As much as i wanted to put in all the details here about my massive big, overly camp birthday party celebrations..... I can't.
Not because i can't be botherd typing this, but simply because, there are none!
It's nothing to do with me going to canada, or.... anything really, i think it's just that, with me creating peoples ideal parties all year round and helping them to party their ass's off, when it comes to a day about me, i actually prefer just to chillax and not do anything.
Sure, i still love all the messages that you get via text, or facebook / twitter / youtube etc, but in all honesty, i think the most i want to do for a birthday these days, is just to sit back and have a night like i want.
So enough of me being miserable, thank you for any messages i have recieved up to now, thank you in advance if you are reading this and you're now going to tweet me or facebook me....
One of my many spare time activites is a passion for finding out about the news and things that are happening. I guess that comes with being a gemini right?
Anyhow, for a while now i've been watching closely to something happening online, which i've gotta say, the government's around the world are slow acting on this, but i get the feeling we'll all know soon enough where we stand when it comes to what is classed as free speech and what is classed as hate speech.
For the purpose of this, i'll be giving you an example and trying as best possable to show you the difference between the way you would have handled things in the past and the way you will in the future. The case i reffer to i DO NOT know the final outcome, NOR do i know what action was exactly taken, only what is told in the video you will see as we go along.
Also, please note that these law changes ONLY currently apply to the UK. Other contries may well follow suit, infact websites alone, might start doing the same world-over. But we'll see.
Anyway, so today's topic is internet trolls.
You might have a few questions, so here's some of the most commonly asked ones, i'll try and answer as best possable.
What is an internet troll?
Remember in storys when you were growing up, being told about the troll who lived under the bridge? In most cases bringing misery to people and certainly frightening many a child. Well, forget that. These days an internet troll is a person who says things to provoke a certain type of reaction. They will claim things about certain people (Calling them anything from a pedophile through to being a murderer, when they are aware these claims are not true).
Are what internet trolls say protected under freedom of speech?
To a certain extent, it will depend on what part of the world you live in. I mean look, you've got the westboro baptist church, who preach at soldiers funerals about how they died because gays are accepted etc, yet they're able to legally do that under the freedom of speech act in america. Yet what they preach, is actually hatred.
What is the point in an internet troll?
You tell me. Some people think its entertaining, or amusing etc, but for the victim, it's neither funny or entertaining.
However, we need to look at the laws that have changed.
The laws will now state that " victims have a right to know who is behind malicious messages without the need
for costly legal battles.
The powers will be balanced by measures to prevent false claims in order to
get material removed."
Basically, we need to know the difference between trolling and hatred.
Let's start with the joy that is hated.
Hatred IS different to trolling. While trolling is done for some peoples amusment / entertainment, hatred isn't. Hatred can be against anything from a person to a product / service or a company etc.
So were going to look at an example of hatred in action so to speak. Note again, this IS NOT trolling.
Now, have a little read of what Jay wrote (Jay's the one not on camera in the video, but you hear him towards the end).
" We have had his videos blocked and pulled through you-tubs flagging hate speech guidelines. Slowly these videos have gotten worse and finally on valentines day this You-Tuber made two specific death threats against both me and Bryan. Enough is enough we felt the need to contact authorities and take action against this person and his hate speech towards not only my family but the GLBT community on You-Tube.
Me and Bryan look at the world in very different ways. Bryan wants to just ignore these type of people and focus on our message of love acceptance and equality...He believe that through our channel and message we can change more hearts and minds of those that would hurt our families. I agree with Bryan to a point. When someone starts to use their free speech as a way to verbally abuse and hurt others. When they use that speech as a way to threaten them with physical harm its time to shine a flash light on them and their activities. People like this You-Tuber want to hide in the dark corners of the web where they can spread their hate and lies.
We have been knocking our heads against the walls the last six months trying to decide on how to share this with you our you tube audience...Finally a you-tuber who follows us made a video that we think explains what we have been up against the last few months....It is so well said we decided that this was the best vehicle to help educate our audience on these people and shine a light on their message of hate.
Never Never Never let them use hate as a way to make you not live your life with peace and happiness.
So, would these laws change anything here? A little actually, yes.
How?
Well, instead of just contacting the police and leaving them to do all the detective work (ALWAYS an option, never be afraid to use it), Jay and Bryan would now be able to contact Youtube directly and be given access to the video poster's IP details. Now for those of you who don't know what an IP is. Basically every computer in the world with internet access has one, every mobile device has one etc. Your IP address gives away certain details, like your exact location, who your internet provider is, what websites you have visited, what you have posted and when etc. Now IP details can be changed, however this in certain parts of the world is a crime by itself, however, in the case of Jay / Bryan, the IP address on the video can't be changed, so whoever posted it CAN still be traced.
Under these new laws, Jay / Bryan could gain access to these details and hire a lawyer themselves and take legal action against the person posting them, OR they could do what i presume they did, which is to contact the none emergancy police and report the action.
Key bit here is to ONLY contact the emergancy police if you feel that your life or welfare is under immidiate threat, any other time only contact the none emergancy police phone numbers.
So how is this different to trolling?
Well have a look at this....
Now that is a prime example of what we have come to know as the internet troll.
So what can you now do if you are the victim of action like this.
If you feel it is effecting you, most websites like facebook, twitter, youtube etc have email address' or forms you can fill in on their website which means you can contact their customer service dept. These people would be able to look into your problems and provide you with the details, should they feel that you have been trolled.
Of course, at the time of me writing this, the laws have not yet come into power, so as it currently stands, websites can still refuse to hand you over the details of another person, no matter how bad their abuse it (Dated 12/06/2012).
Again though, once you have these details, you can then take action, by first seeking legal advice.
My main message for this post is to not feel like you have to put up with it. Jay / Bryan leave up a fair amount of the hate comments they get on their video's, to show exactly what they are up against. If they can live with leaving them comments up, then all the power to them. If however they, or yourself, feel that someone has overstepped the line, then contact someone who can help. There's many charities world over, who are dedicated to helping people who are coming under attack online (Also known as cyber-bullying). See what they have to say.
Legal action can be extreme and stressful, but it is soon to be possible to hold people to account over what they post on any website.
The internet is becoming more policed. This is good.
Seeing years ago, the protests start in Egypt, where people in numbers showed that they no longer wanted the current people in charge, in charge any longer, I said to a friend that this would start something, Egypt wouldnt be the first or the last protest of it's kind and that the world was about to change.
How right i was.
While for days in Egypt, there was trouble with "Supporters" of the people in charge, the people doing the actual protest were peaceful. Sure, they would respond if they started getting things thrown at them, but they stood their ground and made their voices heard.
As Egypt was getting closer to a big shift in power, other contries started showing the sign's of people wanting change. Here's where it got interesting though.
Remember mcdaffy? (I refuse to spell his name right, in my own little protest about him). Well, when people begun to call for him to come out of power, we saw things going slightly wrong. How? Because he sent the army after these people who were calling for him to come out of power. Now, things DID go wrong here, no doubt about it. It could never have been a peaceful protest while this man was involved because he was willing to fight to the death to stay in power. He went on the run.
Now, long story short, as we all saw, he got found and killed.
Great! we all thought..... Oh how we were wrong.
You see, while everyone's attention was drawn onto this battle, few knew that trouble was brewing in Syria.
Syria's people had seen the likes of Egypt and must have thought to themselves "Enough is enough for us too". They began their own little revolution, which was and still is, met with anger and violence from the government and the army of the country.
You see, it would appear that this government is the same as magblaffy, they will fight until the death to stay in power.
I really do hate to say this, but it's something like this which could cause a world war. Of course it might not be as bad as the first world or second world war, but the sign's are there to be read. There's still people dying daily because they want their voices to be heard, people are fighting to stop the suffering that these governments army's are causing.... Long story short, history could repeat itself.
So what can we do in the west?
We can push our governments into pressing for peace talks at first, now if these fail, then we can push for things like a no fly zone etc, if they fail, then the only realistic way that the government can be forced out is by intervention from around the world, not JUST the west!
Suffering like what we have seen is unacceptable and if it were happening in our own country, we would be asking for help, so it's only right that we offer help in times when it is most needed.
See, since 2007 i've been uploading to youtube, not actually starting a blog until about 2010 ish followed later by "Life with Bev" in 2011.
While Youtube is alot of fun, i really have to hold my hands up and admit, i'm losing the buzz of Youtube each and every day. Not only me, but big time youtuber's are considering leaving the site. Infact, some that i have spoken to, are just generally not too happy with some of the decisions that the site has been making recently.
Take this video from the HappyCabbie channel on Youtube (@HappyCabbie on twitter)
Now granted, the discovery of things towards the end is certainly shocking, but the question is, WHY would Youtube allow this?
I mean, IF the channels are really to promote certain things, then great, BUT while im aware that Youtube only has a few staff itself, it's part of Google, who should be monitering the situation alot more than they already are doing, esp when it comes down to issues like homophobia and racism.
Why should i still want to be a part of this site really? What can it offer me any more?
See, Youtube used to be a great platform for bloggers to upload their views and thought's on certain topics, but these days, the majority of people are going to be using Youtube to find songs and download them off Youtube, meaning less views for us bloggers on the site.
Not only that, but the whole system that Youtube has created in order to try and stop copyright infringement has and still does fail beyond being believeable. Want to know something funny? The Youtube copyright system once recognised my voice as a song that was owned by Sony. Honestly. I had to file a notice with Youtube to say that the video of JUST me talking, has nothing in it that Sony owns.
Youtube have since dropped the copyright notice on that video, but you see how messed up their system is? It's one of the main reasons i keep looking at Youtube and thinking "Fuck it, Im out".
Now i can already hear the voice in my head of Greg from MrStripyHead telling me exactly where to go....
Now while i can honestly say, i've never mad REALLY good money off Youtube, it was always seen by me as something great, that if money could be made off the videos that I create, then why not?
The reality is, Youtube keep making it impossable to make money off the site these days, wether theyre re-doing the front page of the site, not telling your subscribers when you've done a new video or putting false copyright notices on your video's, where your appeal will never be looked at because it was filed by a fake company in the first place.... etc, money just can't be easily made on the site.
So there's a few points there why im getting put more and more off the site.
Oh ok, 1 more?
Well, Youtube kept doing this competition where-by they would work with certain channels to make their content better and draw in more viewers to them. While this at the time looked like a great thing, their system had a MASSIVE draw-back. First fail, was that the person had to be a Youtube partner. Now to be a partner, you had to already have a good flow of views daily in order to be considerd. Second failing, was that you had to get people to vote for you, but see, here's the thing.... How can you get people to vote for you if your view count is low? Like some of my video's only have like 5 views or something like that, how on earth can i get people to vote for me? One of the things that Youtube said they would help you with would be the amount of viewers that would be drawn to your channel..... yet the.... Ahh screw it, i can't even be botherd to type it out to try and explain it futher.
So, what do i think of my future on Youtube?
Very very bleak. If something's dont change on the site over the next few months and for the better, then i'm out. The copyright system needs to be looked at, there needs to be better support for uploaders who are not a Youtube partner. They need to take reports of abuse more serious and understand the effects that hate on the website can have on people, before looking at a comment that states "Im coming to set you on fire" and not taking any action, because its not a credable threat of violence.... etc.
There's alot of faults on Youtube and i think in all honesty, I might just be done with the website.
Apparently Silverfish is the name of a... something in a computer game, i'm putting this at the top.
This blog is NOT about computer games, this is about the bug / pest.
Where my problem began.
Well, about 2 or maybe 3 months ago, i was sat on the toilet one night having a mid night erm... clear out shall we call it.
Basically, as i was sat on the toilet, i noticed something on the floor moving. I got scared because i thought it was a spider at first. Turns out, it wasn't. It was a silverfish.
These bugs are nasty as hell! Quick little movers too!
I did some research on these things once i knew what they were called and found out that they seem to feed on wood and crumbs, so bathrooms and kitchens are ideal, but they can be found anywhere else where crumbs of food are found.
They love to live in warm and damp environments, so basically, bathrooms and kitchens yet again.
Today however, i have started the war against them myself, since theres no pest control companies around here that will deal with them!
I have sprayed the flat fully with a bug killer, so at the moment, all the windows are open to let the smell out, and it's already killed 2 of them!! Result!
I'll be spraying for a few night's and i shall update you with the results!!!
