While it's fair to say this is your fault for giving the information to the phishing people, it's also Twitter's fault for not requiring 2FA to turn off 2FA! Seriously wtf!
At risk of making a serious point, this recalls the argument about fare evasion, where the neoliberal/"late stage capitalist" logic is that it's simply not worth helping the handful of people who really need it by spending the money necessary to have real customer service, same as it's worth living with fare evasion rather than spending the money to hire people to work there who might stop it.
As someone that leans skeptical of fare enforcement, I want to add: I don't think the dichotomy is living with fare evasion vs spending money to hire people to stop it. It's that spending the money to stop it usually doesn't stop it, and insofar as it does/could, you'd be spending more money to stop fare evasion than you would just giving people free fares in the first place.
This is easily resolved when pro-fare-enforcement groups admit their goal isn't spending or saving money providing access to transit, but keeping certain types of people off transit. I don't think anyone would disagree about the efficacy of fare enforcement if we just start the discussion there.
It is easy and cheap to prevent the vast majority of fare evasion, on trains at least, and we’re in the middle of doing so in the Bay by simply replacing all the easily jumpable fare gates with tall ones you can’t jump.
More generally, yes, we fare enforcers actually do of course care that fares raise net revenue, since that’s the only way to have mass transit. If fares prevent people coming on transit who endanger other riders and potential riders, then sure that’s a positive second order effects
>fares raise net revenue, since that’s the only way to have mass transit
I see where you're coming from but I don't find it convincing even back in a pre-2020 world. Highest farebox recovery peaked in 2019 and in most places hasn't recovered since. If we use your example, BART, fares are ~20% of revenue. Not nothing by any means, and I'm sure you'd argue enforcing fares would lead to "increased safety" which leads to "more riders" which leads to "more fares from actual paying riders." And I'd allow that line of argument.
But it doesn't seem prudent to spread the idea that people "pay for" transit as a service with fares, thus that's the only way to fund it. People don't really pay for roads or highways with user fees, all transit systems involve massive subsidies, and the conversation about fares doesn't inherently need to focus on "fare revenue or no revenue at all" when we could also consider "fare revenue or subsidy revenue, which the systems already receive, and increasing subsidies would decrease need for fares."
Your new gates are estimated to cost $90 million, with the most generous estimates they'd save 60% of the $25 million estimated fare evasion rev, so anywhere from 4 to 6 years from now these will pay themselves off--not including maintenance fees across those years. The last gates were in for a long time so maybe on a longer scale it's worth it. And again adding in the shorter term second order effects if the gates actually stop fare evasion.
But I don't think it's a full assessment of things to avoid asking what you could do with another path. At minimum it's worth having the plan on hand just in case.
Speaking as a Brit, I would absolutely follow Dylan and think you should necro him immediately. Try getting him to comment on all the 'lol we love tea don't we' accounts like VeryBritishProblems and you'll soon get some followers back, if you care about still having a presence beyond lurking.
None of your more notable moots have an in with anyone at X (I'm cringing just at the thought of calling it that)?
I've experienced how frustrating and demoralizing their automated account inquiry experience can be. Late last Summer, a moot tweeted something very inflammatory about Musk. She often does, as she cannot stand the tech elite. The tweet got attention and I stupidly left a quasi-tasteless joke reply tweet suggesting she should "Butler him". Now, the context is that she was actually at the rally when the assassination attempt occurred. The bad joke also was playing on the whole turning a nameplace into a verb "Canadaing one's self". Nevertheless, because the main tweet got traction, a ton of Musk sycophants mass reported her tweet and then mine for Violent Threats. They permanently suspended my account over that joke. I tried appealing several times but, like your experience, it was futile. Had that account since 2011 so it was really infuriating.
Even more galling was that on the backup account I had made a few years ago and starting using permanently after the account suspension, someone with whom I had never interacted with, tweeted and DMed death threats to me, . Naturally I reported these threats because they were a clear and obvious violation, right? Nope. I got an automated report stating "We found no violations. (Eventually after I tweeted about it and some other reporting the tweets, the person was suspended.)
I worked in tech for 13 years (including at a big tech co) so I have a decent amount of connections. Working on getting my account back but I’m definitely deactivating premium and using it only for Substack promo I think
Thank you for writing about this. I am a security and privacy researcher and this was extremely helpful. I am sorry that happened to you, though. I wouldn’t have known it was a scam either.
My account on a specialty food website got hacked last month. Perp ordered $350 of sausages and $900 of sushi for next-day delivery. Scammers are wild!
Also I almost got got by that Zelle scam. They had me in circles on the phone for fifteen minutes before I concluded they were shady and hung up, so they did, at least, manage to steal some time from me.
Instagram isn’t better, my dad got hacked on there (he actually has quite a following!) and was only ever able to get it fixed by reaching out to the alumni network of the college he works for and getting a hold of a meta employee through it. The regular support was the exact same ai run around you got.
Genuinely an interesting cybersecurity case given the use of two-factor authentication to lock you out. I have no mouth and I must scream, or uh, I have no access to the registered number and I must verify
I'm so sorry this happened. I basically got a personal Twitter account because I found yours while scrolling through the account I manage for my work and I thought you were absolutely hysterical but couldn't justify subscribing from my work account. Twitter would be a much less fun place without you.
I might get back on Twitter with an alt, although I think it’ll be very hard to build the same audience, and while I never had lots of trust in them, it’s really been depleted.
I know you managed to not ingest the stress and tension from the post-Elon Twitter that I did, but honestly I suggest you not provide any support for Elon and his grifty MAGA app and bid good riddance to it.
Also if you want insane takes, I've actually found this place (to my actual chagrin, because I was hoping to avoid the batshit crazy takes online after deleting Twitter) to have PLENTY of material for you to work with.
If all they do is crypto scams that’s bad but hey, it could be worse!
My FB account was hacked years ago and whoever did it posted a bunch of porn and asked for money.
It was so brutal because I was 1) totally broke at the time and 2) being someone in my 20’s it could be assumed I was probably consuming some amount of porn.
I got calls and texts from people being like “dude, this isn’t you right?” And the way they were hedging made me angry 😂
FB did take care of it though but the whole experience was so terrible I just never went back.
Hope you’re able to get access back soon. Have you checked LinkedIn for 2nd or 3rd-degree connections at Twitter? Leaving might be a mistake—your tweets and many such takes are probably one of your top drivers for new subscribers. I know this from personal experience!
I didn't stop posting on Twitter for political reasons. I stopped posting on Twitter because Twitter broke the connection that allowed me to auto-post my WordPress blog posts on Twitter. Never mind the politics, Musk made Twitter a disaster from a technical perspective.
Hey Cartoons, I'm having trouble getting responses for a survey I'm running on romantic preferences. Would you be interested in helping me promote it? I heard you'd be a good person to ask.
While it's fair to say this is your fault for giving the information to the phishing people, it's also Twitter's fault for not requiring 2FA to turn off 2FA! Seriously wtf!
At risk of making a serious point, this recalls the argument about fare evasion, where the neoliberal/"late stage capitalist" logic is that it's simply not worth helping the handful of people who really need it by spending the money necessary to have real customer service, same as it's worth living with fare evasion rather than spending the money to hire people to work there who might stop it.
As someone that leans skeptical of fare enforcement, I want to add: I don't think the dichotomy is living with fare evasion vs spending money to hire people to stop it. It's that spending the money to stop it usually doesn't stop it, and insofar as it does/could, you'd be spending more money to stop fare evasion than you would just giving people free fares in the first place.
This is easily resolved when pro-fare-enforcement groups admit their goal isn't spending or saving money providing access to transit, but keeping certain types of people off transit. I don't think anyone would disagree about the efficacy of fare enforcement if we just start the discussion there.
It is easy and cheap to prevent the vast majority of fare evasion, on trains at least, and we’re in the middle of doing so in the Bay by simply replacing all the easily jumpable fare gates with tall ones you can’t jump.
From what I understand your gates were pretty old regardless, I’m also glad you’re replacing them!
More generally, yes, we fare enforcers actually do of course care that fares raise net revenue, since that’s the only way to have mass transit. If fares prevent people coming on transit who endanger other riders and potential riders, then sure that’s a positive second order effects
>fares raise net revenue, since that’s the only way to have mass transit
I see where you're coming from but I don't find it convincing even back in a pre-2020 world. Highest farebox recovery peaked in 2019 and in most places hasn't recovered since. If we use your example, BART, fares are ~20% of revenue. Not nothing by any means, and I'm sure you'd argue enforcing fares would lead to "increased safety" which leads to "more riders" which leads to "more fares from actual paying riders." And I'd allow that line of argument.
But it doesn't seem prudent to spread the idea that people "pay for" transit as a service with fares, thus that's the only way to fund it. People don't really pay for roads or highways with user fees, all transit systems involve massive subsidies, and the conversation about fares doesn't inherently need to focus on "fare revenue or no revenue at all" when we could also consider "fare revenue or subsidy revenue, which the systems already receive, and increasing subsidies would decrease need for fares."
Your new gates are estimated to cost $90 million, with the most generous estimates they'd save 60% of the $25 million estimated fare evasion rev, so anywhere from 4 to 6 years from now these will pay themselves off--not including maintenance fees across those years. The last gates were in for a long time so maybe on a longer scale it's worth it. And again adding in the shorter term second order effects if the gates actually stop fare evasion.
But I don't think it's a full assessment of things to avoid asking what you could do with another path. At minimum it's worth having the plan on hand just in case.
RIP, your contributions to the discourse will be missed
Speaking as a Brit, I would absolutely follow Dylan and think you should necro him immediately. Try getting him to comment on all the 'lol we love tea don't we' accounts like VeryBritishProblems and you'll soon get some followers back, if you care about still having a presence beyond lurking.
I...kind of love this? The only problem is Dylan is in his 20s now. I guess if he's a known satire account I can keep him young indefinitely.
Trust me, 20yo british men are still talking about clunge
Who do you think is writing the content all the 16-18yr old guys are RTing
That's what would make bringing him back to so great...
None of your more notable moots have an in with anyone at X (I'm cringing just at the thought of calling it that)?
I've experienced how frustrating and demoralizing their automated account inquiry experience can be. Late last Summer, a moot tweeted something very inflammatory about Musk. She often does, as she cannot stand the tech elite. The tweet got attention and I stupidly left a quasi-tasteless joke reply tweet suggesting she should "Butler him". Now, the context is that she was actually at the rally when the assassination attempt occurred. The bad joke also was playing on the whole turning a nameplace into a verb "Canadaing one's self". Nevertheless, because the main tweet got traction, a ton of Musk sycophants mass reported her tweet and then mine for Violent Threats. They permanently suspended my account over that joke. I tried appealing several times but, like your experience, it was futile. Had that account since 2011 so it was really infuriating.
Even more galling was that on the backup account I had made a few years ago and starting using permanently after the account suspension, someone with whom I had never interacted with, tweeted and DMed death threats to me, . Naturally I reported these threats because they were a clear and obvious violation, right? Nope. I got an automated report stating "We found no violations. (Eventually after I tweeted about it and some other reporting the tweets, the person was suspended.)
I worked in tech for 13 years (including at a big tech co) so I have a decent amount of connections. Working on getting my account back but I’m definitely deactivating premium and using it only for Substack promo I think
Thank you for writing about this. I am a security and privacy researcher and this was extremely helpful. I am sorry that happened to you, though. I wouldn’t have known it was a scam either.
Thank you, I feel slightly less stupid!
Everything is a scam, so much so that I expect the Internet and all it minions to collapse any day now.
My account on a specialty food website got hacked last month. Perp ordered $350 of sausages and $900 of sushi for next-day delivery. Scammers are wild!
Sorry, that was me!
Also I almost got got by that Zelle scam. They had me in circles on the phone for fifteen minutes before I concluded they were shady and hung up, so they did, at least, manage to steal some time from me.
Instagram isn’t better, my dad got hacked on there (he actually has quite a following!) and was only ever able to get it fixed by reaching out to the alumni network of the college he works for and getting a hold of a meta employee through it. The regular support was the exact same ai run around you got.
Genuinely an interesting cybersecurity case given the use of two-factor authentication to lock you out. I have no mouth and I must scream, or uh, I have no access to the registered number and I must verify
I'm so sorry this happened. I basically got a personal Twitter account because I found yours while scrolling through the account I manage for my work and I thought you were absolutely hysterical but couldn't justify subscribing from my work account. Twitter would be a much less fun place without you.
I might get back on Twitter with an alt, although I think it’ll be very hard to build the same audience, and while I never had lots of trust in them, it’s really been depleted.
I know you managed to not ingest the stress and tension from the post-Elon Twitter that I did, but honestly I suggest you not provide any support for Elon and his grifty MAGA app and bid good riddance to it.
Also if you want insane takes, I've actually found this place (to my actual chagrin, because I was hoping to avoid the batshit crazy takes online after deleting Twitter) to have PLENTY of material for you to work with.
Sucks that this happened, but I will admit that when I saw what the hacked account posted, I did laugh pretty hard at the crypto scam.
Perfect, no notes.
Sorry this happened to you, but this is driving me crazy! I don’t see any grammar errors or misspellings in the phish email. What am I missing?
If all they do is crypto scams that’s bad but hey, it could be worse!
My FB account was hacked years ago and whoever did it posted a bunch of porn and asked for money.
It was so brutal because I was 1) totally broke at the time and 2) being someone in my 20’s it could be assumed I was probably consuming some amount of porn.
I got calls and texts from people being like “dude, this isn’t you right?” And the way they were hedging made me angry 😂
FB did take care of it though but the whole experience was so terrible I just never went back.
Hope you’re able to get access back soon. Have you checked LinkedIn for 2nd or 3rd-degree connections at Twitter? Leaving might be a mistake—your tweets and many such takes are probably one of your top drivers for new subscribers. I know this from personal experience!
I didn't stop posting on Twitter for political reasons. I stopped posting on Twitter because Twitter broke the connection that allowed me to auto-post my WordPress blog posts on Twitter. Never mind the politics, Musk made Twitter a disaster from a technical perspective.
Hey Cartoons, I'm having trouble getting responses for a survey I'm running on romantic preferences. Would you be interested in helping me promote it? I heard you'd be a good person to ask.
Survey for people attracted to men: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScX2G1iKxXzLlrycCYd60TjSEuaRtYiWgAG0iqIwEqAy48j9A/viewform?usp=header
(If you want to know more about it, there's a post up at https://thingstoread.substack.com/p/romantic-preferences-survey )