Tag: Evil Bastards

Privacy? What’s That?

Corporate Fuckery, Marketing / Advertising

Very few things get under my skin as much as bullshit like this:

A recent study from Consumer Reports engaged 709 volunteers who provided archives of their Facebook user data. Astonishingly, Consumer Reports discovered that 186,892 different companies transmitted data about these users to Facebook. On average, data from each participant was shared by 2,230 companies, with some users’ data being shared by over 7,000 companies.

Think you’re outside this little net?  Think again, Winston Smith:

This examination highlighted a lesser-known form of tracking known as server-to-server tracking, where personal data is transferred directly from a company’s servers to Meta’s servers, alongside the more visible method involving Meta tracking pixels on company websites.

A surprising finding was the pervasive presence of LiveRamp, a data broker, appearing in the data of 96 percent of study participants. The list of companies sharing data with Facebook extends beyond obscure data brokers to include well-known retailers like Home Depot, Macy’s, Walmart, and others, such as Experian and TransUnion’s Neustar, Amazon, Etsy, and PayPal. Notably, LiveRamp did not respond to a request for comment on this matter.

The study’s data came from two main collection types: “events” and “custom audiences.” The latter involves advertisers uploading customer lists to Meta, including email addresses and mobile advertising IDs, to target ads on Meta’s platforms. ‘Events’ describe real-world interactions, like website visits or store purchases, facilitated by Meta’s software in apps, tracking pixels on websites, and server-to-server tracking.

I’ll sum up all this in a simple sentence:  if you’ve bought anything online in the past three years, your personal data is everywhere.

Of course, there are the weasels:

Emil Vazquez, a spokesperson for Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, defended the company’s data practices, stating: “We offer a number of transparency tools to help people understand the information that businesses choose to share with us, and manage how it’s used.”

Oh sure.  Forgive me for being skeptical about the motives of said weasels, and the companies they work for:

However, Consumer Reports identified issues with these tools, including unclear data provider identities and companies that service advertisers often disregarding user opt-out requests.

I don’t even know what to do about all this — nothing can be done, seems to me.

But the best part of all this — and the reason for my hopelessness — is that of you think that Government isn’t getting their snouts into this data trough, I have a fucking bridge to sell you.

Corporations, no matter how big, always fall straight to their knees every time some government department demands a blowjob.  And this circumstance is no different.

Violent Reaction

Marxists

Sure, it’s okay if they do it:

Left-wing protesters in Germany called for supporters of the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party to be killed during a rally against political extremism.

Amid nationwide protests over the weekend, in which organisers claimed over a million people rallied against the right-wing AfD party, it was ironically the left which seemingly exposed itself as harbouring extremists.

A report from the left-liberal Aachener Zeitung newspaper on Sunday hailed the local demonstration in the North Rhine-Westphalian city of Aachen against the AfD, which it claimed saw around 10,000 people attend.

The celebratory article, headlined: “Aachen mobilises against right-wing hate” featured a lead image of the report showed protesters holding a banner reading “Afdler Toten”, which has been translated to “Kill AfD supporters”. The image also showed masked protesters dressed in the familiar black bloc uniform waving the flag of the radical leftist Antifa group.

The article was quietly amended, however, after observers noted the potentially criminal calls to violence by the left-wing protesters, with the image being changed to a less extreme picture, which also did not feature any Antifa-style radicals.

Yeah, you bastards.

Where have we heard that kind of rhetoric before?  Oh yeah, I remember:  it was a popular slogan among Hitler’s Brownshirts back in the 1930s — albeit aimed at Communists, the current Left’s ideological forebears.

Also used by Lenin, against people (kulaks, nobles etc.) who were resistant to Communist Party policy in Soviet Russia.  And also by Lefty heartthrob Che Guevara:  “To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail.”

My, how that Great Circle Of Life does go round and round.

The great irony of all this, of course, is that while conservatives (like me) would like to see a Glorious Day when Leftist filth are led to the walls and execution pits not to mention the Hanging Tree, the plain fact is that it will never happen (unless I become World Emperor, that is).

More’s the pity.

Snake In The Astroturf

Eco-Crap, Watermelons

Here’s a face not known by my Murkin Readers, but probably familiar to those in Britishland:  ITV’s weather reporter on Good Morning Britain, the elfin Laura Tobin.

“Okay Kim,” y’all might say.  “That’s a right purdy lil’ thang, thanks for the pics.”

Unfortunately, this totty is one of those rabid climate change advocates/alarmists, whose slanted opinions on the topic, and frequent injections of said propaganda into her weather reports has even some Brits perturbed.

Just so you know.

More Gummint Bastardy

Government Thugs, Rights

Oh, this is just priceless:

The Treasury Department, on behalf of federal law enforcement after January 6, 2021, asked banks to snoop through customers’ transactions for signs of “extremism,” such as purchases of “small arms” or from gun retailers Dick’s Sporting Goods, Bass Pro Shop, or Cabela’s.

Dunno why they’d include Dick’s, which doesn’t sell any guns anymore (or shouldn’t, given their track record), but whatever.  It’s Gummint, so their lists are probably way out of date.  But it gets worse, by Rep Jim Jordan’s (R-OH) estimate:

According to the analysis, FinCEN warned financial institutions of “extremism” indicators that include “Transportation charges, such as bus tickets, rental cars, or plane tickets. for travel to areas with no apparent purpose,” or the purchase of books — including religious texts — and subscriptions to other media containing extremist views.

“In other words, FinCEN urged large financial institutions to comb through the private transactions of their customers for suspicious charges on the basis of protected political and religious expression,” Jordan wrote.

Jordan said FinCEN also distributed slides prepared by one bank explaining how other banks could use MCCs to detect customers whose transactions may reflect “potential active shooters, [and] who may include dangerous International Terrorists / Domestic Terrorists / Homegrown Violent Extremists (‘Lone Wolves’).”

This, by the way, is why you should never give the government any information, if you can — they’ll just use it, and not always (or ever) to your advantage.

I shouldn’t have to remind anyone of this, but:  cash purchases, individual sales, gun shows, and you know the rest,  Anything to prevent the fucking Gummint from seeing what’s under your fingernails.

As for the travel part:  drive, buy gas with cash, disable any tracking bullshit on your phone (Google Maps, for instance) and leave as little trace as possible.

Range time, Kim?  Yes, indeed.

Dept. Of Righteous Shootings

Righteous Shootings

…from the Youth Division comes this little tale of gunny goodness.

Executive Summary:  Father gets upset with family, threatens to kill everyone in the house, and indeed starts off by killing his adult stepdaughter.  His son says “Enough is enough” and blows a hole in Daddy Dearest, who then assumes room temperature.  Cops shrug and give the kid an “Attaboy” medal.

The only sad thing is that the woman had to die before her asshole stepfather was ushered out.

Gotta Be A Good Thing, Then

Business, Journalist Scum

Whenever the Left goes all Hair On Fire, that generally means good things are happening.  Take this little bit of news, for example:

After it was announced Monday that local businessman and Sinclair Broadcasting Group executive Chairman David Smith had rescued The Sun with plans to revitalize it to a robust status, the left is apoplectic.

Why? Sinclair, the local news behemoth Smith runs, has been accused for years of tilting right. Based on the hissy fits pitched by the AP, the Baltimore Banner (an online site started after the Alden purchase), CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, it seems like journalists would rather the paper die all together than be run by someone who’s not a leftist.

Well, duh;  if the Left can’t control something, they try to destroy it (see:  Donald Trump).

And if, Lenin forbid, that change may tend towards conservatism, the screaming will ratchet up exponentially.

And so it happened in this case.

CNN reacted the way you’d expect. Oliver Darcy, their deranged liberal media hall monitor, whined in his media newsletter that it’s a “deal that has set off alarm bells” since Smith’s local stations around the country “has previously inserted right-wing editorial segments into its local news broadcasts.”

Writing on Threads and X, NPR media writer and former Sun reporter David Folkenflik huffed that “Smith was dismissive of the Sun’s journalism” and “deflected questions about his own political activities.”

He also seethed that “Smith has been a major funder of GOP candidates; more recently he has funded far-right outfits like Project Veritas and Turning Point USA & financed local ballot initiatives.”

Folkenflik made sure to take a swipe at Sinclair stations: “Sinclair…has pulled the news coverage and commentaries on those stations markedly to the right, ultimately becoming quite supportive of Trump.”

Oh noes… I see the End Of Democracy all over this one.  That, or the End Of Civilization As We Know It.

Who knows?  The Sun  may even turn out to be a decent newspaper.