Yahoo Blocked Emails About Wall Street Protests 311
itwbennett writes "People trying to email information about the Wall Street protests on Monday using Yahoo mail, found themselves on the receiving end of messages from Yahoo claiming 'suspicious activity'. ThinkProgress.org has a YouTube video of users trying to send emails that mention the 'OccupyWallSt.org' web site, which seemed to be the magic phrase to get your email blocked. Via Twitter, Yahoo announced the blockage was now fixed, but 'there may be residual delays.'"
If you send spam, that's what happens (Score:5, Insightful)
Mail containing the same URL hit a bunch of spamtraps and caused a lot of complaints. That's the sort of thing that gets your mail blocked.
Nothing to see here, no grand conspiracy of censorship, just spam filters doing what they do.
Re:Talk about hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when is Yahoo a government agency?
Dumbass.
Re:No censorship on youtube (Score:3, Insightful)
and the markets are currently down... where should the people go to show their rage at the people disrupting the markets?
Organize a protest, part and parcel of how a democracy is supposed to work. Of course in a Fascist society, communications get blocked...
Re:No censorship on youtube (Score:5, Insightful)
"Unless the people benefit, economic growth is a subsidy for the rich."
-- Richard Falk
"Post-Mubarak Revolutionary Chances", Aljazeera English 22nd Feb 2011
Re:Talk about hypocrisy (Score:2, Insightful)
So many people watched Yahoo do these things in China and said 'oh well, it won't happen here, so why should we worry?'
Ahem. The chickens are home to roost. Even if this was some kind of coincidental misfire of an adaptive spam filter, it demonstrates the capability if not the intent to do exactly the sort of things that the company has done in/with totalitarian states.
Re:Talk about hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If you send spam, that's what happens (Score:2, Insightful)
But this is Slashdot! Everything's the government's fault, or Microsoft's, or Apple's! If you apply the slightest bit of common sense and it affects somebody's perception of some imaginary human right (like the right to have everything you do remain private, regardless of where you do it, or whether you did anything to keep such actions private at the time), then you're part of the problem, too!
So who are you working for?
As if Yahoo were big enough to have any effect (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Talk about hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
the USA is a corporatocracy.
The corporations are its government.
Yahoo is a de facto government agency in this regard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy [wikipedia.org]
Re:No censorship on youtube (Score:4, Insightful)
Ursula LeGuin:
" Then there's Social Darwinism - bankers red in tooth and claw, surviving fitly, while small vermin live on the blood that trickles down... This metaphor, based on a vast misunderstanding of evolutionary process, hits its limit almost at once.
" In predatory competition, bigness is useful, but there are endless ways to get your dinner besides being bigger than it is. You can be smaller but smarter, smaller but faster, tiny but poisonous, winged... you can live inside it while you eat it... As for getting a mate, if combat were the only way to score, large size would help, but (despite our battle-fixation) most competition doesn't involve combat.
" You can win the reproductive race by dancing gracefully, by having a bluegreen tail decorated with eyes, by building a lovely bower for your bride, by knowing how to tell a joke...
" As for living space, you can crowd out your neighbors by outgrowing them, but it's cheaper and just as effective to corner all the water in the vicinity, like a juniper tree, or to be toxic to sea-anemones who aren't closely related to you...
" The competitive techniques of plants and animals are endless in variety and ingenuity. So why are we, clever we, stuck on one and one only?"
http://blog.bookviewcafe.com/2011/09/19/clinging-desperately-to-a-metaphor/ [bookviewcafe.com]
Empty Gestures (Score:5, Insightful)
I have yet to see any real protest come from this. You don't change policy by willingly confining yourself to the "free speech zones" that the police have set up. You don't change policy by going limp and zipping your mouth when confronted. You certainly don't change policy by loitering around a park eating pizza all weekend.
Instead of disrupting Wall Street, this group has done little more than create a weekend spectacle. They've largely played by the rules, and while that's great at making cops look like bullies, it doesn't actually achieve anything beyond a brief morning headline.
We need real protest. We don't need empty gestures and symbolic marches. We need action. We need rioting, and yes, even outright violence. The system is hostile toward us, why not repay the favor?
Re:No censorship on youtube (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, it's what we have now, or anything resembling "trickle down economics".
It's why Republicans believe that if only we cut the taxes on the rich, their largesse and spending will make the rest of us richer by magically freeing up money the rich would otherwise be spending to avoid paying taxes. (Despite the overwhelming evidence this has never actually worked.)
It's why corporations cut the domestic workforce and send the jobs to 3rd world countries.
It's why asshat CEOs make multi-million dollar bonuses by screwing thousands of workers out of the same amount of money.
It's why corporations are dictating laws to politicians which strip us of our rights while entrenching their own.
It's why when a corporation does something flagrantly illegal or dangerous, they spend years only to pay a small fine and do a public service announcement where you and I would have been hauled off to jail right away.
It's why corporations now have the notion of "free speech" which trumps the rights of actual natural people, and why they can influence elections more than you or I could.
It's why Libertarians say that people should be free to pay for their own social services, and not pay if they don't want to -- which basically is another way for the rich to opt out of paying for society and leaving everyone to fend for themselves.
At its core, Capitalism is all about screwing everybody else over to get your own way. Since the "guiding hand" is busy masturbating most of the time, it doesn't ever really produce these wonderfully hypothetical outcomes everyone ascribes to it. Unchecked, the guiding hand gets turned into a fist to be wielded by the privileged.
If you seriously believe there isn't a situation in which the rich increasingly get more of the pie, and the rest of us get screwed over ... you're either a blind idiot, or you're so slavishly tied to an ideology about how money works that you're not willing to look at reality.
It's basically the most brutally Darwinian system there is ... and people act like it's a kind, friendly puppy dog that will always find the best solution. In reality, it's mostly about how you can try to give yourself an unfair advantage over people and proceed to royally fuck them over.
There's literally thousands of years of examples of economic growth being a subsidy for the rich. Because that's how it works in practice.
Re:No censorship on youtube (Score:4, Insightful)
Until I take it from you b/c I have a bigger army. What's that, the government should prevent that from happening? So you think government should provide the services YOU want (protect your property and wealth), of course by taxing people. But government definitely shouldn't provide any services to anyone else that you disapprove of, b/c then taxation is theft.
I never said that the rich aren't getting a larger portion of the pie. I said that the pie is (has been) growing and everyone's portion is larger.
Except everyone's portion ISN'T getting larger. Proportionally, the middle class's portion is getting smaller, and the super-rich's portion is getting larger. How long do we have to wait until we complain about this? Until their larger portion has grown to 75% of the pie? 80%? 90%? As long as the rest of us has a subsistence level of existence (which not everyone does now)?
and I'll be damned if I let some lazy bastard with an entitlement complex demands I share because I have taken an unfair advantage.
Why is it that anyone that feels our current system is unfair must be a lazy slob that simply can't compete? Maybe I feel the system is unfair and that simply working harder to make sure I get mine would be contributing to a system that, again, I disapprove of. Maybe any system that has some people living in luxury while others literally die for lack of resources strikes me as immoral.
As for your assertion that capitalism is responsible for the overall better lifestyle (some) people enjoy, that's laughable. Technology has improved our lifestyle. Capitalism has supported some technological development, sometimes it has inhibited it. Government has supported some technological development, government has inhibited some.