For nearly a decade, a strange channel by the name of “MrSleepyPeople” has been posting disturbing clips onto YouTube. And after diving deep into this rabbit hole, I realized that not only is this channel very real. But it’s even more twisted than it seems. If you recognize any of the women or men shown in this video, please reach out to SleepyPeopleTipLine@gmail.com . Identifying these people may be our best chance at putting a stop to this.
Tag: internet
Pipergate: A YouTube Rabbit Hole
In December of 2017, a 10 year old girl named Piper would start a YouTube channel known as “Piper Rocks” which she would use to showcase her video editing skills. However, the edits within this channel were bizarre and highly disturbing, causing many to wonder who this child might be. Leading to one of the darkest rabbit holes we’ve ever explored.
Erratas: The Mysterious Word You Shouldn’t Search For
The University of Massachusetts Lowell Bans Students From Sending or Viewing “offensive” Material Online
Most of the internet is apparently off-limits for students at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
The school’s Acceptable Use Policy, which governs the use of computing and networking resources, prohibits students from intentionally transmitting, communicating or accessing “offensive” material. Every month, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression highlights a university policy that hinders students’ free expression. Since most online content could be called offensive by someone, the policy has earned the dubious honor of FIRE’s August Speech Code of the Month.
The Supreme Court has explicitly held, time and time again, that speech cannot be restricted by the government merely because it offends others. In Texas v. Johnson (1989), the Court held that burning the American flag was protected speech, explaining: “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”
In spite of such clear precedent, colleges and universities routinely ban offensive speech in campus speech codes, especially in IT policies. Whether a person is burning a flag at a protest or advocating for (or against) flag burning on Twitter, a ban on “offensive” speech calls for impermissible viewpoint discrimination.
UMass Lowell couldn’t possibly take action every time someone views or retweets something subjectively offensive over university wifi — every single student, and probably every professor, would be on trial. But a policy like this makes it all too easy for the university to crack down on select, disfavored speech.
World Economic Forum proposes AI to automate censorship of “hate speech” and “misinformation”
The World Economic Forum (WEF) continues to beat the drum of the need to somehow merge “AI” and humans, as a supposed panacea to pretty much any ill plaguing society and economy.
It’s never a sure bet if this Davos-based elite’s mouthpiece comes up with its outlandish “solutions” and “proposals” as a way to reinforce existing, or introduce new narratives; or just to appear busy and earn its keep from those bankrolling it.
Nevertheless, here we are, with the WEF turning its attention toward what’s apparently the burning issue in everybody’s life right now.
No – it’s not the runaway inflation, energy costs, and even food security in many parts of the world. For how dedicated to globalization the organization is, it’s strangely tone-deaf to what is actually happening around the globe.
And as people struggle to pay their bills and dread the coming winter, the WEF obliviously talks about “the dark world of online harms.”
The Dark Side of the Digital Revolution: “Slowly Closing its Grip on our Lives”
People love the digital revolution. It allows them to work from home and avoid stressful commutes and office politics. The young love their cell phones that connect them to the world. For writers the Internet offers, for now, a far larger audience than a syndicated columnist could obtain. But while we enjoy and delight in its advantages, the tyranny inherent in the digital revolution is slowly closing its grip on our lives.
Use a gender pronoun or doubt an official narrative and you are blocked from social media. The same corporations that are required by federal law to send us annual statements on how they protect our privacy also track our use of the Internet in order to build marketing profiles of us. The FBI, CIA, and NSA track our use of the Internet to identify possible terrorists, school shooters, drug operations, and foreign agents. Face identification cameras now exist on the streets of some cities. DNA data bases are being built. It goes on and on.
In China the digital revolution has made possible a social credit system. People are monitored about what they say, what they read online, how they behave, where they go. The profile that results determines the person’s rights or privileges. A person who hangs out with the wrong crowd, criticizes the government, misbehaves, drives too fast, drinks too much, has a poor school or work attendance record might be denied a driving license, a passport, university admission, or could have access to bank account limited or blocked.
Bipartisan bill aimed at protecting kids online would require Big Tech to spy on them
A US Senate panel is debating two online safety bills that pertain to children, COPPA 2.0, and the Kids Online Safety Act, the latter of which has been described by observers as a scheme that will force online platforms to spy on children.
The original Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) aims to restrict the tracking and targeting of children under 13, while its update would expand to include those under 16.
We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.
The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) was introduced by Senators Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn, who said that it seeks to provide the solution to problems related to teenage mental health.
The way the senators envisaged this can be done is to improve children’s well-being online by requiring that social platforms provide kids and parents with “tools to help prevent the destructive impact of social media.”
The content that social sites would be tasked with preventing includes promotion of suicide, self-harm, substance abuse, eating disorders, etc., and non-compliance would make these companies legally liable.
They would also have to turn data over to researchers, introduce an age verification system, and set parental controls to the highest settings, to enable filtering or blocking.
But critics say that forcing social media companies to censor content and allowing parents to “spy” on children online is the wrong approach that doesn’t address the core problem of why children seek certain information on the web, while at the same time eroding their privacy.
The quantum internet has taken a major step forward
The development of a so-called quantum internet may have just seen a significant breakthrough, experts have declared.
Research from a team Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada published in the scientific journal Nature(opens in new tab) provides proof of principle that T centers, a specific luminescent defect in silicon, can provide a ‘photonic link’ between qubits (quantum computing’s counterpart to the binary digit or bit of classical computing).
As successfully harnessing quantum technology would benefit from communications technology that enables these qubits to link together at scale, this could be a huge step forward.
Government Overreach? 9 in 10 Official Websites Use Tracking Cookies Without Consent
Is the government going too far? A new study has discovered that “Big Brother” may be more widespread than anyone thinks. Among the countries that make up the G20, researchers found the vast majority of government websites add third-party tracking cookies without their users’ consent.
The G20 is an international forum which includes 19 countries and the European Union. The forum focuses on solving issues connected to the global economy, climate change mitigation, and the development of sustainable technology. The members include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The international team notes that, in some of these countries, nine in 10 official sites add third-party tracker cookies — even if they have strict user privacy laws. To uncover the scale of this problem, the researchers examined 5,500 websites tied to international organizations, governments, and official COVID-19 information sites during the pandemic.
Their study comes at a time when citizens across the globe are providing information through government websites at an unprecedented rate.
“Our results indicate that official governmental, international organizations’ websites and other sites that serve public health information related to COVID-19 are not held to higher standards regarding respecting user privacy than the rest of the web, which is an oxymoron given the push of many of those governments for enforcing GDPR,” notes Nikolaos Laoutaris, a research professor at IMDEA Networks, in a media release.
US Funding Software For Russians To Access Banned Websites
The US is funding technology to allow Russian citizens to get past Russian government censors in efforts to circumvent an information crackdown related to the war in Ukraine.
The US-backed Open Technology Fund is paying out cash to a number of American companies who provide virtual private networks (VPNs). These are now seeking to allow Russians access free of charge, which aids in both accessing blocked websites and preventing Kremlin authorities from tracking IP addresses, thus better protecting online identity.
“Our tool is primarily used by people trying to access independent media, so that funding by the OTF has been absolutely critical,” said a spokesman one of the involved companies, identified as Lantern.
An attorney with an information access rights group called Access Now said of the program, “It’s so very important for Russians to be connected to the whole world wide web, to keep resistance going.”
One firm cited in AFP receiving US government funds reported that on average 1.5 million Russians are using its tools daily, and further:
Tech firms Psiphon and nthLink have also been providing sophisticated anti-censorship applications to people in Russia, with OTF estimating that some four million users in Russia have received VPNs from the firms.
Psiphon saw a massive surge in Russian users, with the number soaring from about 48,000 a day prior to the February 24 invasion to more than a million a day by mid-March, said a company senior advisor Dirk Rodenburg.
This US program to fund companies providing VPNs to assist users living under “authoritarian regimes” has been ongoing for years, but greatly ramped up in the wake of the Ukraine invasion and short-lived attempts of Russian groups to mount protests in major cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg.
A spokesman for Lantern said that getting past Russian censors is fairly easy with the right tools, given “They weren’t ready to block anything” – in reference to Kremlin authorities. “Over time, Russia learned how to block the easy stuff but Lantern and Psiphon are still up and running.”
Hellbound and Down 
You must be logged in to post a comment.