CCPA Data Portability Request for Facebook. To Mark Zuckerberg and whomever else it may concern:
This letter is in regard to your obligations under the California Consumer Privacy Act. Any information I provide to you may solely be used for the purpose of complying with the requests stated in this letter.
The account for which the data is being requested is:— Garrett Smith. I am the account owner.
According to the California Consumer Privacy Act Regulations, “If a consumer submits a request in a manner that is not one of the designated methods of submission, or is deficient in some manner unrelated to the verification process, the business shall either: (1) Treat the request as if it had been submitted in accordance with the business’s designated manner, or (2) Provide the consumer with specific directions on how to submit the request or remedy any deficiencies with the request, if applicable.” If you choose the second option, please provide the required directions.Please provide to me access to all of the content I have posted on Facebook.
If your position requires censorship in order to be maintained, you don’t have one.
Joe Kort, author and Internet Expert on Psychology, deleted his entire video wherein he interviewing James Cantor. He’d performed so badly in that interview that it was hindering his image. Worse yet, his position was kindly demolished in the comments section below by yours truly.
In June 2020, I posting the following comment which appears below in response to a video where Joe Kort interviewed James Cantor.
I’ve experienced this when discussing this issue. People report me to the police, threaten to dox me, threaten to kill me, hack my phone, and contact moderators to get me banned on social media platforms, the count of which is now five.
The lack of public discourse and the oppression of free thought prevents change and progress for this and every issue.
How is it possible to make a fair determination about a general age at which everyone is capable of making a decision about whether or not they want to have sex?
There is great variety between individuals at which point they feel they are ready for sex and actually engage in sex, which, by the way, is mostly below the age of 18.
How then can it be justified to punish individuals who interlope rigid age laws?
Equivocating age of consent with the definition of consent is a mistake of the law. This mistake is made with great variety and with dire consequences to individuals in each and every state.
Consent is the agreement to do something. To equivocate consent with abiding by age configuration rules defined by a given jurisdiction for the particular activity at hand results in the problem of determining between multiple types of non-consensual sex:
consensual nonconsensual sex, where the “victim“ chose to engage in an act that was illegal due to complex age and marital constraints.
nonconsensual nonconsensual sex, where the sexual activity was carried out regardless of the will of the victim.
Some states have a close-in age exemption. This is an attempt to assert that young people can have sex without harm but then when the older partner is one day over the allowed upper age limit or age gap, harm is imminent and the older partner needs to be punished with imprisonment and sex offender registration. That is so wrong.
The fact that there is so much variety between states indicate that at least some states are getting this wrong. Do you think it’s really possible that a healthy, pleasurable sexual interaction, legal in one state, is harmful rape in another state?
If the younger person is married to the older person, it is not statutory rape. This is clearly a holdover from Christian values to preserve the chaste of girls for marriage.
Sex and intimacy are not abuse. Sex and intimacy are not inherently harmful. Nor is harm caused by which state one is in. Nor is there inherent harm in various age gaps defined by various jurisdictions. Nor is there harm to have sex before marriage.
But there is great harm in imprisoning and ruining the lives of those people who chose to perform harmless, enjoyable acts. The fact that none of the states can seem to agree on what the correct ages are indicates that probably most of them get it wrong, thereby imprisoning and punishing thousands of innocent people.
By the way, the most common age to sexually offend is 14. And they get thrown on the registry, too. So much for protecting children.
It is a biological fact that girls, on average, reach womanhood at the age of 14.
The ages at which individuals began and complete puberty varies statistically between groups, too.
How can any exact age be a fair determinant for whether or not the act was wanted? And if it cannot always be fair, then why is it acceptable to punish to people for committing a harmless, enjoyable act?
Legislation that defies biological facts is inherently wrong. Sexually mature minors generally experience strong desire for sex. This is summed up in the colloquialism “horny teenager“.
Many adults find these mature minors sexually appealing, too. Even if they won’t admit it, it can be evidenced by the large number of likes, comments, and follows for scantily clad minors on social media.
The age of consent for sex should be reduced to at most 12 for penetrative acts. That doesn’t account for harmless activity that might occur below that age, but is at least a step in the right direction.
Rape and coercion are already illegal. Sexual assault is already illegal. Forcible rape of a minor child already carries special consequences.
March 25, 2020, Facebook content moderation struck again with more censorship. They deleted the second Facebook group Age of Consent Reform.
When I logged in to Facebook, as I seldom do, I saw a page with the following notice:
Groups and Posts are Different Things
Facebook did not notify me that my group had been removed or suspended, because it did not treat the group as a group. Instead, Facebook miscalled the Group a Post and punished me for having… posted a group? It doesn’t seem logical. If the group was to be suspended, that would be a different action. However, the group was treated as a post, something that it is not.
Both incarnations of the Age of Consent Reform group were created to discuss the legal and social aspects of Age of Consent – type laws. Such laws include statutory rape, rape in the second degree, annoying or molesting any child under 18, and others. It was essentially political discussion; the discussion of a socio-legal construct and its consequences.
Neither of the two Age of Consent Reform groups violated Facebook Community Standards.
However, censoring political discussion is itself a violation of Facebook’s policy on Hate Speech. By deleting the group, Facebook’s content moderation team sort of committed a Tier 3 violation of Facebook’s Community Standards, wherein it states that users must not target a person or group by exclusion or deny the right to political participation.
… users must not target a person or groupof people on the basis of their protected characteristic(s) with any of the following:—
Explicit exclusion, which means things like expelling certain groups or saying they’re not allowed
Political exclusion, which means denying the right to right to political participation
Deleting the group, a political group, is political exclusion, and thus a violation of the rule against political exclusion.
It’s “sort of” a violation, however, because (a) this “guideline” applies to Facebook users, not to Facebook content moderation and because (b) Facebook doesn’t apply it fairly or consistently, rather, it’s a loose guideline they apply how and when they see fit, to justify deleting content. Facebook’s guidelines are designed to be holistically vague to be implemented inconsistently, whenever and however Facebook chooses. The idea that these guidelines would be applied one-sidedly, hypocritically, is thus concordant.
If Facebook needed to secure its userbase, they would need to treat their users well, and would thus need to to meet reasonable expectations of the user. To do that, they would need to consistently follow their rules.
But, since Facebook has secured a cornerstone of marketshare, they don’t. So, failing a reasonable user experience, Facebook should follow the law.
Facebook failing to obey the law, the OAG should consistently enforce and uphold the law, specifically in this case, by providing consumer protection for CCPA data portability requests.
CCPA Data Portability
CCPA data portability is a consumer protection law designed to allow users to retrieve their data.
In practice, neither the District Attorney nor the Office of the Attorney General, nor any office in CA has upheld my legal rights when companies have denied my CCPA data portability requests.
Facebook censored me and then rejected my CCPA data portability requests.
Nextdoor and Twitter only allow non-suspended users do CCPA data portability requests, so I was unable to issue a CCPA data portability request for Twitter. This directly violates CCPA, which states that businesses must, in a form that is reasonably accessible to consumers:
(1) (A) Make available to consumers two or more designated methods for submitting requests for information required to be disclosed pursuant to Sections 1798.110 and 1798.115, including, at a minimum, a toll-free telephone number. A business that operates exclusively online and has a direct relationship with a consumer from whom it collects personal information shall only be required to provide an email address for submitting requests for information required to be disclosed pursuant to Sections 1798.110 and 1798.115.
Out of all the technology companies, only Quora and YouTube have acknowledged my CCPA data portability request and furnished me with my posts. Reddit also ignored my CCPA data portability requests.
Unenforced laws are at best useless; only when they are consistently unenforced.
Selectively enforced laws guarantee unfair treatment and prevent equality under the law.
March 12, 2020, my resume was submitted to Facebook by a recruiter for a full time job at Facebook as a front end developer, a role I was highly qualified for.
Shortly after that, I received notices from Facebook:
1) Your post violates community guidelines. The post: Age of Consent Reform
2) Your Direct Messages violate community guidelines. You are suspended from Direct Messages.
Suspending me from Direct Messages negates every marketplace deal I was involved with. Facebook says that this is to make Facebook “safe and welcoming.” How is deleting and banning me and the lying about that “safe and welcoming”? How sickeningly ironic.
Perhaps the group was reported by someone the likes of Joe Kort.
Age of Consent Reform I
In 2020, Facebook deleted a group with the same name, Age of Consent Reform, claiming an issue with “images” in the group. Facebook said an image in the group deemed it necessary to delete the entire group. The group had two images. One was a cartoon, the other, a photo of a woman wearing a bikini. Facebook would not say which of the two images compelled them to delete the entire group.
Facebook could have deleted whichever of the two images they attributed to violating its Community Guidelines, but they instead deleted the entire group and used the “images” reason as post hoc rationale to justify deleting the group — what they wanted to do in the first place. This behavior is not unlike the police arresting a suspect and then filling in the reason later, sometimes so ironically, with a sole “resisting arrest” charge.
In 2020, I issued several CCPA data portability requests to Facebook, requesting the contents of that group.
Facebook mostly ignored me for months, occasionally giving an irrelevant response. Then, in Oct 2020, Facebook decided to acknowledge my CCPA request and refused to comply with it. They said that because something had “seriously violated” facebook’s Terms of Service, they would not fulfill the CCPA data portability request. Facebook would not say what it was that “seriously violated” the terms of use. Regardless, it doesn’t matter. CCPA data portability requests are lawfully binding. The law provides no clause that allows companies to reject CCPA data portability requests on the basis of the company’s interpretation of its own content guidelines.
Facebook claiming that my violation of their terms of use therefore does not and cannot justify their refusal to comply with the law. CCPA clearly states:
A business that receives a verifiable consumer request from a consumer to access personal information shall promptly take steps to disclose and deliver, free of charge to the consumer, the personal information required by this section.
So, months later, I created the Age of Consent Reform group again. This time, with no images that could potentially be used as to vaguely justify spurious post hoc rationalizations. I wasn’t going to give them any excuse.
As a result, and after applying to Facebook for full time, my entire group was deleted and I was banned from direct messages.
If Facebook does not consistently follow its rules, it must at least follow the law. However, if the OAG does not consistently enforce and uphold the law to provide consumer protection for CCPA data portability request denials, then the law is unenforced and therefore useless, at best. Facebook is happily aware of this and takes advantage of a government that is weak on consumer protection.
The OAG selectively enforces the law and this guarantees unfair treatment and prevents equality under the law.
I’m blocked on major platforms including Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Nextdoor, and Wikipedia.
The US doesn’t have a “social credit score” yet, but just wait; it’ll happen. Sanctioned and controlled speech is what the woke left wants.
I was recently suspended from Facebook.
This happened after applying for F/T through a recruiter. Probably the employer, Facebook, checked my Facebook page and decided to reject my resume on that alone. It was a really good match for my skill set.
Around the same time, I posted on Facebook about Joe Kort, who promotes himself heavily online, including on Facebook.
I cannot keep up with the number of enemies trying to do me in because of what I think. If what I think is so wrong, why can’t you just explain why it’s wrong? The Facebook group, Age of Consent Reform, was public. It’s not as if they were blocked or prevented from posting there.
I apparently thought the wrong things.
Because I’m banned from WikiPedia, I’m not allowed to send WikiLove.
If you don’t support free speech for those whose ideas you despise, you don’t support free speech.
Dr. Joe Kort censors to uphold his dogmatic and unreasonable positions. It’s all he can do, as his ideas don’t stand on their own.
Dogmatists rely on lies and censorship to try to “win” an argument. On YouTube, Dr. Kort pushes himself as something of an expert on a subject matter he is incapable of discussing. A user, Jane Anon misrepresented my position and then Dr. Kort prevented me from replying by blocking me. This is not a fair way to debate. Joe Kort followed up by blocking my further commenting on the video. Although Jane Anon made false claims about me, I made no retaliatory remarks.
This shows clearly that Dr Kort suffers from control issues and the need to silence, censor, and cancel rather then address any voices that challenge his narrative, discourage me from such endeavors by deleting all the careful and thoughtful reply I’d made, and discourage any dissent through censorship.
Dogmatism defies reality. Dogmatism is a failure of the mind to closure over falsehoods to eschew and “block” (literally) any new evidence and new arguments that might shatter the false illusion.
Dogamatism is harmful. Censorship is harmful. Both should be condemned ruthlessly.
Censorship of ideas is harmful. Shaming people into silence is, too, as I described in my response to user @Jane Anon.
I have encountered discrimination and censorship regarding this issue many times. The more censorship, the more unbiased investigation is warranted. The more that ideological discrimination is practiced, the more it should be questioned, resisted, and condemned.
The following paragraph is to everyone shamed. Most adults are too afraid to admit sexual attraction to minors under 18. Such attractions don’t need to denied, nor be self-consuming. Liking people under the age of 18 is not a mental illness, and if you’re attracted to teenagers, you’re probably very normal. It is ok to acknowledge the attraction. Suppression does not help.
The response I posted to @Jane Anon:—
Child marriage is legally sanctioned child abuse? Because you say so? Arrogant, baseless proclamations of social justice don’t constitute logical cogency.
Granted, few children nowadays seriously want marriage, but how is it that the odd 17 year old yearning to marry is suddenly a victim?
“The fact that you want the age of consent lowered shows that you are attempting to find a legal way to have sex with children.”
In all your bias, you read past all the glaring questions raised, read the number “12”, and reacted the way you did. This shows that you weren’t reading or comprehending what I carefully and clearly explained and ignored.
You read past all that was clearly explained to you to arrive at the same polarized, unwavering conclusion; that it’s all because I want to have sex with 12 year olds.
That itself raises a perplexing question: How does commenting on sociology videos on YouTube work as a strategy for having sex with twelve year olds? Are you OK?
My words stand on their own.
It would be a good idea to work on your reading comprehension. (You might want to take a deep breath and count to ten and see if it helps.)
“If you have ever had sex with a child under the legal age of consent, you have sexually abused that child, period. You have damaged that child, legality notwithstanding.”
(1) Sex and abuse are two different things.
(2) Children are not generally harmed by sex.
(3) Age gaps do not cause harm. That is, the age of one’s chosen partner does imply harm.
(4) People hide tabooed attractions out of social pressure and shame.
Any 12 year old who chooses to fondle, pet, or kiss is not harmed by the age of their chosen partner.
Harm is not caused by age difference. There is no evidence to show that age gaps cause harm. To assume otherwise is a common error. [Kilpatrick]
Most people across the globe have sex before age 18.
If you have been calling for laws to be changed so that you can freely abuse children, I can see why you’ve been banned from several social media platforms. That’s horrific.
I post science, coherence, logic, reason, insight. Dogamatists cancel. That’s what they do, by definition. That’s what you do.
I did not advocate for abuse and is incorrect for you to say that. To misrepresent me is not a good d
Sex itself does not cause harm.
What causes harm? Coercion, manipulation, and abuse cause harm. Shaming people — both adults and children — into silence causes harm. Punishing people for victimless crime causes harm. [Finkelhor][Larsson]
[Finkelhor] Finkelhor, D. & Browne, A. (1985). “The traumatic impact of child sexual abuse: A conceptualization,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 55 (4), 530-541.
[Larrson] Larsson, I. & Svedin, C. G. (2001). “Sexual experiences in childhood: young adult’s recollections,” Arch Sex Behav, 31(3):263-73
[Killpatrick] Kilpatrick, Allie C., Long Range Effects of Child and Adolescent Sexual Experiences: Myths, Mores, and Menaces. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1992.
Politics are managed by media technology companies.
The discourse of the nation is predominantly controlled by large technology companies.
Executives of these companies donate to the Democrat party and, in some cases, held political positions as Democrats, either before or after their employment role, in a revolving door to have an influence that is favorable to their respective company and to the Democrat party.
Siobhan Oat-Judge, Global Content Policy Lead at YouTube, started with the DNC in 2004, then went to the U.S. Department of State from 2007 to 2019.
Google itself funds the Democrat party establishment, to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign.
YouTube funded “Defending Democracy Together” among others.
“Defending Democracy Together” is an organization of conservatives against former president Donald Trump. These are possibly the Republicans referenced by the “well-funded cabal” mentioned in the Time magazine article, “The Secret Bipartisan Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election”.
Twitter supports and funds Democrat politicians with money and with what they publish or suppress on their website. When the New York Post published its article on the connection between Hunter Biden and China, Twitter Trust and Safety locked the NY Post’s Twitter account and prevented the sharing the Hunter Biden news article. This was done prior to the 2020 presidential election to influence the election in favor of Joe Biden.
It is year 2021, the internet has been in widespread use for over twenty years. There is still no public discussion forum.
It would be nice if there were open public discussion about a diverse range of topics from across the globe.
But what if people disagreed or said hurtful things? Would it be too much a burden to bear? Do we now thank Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Vijaya Gadde, Sundar Pinchai, and the tech oligarchy preventing us from the unpleasant feelings unmoderated public discussion can cause?
If the internet is taken over by social media platforms that censor and ban offensive users and content, is it really for the better?
Today’s pondering: How can I modify my UTK far infrared heating pad to stay on for more than five hours? I can ask that question here, on this blog, where the right person who has the answer surely won’t see it.
It would be nice if there were an open public discussion forum.
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) provides a means by which consumers to obtain personal data from service providers.
I have issued formal CCPA data portability requests to several companies who have either refused or ignored my requests.
On Nov 26, 2020, I made a request to download my content from Nextdoor through the nextdoor.com website.
Nextdoor did not respond to the request and thus, I was unable to download my content.
On Nov 26, wrote a letter to support@nextdoor.com formally requesting my data and content under CCPA SECTION 1. Section 1798.100 of the Civil Code.
Nextdoor responded to tell me that the case is no longer active. I don’t know what that means.
I never got the link to download my data.
I followed up to that email several times.
I tried to log in to nextdoor.com to request my data again, but was unable to log in due to account restrictions.
I have had similar experiences with Reddit and Facebook.
Today, I called in to the AG at (916) 445-9555. I navigated about six different phone menus with long outgoing message until, nearly eight minutes, I was transferred to a representative.
I explained my problem to the man. The man told me that I was wrong. When I asked if he was familiar with “the law I’d mentioned”, he said “yeah, the California [pause] consumer Financial something or other”. (He literally said “something or other”.)
I politely told him that he was mistaken and asked his name. The man raised his voice and asked me my name. I told him clearly “Garrett Smith”.
The man told me to not call there again and hung up on me.
It is important to have such consumer safeguards, but they are only as effective as they can be enforced. It is very discouraging when the government does nothing to protect consumers from getting steamrolled by corporate technology companies. Please help me uphold my consumer rights.
If we don’t have lockdowns, what can we do to stop people from contracting and spreading COVID?
Are lockdowns helpful?
Lockdowns have been correlated with decreased case fatality rate.
Strict lockdown strategies together with a wide diagnostic PCR testing of the population were correlated with a relevant decline of the case fatality rate in different Countries.
Therefore, lockdowns might offer greater potential protection to at-risk populations, such as older people.
Lockdowns decrease deaths of COVID. They’re helpful.
How Helpful are Lockdowns?
It’s not entirely certain how helpful each city’s lockdown is in preventing COVID deaths. We can, however, look at who is the most at-risk from such deaths.
IFR is very low for children and younger adults (e.g., 0.002% at age 10 and 0.01% at age 25) but increases progressively to 0.4% at age 55, 1.4% at age 65, 4.6% at age 75, and 15% at age 85.
Are lockdowns hurtful?
The current lockdowns are having a substantial impact on society. They impact mental health, social health, and the economy.
Regarding the economy, GDP is down and we are in a recession. According to the Brookings Institute, “if job growth continues to slow, it will take years to bring the economy back to its level of employment before the COVID recession”.
If the fatality rate increases progressively from 0.002% at age 10 to 0.4% by age 55, to what degree can these people be allowed to take a measured risk? What about people outside of that age range? Whose interactions must be prevented? Whose may be allowed? How can we pragmatically minimize harm, both from infection and from loss of freedom and economic prosperity? How well do the current lockdowns meet those objectives when they only consider a single factor model of minimizing harm from the affects of COVID infection?
In the US, the number of reported deaths related to COVID-19 is 348,000. In contrast, 150,000 people die of lung cancer every year but smoking is legal. 650,000 die of heart disease, yet red meat and high sugar diets are legal. For smoking, red meat, and sugar, we value the right of personal choice and freedom. Yet when it comes to COVID-19, personal freedom is not considered. Personal freedom matters, too.
One downside to relaxing restrictions is that low-risk individuals might put higher risk individuals at unknown greater risk. Mitigating that risk is important.
Relaxing restrictions doesn’t alleviate the mental health impact to at-risk persons who must remain restricted, whether by choice or by order, and who cannot enjoy such freedoms.
Proposal
Preamble to Free Thought
What follows is a lockdown proposal that considers personal freedom, mental health, and economic prosperity. It is more nuanced than a simple yes/no regarding lockdowns.
Open Discussion
The decision to implement lockdowns is already done. I believe that nuanced rational discussion can improve the current situation.
Censorship of the discussion on Facebook, Twitter, and others has impacted free thought and hindered progressive discussion for better solutions.
Furthermore, at a time when we are isolated; at a time when we most need human connection and personal expression, such censorship is absolutely sickening. Censorship is a threat to personal liberty and happiness. Censoring someone could mean the difference between that person expressing their negative feelings online to others versus having more negative ideas and actions.
Likewise, fact check warnings overlaid atop messages on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media delegitimize and stigmatize unapproved ideas. This impacts their consideration and discussion.
That such discussion is cowed on social media platforms is censorious and unacceptable. It should not even need to be said that censorship is bad, as it is antithetical to freedom and progress of the western ideal we have fought so hard against in wars past (See also Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Such censorship deserves no respect and should not be tolerated.
Ideas that require censorship to be maintained do not stand on their own and deserve no respect.
So… without further ado, here is my proposal draft:
Proposal
Allow low-risk people to work, dine, socialize, etc.
Low-risk people could help us achieve herd immunity faster. The economy might recover.
Allowing low-risk people to work, dine, and socialize would not be a blanket edict for all.
If the fatality rate increases progressively from 0.002% at age 10 to 0.4% by age 55, the cost of risk of infection is not necessarily offset by the cost of the current blanket one-size-fits-all lockdowns. Individuals can be allowed to choose to go to work and businesses allowed to operate.
People who are considered generally low-risk would still be allowed to work from home, if possible. Employers should be required to accommodate for such options wherever possible.
Likewise, people considered higher risk would be allowed to work, provided they were already given an option to work from home and had signed under full voluntary consent to opt-out of it with no pressure to do so.
The government could encourage people to socialize safely, outside, by maintaining and promoting existing outdoor parks and recreation and helping businesses facilitate outdoor dining opportunities. This would improve mental health and well-being, which could translate to stronger community, less drug abuse, less domestic violence, less suicidal ideation. It would cost government very little to do this. It could also benefit some businesses who provide goods and services outdoors.
Take a strong stand to end censorship so that these things can be discussed unmoderated, in public.
