Elon Musk’s Billionaire Nerd Revenge continues unabated. He has opened, through his legal department, Twitter’s email vaults. His rational here is very transparent. Having been mocked and attacked by Twitter’s old liberal-adjacent managerial class, he’s thrown open the books to a few trusty-and-tested influencer types that he can count on to stay on message. And the message is: Show the corruption and hypocrisy and downright evilness of the liberal types. They hate free speech! They work with spies, despite being Democrats!
I support your work Yasha..I am going to buy your book when I can figure out how to buy it (given that I live half way around the world from you in India and don't use Amazon)..Amazon also bought up AbeBooks at some point.
I found Shoshana Zuboff's "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" an eye-opening (though depressing) read and expect to find yours similarly enlightening and depressing (a common theme with these sorts of things).
Loved your Baffler article on astroturf groups like the EFF. I always feel dubious about groups like that but there appear to be no non-astroturf privacy groups out there. Privacy International is fairly respectable as far as I can tell, but feel free to correct me..
Your book opened many doors long before others. The others later released mainstream documentaries and other hits on the deep rooted evil of "everything is spying on us can you believe it". Later this evolved into "sure they're spying on you but they're doing it for your best interests". Now that everyting was always spying on us we need to shepard the spys into spying for our interests alone. So it's been said.
I got your book on it's release and regrettably since spilled coffee on it's back side. I'm sorry!
As far as espionage goes, it might just be that the ARPANET eulogists are more comfortable with seismometers than with clandestine supervisors of their scouting around for titillation & animation, and there wasn't too much t&a before the humanist turn of the Internet in the 1990s when it started to realise the age-old dream of mankind: free pornography for everyone …
Taibbi is just laughing his way to the bank these days. I made it thru 46 pages of Surveillance Valley in my initial reading and am enjoying it very much. I also wanted to compliment whoever helped with editing because it all just flows so well. Much more fluid than Zuboff's book.
Furthermore, a search using their search function for both "Surveillance Valley" and 'Internet spy' do not return the book review. For whatever reason they killed it, at least temporarily.
And a reply to myself, because nobody else with a rational mind would be viewing at this point - I see that the "review" was from 2019, therefore several years ago. But the way Substack presented this email to me was very misleading. I mean, I could easily go and delete both of my prior posts, but I won't because something is way off. The link doesn't in fact work. However the search does at "The Spectator" - but my big concern is how different the email version of these dispatches are vs. what happens when you actually click through to the Substack entry.
Meh, OK maybe I'm going senile, but something seems "off" to me.
I support your work Yasha..I am going to buy your book when I can figure out how to buy it (given that I live half way around the world from you in India and don't use Amazon)..Amazon also bought up AbeBooks at some point.
I found Shoshana Zuboff's "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" an eye-opening (though depressing) read and expect to find yours similarly enlightening and depressing (a common theme with these sorts of things).
Loved your Baffler article on astroturf groups like the EFF. I always feel dubious about groups like that but there appear to be no non-astroturf privacy groups out there. Privacy International is fairly respectable as far as I can tell, but feel free to correct me..
Your book opened many doors long before others. The others later released mainstream documentaries and other hits on the deep rooted evil of "everything is spying on us can you believe it". Later this evolved into "sure they're spying on you but they're doing it for your best interests". Now that everyting was always spying on us we need to shepard the spys into spying for our interests alone. So it's been said.
I got your book on it's release and regrettably since spilled coffee on it's back side. I'm sorry!
As far as espionage goes, it might just be that the ARPANET eulogists are more comfortable with seismometers than with clandestine supervisors of their scouting around for titillation & animation, and there wasn't too much t&a before the humanist turn of the Internet in the 1990s when it started to realise the age-old dream of mankind: free pornography for everyone …
Taibbi is just laughing his way to the bank these days. I made it thru 46 pages of Surveillance Valley in my initial reading and am enjoying it very much. I also wanted to compliment whoever helped with editing because it all just flows so well. Much more fluid than Zuboff's book.
P.S. Just FYI - I decided to go to read that Spectator review and it has been taken down. At least if this URL wasn't changed for some reason (your link resolved to this). https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/01/the-internet-was-never-intended-to-spy-on-us/
Furthermore, a search using their search function for both "Surveillance Valley" and 'Internet spy' do not return the book review. For whatever reason they killed it, at least temporarily.
And a reply to myself, because nobody else with a rational mind would be viewing at this point - I see that the "review" was from 2019, therefore several years ago. But the way Substack presented this email to me was very misleading. I mean, I could easily go and delete both of my prior posts, but I won't because something is way off. The link doesn't in fact work. However the search does at "The Spectator" - but my big concern is how different the email version of these dispatches are vs. what happens when you actually click through to the Substack entry.
Meh, OK maybe I'm going senile, but something seems "off" to me.
Is THIS the 2019 review in question? https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-we-lost-to-big-brother/
Yeah that link is broken. Here's the new link: https://thespectator.com/book-and-art/internet-intended-spy/
Here's the unlocked archive link: https://archive.is/N4LXx
Almost looks like they reviewed it again at the link I posted in my first reply to myself???