Istyosty Down–Google Next?

The proxy service istyosty has had to close due to legal threats from Associated Newspapers (aka The Daily Mail). The cease-and-desist letter has been published online.

Istyosty worked by caching webpages and providing a URL to the cached version. This means that the cached website does not get hit every single time the cached page is loaded. This deprives the target site of advertising revenue, whether that be through page ads (which can be stripped by an automated script – this is what browser extensions like Adblock do), or by pay-per-hit schemes.

Obviously, the Daily Fail found istyosty either vocal enough, or popular enough to warrant it a threat to its online business. We can take that as a good thing. The Daily Mail is one of the most popular online news sites, gaining in popularity through flamebaitery articles (case in question: Facebook gives you cancer), reams of celebrity drivel supplemented by photographs, and the sheer ignorant and offensive columns of the likes of Richard Littlejohn and Jan Moir. Their bile is what causes people to take these measures – but they don’t care too much about that.

Now, the source of some of this content has been brought into question – allegations stand from multiple sources that the Mail online uses copyrighted images without remuneration or attribution; and there is also evidence of plagiarism. From a business perspective, this all makes sense. Competing on the Internet largely translates for competing for Google search rankings. The Mail is always up there at the top of the first page – an impressive feat. It seems as if they are willing to do anything to get there, whether that be rip off content or threaten

The big question is – will the Daily Mail go after Google? Google caches web pages in the same way:

Furthermore, I can link to the Daily Mail homepage using that cached link, just like istyosty. Google is considerably stronger that istyosty (both in terms of financial and server power) – and so will cache pages at a vastly accelerated rate. Surely this is a bigger threat to them?

The Daily Mail has a history of setting the lawyers on those who disagree with it – but will Google be considered too powerful to pull the same tactic on?

The Danger of Social Media is also its Strength

In the wake of last week’s riots across the UK, David Cameron announced on Thursday that the government would look into banning people from using social media “when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality”. I think this is a ridiculous, ignorant and impossible position to uphold.

What can already by done?

Social media services are provided by private companies, and by signing up to those services you agree to abide by their rules. You do not have the right to freedom of speech on their services. It is very often the case that “private” messages are rarely private – there is money to be made in mining your data and handing it over to advertisers. This kind of policy exists so that administrators can remove hate speech and graphic content.

Looking at the terms of use of Facebook, Twitter and RIM, it is pretty clear that all three services have clauses allowing them to hand information over to the authorities. Facebook asserts:

“We may disclose information pursuant to subpoenas, court orders, or other requests if we have a good faith that the response is required by law.”

Twitter similarly states that:

“We also reserve the right to access, read, preserve and disclose any information as we reasonably believe is necessary to:

(i) Satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request

(v) protect the rights, property or safety of Twitter, its users and the public”

Finally, RIM

“Reserves the right to review materials posted to or sent through a Communication Service and to remove any materials in its sole discretion.”

Furthermore,

“You hereby authorize RIM to co-operate with (i) law enforcement authorities in the investigation of suspected criminal violation”.

All of these services will aid law enforcement authorities with their enquiries – which is in their commercial interests as by doing so they will be seen as responsible organisations who do not want to promote criminal activity.

But, David Cameron was not just talking about having these companies hand over information; he was talking about going further and banning people from these sites altogether. So, let’s take a look at whether this could actually be implemented.

The Implementation

As this was just a general speech, not a lot of details were discussed on how such a policy would be implemented. There are a lot of questions to be answered; these are a few of the big ones that come to my mind:

• Will banning be a proactive or a reactive task?
  • If done proactively – how is this reconciled with the presumption of innocence?
• Will this be a blanket internet ban, or a ban on specific sites?
  • If a blanket ban is in place – how can you guarantee that person cannot access the Internet from another machine?
  • If a social media ban is in place:
    • What is the definition of a social media service?
    • Who will keep track of what social media services exist?
    • How often will this be updated?
  • Who will enforce this ban?
• When will users be allowed back on the Internet/services?
• What is the process of appeals?

This is quite a difficult area to be wrangling policy in, as actually enforcing such a ban would incur a massive and ongoing cost to the state, would require the full co-operation of all parties involved, and verges on the impossible. BBM, for example, is encrypted. To actively police this network would require the ability to decrypt a message and identify the origin, in addition to catching the criminal with enough other evidence to prosecute.

Chris Morris’ excellent film Four Lions shows the main characters communicating through a web service called “Puffin Party”. The reason I bring this to your attention is to state that not all social network activity is carried out via the larger services. Once you start heading into the obscure, you suddenly find yourself dealing with hundreds, if not thousands of places in which communications could be taking place. When Twitter and Facebook were blocked in the Middle East uprisings earlier this year, people turned to dating sites to communicate. People even get around the so-called ‘Great Firewall of China’. These systems are never perfect.

Neutral

During the riots there were various rumours going around on Twitter that riots had started in several cities when they hadn’t. Some police forces were very visual on Twitter to dispel these rumours. There is a risk in such a fast-moving story that these rumours might gain some traction and people would take to the streets, but this is not an exclusive feature of social networks. It is good ol’ scapegoating to say that social media was the cause of the riots. Sure, it might have been one of or the major means by which the message spread, but we must also consider the flipside.

Users of social media regularly use the service to do good – by linking to charities, or important stories, or in context of this article, organise a community cleanup operation (see the #riotcleanup hashtag feed). Tom Watson MP was correct in calling this technology “neutral” as the technology does not encourage this kind of behaviour. Social media is unique in that is has the ability to spread information on a scale never seen before – that is one the whole a good thing that we should not want restricted because of some bad apples.

To me, it seems as if this part of David Cameron’s speech is nothing more than populism, with the intention of gaining small-term favour from the public, and ensuring they remain in control of the media cycle by looking ‘tough’. There is clearly a fine line between the need for the Police to be able to effectively police our society, and acting in an oppressive manner. Whilst this does mean that the Police will have to adapt to new technology, we should always be wary of how much power we hand over. In times of crisis – keep a watchful eye on the government, and think critically about what they want to introduce into law.

Scum

This week, I blogged about how we don’t really know what caused these riots. Is it a response to austerity, unemployment, phone hacking or the stock market crashes? I think now is the time to start asking questions. Why did these riots happen? Why now? Why in this particular manner? If we start to open our eyes and minds to these questions, we stand a chance of improving our society.

Based on the bile spewing forth from certain sections of the Internet, it seems as if this is not happening. Rather, I’ve seen people calling for the user of rubber and real bullets, water cannon, the army, and for more out-there punishments including removing benefits. The Government are warming to these ideas too, with David Cameron expressing that rubber bullets and water cannon may be used, and that they would ignore “phoney calls about human rights.” I despair at how rapidly we call for an escalated violent response from the State in order to quell violence.

Some think that wanting to understand the causes of the violence means you condone the violence, that you are an apologist, or a sympathiser. These are mutually-exclusive states. Of course any sensible person doesn’t condone the violence, and one expresses extreme concern for the people who have been affected directly by the riots, whose houses and businesses have been burnt to the ground. Since the police have been deployed in larger numbers, there have been more arrests and less violence – something which will improve in the coming days. We have a rule of law, and I am a firm believer that those responsible for their own actions should be brought to justice.

I cannot see the logic in calling the rioters scum. It serves no purpose other than demonising, dehumanising and forcing these people further underground. Behind these calls lie ignorant assumptions, such that the rioters are all benefit claimants – something totally unsubstantiated. In my mind, by referring to people as “scum” you are essentially condemning these people, taking their actions out of their own hands and placing them on their ‘class’, if you can call it that.

Put this all together, and you get the potential for a government to enforce further crackdowns on civil liberties, backed by ‘popular opinion’. We can’t let that happen. Whilst the past few nights have been terrifying for all of us, we must remain focused on building a better society for all of us – not just the few. One step towards that is to stop calling these people scum, holding them to account, and ensuring this never happens again.

London’s Burning–Don’t Let Our Rights Burn With It

London seems to be a pretty dangerous place as of late, as I’m sure you’ve heard. It seems rather difficult to identify why people are rioting and looting – even more so for me because I’m out the country with limited internet access. The media are yet again whipped up into a frenzy, all ready with explanations that miraculously fit their ideological narratives.

I don’t think it is as simple as that.

The protests started in Tottenham over the mysterious death of Mark Duggan. That may have been the spark that kicked things off, but I don’t think it is possible to say this public disorder happened because of this reason, and this reason alone. We just don’t know. Whilst we might try and understand these events in a sentence, or a soundbite – what we have is a mix of mob behaviour, anger, opportunism and confusion; mixed together with a media frenzy, competing rationalisations and an overwhelming sense of information overload. With all of that going around - how can me make full sense of what is going on?

The Prime Minister is chairing COBRA tomorrow. Some on Twitter seem adamant the army will have to intervene in the situation. This may be due to the glamorising of the violence by the media, genuine concern, or a lust for dramatic events. Context is difficult to ascertain in 140 characters. Whatever happens, I hope that we remain aware that there is a disparity between rioting and legitimate, legal, protesting. Any sweeping crackdowns must try and remember that, and not restrict further our ability to hold our lawmakers to account. But this - what is happening right now - is not the way to do it. Stay safe.

Superin-joke-tion

After a Twitter account revealed the (potential) details of a superinjunction, an injunction with the added clause against revealing any details, with a footballer and a Big Brother contestant a frenzy has erupted that I think is dangerous.

Twitter went crazy with people tweeting about the names of the parties involved, and eventually the press joined in as soon as their lawyers thought they could get away with it.

These injunctions exist as a way of enforcing the right to privacy under the Human Rights Act. The concept of the ‘superinjunction’ itself is being made a scapegoat here, with the media salivating at the lucrative details waiting to be published. The issue I take is that is that newspapers are a business – they exist first and foremost for profit. They know what sells, and what sells en masse. Daily Mail hysteria, tits in the Sun – these are what get the punters in. Where a famous person is sticking his dick is of paramount importance – to them.

I feel as if the public has been used. By repeating the details of the injunction, could there be a case for the injunction to come down, as it is potentially not enforceable anymore? MPs looking for political gain by abusing parliamentary privilege to embrace this name-and-shame creates a frenzy, and brings further into question the validity of such an injunction existing in our legal frameworks.

At a time when the News International phone hacking scandal is once again picking up steam, as even more allegations against corruption are being raised, questioning just what interests the media serves (itself) and what the standard of ethics they possess (very poor); there is now the perfect distraction, as Alastair Campbell pointed out.

Superinjunctions have been previously used in the past, notably by Trafigura to cover up environmental abuses. These laws are designed to protect the vulnerable from real danger – not for the rich and powerful to maintain a public image. By breaking the law and revealing the details of these injunctions, I fear we are playing right into their hands by bringing down the tone of the debate. This can’t end well.

Discredited, on Dubious Grounds

Yesterday I blogged about the #march26 demonstration. In this world, things move quickly. 24 hours on, I feel a follow-up is necessary.

Front Pages

Sunday’s front pages were not all entirely about the demonstration – something you may find shocking until you realise the Z-list celebrity-obsessed Daily Star Sunday and News Of The World were writing about Jordan and her cohort. From the front pages, the narrative being pushed indicates the march is being discredited, overshadowed by the violence. Photographs of riot cops in full gear surrounded by an air full of flare smoke sells. It looks like hell. Today’s front pages show (aside from the Evening Standard scaremongering over the Royal Wedding) the issue was not salient. It’s old news.

The press doesn’t have much time to get their opinions out there. They are competing to get articles written which fit their pre-chosen narratives, squeezed through the editing process and out onto the printing presses in time for the morning rush hour. They don’t have the time for detailed analysis – if the issue is dropped by them, it will die quickly. Of course, this is why I like the blogging and tweeting platforms – the discussion can continue.

Boris Alert!

Boris Johnson wrote in the Telegraph (istyosty link) that:

"The sad thing is that in spite of their crocodile tears, Balls and Miliband will feel quietly satisfied by the disorder – a token, they will tell themselves, of the public feeling that is out there to exploit.”

This is nothing but flamebaiting party politics, the “us and them” logic that so often plagues discourse in the media. His views are warped. The event the Leader of the Opposition attended, like 99.996% of the 500,000 protestors, was entirely peaceful. It was a family event. Boris's comments are part of the discredit narrative – and they didn’t go down too well.

On the actual day of protests, when he didn’t have a Torygraph column to fill, this is all he had to say:

This is the same Boris, of course, who Political Scrapbook asserts is prone to violence himself. The well-publicised antics of the Bullingdon Club, an exclusive club of which Boris, Cameron and Osborne were members of, comes to mind.

In an urgent question session, the Home Secretary Theresa May refused three times to comment on Boris’s article, whilst blaming Yvette Cooper (whom raised the question) for her partisan questioning. Of course, more party politics. She also praised the demonstrations of the Countryside Alliance back in 2004. Of course, those didn’t involve a House of Commons invasion, or riot cops attacking protestors. I’ll come back to this question session in a moment. We need a bit of context first.

UK Uncut

The simultaneous protests caused the media a bit of a headache – trying to establish an accurate version of events in real-time is extremely difficult. Whether deliberately or accidentally, the portrayal of the violence with the peaceful occupation of UK Uncut has gifted them with negative attention from both sides. They are also (incorrectly) being attributed as the violent ones. Anthony Painter on Labour List had the following to say:

“How dare they unilaterally decide to conduct their own protest and divert attention from the main event.”

This view, whilst acknowledging UK Uncut were not responsible for the violence, questions why everybody shouldn’t just shuffle around in a queue. People have a right to protest, and this can be expressed in many ways. UK Uncut’s action was targeted not as a diversionary headline-grabber, but as part of a wider-scale response to the government’s claim that there is no alternative to their ideological cuts.

Likewise, Charlie Beckett condemns the timing of UK Uncut’s actions, which may be valid, although the BBC did possess leaflets regarding the situation hours before it happened. They had a chance to get their story straight. Joe Cox argues that UK Uncut partake in frequent occupations – to cherry-pick a particular event without the context of the others is misleading.

The police announced that 201 arrests were made. 145 of these arrests were on non-violent UK Uncut occupiers – 138 of which were charged with aggravated trespass. Shocking footage released by the Guardian shows that UK Uncut’s claim that occupiers were tricked into leaving with promises of not being arrested stand up to what happened in reality. The police have some serious questions to answer.

Eyewitness Reports

Eyewitness reports have been pouring in since the demonstration began. Laurie Penny’s New Statesman post was one of the more popular ones, however has been the source of both valid and unnecessary criticism (check out the comments on her article). Adam Ramsay described his arrest, and Dominic Campbell’s account goes into detail about the events at Trafalgar Square, where Black Bloc protestors became intermingled with other ongoing protests; mentioning the disproportionate police behaviour.

Eyewitness accounts, and I don’t mean to discredit them here, can be subject to hyperbole. They can even claim to see things that didn’t happen, or not see things that did. However, they are useful to get an on-the-ground view of things, and provide some more context for what I want to actually talk about.

More Powers

In the urgent question session, Theresa May said that she is prepared to look at granting more powers to the police. These powers seem to indicate the pre-emptive banning of people from protests, and the power to remove face masks. It will be interesting to see what Fitwatch makes of these powers. It will be additionally interesting to see how these powers stand up to the presumption of innocence and the right to protest. Comparing these powers to laws regarding football hooligans is like comparing apples to oranges: there’s a difference between banning people from football matches and removing their right to protest. In my mind this is reminiscent of sweeping legislation introduced by the Blair Government, such as the Serious And Organised Crime And Police Act 2005, which helped further erode our civil liberties and restricted the conditions upon which we exercise our right to protest. This coming from a Tory-led government who campaigned against Labour’s legacy of civil liberty abuse, and who have already taken positive steps into removing controversial databases (the ID card database). This is an intriguing test for the government.

Conclusion

It’s been a difficult three days to try and consume and analyse the amount of information that’s been streaming onto the internet, in a very fast moving story. I am hoping that a full debate is heard within the House of Commons with a full, independent report relating to the police tactics being on the table. The Met have questions to answer, which, when combined with their seemingly-dubious involvement News of the World phone hacking scandal, brings their credibility into question.

Whilst the violence on the day has been largely condemned and in the short term may allow the Tories breathing space to go on the offensive again, I believe that the anti-cuts message will percolate through once the cuts start to really kick in. Only time will tell – it’s just a shame we have a government willing to gamble with the lives of millions to find out whether they have the right medicine.

The Narrative Prevails?

Yesterday saw the March 26 demonstrations, a half-a-million strong anti-cuts march across London. The route, organised by the TUC in conjunction with the Met Police, was stuck to by the vast majority of people. It was peaceful, successful, and very well policed.

These protests were advertised as a family-friendly event, and that it was. The police upped their game, allowing Liberty (the legal observers for this event) into their control rooms. The TUC had employed stewards to co-operate with and assist the police. All fine, and commendable behaviour.

The Plot Thickens

Now famously, the BBC cut away from Ed Miliband’s speech to show a group (whom had diverted from the main protest group) deploying hit and run tactics, smashing windows of banks and the Ritz hotel. Sky News did a similar tactic, and the #shameOnBBC and #shameOnSky hashtags quickly did the rounds on Twitter. The nature of 24-hour news means such action was inevitable. Editors at the BBC (and Sky, in theory) must balance the need for a fair, representative coverage events with being the first to break the story. In this case, I think the BBC made an incorrect decision – and they knew it. The BBC were largely fair and representative outside of these ‘breaking news’ events, continually stressing that the ‘Black Bloc’ protestors were an extremely small minority, however, which is worth pointing out here.

When the Black Bloc broke off, suddenly the news coverage was covering two events. This later again became confused with a third simultaneous protest – that of UK Uncut’s occupations of tax-avoiding companies, including a secret occupation. At the speed these events were unfolding, it became difficult for the media to portray and understand what exactly was going on. UK Uncut’s secret occupation turned out to be at Fortnum and Mason. The store was inundated with occupiers. Video footage from the event showed that, from the inside, the occupation was largely peaceful (although no doubt extremely stressful and scary for the shoppers caught in the middle).

In came the riot cops. The entrance was blocked, with many of the UK Uncut activists being photographed, cuffed and arrested. UK Uncut is a peaceful, although sporadic and chaotic movement – a fact many on Twitter defended. Look at previous footage – they don’t destroy, they occupy and educate.

The narrative was blurred even further. The Black Bloc became confused with the UK Uncut activists at Fortnum and Mason, and additionally with the large rave going on at Trafalgar Square, organised as a 24-hour protest by the Education Activist Network. The police made 201 arrests (141 of which were at Fortnum and Masons), although the crowds at Trafalgar Square weren’t cleared until 2:45am.

Protestors I knew managed to break the police lines and escape via Charing Cross station. Others weren’t so lucky and were kept within the containment zone. The police were very often surrounded, and attacked. They also did their fair share of fighting too. Footage shows questionable force used for an arrest that I can’t seem to justify from the context of the video. Policing an operation of such a scale, with such variance is inevitably going to be hard work.

2 Cents

In my (outsider) view, the police didn’t do enough to remove the Black Bloc threat early on. Aerial photographs from the rolling news cameras showed the police attempting action, and retreating. The Black Bloc movement was highly mobile, violent and evidently difficult to police. I have no doubts in my mind their actions were deliberate to avoid being caught in a kettle. Whilst I condemn their actions, it is not them, nor the police who are the real enemies. There was violence on both sides, a riot cop punched a woman in the face live on BBC News. The Police would do well to remember they work for the people, something demonstrated in Wisconsin, where the police joined the protest. Questions will be raised about the kettling tactic again. It does not work.

That said, I also disagree with the new style of protesting brought in by the Blair Government – that of shuffling down a pre-arranged route in an orderly queue. That’s why there were simultaneous protests, each in solidarity over the government’s cuts. The protestors have a right to protest. With hindsight, it is clear that smashed windows and graffiti mean nothing to heavily-insured multinational conglomerations – although the images last. These images will (but shouldn’t) detract from the TUC’s message. They do not detract from the sheer anger people from all demographics are expressing towards the Tory’s purely ideological cuts.

Of course, the course of events has put the alternative message back on the defensive. Yesterday, the Tories could only muster Francis Maude and Matthew Sinclair to defend the establishment on BBC News. Francis Maude warned we should be wary of placing the blame for the deficit on one person, whilst in the same sentence blaming it on Gordon Brown. Am I back in May 2010?! Matthew Sinclair, head of the TaxPayer’s Alliance (a supposedly neutral pressure group, but in reality a group of out-of-touch Tory rent-a-quotes) belittled the protest, calling it a folly and out of touch with the vast majority of the public.

The strategy undertaken by the Tories is to claim there is no alternative to their cuts. Yesterday, this argument was shattered. Whilst political parties and unions are still devising their concrete alternatives, hundreds of thousands showed that there is another way. Whilst initial news reports indicate the Government don’t intend to change their course of action, I believe that change is in the air. As the new tax year starts and the brunt of the cuts begins to bite, more and more people will lose their jobs. More and more will become poorer, watching big businesses get richer as starving the beast reduces their taxes. This anger will surely be felt at the ballot box, but public opinion goes further than that. The Government will no doubt be aware of a growing movement against them. They’re only adding fuel to the fire.

For those who say protest doesn’t work, I direct you to the civil rights movement, and to the revolutions in the Middle East. To those who say protest doesn’t work in this country, I direct you to the poll tax riots, to the Suffragettes. The 26th of March march was bigger than the poll tax riots. Protesting is in our nature.

Things You Should Definitely Do On Facebook

In some parallel universe, all of the following are considered socially acceptable.

Comment and Wall Confusion

You know when someone posts a status update? Why not use this as a convenient time to recognise they actually exist by posting some irrelevant and mundane comment? Bonus points if you interrupt a comment chain during a conversation. Forget writing on their wall, where that stuff should actually go, that’s too many clicks away, and there’s a data limit to deal with!

“Checking In”

Why not update all your friends on your exact location and current activities by “checking in” on Facebook? Everybody gives a shit about what you’re getting up to, all the time. They’re just sitting there (at home, obviously. Probably crying and simultaneously masturbating because they’re not as popular as you) and just waiting to comment on your every move.

Even better, if you’re one of those people who has everything public, applications using the Facebook Graph API can see where you are too!

Spam Posts

Posting spam to your wall accidentally, say, if some rogue app got installed, is for losers. You should be publishing everything that every application you use wants you to publish. That’s just how we roll, we like to know what fun things you’re doing while we sit and eat and stalk people’s profiles. We’re all waiting for the call to arms to visit your fucking farm. Don’t bother creating friend lists so that your application wall posts are only seen by people who are genuinely interested, that’s just a waste of time. Imagine how many flowers you could have planted in that time!

Abusing Your Friend’s Trust

There is nothing funnier than somebody logging into your profile and saying you love anal sex. Decades of the LGBT community desperately trying to become less and less prejudiced against is just forgotten with that clearly well-written piece of wit. Every time it cracks me up, honestly.

Regardless of the cause, I love it when you create a group and invite me into it. I’ve pretty much given my permission anyway, what with their being no way to turn this off by default. It fills me with joy when I hear my phone chime every 2 minutes with every successive wall post on the group. All those people who become suddenly hostile to your cause to raise money for a charity are just freaks of nature, right? Weirdos.

Remember how I said I love it when people check in to places? It’s even better when you tag your friends too. Especially when they’re going to be away from the Internet for a while so they can’t remove the tag and we can all have a good lol about it. It’s just funny when they change their relationship status to single because you checked them into their girlfriend’s sister’s bed.

Seriously

Some of these annoyances, such as people starting a wall conversation on a status update and application wall posts, are a mixture of idiocy and poor usability design. Checking in to locations and updating status/profile picture/photo albums every five minutes is nothing more than a desperate plea for attention.

People create groups for genuine reasons, such as raising money for charity. The constant spam in those groups, coupled with Facebook’s “everything on by default” standard settings makes people instantly hostile to your cause (the lack of ability to disallow people inviting you to a group is disgraceful, by the way). Again, the frustration here is a mixture of bad UI design, idiocy and ignorance/oversight.

The worst abuse of trust is when people decide to take your information into their hands. Again, Facebook’s standard settings allow your friends to check you into locations, and allow their applications access to some of your personal information. That can be misjudged as you acknowledging the share. Facebook rape is so common that it takes something truly creative for anybody to find it funny anymore *, and I’m really surprised more people haven’t added the check-in scenario I posted above to their utility belts.

Privacy Is Key

Tom Scott showed us what is possible using publicly-available personal information from Facebook, and I’m sure that’s on the moderate side of what the Graph API can open. The main principle to abide by is if it’s public, Google can see it. Try googling your phone number, or even your name (if it’s sufficiently uncommon). Employers can look at that, they can see your drunk photographs, and it will affect your employment prospects. Have a look through your privacy settings and keep information private where necessary – and try to make looking through those settings a monthly/bi-monthly habit. Here’s some ones you should probably turn off.

In terms of reducing the amount of nonsense you see on your wall, I highly recommend the Fluff Busting Purity extension, which is available for Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari. It sits quietly in the background and filters out annoyances. It is fully user-customisable so you can moderate exactly how the tool works, and even remove some ads. WIN.

* I in no way condone Facebook rape (and I also believe the use of ‘rape’ does no good into affecting how we as a culture perceive the severity of actual rape) and in fact might be a crime under the Computer Misuse Act 1990; but the most ingenious one I’ve seen is to change somebody’s birthday to two day’s time. As this e-card perfectly sums up, people don’t bother fact-checking or questioning what they see:

Not Giving Them Money

New Statesman blogger Steven Baxter, or as he’s also known, Anton Vowl, recently published a post called “Don’t Click on the Daily Mail!”. The crux of the argument is that the Daily Mail (and they are by no means alone in this) encourage millions of webpage views using a utility-belt of tactics, and we should avoid them at all cost. Some of these tactics are:

• Flamebaitery – Offensive columnists such as Richard Littlejohn, Melanie Phillips and Jan Moir attack homosexuals for being in public, dead and homosexual. Outrage drives page views.
  
• Lots of pictures – Oh my this is offensive! Let’s post lots of pictures to show you how offensive this is from every angle! Oh yeah, the offensive thing might be underage, too. Or it might be an upskirt shot that was kicking about on our image database.
  
• Celebrity Drivel – Whether they dye their hair, or you have an image of a thin woman who you want to call fat – all of it builds up into traffic-heavy non-stories.
  
• Insult Muslims – Unfortunately, these stories are far too common, far too contrived and far too easily believed by bigots. Idiots shout the loudest, and it all contributes to their traffic.
  
• Insult Facebook – At least 10% of the Mail’s traffic comes from Facebook. It is a massive revenue stream, but it’s something their older readership won’t necessarily use or understand, so it makes perfect sense to say it gives you cancer (like a lot of things, apparently). That’s one way to get a news article to virally spread across a social network!

I hate to say it, but they know what they’re doing and it’s paying for them big-style. But can we fight back? I’d like to summarise some of the tools out there that you can employ to starve their revenue streams, have a laugh at them, and avoid them altogether.

Journalism Warning Labels

Tom Scott created a set of warning labels that can be printed and stuck onto newspapers. The Newscrud tool lets you add these to websites! You can even attach a rebuking blog post or information source, which is awesome. This then gives you a newscrud link which you can send to peers, rather than the plain old Daily Mail link. However, I think this still links to the Daily Mail within an iframe, but there’s a way around that too.

Istyotsy

Istyotsy lets you view the Daily Mail, Daily Express etc by proxy. Istyotsy stores a copy (a cache) of their articles on their own servers, and provide an istyotsy web link you can use. When this link is accessed, the cached version of the article is displayed, rather than going off to the original source every time. This reduces the number of page views to one! Huzzah!

When an istyotsy link is combined with newscrud link (give the istyotsy link to newscrud; the other way around won’t work) – you attack the weak point for massive damage.

Furthermore, Istyotsy strips adverts, doesn’t perform tracking, doesn’t index to search engines like Google and Bing; so cuts off as many page view streams as possible.

AdBlock and Tracking Cookies

The AdBlock extension for Firefox and Chrome is amazing. It pre-filters web pages to reduce the amount of adverts you see online. The built-in filters work well and are regularly updated. You can create custom filters, and even make exceptions. It’s worth getting for general internet browsing.

Advert revenue can be generated in several ways:

• Revenue is paid on a per-click basis.
  
• Revenue is paid per page view.
  
• Both of the above.

AdBlock reliably denies click revenue, but won’t stop page revenue unless the adverts perform some clever trickery to check if they’re not being displayed; which is why I’ve previously suggested istyotsy .

Next up are tracking cookies. Cookies are essentially text files which store information that websites can use. Cookies are the basis of how your shopping basket is stored, or how you can automatically login to websites. They’re not evil, but can be exploited to perform tracking of your web browsing sessions. Tracking isn’t always malicious either, a website may want to track which products you’re viewing to suggest recommendations. Tracking cookies can also go and look across web sites, or even across multiple uses of your web browser. Some search engines do this to improve their search listings.

Your web browser’s options has cookie-related preferences so you can tweak how cookies are handled. If you have the option to clear all data when you close your web browser, do it. You can turn off cookies altogether, but it becomes annoying as you then have to log in to every website manually. It’s a trade-off that can take a bit of tweaking to get right, or you can get extensions to help you .

Google has released advertising opt-out cookie extensions (here and here), and the Disconnect extension for Chrome automatically blocks the big players. This can go a long way to stop websites gaining information from you which can be used to their advantage.

When In Doubt, Laugh

Comedian Chris Coltrane launched the Polljack twitter account, which suggested to its legion of followers various Daily Mail polls to hijack, for the sheer fun of it. This often produced hillarious consequences; but be warned, the Polljack account was retired after Chris realised this was driving ad revenue to them.

Abstinence

For times when someone gives you a plain old Daily Mail link, you have the choice to click or not click. I always advise not clicking, but what if you do? Don’t worry, I have your back.

Chrome users can get the Istyotsy Chrome extension, which automatically displays the article through their proxy. Handy.

Firefox users can get the Tea and Kittens extension, which automatically redirects you to teaandkittens.co.uk if you try and visit the Daily Mail or Daily Express. I hope more newspapers are added soon!

Conclusion

If you’ve made it this far, I hereby declare you King / Queen / Non-Gender-Aligned Monarch of the Internet. You can avoid giving as much money to unregulated, racist, homophobic, ableist, sexist, ill-informed, manipulative scumbags as much as possible, like a boss.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this (rather long) post as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it – even with the immense chest pains I’m having right now. I better see to that.