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Gab Has Been Breached

troyhunt.com

121–130 of 194 posts

Re: Gab Has Been Breached

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

When you are on receiving side of the "assholeness beyond normal range", it is significantly destructive.

It does actual real world significant damage to actual real world people who then suffer a lot. If such person have real power, say over salaries and firings, the damage is financial and long term very very quick.

It is not just it is unacceptable in abstract way. It is that innocent people are made suffer.

Re: Gab Has Been Breached

#122
post #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 Ga…

> the people on Gab are there because they feel like they are under sustained political attack I mean aren't they? I don't see another intellectually honest way of framing this. And yes, I'm aware: Popper's paradox, fighting fascism, etc., etc.

Thanks for mentioning Popper’s paradox, I looked it up just now and its scenario has been on my mind for a long time. Now I can just refer to it, in a fashion like Dunning-Kruger.

Re: Gab Has Been Breached

#123
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…

>The most realistic scenario is that he knows exactly what he's saying and is doing so simply to rile up fanatics, I don't know, if there's one thing I've learned from Q-anon and other modern cultists is that they are who they tell you they are. There's no need for mental gymnastics on our part to explain awful behaviour away.

On the other hand it was revealed from a 2019 video that Alex Jones hates Trump, while publicly pretending to love the guy to appeal to it's target audience; my guess is that he does believe a few of the nonsense claims he makes on his show but not all; but like the sibling comment says the difference may not matter at all.

Re: Gab Has Been Breached

#124
post #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 Ga…

[deleted]

Re: Gab Has Been Breached

#125
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is like modern day version of Hitler did not getting in art school.

Except he did get into YC and he's not a genocidal dictator so much as an angry and inappropriate person online.

As both an former art student and Austrian living in Germany I don't think it is forbidden to think about how Hitler became Hitler.

Because for some time of his life Hitler was just some angry guy until he turned to a fully fledged genozidal fascist dictator.

Hitlers antisemitism was partly created by his rejection in the viennese academy and his hurt ego made him want to pay them back for the rest of his life.

Why should forbid ourselves from talking about that psychological mechanism? Because Hitler is not seen as a human but a demon? Because accepting Hitler as a human would mean this could happen again, with us in the role of the baddies?

When your main reaction to personal rejection is to search for a scapegoat, because you can't handle it otherwise you are going down a similar path. Surely most will calm down on the way, surely most will not do so in a political and historical environment that allows them to become violent or even genocidal, but why not talk about it?

Re: Gab Has Been Breached

#126

Some bit of gossip about the CTO of Gab, seeing as how I've got a bit of context. (Throwaway, for obvious reasons.) The CTO was never a software engineer. They were a developer advocate so had some interaction with code, but was more of a "talk to developers using things and make sure the requirements were passed along to the dev team" sort of guy, rather than someone that knew his technical details (beyond say, the…

Not sure I understand the downvotes this seems to have collected...

Re: Gab Has Been Breached

#127
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True but it’s also free speech and as such should be permitted on a social network oriented around free speech. Unless trolling doesn’t count as free speech?

With that definition, would you think unlimited spam is also ok? Most likely you got reported by the community and picked up by the same sort of algorithm that exists on every other platform.

[deleted]

Re: Gab Has Been Breached

#128

Some bit of gossip about the CTO of Gab, seeing as how I've got a bit of context. (Throwaway, for obvious reasons.) The CTO was never a software engineer. They were a developer advocate so had some interaction with code, but was more of a "talk to developers using things and make sure the requirements were passed along to the dev team" sort of guy, rather than someone that knew his technical details (beyond say, the…

> I feel pity and sadness more than anything else

I am not sure that is necessary. These guys know how the game is played. The alt-right has turned into an ecosystem of performative trolls all trying to out troll one another. They then leverage the infamy/fame into interviews, speaking gigs, book deals, etc... They all pretend to be outraged when they get banned from twitter, but they were purposefully toeing the line knowing full well that the inevitable ban would lead to a few headlines that they can then leverage to build their brand. And as Troy Hunt has shown, even in the middle of a security incident, they can't dare drop the facade, it would be bad for business.

Re: Gab Has Been Breached

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the people on Gab are there because they feel like they are under sustained political attack I mean aren't they? I don't see another intellectually honest way of framing this. And yes, I'm aware: Popper's paradox, fighting fascism, etc., etc.

Thanks for mentioning Popper’s paradox, I looked it up just now and its scenario has been on my mind for a long time. Now I can just refer to it, in a fashion like Dunning-Kruger.

Popper is often misunderstood. He was a passionate advocate of free speech and rational argument; when he said "intolerance" he was referring to people who would use violence to suppress free speech:

> for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

And even while explaining the paradox, he expressed his opposition to censorship in general:

> I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance#Discussio...

Re: Gab Has Been Breached

#130
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.

Replying to both your nearly invisible comments: On the one hand, yes, selling things to people is the point.

On the other hand, one does not need to be an ass to one group just to get trade from another. Tim Cook was part of the big tech group that used to meet with Trump, yet managed to maintain corporate policies that are (from my non American POV) stereotypical of the American left.

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