Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Google’s “private” coronavirus tracking app wasn’t so private after all

Back in April 2020, Big Tech firms Apple and Google released their frameworks for contact tracing in an effort to help governments track the coronavirus. When the frameworks were released, both the firms vehemently promised that user data, including their location information and data of whom all they’ve come in contact with, would remain private.

But the recent findings by a privacy analysis firm revealed otherwise.

Both Google and Apple stated that the data users share through their frameworks would be anonymized and shared with public health agencies only. Here’s what Google CEO Sundar Pichai said about the tool last year. “Our goal is to empower with another tool to help combat the virus while protecting user privacy.”

Banking on the promises made by the Big Tech firms, several million users ended up downloading apps built on the frameworks developed by Apple and Google.

The UK’s National Health Service app, Canada’s Digital Service COVID Alert app, and Virginia’s Department of Health’s COVIDWISE app were all built on the frameworks provided by Apple and Google.

While the NHS app has more than 15 million users, Canada’s COVID Alert app had over six million downloads in January alone.

Based on what the researchers at AppCensus, a privacy analysis firm, state, there was a privacy flaw in the Android version of contact tracing tools. What’s more, the researchers at AppCensus even ended up informing Google about it, but to no avail.

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CBC features author who writes about blowing up and gassing white people during ‘race war’

During this program, an excerpt from his book was read where he considered what his actions would be in a race war.

“When this race war hits its crescendo. I’ll gather you all into a beautifully decorated room under the pretense of unity. I’ll give a speech to civility and all the good times we share; I’ll smile as we raise glasses to your good, white health, while the detonator blinks under the table, knowing the exits are locked and the air vents filled with gas.”

After the host read this passage aloud, she responded by saying: “I mean that’s… I’m a Jewish person, and my grandparents survived the holocaust. I can’t tell you how it felt to read that sentiment, and I wanted to say to you that I’m so sorry that your experience of the world made you feel that way.”

Q is the highest-rated show in its time slot in CBC history and is known for generating a younger audience. Q was hosted by Jian Ghomeshi until he was accused of sexual misconduct in 2014.

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Big Tech Colluded With California Democrats To Censor Americans

Big Tech colluded with California Democrats to censor Americans posting about the 2020 election on social media, a new report from Judicial Watch states.

According to documents obtained by Judicial Watch, the California Secretary of State reportedly leveraged the state’s relationship with communications firm SKDK, which Judicial Watch noted “lists Biden for President as their top client of 2020,” to get videos and other social media posts the state deemed “misinformation” removed or flagged. Most of the time, the Big Tech companies lent ear to the “misinformation” concerns brought to them by the state and either removed the posts or applied contextual labels to them.

Not only did the Secretary of State receive “briefings” from SKDK cautioning the state about certain social media posts and YouTube videos that they deemed unacceptable, but the Office of Election Cybersecurity, which is housed under the Secretary of State, also kept a database of posts “coded by threat level” that the state eventually requested be forcibly removed by Big Tech companies. Of the 31 requests for removal, Silicon Valley giants such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google-owned YouTube either nixed or flagged 24. 

Judicial Watch was allegedly targeted in some of these purges by YouTube and Twitter which prompted the organization to inquire with the state.

“These new documents suggest a conspiracy against the First Amendment rights of Americans by the California Secretary of State, the Biden campaign operation, and Big Tech,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “These documents blow up the big lie that Big Tech censorship is ‘private’ – as the documents show collusion between a whole group of government officials in multiple states to suppress speech about election controversies.”

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Activists, media, and Twitter mob pressure Spotify to deplatform Joe Rogan over vaccine comments

Joe Rogan, one of the world’s most popular podcasters, is being targeted again, this time for sharing his opinion on whether young people should get the COVID-19 vaccine.

The attempts to cancel Rogan began after a clip from his recent podcast with comedian Dave Smith went viral on Twitter.

In the clip, Rogan begins by stating “I think for the most part it’s safe to get vaccinated, I do, I do” but adds that in his opinion, young and healthy people shouldn’t get vaccinated:

“But if you’re like 21 years old and you say to me, ‘Should I get vaccinated?’ I’d go ‘No. Are you healthy? Are you a healthy person? Like look, don’t do anything stupid, but you should take care of yourself. If you’re a healthy person and you’re exercising all the time and you’re young and you’re eating well, I don’t think you need to worry about this.’”

He also shares his concerns about employers forcing people to get the COVID vaccine and describes his personal experience with his children getting the coronavirus:

“Both my children got the virus. It was nothing. I hate to say that. If someone’s children died from this, I’m very sorry that that happened. I’m not in any way diminishing that. But I’m saying the personal experience that my children had with COVID is nothing.

One of the kids had a headache, the other one didn’t feel good for a couple of days. I mean not feel good like, hmmm, no big deal. No coughing, no headaches, no aching, no, like, in agony, there was none of that. It was very mild. It was akin to them getting a cold.”

Smith also discusses how some people that get vaccinated are putting on a theatrical display and virtue signaling.

“I’m not injecting my daughter with something to fucking virtue signal,” Smith said. “If there’s something that she’s of no risk, statistically has no risk from, I’m sorry, I’m not taking any experiment on her.”

Rogan concludes by describing his amazement that someone stating they don’t want to get their child vaccinated is controversial:

“It’s amazing that that’s controversial. That even saying that ‘I’m not going to inject my child with a vaccine,’ is controversial. It’s crazy. Because again, we are not even talking about the flu which we just found out that killed 22,000 people last year. We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about something that is not statistically dangerous for children. But yet, people still want you to get your child vaccinated which is crazy to me. Like, you should be vaccinated if you’re vulnerable.”

Activist group Media Matters were sure to frame its headline to highlight Spotify’s association with Joe Rogan, a common technique when trying to apply pressure to a platform.

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