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DDoS protection by CloudFlare
See this lately? Wondering what’s up?
Well, this Saturday, some jackasses decided they didn’t like us — nor Skepchick, nor Feminist Frequency — and tried to take us off the internet.
And they woulda gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for us meddling techs.
Some gearheaded stuff followed by some analysis of why this might have happened. Skip to the bolded red note if you aren’t so interested.
When I found out that our downtime Saturday night was anything sinister, I immediately got in touch with our webmaster, a rather clever chap who was already on the case. We had New Relic data for our site, external metrics that we could look at to figure out what was actually happening. As it turns out, while the site was under attack, the only metric that spiked was network — whoever attacked us used a pure network-based attack. It wasn’t loading the website itself, as our CPU was not taxed at all while our network was completely pegged. The metrics showed that from 7:49pm CST, til 7:54 when the server went offline, our network interface jumped up from its usual 2-ish megs a second all the way up to 100 megs a second where it capped out. The server was totally responsive during this time, though.
The server only stopped responding because our web host detected the DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, and their automated systems null-routed our server. Us being a target was having a detrimental effect on the rest of their services, and they had to block the target at the firewall. This automated script was set up to block for an hour. After that hour was up, we were able to get in for a little while. I downloaded the Apache logs during that time. But the attack continued, and our host automatically blocked us again — this time for four hours. This pattern would continue with the time exponentially increasing repeatedly, apparently.
However, while investigating the problem, our web guy discovered that the previous tech — who’d since abdicated the position with family issues — had the server set up in such a way that it responded on another IP as well, and we could get in and do more diagnostics. We learned that Apache, the web server program serving all these page requests, was not actually receiving any spurious requests when the site was under attack, correlating the belief that the attack was “dumb” — not intended to hack us, or cause a denial of service by causing too much CPU load. They just aimed a fire hose at us and fired away.
The attackers themselves, in addition, were attacking the server directly — bypassing the Cloudflare service we’d put between us and the internet. Normally, getting the IP address of your target server is not possible when attacking something behind a CDN like Cloudflare, but there were a few sub-domains pointing to the same IP address and the attacker obviously found one. Because we had a second IP already pointed to the domain, and our hosting provider’s script was kind of terrible in its lack of intelligence by null-routing only the IP being attacked, we were able to give Cloudflare that other IP instead. This one isn’t set up anywhere else but Cloudflare.
So, the attack profile that we faced last time won’t work again. Something would have to change, and some info would have to be obtained that the attackers don’t have presently. We also ratcheted up the Cloudflare protection, though that might not be entirely necessary any more. Plus, we’re planning on moving to a new web hosting provider soon anyway, a company that has more experience with dealing with DOS attacks and does stuff a little more surgically than effectively just turning off our server’s internet connection.
Skepchick recovered with the help of their hosting provider, and I’m not actually sure how Anita Sarkeesian recovered from the attack. This is probably a good thing, honestly. It means they’ve got people watching their back too — techs like our clever web guy.
That all answers the question of “how”, to the degree that I’m comfortable answering it without giving away too much. But the real question that interests me the most is, “why?”
The less technically-inclined can skip to here!
The obvious answer lies in the choice of targets. Why would anyone target Freethought Blogs, Skepchick and Feminist Frequency all at the same time? Because we’re feminists, and we have platforms on the internet. That much is pretty clear — and this despite the fact that Freethought Blogs has over fifty bloggers across thirty-five blogs, few of whom talk about gender issues, and not all of whom are feminists. We are, despite some vocal assholes’ exclamations, a fairly diverse crew. If we’re groupthink at anything, it’s that we’re all proudly atheist, and the majority of us are liberal with the odd libertarian streak.
But there’s this perception that because some of the more prominent voices are feminist, so too is all of Freethought Blogs. And so the “big lies” of us being bullies for being feminists rage on, for having moderation policies on our blogs, for generally disagreeing with the more strident antifeminist and otherwise libertarian factions within movement secularism and atheism. We have a place where reasonable discussion can happen, and sometimes the only way that can happen is by tossing out the hyper-fixated and unreasonable interlocutors. Nobody balks when the person being banned on the blog is David Mabus, but some people really lose their shit when the person being banned is a libertarian in otherwise good standing elsewhere, who just happens to be perniciously arguing against things like the sociologically sound concept of privilege and is doing so in the most uncivil manner imaginable.
So you get this crew of people who have a sense of entitlement, who misunderstand what “freedom of speech” is, who think that because you have a place on the internet and the internet is publicly accessible, you are absolutely forbidden from having a moderation policy, or else you’re a censorious fascist nazi something-something. The cries of being “blocked for disagreement” get repeated and eventually believed by the faction that refuses to engage in civil discourse, and refuses to acknowledge they were actually banned for being raging assholes. Some of these people have tech savvy. They believe that because places like Feminist Frequency, where comments on videos and the blog are disabled because of the thousands of death and rape threats Anita Sarkeesian endures anyplace they’re enabled, do not allow the publication of these rape and death threats on their server, they are therefore against free speech. (These misunderstandings of the concept are what led people to counter by calling their misapprehensions “Freeze Peach”.)
So these tech-savvy people, with little understanding of free speech, take it upon themselves to get revenge — if they can’t have their immoral, atavistic displays of rage and lack of empathy published where they want them to be published, then the server should be taken off the internet entirely. They get themselves a botnet, they aim a network firehose at their targets, and they blast them right off the internet altogether. That’ll learn ’em for disagreeing with you, right?
So much for free speech.
“He puts one of your guys in the hospital, you put all of his in the morgue”, to appropriately scale the quote from The Untouchables. If I can’t post on your blog, neither can you or anyone else for as long I decide. If I can’t enter your home and shout slurs at you through a bullhorn, then I’ll burn your house down.
Hacking or DOSing a place that disagrees with you because you can’t out-reason them, well, that’s pretty unbecoming for someone who is likely also an atheist. It smacks of the mental trap behind Self Projection As God: your voice alone isn’t enough to force people to conform to your will, so you claim that a supreme deity also wants others to do that thing that you’d prefer. Only in this case, these people are taking matters into their own hand, probably because they know there are no gods. They amplify their voice beyond their actual ability to reason and argue and have discourses, since they’ve already failed at the attempt. They take vengeance by preventing their targets from being able to speak.
They’ve taken on the role of the government in the argument about free speech — they’ve taken upon themselves extraordinary power to block others from being able to speak. And I don’t mean in the limited sense of being blocked on a single blog, I mean they’ve been blocked from speaking at all.
I don’t have any real evidence tying this even to a member of our community, but we’ve already seen a number of people with libertarian, anti-feminist bents who are otherwise respected (for some reason) in this community — people who claim that we got what was coming to us, that the DDOS was somehow defensible or even justified, all because certain people are banned at our blogs for being assholes. If we were anything like the censorious fascist monsters this contingent makes us out to be, though, this action is STILL not justified.
I absolutely support freedom of speech. When I ban someone, I tell them to take their nonsense elsewhere. I sometimes helpfully point them to one of a number of free blogging services where they can vent their spleens freely — my kicking them out of my pub does not prevent them from visiting other pubs or even starting one of their own. I might even link to them to point people to their terrible arguments on occasion, by way of doing a fisking or even just a facepalming post. And I can assure you, if someone from the slimepit, or, say, A Voice for Men, or some other such hate site, had problems with their server that they thought I could help with, I would be a consummate professional and offer them my normal (undiscounted) consulting fee, delivered in escrow, while I work on the problem on their behalf.
Mind you, I know this is an empty promise, because the former is convinced that the size of my penis and how it apparently fits into a thimble determines my worth in this world, judging by their pet name for me; and the latter is convinced that I’m only good as someone to throw under a bus on occasion, in order to prove some larger point about the evils of women. But I’m being completely honest when I say that if they offered me money to help them fix their server, or to help them recover from a DDOS attack, or whatever other technological or sociological problem was preventing them from speaking freely on the internet, I would do it. I wouldn’t even hesitate. Not because I am particularly hard up for money, but because I love free speech that much. They could even be assured that I would do nothing to compromise their security, or destroy their server, because not only am I a professional, but I have an extremely strong moral impulse and I have empathy for them even when they have none for me.
Besides, how else can I “drama blog” by pointing to things that they say that I disagree with, the way that they do every single day? How else can I use their words to show how their philosophies are atavistic or antisocial or detrimental to humanity or the cause of egalitarianism if their words are scrubbed from the internet by a truly censorious asshole with a script and a botnet and a grudge?
I WANT their speech on the internet. They, or some subset of them at least, DON’T want MINE.
I will always side with the people fighting to ensure that established platforms aren’t yanked out from under them, even while I will argue unabashedly that this does not extend to your speech on someone else’s platform and that freedom of association enshrines that you damn well get to choose who’s on your platform for whatever reason.
Freedom of speech as a right ensures that a government — an entity with supreme power in this world — cannot take your right to speak away. A blog is not a supreme power like a government, and much like a home, you are not entitled to someone else’s private property. By trying to burn someone else’s home down, you are the one in the wrong. You are the one being censorious, and you are the one who has ceded any moral high ground or appearance of intellectual enlightenment.
And all because you were incapable in the first place of arguing your points without acting like an asshole.
Why these “rational” people gotta get so emotional?
I think it is interesting (maybe not important) to note that these people can’t reason their way out of a wet paper bag, and almost never have anything remotely interesting to say.
As I’ve noted multiple times on Twitter, I’ve never lost anything of value by blocking anyone. They were never going to magically pay my rent or say something so profound that it would change my life just 3-4 tweets after I blocked them. The odds of them saying anything of value is incredibly slim, and the odds of them saying something of value that someone else has also said somewhere else is virtually nonexistent. Further, our experience as a group is that these people who claim that we desperately need to hear their every word generally follow up by using the worst sort of bigoted slurs in place of any meaningful content.
I remember Rebecca Watson tweeting an email she got, which went “you block people because you’re afraid of rational debate, because you’re a stupid ugly f****ing c**t”… Yeah, this is the “rational debate” we’re missing by blocking/banning these people. No loss at all.
Improbable Joe wrote:
Conversely, I’ve never lost anything by being blocked by someone – another frequent complaint from the same kind of whiny pissant as those most likely responsible for the DDOS – either. Why would I care if someone blocked me?
If it was a legitimate hacking, your computer has ways of shutting that thing down
Jason, just something worth bringing to your attention…
I had to replace all my FTB RSS feed URLs with feedburner URLs since the cloudflare protection has been added. Feedburner seems smart enough to deal with those feed URLs like a fully featured browser, or cloudflare is smart enough to just let them straight through unimpeded, but the direct URLs make my RSS reader barf because of the timed redirect.
I’m sure I’m not the only one having this issue, so I figured it worth bringing to your attention. If cloudflare lets you whielist any URLs for direct passthrough, the RSS feeds might be a good idea to add.
“I WANT their speech on the internet. ….. I absolutely support freedom of speech. When I ban someone, I tell them to take their nonsense elsewhere.”
Ok, so I guess the stated goal of some from this network of having the ‘pit wither away by getting ERV banned was a BAD idea? Or is your point more nuanced?
And to clarify is your concern tone trolling (“doing so in the most uncivil manner imaginable”) or the
questioning of ideological canon? (perniciously arguing against things like the sociologically sound concept of privilege)? A combo of both? Or is it really how you feel on the day?
The people who DoS’d (Barely a DDoS, unless using TOR counts) the block bot website a while back used pyloris, an open source tool for “testing” your vulnerability to slow loris attacks. Only worked because my server is tiny and even then I managed to defeat it… This lot were anti-feminist “anons” or rather they mostly call themselves part of the “Rustle League” and are trolls out and out. They happily announced theblockbot.com was #tangodown on @Anon_Central (Killed in the “trollocaust” due to it being used to attack high profile feminists)
Sounds like you got the attention of someone a bit more savvy as it was definitely no bot net that attacked me. Can’t imagine that lot being quiet about it either. Has anyone claimed responsibility? Seems very suspicious that there is no announcement as that is usually the modus operandi.
Hi Jason,
Can you confirm the attack against FTB is not part of the huge Cloudflare attack http://www.securityweek.com/cloudflare-infrastructure-hit-400gbs-ntp-based-ddos-attack
Or the huge wordfence attack http://www.wordfence.com/blog/2014/02/large-distributed-brute-force-attack-underway/
thanks
jacquescuze / olivercrangle / whatever the hell other nicks you have or pick up next (banned a year ago for sockpuppetry, repeated lies and personal attacks):
I can confirm that the attack against FtB bypassed Cloudflare entirely, as I said in the original post. I can further confirm that the attack that took us, Skepchick and FemFreq down happened on Saturday, and this attack you’ve mentioned supposedly happened yesterday. If the attackers have decided to turn their firehoses on Cloudflare because they’re mad that they have helped protect sites like ours from their attacks, I don’t know. I have no way of knowing. It COULD involve the same sort of attack, being NTP amplification.
I can further confirm that the Wordfence attacks describe brute-force attempts against WordPress sites. If you read my post, you’ll know that doesn’t fit the profile of the attack that happened against us, because it didn’t involve loading a single webpage. That fits, rather, the profile of spammers trying to hack WordPress sites to create web-server bots in a spam botnet army. I can say that with a good deal of confidence because I’ve seen and fought the attacks before, personally, for various clients.
Brive1987: no, you don’t get to rewrite history. Someone who once blogged on this network wanted ERV banned from Scienceblogs for hosting hate speech against Scienceblogs’ written policy. Instead, Scienceblogs made Abbie Smith take down the threads containing the hate speech. The self-described “slime pit” went out and purchased a domain name and continued to exist, albeit with a lower profile than before, at its own domain name. I’m more than happy with that outcome — you get to keep spewing your hate speech on your own platform, instead of Scienceblogs’.
And no, you further don’t get to impute motivation. If you want to argue with sound sociological concepts, I’ll ban you exactly when it gets irritating to refute the same point for the dozenth time, yes, just like I would with an evolution denialist — but with most of you assholes who’re actually thrown into my moderation bin, it’s mostly for slandering people and other abuses of discourse.
Like Steersman, for instance, who every month or so posts “Testing, testing, testing…” but never actually posts anything that might make it through moderation. He did it again today. It’s like if he isn’t allowed to pass moderation freely, it’s not worth saying something that I might get the chance to reply to before it gets published. He apparently doesn’t like it when his tediousness can’t go unchallenged and he can’t hog the microphone. (Guess why HE was banned a while back.)
You want to challenge my points? Go for it. Do it without abusing discourse or pissing me off, and you get to stick around. Go read this post, which I linked in the body, if you want to know more about my moderation policy. Questioning why I moderate at all, given the actual words I wrote above in defense of a person’s ability to moderate their blogs as they see fit, is decidedly off-topic for this post.
fwtbc: I will talk to the guy with the keys to Cloudflare and figure out whether we can get RSS working properly again. If we have to ratchet down the DOS protection to do it, I think we’re actually relatively inured at this point.
[…] am getting many complaints about recent changes. In response to the DDOS attack (Jason has all the details), there have been some new problems caused by the repairs: RSS is down, and there are apparently […]
Thanks, I wanted the confirmation.
Also, sockpuppetry does not mean what you think it means. And of course, I have never lied about anything.
FWIW, I don’t know anyone who believes your worth in the world is based on your dick size, I think most people just find it funny your dick fits in a thimble.
Also, when not logged in through the idiot ftb dual login system, my nym at most ftb blogs is wtfwhateverd00d.
So jacquescuze, now that your question has been answered are you going to go back to the slymepit to correct the narrative there, or just slink away quietly and go on pretending this wasn’t what it looks like?
@A Hermit,
Thanks for asking
I had in fact corrected the narrative at the SlymePit BEFORE posting here to get the confirmation from Jason.
[Link scrubbed, find your way to the cesspool on your own. You’ll not drink my Google Juice. -Jason]
The Pit is a pretty remarkable place. I find it a lot more honest, a lot more intellectually honest than Free Thought Blogs. Much more open, much more accepting of criticism and encouraging of free expression, much less bigoted and far less misogyny or misandry too. Free Thought Blogs is pretty scary in those regards.
For example, in addition to this comment, there are two other comments I made here that are still in moderation.
“For example, in addition to this comment, there are two other comments I made here that are still in moderation.”
Sigh. Most FTB I don’t bother to log in to via WP, and I don’t use the same nym all over the place and have explained why many times, so the other two comments in moderation ARE under a different, not logged in, nym.
That’s great jacquescuze! I’m so happy you found an internet community that is interesting and rewarding for you to participate in! Why are you here at a place you clearly don’t like to tell us all about it? Why aren’t you over there doing all your intellectually honest debate n’ shit?
Here’s what jacqucuze calls “correcting the narrative”…
Yeah, that’s a fine example of the kind of high minded, thoughtful conversation one can find from that collection of whiners at the Slymepit.
No thanks.
Sorry Jason, didn’t think before posting that link…
No problem. I changed it to a block quote.
Nope. There is no dual login system. There is one login system where some blogs allow anonymous comments (like mine), some do not. Stop lying, Crangle.
Again kestra, thank you for asking.
I linked to, but Jason deleted the link, a comment I made at least 30 minutes if not an hour before posting here where I stated that it didn’t sound like the attacks were related. I came here to verify that with Jason, not to have you wet your panties over it.
Over at the SlymePit I think the denizens prefer evidence and prefer 1st person accounts over 3rd person accounts. So I came here to make sure I had Jason’s position on that correct.
@A hermit, the comment I believe you are referring to isn’t where I corrected the narrative. Look for post 6880 at 6:52am.
I linked to it, but um, it was #FREEZEPEACHED and #PATRIARCHYSMASHED by Jason.
Does anyone else find it terribly ironic that someone’s here exhorting how there’s much less misandry at the slimepit, where “Thimbledick” passes for reasonable discourse? There’s nothing more misandristic then equating a man’s worth to the size of his penis. And nothing more skeptical than lying repeatedly about someone without any proof until the lie sticks.
Discourse. You’re doing it wrong.
I guess I am in moderation again.
> Nope. There is no dual login system. There is one login system where some blogs allow anonymous comments (like mine), some do not. Stop lying, Crangle.
More accurately:
There is a login system where some blogs allow either 1) anonymous comments (like mine), or 2) some do not.
This is a dual login system. You can either “login”, or not. On most blogs I do not “login” and use the wtf nym. On ones requiring a login, I login now as jacquescuze. I had logged in as jaqcuescuze here because I wanted to alert you to who I am because I know you are strangely sensitive about that and prone to all sorts of distortions.
I prefer the more anonymous logins, and in this day and age of NSA and Google tracking, that should not require a defense, but I find it often does, mostly by know nothings.
If there is a confusion then, it is caused by inconsistent login policies at FTB and aided by human error (my own in forgetting to logout at times.)
Have a nice day Jason.
I’ll not post any more nonsense from you, Crangle, so long as it contains that amount of crying about how awful we are and how freedom the slimepit is. If you like it so much there, stay there. Stop encroaching here and I’ll do you the same favour right back.
I appreciate that you were quick to correct the mythmaking that goes on as a matter of course over there, this time. You folks should look to that tendency. It’s not very skeptic of you.
Yes, jacquescuze / wtfwhateverd00d / Oliver Crangle, you are in moderation again because your nym shifts are intended solely to dodge that moderation, and you were put into moderation for previous (and continued) abuses of discourse. You can either stay logged in across all of FTB with the account you’ve registered, and post where you’re allowed and honour the moderation policies of each blog as they are set by the individual blogger, or you can change the way you log in repeatedly to dodge it then complain about how hard it is for you to do like you’re doing here. Go cry over at your so-freedom, so-skeptic cesspool.
Meanwhile, accept that we have separate and distinct blogs at FtB, and there is no groupthink or network-wide moderation policy.
Or would you prefer to complain, perhaps, about how wordpress.com or some other blog network happens to allow its bloggers to set their moderation policies? You’re making about as much sense as claiming that people blogging at wordpress.com or blogger.com are all groupthinkers. You’re starting to sound pretty conspiratorial, in fact. That’s not very skeptic of you either.
Why do these people find free speech so difficult to understand? Is “I get to choose who uses my property as a platform, and you get to choose who uses yours” really so complicated?
FYI, everyone — the RSS feeds should be back to normal, and the Cloudflare browser paranoia should be removed. Everyone should now be able to get back in who was previously having trouble.
From jacquescuze’s ‘Pit post #6880 at 6:52am:
Pretty weak. And of course the comment includes the sexualized slur and your later comment insinuates that Jason is probably lying anyway ““If you believe…(sexualized slur)…”
Yes, you’re a paragon of reason and civil discourse jacque. Can’t imagine why anyone would decide they didn’t want your comments cluttering up their blog…
And I’m going to stop feeding the troll now…promise…
I joked on Twitter later that this was like, “hey baby, check out…”
And don’t you wish you hadn’t?
I’m a little surprised that you’d make a rape-related joke about this, Jason? Usually you’re more aware than that. I understand how frustrating it is to be attacked, and to have to fight back, but maybe try not to wing the survivors while you’re doing it? Thanks.
Not that this excuses it, CaitieCat, but it was in conversation with Elyse about what MRAs hoped to accomplish by it. Without that context, it’s unnecessary where it is — so I removed it from the post. That context is here:
https://twitter.com/dELYSEious/status/432370540397871104
https://twitter.com/dELYSEious/status/432371041860452352
I get your point, Jason, and I do believe in your goodwill, and that it was probably more sensible in context. Kinda blindsided me a bit, is all – to be fair, I was already in a sensitive spot, for personal reasons, but I appreciate the response and your understanding. 🙂
Yeah…I had the “pleasure” of finding some atheist blog today that was going off about how horrible feminism is because of how poorly it treats men…and then there was a top commenter there going off about what it takes to be a “real man.” Nothing with penis size, but it still had a similar irony to it.
@jacquescuze
That makes it optional to login, not a dual login system. There’s nothing to log into when anonymous, that’s the point. You do realize everyone can see you making yourself look like an obtuse teenager right?
This is coming from the guy who just a sentence ago was orating to us all on the new meaning of the phrase dual login system, instead of just owning his mistaken choice of words.
I hate to break this to you, but you are clearly among the knownothings if you think the choice between anonymous and logged in commenting has any impact on parties such as google and NSA interested in tracking you. I would even want to call it, wonderfully naive.
To be more precise, the only ones who you might partially be able to throw off by that particular choice (anon/logged in) are normal internet users, who do not have subpoena powers, and are not privy to server logs and such.
You should be glad you can hide behind your ban now to be honest, haven’t encountered this much cluelessnes in a while. And i watched Ken Ham vs. Bill Nye.
RSS is changed. Feedburner feeds work. Direct feeds don’t. I suspect many non-tech savvy users don’t know the difference, and tools like feedly don’t make the difference clear.
You know, given how remarkable and honest and freedom the Slymepit is,* it’s sort of baffling how they keep–well, I won’t say begging for–seeking attention from the bloggers and readers of Freethought Blogs.
It’s as if they needed some sort of validation from this network; almost as if they were–I don’t know–desperate to be taken as seriously by us as they take themselves.
.
* You know it’s those things because they’ll tell you so themselves. You won’t even have to ask!
I do wonder, occasionally out loud, what exactly Certain People hope to achieve by making repeated visits to places they openly loathe and publicly mock. Do MRAs, anti-feminists and assorted associated stooges honestly think they’re going to win hearts and/or minds over here? Even if they do act civilly and don’t sockpuppet, troll or behave obtusely, it’s usually only a matter of time before they’ll say something at their Sekrit Klubhowse (No Gurlz!) or on twitter that belies their claim to be rational, civil debaters interested only in The Facts™.
Seriously, if FtB is such a hateful den of misandrist Vagylon fascism and the oppression of manly free speech by radfem Braleks, why do so many of its self-proclaimed nemeses keep coming back here and repeating the same vacuous shit? I’m starting to think the Klubhowse must award badges – kinda like those creationist schools that give students credit for trolling science websites with the usual litany of gotchas. Only it’s not “If we came from moneys, why are there still monkeys?”, it’s “If you’re all about Free Thought, how come I can’t call you a mangina or Thimbledick?”
As for the DOS, well, slow clap, whoever was responsible. You’ve displayed that you’re quite okay with not only squashing others’ free speech if you don’t agree with it, but also causing collateral damage on an epic scale – even if you conservatively grant that ten FtB writers are the uber-fem supervillains that haunt your dreams, that leaves about twenty-five who aren’t, but who you’ve just fucked over anyway, purely due to their association with your declared mortal enemies. And if some out there are a little miffed that accusations are pointed in their general direction, perhaps consider that choosing the three most-loathed fem-friendly sites in the atheosphere to attack simultaneously appears more than a little coincidental. Many of the haters of these three sites are well-known, public and quite vocal about their hatred (and some possess a modicum of tech-savvy), so you can understand why some might point their fingers in certain directions.
DOS attacks on people who do nothing but hold opinions different to yours and collective punishment: not rational, not reasonable, indicative of glaring hypocrisy regarding “free speech” and a clear indication that you’re out of arguments. It’s pathetic. Grow a spine already.
No, not ironic. Expected. Misandry is when women or feminists say shitty things about men and/or penis size. When anti-feminists say those things it’s called “humor”.
Or worse, biology.
Next thing you know they’ll tell us the slymepit is “Fair and Balanced”.
It’s probably me not knowing what to go and tweak, but I’m still not getting anything from FTB in my Feedly feed. From what I read you saying here and in the comments of Pharyngula, I assumed this would pick up automatically after about 30 minutes, but I’m now starting to wonder if there’s anything you can suggest I do. I’m an archaeologist – I might be better at sorting out IT issues than any of my colleagues, but that doesn’t really say much! All this new-fangled technology is a bit too modern for me! Thanks.
Thanks for letting me comment on your blog.
I’m not seeking to re-write history. Rather I was of the opinion this comment from 2011 (Rorschach) accurately summed up the motivation behind the drive on ERV:
…………………………………………
“SC,
I do think that the buck stops with Abbie Smith, those other clowns don’t have blogs that anyone reads unless they can promote their shit via ERV, so if she closes comments, the haters will fade into obscurity. If it takes a campaign to NatGeo to achieve that, I’m in.“
…………………………………………
That sounds a lot to me like an attempt to silence the group. I can’t really accept that the push was simply focussed on some abstract concern (by the FtB community) on behalf of NatGeo for upholding terms and conditions? I mean really?
Re “but with most of you assholes “ – given this is our first exchange I find the immediate retreat to generalisation and insult …… well un-necessary. But it’s obviously your patch to define.
Re Steers, I fail to see the relevance to me or my queries? I am not some ambassador for the ‘pit (which incidentally and as I’m sure you know, adopted its name in ironic mockery of an epithet bestowed upon it by FtB bloggers.)
I have read your post on commenting and welcome the sentiment:
“I’m certain that most of the participants in the conversations at my blog disagree with me on some point of my philosophy — otherwise, I’d have nothing but “yes, excellent post!” comments and absolutely no dissent. I am welcoming toward dissent. I will not tolerate “mic-hogging” or other types of proselytization, and I will not tolerate hate speech directed at any of the groups I personally identify with — these are trolling behaviours. “
This sentiment, in principle at least, seems very reasonable.
Stacy hits the nail on the head. The pit is a very boring place as they have nothing original to say, all they can do is “critique” others work and ideas. Assuming that people arrogantly making constant statements about their own intellectual superiority and how stoopid the “opposition” are can be called a critique…. While simultaneously being epically butthurt about these stupid, nazi, free-from-thought, bullies shunning them by banning the odd user or not publishing a few daft comments.
I know what’s on the pit, exactly the same old crapola that has always been on there, so why waste the brain cells confirming that?
>>> FTBoolies are stoopid, we are so clever seeing through their feminazi ideology, we don’t block any one, that is real free thought, not like that place free of thought. We hate them, lets go over and comment and then talk in the clubhouse about how stoopid they all are, we are #braveheroes. Hey Ma, look at that pointy haired FTBoolie, hah haaah. >>> Repeat, ad nauseam.
They are heavy on the belief they are skeptical superheroes, but unfortunately for them there is a distinct lack of any evidence for this. Shame as if they didn’t waste all their time obsessed with the targets of their unrequited love then maybe they could do something productive. I wouldn’t be in the slightest bit surprised if some of the denizens were responsible for the DDoS, if it wasn’t for the implausibility of them being technically capable of it.
Absolutely true, leni. But I’ll take that one step further: misandry is also when feminists critique the patriarchy for any reason, including when they’re critiquing things that demonstrably harm men. When anti-feminists critique the patriarchy, they’re MRAs, and they’ll make sure to blame women for the existence of said patriarchy while denying the word itself.
Thanks for the reminder , Hank, I need to refill my order of Vagylon!
I got nothing productive to add here. Thanks for getting things nailed back down, Jason.
Looks like Feedly’s processing the RSS feeds again as of about 3-4 hours ago, so direct feeds appear to be working now.
@brive1987:
Seems like the skeptical superheroes from the Slymepit should be aware that there’s a term for choosing a small part of the evidence (which, in particular, supports their point) and pretending it’s representative. Something about harvesting a particular kind of fruit.
We could split hairs over whether this represents any kind of “silencing” when the stated hope was that the haters would just lose interest without The Monument as a gathering post. We can’t split hairs over “getting ERV banned,” since even that statement only talks about “closing comments.” It was obviously a hope grounded in a mistaken belief that ERV was a leader and not just a convenient venue.
That said, it’s not “abstract concern.” FTB started, in part, because Nat Geo (as I recall) was exerting stricter control over PZ’s blog, and basically telling him to tone down the anti-religious stuff and comments, as per their guidelines and rules. Splitting Pharyngula between NatGeo (for science posts) and FTB (for everything) was the solution that kept NatGeo receiving some of that Pharyngula traffic without hampering PZ’s style. But if they were going to crack down on Pharyngula, then it was only reasonable (and fair) that they be consistent and crack down on the actual hate speech elsewhere on their new network.
This comment is to mention that, once again, I won’t comment on anything important on FTB.
The publisher has the right to edit or delete posts here.
I should also mention that I disagree with you on much. You do not have the opportunity to enjoy that disagreement under this structure.
Jason, you can likely pull my email from this. Feel free if you would like to chat. Alternately, you could go to a place on the net where neither of us need fear having our contribution deleted or edited.
Tom, thanks for your comment. I would be better persuaded if you had supplied some counter evidence to mine. Ie specific contemporary posts welcoming the continued existence of the ‘pit community albeit on a different server. At the moment I don’t see the mood can be defined as anything “let’s deprive these people of oxygen by focussing on closing down ERV”.
oolon, I can only assume you are trying to be disingenuous. The ‘pit is defined by a huge variation in opinion and world view, though it skews, surprisingly enough, liberal left. Say what?!
In fact the community is only united by a common rejection of specific SJ models as a pragmatic way to view the real world. Rejecting (dare I say it) patriarchy, privilege, SUAL et al as objective truths (and for some there, but not all, mocking those who seek to impose this world view on others) does not then force a dichotomous label of misogyny.
Your last sentence says more about your own failure of understanding / honesty than anything else.
Anyway why bring the ‘pit into this at all? I come here with my personal views and opinions and an awareness I am a guest. Further it is clear the host wants disagreement to be conducted honestly and without undue rancour. What will you bring?