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.

CMYKat

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

CMYKat

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?
Credit: XKCD; explainer

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.

MarleyTanuki

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

Dhole Moments

2023-11-17 18:21:17

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: AJ

The 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).

MarleyTanuki

MarleyTanuki

Even some old school hackers conveniently forget that alt.fan.furry was 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 alone

With 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 on furry.engineer anymore.

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=59

Somedays 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.

(Art by Khia.)

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?

(Art by Khia.)

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,
CJ

P.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.)

“Sick fursona, bro.”
(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:

1. The webmaster is lazy and doesn’t update the team page frequently.
2. CJ doesn’t actually work for them (either as an employee or contractor).
3. 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?

(Art by Khia.)

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

2020-04-21 10:46:39

Dhole Moments

Writings about information security, cryptography, software, and humanity, from a member of the furry fandom.

About This Blog

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

@soatok@furry.engineer

https://soatok.blog/