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A common narrative on discussion boards like Hacker News is that my inclusion of my fursona on my technical blog posts somehow makes them unsuitable for consumption in a business setting. (This claim is made despite the fact that I’ve never posted pornographic art on this blog.)
Well, Internet marketers must have missed that memo!
They keep contacting me through various channels to try to pay me to publish something that promotes some business.
A few years ago, I briefly humored one of these outreach requests just to see if they’d attempt to write it in my distinct style, complete with furry stickers. In the end, I declined payment and fully disclosed their draft blog post and the emails.
If the recent deluge of emails from marketing agencies are indicative of a trend, neither the furry art nor shenanigans have made me enough of a pariah to the advertising industry for them to leave me alone.
A word on emails and incentives
I generally don’t want to make a habit of publishing emails I’ve received, no matter how hilarious they would be to dunk on. This is especially true of hate emails I received over the years.
Part of the reason for my stance here is that it creates perverse incentives: Some people will enhance their negativity in the hopes that their email gets published next. This can lead the blogger to experience more negative feedback from their audience, which can lead to all sorts of toxic outcomes. Even if you avoid those, you still generally feel shittier about your own blog and interacting with people.
Conversely, I receive a lot of positive and thoughtful letters and comments from folks across the world. It’s a delight to hear from most of you.
I even occasionally hear from technical recruiters (and one investor) that are interested in working with cryptography or privacy experts. When this happens, I’ll funnel recruiters towards excellent people I know that are on the market for new jobs, and refer investors to companies staffed by people I’ve worked with before and know to be capable of delivering incredible work.
I actually don’t mind hearing from recruiters or investors in this way because there’s no editorial pressure on my blog’s contents. Connecting people on both sides of a potentially mutually beneficial business transaction is called being part of society and not a burden, nor something I hope to personally extract value from.
The problem is when people think they can pay me to publish their words as my own.
I’m not interested
I’d like to believe that explanation is sufficient and satisfactory, but we clearly don’t live in the ideal world.
So here’s some more reasons why I’m not going to entertain any offers from advertisers.
Your brand sucks
There’s no gentle way to put this, so I’m not going to mince words.
If you’re so desperate to try to get eyeballs on a product or service that you’ll ask furry bloggers that have explicitly made it a point to be hostile towards Advertising as an industry, your product or service is probably (at best) utter shit. In all likelihood, it’s even more likely to be a scam or a grift than merely “not valuable” to potential buyers.
If you’re that desperate, why would I subject my readers to your product or service at all, let alone endorse it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_F5GxCwizc
Your offer sucks
The dollar amount attached to these offers is, in practice, irrelevant. I wouldn’t sell out for any price, after all.
Having said that, the fact that these unsolicited offers are as cheap as they are also makes me feel kind of insulted.
You advertising parasites really think $100 (or less) is going to compel me to sell out? I’m not a middle school kid arguing for a bigger allowance. I have a career and pay a mortgage.
Give me some credit for fucks sake.
$100 wouldn’t even cover my hosting costs for this blog for half a year. Did someone in your network veer into the creepy realm of pick-up artists and suggest negging as an outreach strategy?![XKCD comic about pickup artists.[Hairy and Cueball sitting at a table.]Hairy: I've been learning tricks from pickup artist forums.Cueball: Pickup artists are dehumanizing creeps who see relationships as adversarial and women as sex toys.[Close-up of Hairy's head, with a faint outline of Black hat and Danish sitting at a table in the background.]Hairy: No, it's just a bunch of tips! Like negging: you belittle chicks to undermine their self-confidence so they'll be more vulnerable and seek your approval.[Close-up of Cueball's head.]Cueball: Just talk to them like a fucking human being.Hairy: Nah, that's a sucker's game.Hairy: Ok— wish me luck![Small frame across top of panel reads Meanwhile... and Danish is sitting at a table with Black hat standing next to the table holding a bowling ball under his arm.]Black Hat: I'm going to the bathroom to roll a bowling ball down under the line of stalls.Danish: Cool.[Close up of Cueball's head, with Hairy approaching Danish's table in the background.]Cueball: Oh no.[Hairy and Danish at a table. Hairy is standing up and leaning on the table.]Hairy: You look like you're on a diet. That's great!Hairy: How's the fruit plate?[Close-up of Danish's head.]Danish: Ooh- are we negging?Danish: Let me try![Close-up of Danish's head, with her hand raised.]Danish: You look like you're going to spend your life having one epiphany after another, always thinking you've finally figured out what's holding you back, and how you can finally be productive and creative and turn your life around.Danish: But nothing will ever change. That cycle of mediocrity isn't due to some obstacle. It's who you are.Danish: The thing standing in the way of your dreamsDanish: is that the person having them is you.[Hairy and Danish at a table. Hairy is standing up.]Danish: Ok, your turn! Ooh, try insulting my hair!Hairy: I think I need to go home and think about my life.Danish: It won't help.](https://fika.grin.hu/photo/link/10419 "XKCD comic about pickup artists.[Hairy and Cueball sitting at a table.]Hairy: I've been learning tricks from pickup artist forums.Cueball: Pickup artists are dehumanizing creeps who see relationships as adversarial and women as sex toys.[Close-up of Hairy's head, with a faint outline of Black hat and Danish sitting at a table in the background.]Hairy: No, it's just a bunch of tips! Like negging: you belittle chicks to undermine their self-confidence so they'll be more vulnerable and seek your approval.[Close-up of Cueball's head.]Cueball: Just talk to them like a fucking human being.Hairy: Nah, that's a sucker's game.Hairy: Ok— wish me luck![Small frame across top of panel reads Meanwhile... and Danish is sitting at a table with Black hat standing next to the table holding a bowling ball under his arm.]Black Hat: I'm going to the bathroom to roll a bowling ball down under the line of stalls.Danish: Cool.[Close up of Cueball's head, with Hairy approaching Danish's table in the background.]Cueball: Oh no.[Hairy and Danish at a table. Hairy is standing up and leaning on the table.]Hairy: You look like you're on a diet. That's great!Hairy: How's the fruit plate?[Close-up of Danish's head.]Danish: Ooh- are we negging?Danish: Let me try![Close-up of Danish's head, with her hand raised.]Danish: You look like you're going to spend your life having one epiphany after another, always thinking you've finally figured out what's holding you back, and how you can finally be productive and creative and turn your life around.Danish: But nothing will ever change. That cycle of mediocrity isn't due to some obstacle. It's who you are.Danish: The thing standing in the way of your dreamsDanish: is that the person having them is you.[Hairy and Danish at a table. Hairy is standing up.]Danish: Ok, your turn! Ooh, try insulting my hair!Hairy: I think I need to go home and think about my life.Danish: It won't help.")
Your writing style is uninteresting
I am, much to the chagrin of pedants everywhere, a proponent of conversational English writing.
Every attempt at native advertising copywriting I’ve seen has been painfully corporate and dull. (Maybe the pedants would like it, though?)
You might think you’re being conversational, but you’re about as authentic as the “sugar baby” scammers on Telegram.
You missed the point entirely
Have anyone in the advertising or marketing space ever wondered, “Why would anyone write technical deep dives under their furry fandom persona when all that could instead be written under their professional name to advance their own career?”
It’s not much of a mystery: I’m sufficiently established in my career that writing something that other engineers could use to bolster their career as my fursona isn’t a significant loss to me.
This is aside from the fact that most cryptography experts, and companies that hire cryptography experts, don’t give half a shit about anyone’s hobbies or participation in Internet subcultures, no matter how weird they may seem to Reddit users.“You’re a gay furry? There’s a private Slack channel if you want to join it. Talk to [person] for an invite.” — every major tech company
In practice, the most of the people who would hold such a thing against you aren’t the sort of people you’d want to work for anyway.
The entire point of writing furry blogs is to have fun; not to make money.
If people want to throw a few bucks my way for a coffee, as a way of showing their appreciation, that’s wonderful. But I don’t expect it, and I don’t take it for granted.
I don’t have a content strategy.
I don’t have monetization goals.
My livelihood doesn’t depend on how well my blog posts are received by strangers on the Internet.
I don’t fit the vague “content creator” box. There is no today’s sponsor. This message isn’t brought to you by anyone but me.
And that’s the way I like things.
I’d be willing to bet, that’s how most of my regular readers like things, too.
I don’t have anything to sell. I don’t want to have anything to sell.
If I ever recommend a piece of technology, it’s always for technical reasons and it’s usually free.
The only thing I do that could be considered mildly promotional is crediting the artists that drew stuff for me when I use it in my blog. (The furry sticker I used in the header image was made by AJ, by the way.)
Why do I do that? Because I want to see people in my community thrive. I don’t want anything in return.
A few years ago, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, I wrote a detailed series about getting into the tech industry for as close to $0 and zero experience as possible, aimed at furry audiences. Between the money I paid to artists to create the illustrations for that series, and the time and expertise that went into writing it, it’s probably worth something like $6,000 to someone in a three-piece suit.
To me, its worth is that a half dozen or so furries (that I know of) have successfully followed the advice given therein to change careers. This is priceless. But it also probably injected damn near half a million dollars into the economy, due to these folks’ increased purchasing power.
If each of them pay it forward and help at least one other person attain their career goals, based on the strategy and guidance I gave away for free, the sky’s the limit on how beneficial it could be.
Me selling out wouldn’t help anyone.
Furries aren’t a marketable demographic
I know that, partly due to the breakneck exponential growth of the furry fandom, it’s inevitable that some marketer would view us as an untapped market.
But every time a major brand has tried to establish themselves in the furry community, they usually get shouted at with lots of porn. This tactic is controversial (especially when the brand in question is one that a lot of kids might follow on social media) yet effective.
Porn is mainly an anathema to marketers because of influences from the likes of MasterCard, who are in bed with “Christian” anti-sex movements like “Exodus Cry”; not because there’s any falsehood to the idea that sex sells.
If I thought it would scare marketers away, and not just cause myself a different kind of headache, I would consider including furry porn on every blog post I ever wrote.
TL;DR
My final answer to any online marketer looking to publish anything on this blog is, “No.”
If anyone is really has money burning a hole in their pocket that they want to send me, you’re certainly free to do so, but you won’t get anything in return.
If it still doesn’t click, I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe my writing isn’t that good after all, and your brand would be better served by a blog that’s easier to understand? Tell yourself whatever keeps your unsolicited marketing emails from being sent.
https://soatok.blog/2024/07/02/my-furry-blog-is-not-an-opportunity-to-develop-your-brand/
#advertising #furry #Internet #marketing #nativeMarketing #rant
The people afraid to show their peers or bosses my technical writing because it also contains furry art are some of the dumbest cowards in technology.Considering the recent events at ApeFest, a competitive level of stupidity is quite impressive.
To be clear, the exhibited stupidity in question is their tendency to project their own sexual connotations onto furry art–even if said art isn’t sexual in nature in any meaningful sense of the word.
But then again, poetry can be sexual, so who knows?
Scandalous furry,
Why are you glitching like that?
Haiku are lewd too!
Art: AJThe cowardice comes in with the fear of their peers or bosses judging them for *checks notes* the content and presentation that I wrote, and not them.
Which (if you think about it for any significant length of time) implies that they’re generally eager to take credit for other people’s work, but their selfishness was thwarted by a cute cartoon dhole doing something totally innocent.
Even sillier, there’s a small contingent on technical forums that are “concerned” about the growing prevalence of queer and furry identities in technical spaces (archived).
Even some old school hackers conveniently forget that
alt.fan.furrywas a thing before the Internet.As frustratingly incompetent as these hot takes are, they pale in comparison to, by far, the biggest source of bad opinions about the furry fandom.
Credit: Tirrelous
The call is coming from inside the house.
Like Cats and Dogs
Last month, I wrote a blog post about Aural Alliance, which caused a menace in the furry music space to accuse me of “bad journalism” for not verbally crucifying the label’s creator (a good friend of mine) for having a failed business venture in the past, or taking credit for donating to their cause early on.
Twitter DM conversation.
Everyone I’ve talked to that has dealt with this particular person before responded with, “Yeah, this is typical Cassidy behavior.”To which one must wonder, “Since when am I a journalist?”
I’ve never called myself a journalist. I’m a blogger and I don’t pretend to be anything more than that. I especially would never besmirch the work of real journalists by comparing it with my musings.
At times, I also wear the security researcher hat, but you’ll only hear about it when I’m publishing a vulnerability.
This is a personal blog. I will neither be censored nor subject to compelled speech. I have no moral or professional obligations to “both sides” of what amounts to a nontroversy.
Nobody has ever paid me to write anything here, and I will never accept any compensation for my writing.
Sure, I contributed to covering Aural Alliance’s up-front infrastructure costs when it was just an idea in Finn’s head. I’m not going to apologize for supporting artists. The Furry Fandom wouldn’t exist without artists.
This kind of behavior isn’t an isolated incident, unfortunately. A handful of furries have rage-quit tech groups I’m in because they found out I generously tipped artists that were under-charging for their work.
It bewilders me every time someone reacts this way. Do you not know the community you’re in?
The most intelligible pushback I’ve seen over the years is, “Well if everyone raises their prices, low-income furries will be pushed out of the market!”
Setting aside that art is a luxury, not a need for a moment, that’s not actually true.
There are so many artists, and they’re so decentralized, that no coherent price coordination effort is even possible. It’s worse than herding cats. Some may raise their prices by $5, others by $500. If furries were organized enough to coordinate something like this, then we’d have a tough time explaining why there are still abusers in the fandom.
Also, it costs very little to learn to draw, yourself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeoQx9hphBw
Oh, but I’m not done.
The demand for low-priced digital art incentivizes people to reach for theft enabled by large-scale computing (a.k.a. “AI” by its proponents).
A similar demand for cheap, high-quality fursuits (usually at the maker’s expense) will lead to a walmartization of the furry community.
If you listen to these hot takes long enough, you start to notice a pattern of short-sighted selfishness.
When you demand something of the furry community, and don’t think of the long-term consequences of your demands, you’re probably being an idiot. This is true even if it’s actually a good idea.
If me supporting artists somehow prices you out of commissioning your favorite artist, you still have other options: Learning to make your own, finding new artists, saving money, etc.
On the flipside, the artists you admire will suffer less due to money troubles. Fewer artists starving makes the world a more beautiful place.
Center of the Fediverse
If flame war and retoot count relieved desire
In the comment thread someone must have known
That the hottest takes truly leave us tired
‘Cause in the center of the fediverse
We are all aloneWith apologies to Kamelot
If you’re on the Fediverse (e.g., Mastodon), and your instance uses a blocklist like TheBadSpace (TBS), you probably cannot see my posts onfurry.engineeranymore.This is because the people running TBS have erroneously decided that any criticism of its curators is anti-blackness.
If you want a biased but detailed (with receipts!) account of the conflicts that led up to
furry.engineer‘s erroneous inclusion on their blocklist, Silver Eagle wrote about their experience with TBS, blocklist criticism, and receiving death threats from the friends of TBS curators.(Spoiler: It was largely prompted by another predominantly LGBTQIA+ instance,
tech.lgbt, being erroneously added to the same blocklist, which resulted in criticism of said blocklist curators.)Be forewarned, though: Linking to Silver Eagle’s blog post was enough for TBS supporters to harass me and directly accuse me, personally, of anti-blackness, so don’t expect any degree of level-headed discussion from that crowd.
Art: CMYKat
What Can We Do About This?
If you cannot see my Fediverse posts anymore, and actually want to see them, message your instance moderators and suggest unsubscribing from TheBadSpace’s blocklist.If they refuse, your only real recourse is to move to another instance. The great thing about the Fediverse is, you can just do that, and nobody can lock you in.
Personally, I plan on sticking on
furry.engineer. I trust its moderators to not tolerate racist and/or fascist bullshit.The baseless accusations of anti-blackness are, unsurprisingly, false.
Burnout Isn’t Inevitable
A few months ago, I quit a great job with an amazing team because the CEO decided that everyone has to return to working in the office, including people that were hired fully remote before the pandemic. This meant being forced to move more than 3,000 miles, or resigning. I’ve been told the legal term for such a move is “constructive dismissal.”In hindsight, I was starting to burn out anyway, so leaving when I did was a great move for my mental health and life satisfaction.
Art: CMYKat
I’m an introvert. I have a finite social battery. Because my work was split across three different teams at the same company, I was a necessary participant in a lot of meetings.
More than 5 hours per day of meetings, as an individual contributor. Sometimes as many as 7 hours/day of them. I almost never had a quiet day, even after blocking one day every week so nobody would schedule any meetings and I could get productive work done.
If you’re interested in being a people manager, or have an extroverted personality, you’re probably unperturbed by this account. But I was absolutely miserable. My close friends started to worry if I was suffering from depression, because of how socially exhausted I was all the time.
I took a few weeks off between jobs. My new role doesn’t pointlessly encumber me with unnecessary meetings.
Every day, I feel the burnout symptoms leaving my mind. I feel challenged and stimulated in a good way. I’m learning new technologies and being productive. I’ve never spent more than 3 hours of any given day in a meeting.
Different people burn out in many different ways, for many different reasons.
In my experience, the consequences appear to be reversible if caught early enough. I don’t know if they would be if I held onto my old job for much longer.
The job market’s tough right now, but if you’re deeply unsatisfied with an aspect of your current job, prioritize yourself and make whatever change is necessary.
This doesn’t mean you have to switch jobs like I did, of course. It was a good move for me. Your mileage may vary.
Where’s The Cryptography?
https://youtu.be/4KNzdlc7ZcA?t=59Somedays I feel like writing about technical topics. Other days, I feel like writing about unimportant or personal topics.
If you’re disappointed in this post, perhaps you also expect everything on this blog to be professionally useful?
Well, worry not, for you’re eligible for a full refund for the amount you paid to read it.
Art: CMYKat
Logging Off
This post has been a collection of unrelated topics on my mind over the past few months. There is one other thing, but I was unsure if it warranted a separate post of its own, or an addendum on this one. Since you’re reading this, you’ll know I ultimately settled on the latter.I started this blog in 2020 because I thought having a personal blog where I talk about things that interest me (mainly the furry fandom and software security) would be fun. And I wanted to do it in a way that was fun for me.
“Having fun with it” has been the guiding principle of this blog for over 3 years. I never intended to do anything important or meaningful, that sort of happened by accident. I didn’t care about others being able to use my writing in a professional setting (hence, my scoffing at the very notion above).
Lately, posts have slowed to a crawl, because it’s not fun for me anymore. I have a lot of ideas I’d love to write about, but when it comes time to turn an idea into something tangible, I lose all inspiration.
So I’m not going to force it.
This will be the last post on this blog for a while. I recently tried to pick up fiction writing, but I’m not happy with anything I’ve been able to produce yet, so I won’t bore anyone with that garbage.
There are a lot of brilliant people that read my writing. Most of you are more than capable of picking up where I left off and starting your own blogs.
I encourage you to do so.
Have fun with it, too. Just remember, when it’s time to put the pen down and take a rest, don’t be stubborn and burn yourself out.
Happy hacking.
Header is a collage of art from AJ, CMYKat, Kyume, WeaselDumb, and a DEFCON Furs 2023 photo from Chevron.
https://soatok.blog/2023/11/17/this-would-be-more-professionally-useful-if-not-for-the-furry-art/
#fediverse #furries #furry #FurryFandom #furryMusic
Before I get into this story, I feel it’s important that you know where I’m coming from. But if you don’t care about that, feel free to skip the Background section.
Background
My blog, Dhole Moments, has always been available online for free and without any kind of advertisements. The only thing I might ever “promote” here are other furry bloggers, free and open source software projects, and anything cool happening in the furry fandom–and I won’t ever do so for monetary gain.
The ability to freely share my knowledge and experience with others is one of the privileges granted to me by modern technology. I’m further privileged to be able to afford to live through my career in computer security, and to never be desperate enough to have to choose between personal integrity and survival.
To be clear: My resistance to compensation here is simply to avoid perverse incentives, not to throw shade at people who lack the privileges I do.
It has to be known that I’ve been pretty open about my stance against paid promotions, from my 2020 year in review blog post to the absence of any payment information (Ko-Fi, PayPal.me, Patreon, etc.) on my blog. I certainly have those things, but they’re utterly divorced from what I’m doing here.
My attitude about gratitude towards anything useful I write on this blog (e.g. the Furward Momentum series) is simple: Pay it forward. (And if you can’t pay it forward, what good would a sense of debt do you? People care. You’re worth caring about.)
If you still have money burning a hole in your pocket, just make sure you generously tip the next furry artist you commission.
An Internet Marketer Offered Me $100 to Betray Myself and My Community
In March 2021, I received an email from someone named CJ Hankins, who purported to be an Outreach Executive of Wise Marketing (although their name is suspiciously absent from their “Meet the Team” page).
If you’d like to independently verify the authenticity of these messages, I’ve dumped the .eml files with DMARC headers into a zip file (including my replies).
In this email, CJ Hankins offered to pay me $100 to publish an article on this blog.
Hi,We have read your content on soatok.blog and would very much like to contribute an original article for your consideration. The said content would be exclusively written for your site.
Within the article, we would place a reference to one of our clients and for this request, we are able to pay $100 (via PayPal).
Please let us know if this is something you would be interested in.
We are ready to send a draft or a sample piece for your perusal.
Yours sincerely,
CJ[signature snipped]
P.S. Message sent through Gmail due to technical issues with my primary work email account.
If I were anyone else blogging about cryptography, I’d probably ignore the email entirely. If I felt generous, I might politely decline. If they persisted, I might reply with a hearty “fuck off” and setup a filter to ensure any subsequent emails from their company skip my inbox.
That’s the mature, professional, adult thing to do.
But wouldn’t it be funny if they tried to write an article in my usual style–complete with my usual smattering of art of my fursona throughout the prose?
So, naturally, I replied.
Hi CJ,Do you have a draft available for what you would like to publish?
I’m also curious how well your intended post will fit with the usual style of my usual blog posts.
Thanks,
Soatok
(Background image derived from Johis’ work.)
If you’ll notice, I didn’t commit to any sort of agreement in my reply. I asked if they had a sample available and expressed curiosity.
Their reply came nearly a week later, and I need to emphasize something in their next email, so I’ll make it bold. (In the original email, it isn’t.)
Hi Soatok,We are very happy you have gotten in touch. Here are the details of the next steps.
A professionally written and edited draft will be sent for your approval in the next few weeks. Please let us know if you have specific editorial requests or guidelines you want us to follow. Or if you feel the topic needs some work or adjusting. We will be ready to make any changes you see fit.
In the article we will need to mention our Online Gaming client. Another point is that the live article cannot have any label. If this is in breach of your guidelines, don’t hesitate to get in contact so we can figure out if there is any other way forward.
Warm regards,
CJP.S. Message sent through Gmail due to technical issues with my primary work email account.
Up until this point, I had already suspected that this outreach was an attempt at what marketers call native advertising. What I didn’t expect was for them to try to get their targets to deceive their audience.
If you’re not familiar with native advertising, this Last Week Tonight video is worth watching for a primer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_F5GxCwizc
Even when clearly labelled, native advertising is deceptive, but in sort of a gray area way: If you’re keen enough to notice the label, you’ll realize you’re reading an ad. If you’re not, you might get fooled, but you only have yourself to blame for not being perceptive enough. This is kind of a bullshit argument, but humans are good at rationalizing their misdeeds.
Native advertising without any sort of label? That’s indefensible, even by the above bullshit argument’s standards.
I did not reply to CJ’s email, and they went quiet for a few weeks, until they finally delivered the proposed article for me to publish.
Hi Soatok,I hope you are well and have had a good week. The reason for this email is that I now have the article to put on your site. Please see attached Word document file.
Please make any small changes to the text that you see fit, but we do ask that you keep the tone of the article and do not alter any of the anchor text. This article was written exclusively for your website and is not a duplicate.
If you agree to put this article on your blog/homepage, please do so as you usually would so that it appears at the top of the page before eventually being replaced by a newer article.
Please publish the content if everything meets your satisfaction. We will then do a final check and immediately transfer the agreed fee via Paypal.
If you have any concerns or questions let me know.
Cheers,
The attached word document was titled, How Cryptocurrency is Making Online Gaming Safer. The purpose of the deceptive advertisement was to promote an online gambling platform from a company called Foxy Games. (The document is included with the emails if you’re curious.)
(Cropped screenshot of the Foxy Games website, which breaks archive.org.)
Who’s Running This Shitshow?
Foxy Games is operated by ElectraWorks Limited, which (in a twist that will surprise no one) was hit with a fine in 2018 for repeatedly breaching advertising standards.
However, Foxy Games is also a brand owned by the Entain Group. This split ownership model makes it difficult to pin down who’s exactly responsible for the unethical behavior we’re seeing here.
To make matters more frustrating, as noted above, CJ claims to work for a marketing firm (Wise Marketing) that doesn’t list them on their personnel page.
Even if we assume CJ is an actual employee of Wise Marketing, there’s no evidence that ElectraWorks Limited or the Entain Group is aware of the unethical behavior of their vendors.
But let’s be real (and, disclaimer, what follows is just my speculation):
This sort of corporate model, combined with the use of third parties, sure seems carefully constructed to minimize legal liability without actually complying with regulations.
The vendors do the dirty work. If one gets caught, then, at worst, the client simply terminates their contract and maybe issues a banal press release insisting they didn’t know and do not condone this behavior, and then proceed to change nothing else.
The fact that CJ Hankins isn’t listed could be explained by any of the following hypotheses:
- The webmaster is lazy and doesn’t update the team page frequently.
- CJ doesn’t actually work for them (either as an employee or contractor).
- Wise Marketing wants some sort of legal deniability to keep their contract with e.g. their client related to Foxy Games.
I don’t know which one is more likely to be true; it’s anyone’s guess, really. I’m sure the “my work email isn’t working so I’m using gmail” is totally legit.
Is Cryptocurrency Making Online Gaming Safer, Though?
Cryptocurrency is not making online gaming safer. Also, there’s a huge difference between online gaming (e.g. World of Warcraft) and online gambling (which they insist on referring to with “gaming” as a euphemism for gambling, which is stupid and I refuse to do that).
I could speculate further on many reasons why cryptocurrency would be an attractive subject for gambling companies, but I ultimately think it has a lot more to do with blockchain hype and reaching new audiences than anything more strategic (e.g. avoiding retributive chargebacks from gambling addicts who bleed their bank accounts dry and run up a massive credit card debt trying to win big).
Bloggers Beware
For reasons I’ve explained above, I have no temptation to accept their offer of $100 to deceptively promote an online gambling client through an unmarked native advertisement on this blog.
However, I’m certainly not the only blogger they approached with this sort of offer. And I certainly won’t be the last.
A lot of people do blog because they want to make money online, and these kind of marketing opportunities can be incredibly enticing especially if you’re in a financially desperate situation.
But is $100 really worth sacrificing your personal integrity forever?
Is it worth it to unethically promote a platform whose operators have a history of repeatedly breaching the advertising standards of the UK’s Gambling Commission?
Personally, I’d rather pursue a career drawing erotic furry art for random people with increasingly specific kinks than deal with this nonsense.
Closure
As I started writing the draft for this blog post, CJ sent me another email.
Hi Soatok,How are you? I sent our proposed article “How Cryptocurrency is Making Online Gaming Safer” last week. Did you receive it? If not, kindly let me know and I’ll be happy to resend the copy.
I look forward to hearing from you again. Have a great day!
My response (which will be sent as soon as this post goes live) is as follows.
Hi CJ,In my previous response I had expressed curiosity and asked for a sample. I didn’t expect you to deliver the entire completed article for review without further discussion.
Upon review of this article, I must admit that it doesn’t live up to my strict editorial standards of bad furry puns or fursona art between paragraphs.
Given the reason above, I don’t wish to move forward with this transaction, and I’m not interested in the $100. However, since you put forth the time to write this post, I just might share it with the world for free.
Regards,
Soatok
Here’s hoping the entire internet marketing industry puts me on a “do not contact” list after this.
https://soatok.blog/2021/05/18/avoiding-the-frigid-hellscape-of-online-marketing/
#entainGroup #marketing #nativeMarketing #onlineGambling #Society #unethicalBehavior
Dhole Moments
Writings about information security, cryptography, software, and humanity, from a member of the furry fandom.From the Furry Fandom…
Featured Furries
Can’t get enough of blog posts written by furries? This post aims to curate some of the other blogs written by furries that are worth sharing with my regular readers. Many (but not all) of these furry blogs are focused on technology in some way. Background Information Many years ago, I wrote a post titled…July 21, 2024August 15, 2024
Soa Talks (Latest Posts)
Ambition, The Fediverse, and Technology Freedom
If you’re new to reading this blog, you might not already be aware of my efforts to develop end-to-end encryption for ActivityPub-based software. It’s worth being aware of before you continue to read this blog post. To be very, very clear, this is work I’m doing independent of the W3C or any other standards organization…October 12, 2024October 12, 2024
Why are furry conventions offering HIV testing to attendees?
Spoiler: It’s nothing scandalous or bad. Every once in a while, someone posts this photo on Twitter to attempt to dunk on furries: Over the years, I’ve seen this discourse play out several times. The people that post this photo usually don’t elaborate on why they think this photo is meaningful, they just let it…September 30, 2024October 3, 2024
Cryptographic Innuendos
Neil Madden recently wrote a blog post titled, Digital Signatures and How to Avoid Them. One of the major points he raised is: Another way that signatures cause issues is that they are too powerful for the job they are used for. You just wanted to authenticate that an email came from a legitimate server, but now…September 20, 2024September 20, 2024
BOUTIQUE DIGITALE LIVRE, EBOOK + FORMATION
#blague #drole #rire #france #belgique #nouvelleici #luxembourg #canada #nostress
#marrant #lol #france #rigoler #mourirderire #blague #blagues #memes #instahumour
#tropdrole #jpp #mdrr #rigole #videodrole #mdr #le #humournoir #rigolade #fourire
#tweetdrole #fun #comique #humour #humourdemerde #rire
#drole #rigolo #ptdr #mortderire #frenchhumour
#fou #videohumour #tweet #humourfran #memefrancais
#photodrole #ais #love #memefr #instagram #comptehumour #meme #mdrrr
#amour #dr #droles #rires #delire #vdm #divertissement #drolehumour
#sourire #funny #citation #insolite #desbarres #twitter #haha #xptdr
#LIVRE #EBOOK #FRANCE #BELGIQUE #LUXEMBOURG #QUEBEC #MONTREAL #ACARDIE
#SUISSE #FRANCOPHONE #professionnel #maison #famille #informatique
#internet #publicité #travail #culture #marketing #formation #achat #shopping
#produit #service #guide #massage #bien #patrimoine #immobilier #chien #chat
#domestique #miracle #energie #soins #spiritualité #entrepreneuriat
BOUTIQUE DIGITALE LIVRE, EBOOK + FORMATION
#blague #drole #rire #france #belgique #nouvelleici #luxembourg #canada #nostress
#marrant #lol #france #rigoler #mourirderire #blague #blagues #memes #instahumour
#tropdrole #jpp #mdrr #rigole #videodrole #mdr #le #humournoir #rigolade #fourire
#tweetdrole #fun #comique #humour #humourdemerde #rire
#drole #rigolo #ptdr #mortderire #frenchhumour
#fou #videohumour #tweet #humourfran #memefrancais
#photodrole #ais #love #memefr #instagram #comptehumour #meme #mdrrr
#amour #dr #droles #rires #delire #vdm #divertissement #drolehumour
#sourire #funny #citation #insolite #desbarres #twitter #haha #xptdr
#LIVRE #EBOOK #FRANCE #BELGIQUE #LUXEMBOURG #QUEBEC #MONTREAL #ACARDIE
#SUISSE #FRANCOPHONE #professionnel #maison #famille #informatique
#internet #publicité #travail #culture #marketing #formation #achat #shopping
#produit #service #guide #massage #bien #patrimoine #immobilier #chien #chat
#domestique #miracle #energie #soins #spiritualité #entrepreneuriat
LOCAL* ANGUS BEEF BURGERS
*Raised** within the mid-Atlantic region of the USA***
**Minimum 100 days
***NY, PA, NJ, MD, DE, WV, VA, or OH
Let's see. "Local", but according to Wikipedia, "the [mid-Atlantic] region typically includes the five states of New York (NY), New Jersey (NJ), Pennsylvania (PA), Delaware (DE), and Maryland (MD), the District of Columbia (DC), and occasionally Virginia (VA) and West Virginia (WV)." Ohio (OH) is more often considered as a Midwestern state.
So:
- Animals were born and raised possibly anywhere in the world.
- Were most likely brought to Ohio, about 500 miles (800 km) from New York City.
- Spent exactly 100 days there before being slaughtered.
- And were sold in New York City as "Local" meat.
Another #marketing victory for FreshDirect, good job everyone.
#foss #opensource #software #marketing #branding #design #linux #freesoftware #libre
#tech
#edm #DanceMusic #HouseMusic #Soul #AcidJazz
#aviation
#photography
#CatPix
#Art
#Liberal #LeftOfCentre #nzpol
#clouds #sunsets
#pubs
#puns (the last one should say puns but it works) #DadJokes
#travel
#Books & #Reading & #Writing
#Astronomy
#NotAstrology
#exPom
#Marketing
#SciFi
I recall in the early 2010s how, as #Facebook allows companies to open "fan pages", businesses of every size gave those guys a lot of free advertising while they asked their clients to "follow them on Facebook".
This makes me ask myself a few things:
- How welcoming would Diaspora users would be with business accounts? It is extremely easy to avoid spam by ignoring users on this social network. Would you give them a chance without frowning?
- Facebook is dying (don't believe me, see it by yourself) so this could be a nice moment to promote Diaspora to others (just to see what happens, at the very least). Am I being naïve?
- What if someone opened a pod for businesses in Diaspora, just as someone opened one for former Google+ users?
#business #marketing #growingthecommunity
About the Upcoming Changes to Third-party Cookies
As you may have already read, #Google announced in January that they are planning to phase out support for third-party #cookies in 2022. There seems to be some misunderstanding about this topic, so, hoping you will find it useful, I am writing this article to help clarify a few things.
The Basics
Let's start with the basics, so the rest can be understood easily. You may have read about the evil cookies, and you may be sick and tired or seeing how websites request your permission to use cookies almost every time you visit their sites; but truth is that cookies are crucial for the web. They allow interactivity with websites! Before we had cookies, in the early 1990s, the web was a passive media. You could only read (and see the images) that other person published. There was no way for a web server (or its owner) to know that two web page views were related to one another. Every web page you saw was treated as a new web page visit from scratch.
Cookies solved this problem by allowing a website to store some information in the visitors computer, and to read its content before taking the next step. It works this way:
- You visit a log in screen on a website.
- You input your user name and password.
- If your credentials are correct, the server places a cookie on your computer that reads "User X connected".
- From there on, every time you request a new web page on that site, the server will fetch the content "User X connected" from your computer, and give you only the web pages that are specifically prepared for "User X" to see.
- When you log out, the web server edits the content of the cookie file from "User X connected" to "null", so anybody else can see content that was prepared just for "User X" until the cookie value changes to "User X connected" again (after entering the correct credentials, of course).
How Cookies Became a Problem —Part One
Now that you know that cookies are an important part of the web, you are probably curious about when and why they became a problem. This happened because cookies were abused. Let me show you how:
Let's imagine you want to visit your favourite blog. To do that, you open a web browser, type its URL (or find it among our bookmarks), press enter and wait a few seconds. Voilà!, the blog appears on the screen.
What most people are not very aware of is what happens under the hood. It works something like this:
- First, you enter your blog's URL on your browser and press enter.
- Then, your browser sends a request to your Internet Service Provider (ISP), asking for the information contained in that URL.
- Your ISP forwards the request to other servers until finding the web page you asked for. When it finds it, the web server responds by sending you the all information contained in that web page you requested:
- First, the HTML file with the instructions, and then,
- All of its parts (images, audio, video, etc.)
- Lastly, your web browser then gathers all that information and use it to build the web page on your browser, according to the instructions in the HTML file.
- If the owner of a website included a web counter script on his site, you download it and execute it.
- If this script orders the creation of a new cookie with certain values, your computer obeys.
- If there are other scripts, and they order the creation of other cookies, your computer obeys them too.
If cookies are a problem today it is because so many websites install so many cookies that it has become very easy for their creators to assign a unique ID to each visitor, and follow him around the web. It was not the original idea for cookies, though.
How Cookies Became a Problem —Part Two
If cookies are this troublesome, you may be wondering why website owners do this. Truth is only very few web owners are aware of this situation and do it on purpose. The majority do not even know. You see, most web owners do not design websites. They hire people to do them for them. Likewise, most web designers are knowledgeable about building websites, yet they are not experts in online privacy. They just know there are resources out there that make their lives easier, and they use them. Why reinvent the wheel if you can use free resources and get the job done faster?
Here a few samples of those free resources:
- The world's most popular web content manager: WordPress
- The world's most popular visitor counter: Google Analytics
- The world's most popular advertising network for website owners: Google Adsense
- Facebook's "like" button and Twitter's "tweet" button.
- AddThis article-sharing script.
- Disqus comments box.
Now, to be fair with web designers, the alternative would be to create all those features from scratch, or at least without third-party services. It is doable, but it would raise costs a lot. So let us all add to the to-do list that we need to find a balance for this situation in a reasonable future.
How Cookies Became a Problem —Part Three
Needless to say, service owners want to make money for what they offer, so they charge advertisers a fee for accessing their user base. To get advertisers to spend money, they need to show them an attractive offer; and the best way to give them that is to gather the most complete set of users. There is a huge difference for an advertiser between being able to display an ad on example.com (a very generic offer), being able to display it on 254873 websites that are seen by women between 25 and 45 (a more specific offer) and being able to display it on 32495 websites that are seen by divorced women between 25 and 45, with at least two children each. The last offer will make them more money because it is more specific, so they use cookies to gather as much information as possible from users to build the most attractive set of profiles they can.
So "tracking cookies" have become a problem because there is a financial motivation to use them. There is a lot of money in specific databases, and very little money in generic databases. That is, for example, what made Facebook a multimillion company in so little time. They have a really specific database of users.
We need to add to that the fact that gathering these databases have become so precise it scares. Companies have gathered (and sold) so much information behind our backs that we did not learn the level of detail data brokers can handle until the Cambridge Analytica data scandal of the late 2010s. In one sentence, they have just too much information, and this is why in recent years governments have approved privacy laws and regulations to try, at least, to require users' permission before they start using them to collect information.
What is Going to Happen in 2022 and its Consequences
The most accepted theory is that Google's Chrome browser will just ignore third-party cookies (the ones that are included by scripts from websites you are not visiting right now) and not let them work. Time will tell if this is correct.
Yet this does not mean Google will kill third-party cookies, as some people have stated in a variety of blog posts. The change they announced will only affect Chrome. All other browsers will still give users the option to accept third-party cookies, although most of them will keep blocking them by default.
This has been big news over the last few weeks because it affects a lot of people… and because of irony: Google is one of the companies that uses third-party cookies like there was no tomorrow.
Does this mean online tracking is going to end? No, it just means it is going to continue without cookies.
Can online tracking work without cookies? Yes, there are a few ways. One is already in use, and it is called canvas fingerprinting. JavaScript has become very powerful, so that is definitely a second option. (Take a look at clickclickclick.click to see with your own eyes how far JavaScript can go.) A third option would be making third-party cookies work as first-party cookies using some kind of redirection inside a web page's code. There are a few experiments with favicon tracking too. But let's not get too technical, shall we? Keep an eye on the news, and I am sure that you will find both programmers creatively creating new ways to track people and programmers creating way to stop those new ways to track people alike. It has been a mouse and cat race for decades.
What is interesting is the way Google will move its tracking to the browser. As Google is the only company that can control Chrome, it has full control on how it can gather information from that software. Today, we know that Google has already published a new tracking proposal model —named FLoC, an acronym for "Federated Learning of Cohorts"— and that it is testing it with a set of Chrome users (without notifying them, as usual). In a short future, it will allow a group of advertisers to place ads on those new "cohorts of users" to see how it works.
The idea of FLoC is creative, but it does not appear to be less invasive. As they state, the browser will use the user's browsing information to add him in a cohort. Then, it will allow advertisers to publish ads on those cohorts. Cohorts will be dynamic, which means the software will automatically be moved to a different cohort as his browsing history continues being analysed.
This means that, the first few times you browse web pages using Chrome, your cohort might be very generic. For example, "man". But, as you continue browsing the web and Chrome learns more about your user behaviour, your cohort may become more specific. "Single man in his early 40s, fighting against alopecia".
I do not have information yet on how specific cohorts may become, but I do know that advertisers want specific sets of users when they advertise online. If I wanted to advertise razors, for example, I would like to place my ads in the eyes of men from teenage years up. It does not need to be too specific. If I wanted to advertise tampons, conversely, I would like to place my ads in the eyes of women from teenage years up to the average menopause age (around 50) who are not pregnant. That is way more specific. Will there be a cohort for that? If yes, that would certainly be too specific and somewhat invasive. It is correct to feel concerned.
Can online marketing be specific to the point of knowing what women are pregnant today? Yes! Pregnant women tend to visit maternity websites a lot more than single women with no children. It is not too hard to notice a change if you have been following Sandra for a while and you see a switch in her browsing behaviour.
Now, Google claims that users will be protected both because the cohort ID will not leave the browser and because there will be thousands of users in each cohort. I do not agree very much. Every online marketer with enough experience know that you can always create a web page with an irresistible offer, advertise it to just one very specific cohort, and harvest those users' names and emails. Extracting people's personal information will not be very hard with their new model.
I will finish this section with a comment about what could have motivated Google to make this change. I certainly cannot speak for them, but I believe the rise in the use of ad blocking extensions is one of the strongest reasons. After all, it is hard for tracking companies to gather information about people if there are more than 200 million people using ad blockers in their computers.
That said, let's move on to the final part of my article.
What All This Means for You, as a User
There are many ways to understand and interpret this news from a user's point of view:
When Chrome finally "phases out" its support for third-party cookies, it will be just catching up with the browsers that currently block third-party cookies by default. Third-party cookies should continue working on other browsers.
This also means that, if the web drastically reduces its use of third-party cookies, all web pages will transmit less information and load slightly faster, which is good.
This also means that companies will need to adapt to the change. That will force them to make changes, so get ready to see a few updates here and there in almost every website you visit.
During the search for an alternative, we should all expect a raise in other means of software tracking in the upcoming months —that is, less cookies but more #canvas #fingerprinting and JavaScript tracking. Those are reliable techniques that have worked for years, so it is the easiest path to take (for them). Web #browsers do not block canvas or #JavaScript by default, which means that those who are concerned about this we need to take additional steps to prevent that kind of tracking in our computers. Other companies may feel creative and try new things.
As I mentioned above, Google's FLoC is an interesting proposal, but it means that the more you use Chrome the more precisely segmented your browser (or, in other words, YOU) are going to be, even if Google keeps its word and that information never leaves your computer. Would you like to be "FLoCked"? If not, then it is time to seriously consider switching to another, more privacy-aware, web browser, such as Mozilla Firefox.
What All This Means for You, as a Website Owner
For website owners, there are three additional things to think about:
First, for those among you who have not noticed it yet, I mentioned earlier in this article that most web browsers have been blocking third-party cookies for a few years already. This means that if you are using Google #Analytics, Statcounter or some other third-party software to gather statistics and analyse how many people visit your site, you are not receiving a share of your traffic information, and you are not receiving it today (because its trackers are being blocked by the browser's privacy protection settings). It may be a good moment to start thinking about switching to a self-hosted statistics solution, such as Matomo. As a Matomo installation runs on your own web server, its statistics software uses first-party cookies. Those are slightly less likely to be blocked, giving you more reliable information.
Next, if you count on affiliate marketers to bring you clients, and your affiliate marketing software still uses third-party cookies to track sales and commissions (it should not be doing that in the third decade of the twenty-first century, but it does not hurt to remind you), you may also need to think about switching to a different solution that uses first-party cookies or server-side recording of commissions. If not, your affiliates will receive less money than they should, and they may not be as interested in working for you as they were in the past, affecting your business. Add to your to-do list talking with your webmaster to double-check your affiliate program will not be affected.
The last one is sort of a moral question: Will you allow Google to "FLoCk" your users? If your answer is "yes" or "I don't mind", no problem, you do not need to change anything. If your answer is "no", then you need to take an extra step to opt out your website from Chrome's FLoC calculations. It is reasonably easy to do…
If your website works in an Nginx server, then you need to add…
add_header Permissions-Policy "interest-cohort=()";
…to your nginx.conf or website's configuration file.
If your website works in an Apache server, then you need to add…
Header always set Permissions-Policy "interest-cohort=()"
…to your .htaccess file.
…but I am afraid I cannot tell if Google will respect that signal in the future.
Anyway, your webmaster should be able to add those lines in five minutes. If he cannot, drop me a line and I will help you. Honestly, I would have preferred an opt-in rather than an opt-out mechanism for FLoC, but that has always been too much to ask for certain companies. At least, we should be happy to know we did not lose full control on what happens on our own websites.
What All This Means for You, as an Online Marketer
Lastly, if you are an online marketing, it is time to think about a few (new, but not that new) scenarios:
You have users who use Chrome and users who use other browsers. That has not changed. Yet soon the first set will be able to be targeted using the FLoC system, while the second cannot. This will have consequences in the way you control your clients' online advertising expenses.
You will also need to schedule some time so both your team of programmers and you can learn how to use the FLoC API for your campaigns.
If you are an affiliate marketer, you will need to keep an eye on how your affiliate marketing networks adapt to this change. If they do not update away from the use of third-party cookies, then you will need to start looking for a network that did.
Social media marketers are not affected by this change. You rely more on recommendations, popularity and reputation management; BUT tracking pixels will quite likely stop working altogether. Pay attention to news about that.
Search engine and conversion optimization marketers are already being affected by those browsers that block "tracking cookies", such as Google Analytics. I already suggested Matomo as an alternative, although it is safe to expect a future update to statistics software to see if updating is necessary.
Retargetting advertising will quite likely fall, which means you will need to start capturing e-mail addresses (again) to be able to nurture your potential clients.
Finally, this means you will need to schedule updates on all the sites you manage in a reasonably short future. All optimization and #marketing automation software that you use (and relies on third-party cookies to work) will stop working for Chrome users during 2022.