of the science though.

Either way, I appreciate the conversation. It's a topic that fascinates me, even if it isn't particularly relevant to my own life. I hope you have, or are actively having, a great holiday!

Re: Flock and Cyble Inc. weaponize “cybercrime” takedowns to silence critics

#120

Post by tptacek »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #119
tptacek wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again: there is active science being done at some of the largest research universities in the world on the questions you're talking about. What there isn't is a global country-by-country survey of representative samples of people to generate "average IQ", not because such a thing would be forbidden knowledge (we're awash in data that would be equivalently "forbidden"), but because the cost of such a project likely sw…

> But now the wrong ox is getting gored, and people are uncomfortable with it. I'm not mad the ox was gored, just that nobody replaced it after they were done sacrificing it. Bad science deserves to die, but in my mind it should always be replaced with better science. Not just left as an empty gap. > Again: there is active science being done at some of the largest research universities in the world on the questions y…

Sasha Gusev and Alex Strudwick Young are two good follows on opposing ends of the spectrum of research beliefs here, both link constantly to new studies. From a more psychometric and behavioral perspective, Eric Turkheimer is a good starting point. On the other end of the spectrum from Turkheimer is Richard Haier.

These are, like, high-profile names, but of course there are many dozens more people actually doing work in these fields.

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