That's not true at all. Anonymous speech has existed for a long time. Look at something as inane as graffiti, no newspaper is reprinting graffiti on its front page and saying "Now we know who killed JFK." Conversely, if graffiti contained something thought provoking or poetic in its own right, it might make the front page -- say if it was Banksy commenting on social problems.

The problem isn't anonymity, the problem is that people took what was being posted anonymously and gave it undue credibility. If you read about my experiences with drug abuse on Slashdot and you walk away with a life lesson, it doesn't really matter if those drug addiction stories are true or not. It would be nice to be able to verify it but it's not really necessary if what I'm saying rings true. But if I say "George W. Bush was behind 9/11" and you believe that without verifying it and then newspapers start to publish it, that's where the problems arise in an obvious manner.

The media was thirsty to break this story because of all the money it would bring them. Reddit and 4chan were all too happy to put on their inspector gadget hats and play the part of armchair detective. And that's fine, you can go make your subreddit all you want. The problem is when you start to act on it (harass the families) and when you start to disseminate it as "verified." Further problems arise when you then go back and delete and block all this stuff that implicates you as a liar because then your credibility is protected and you can always do it again.

No more so than the internet is the problem. Those are two tools used to carry out a witch hunt. Those aren't the problem, the problem are the irresponsible parties involved with propagating this from an internet forum to media and social networks. They preyed on confusion, hatred and fear without relying on law enforcement to do their job. Those are the real problems.

If you're going to reprint or reshare something as true and fact then you better verify your source. With anonymous speech, you can't verify your source so you should instead look for supporting evidence or not act on it at all and ignore it.

I was passed along three images following the bombing. I deleted them because they were completely unverifiable and had no attribution on them. And I turned out to be right.

As detailed in my last post on this topic, some responsible individual on Reddit named Thirtydegrees decided to give us a little background on what went down (I know it's long but it's worth the read for chronological context).

But wait! We can do better than that! Let's go look at /r/FindBostonBombers to see exactly what happened! Well, you can't. Oddly enough, the founder of that subreddit decided that he should just set it to private (here's a Reddit friendly vulgar meme of my request). Guess what? The founder of findbostonbombers doesn't want to be identified! Bizarre that he/she would create a subreddit devoted to identifying people and then themselves think that it's completely acceptable for their identities to be protected. Should you have a right to know who is accusing you of what? Well, you find out that you have done something wrong ... time to own up to it, right? Right? No! Not in the futuristic amazing world of crowdsourcing!

Also hilarious is that they are saying the bombers have been found. Wrong. Whatever they did, they are still innocent until proven guilty! I am quite upset with everyone dropping the "alleged" word and referring to them as "the bombers" instead of "the suspects." They will get their day in court, that's how this stuff works. That's what lead to all the bad stuff that happened in /r/findbostonbombers. They went straight from "we have images that our untrained eye finds suspicious" straight to "these are the guys who killed innocent people, help us identify them and harass their families."

We live in an era of digital lynch mobs.

Nothing except a huge barrier cost of entry, which is a consideration in anti-trust cases. Few companies have the capital (intellectual and monetary) to succeed (make a profit) in such a venture. Most are either competitors or partners with Google. The competitors have no interest in making the Android customer experience better, and the partners have an implicit agreement not to compete. As for a startup, tell potential investors that you plan to beat Google on their playing field, with their ball, and be careful of the scramble as they rush to fund you /sarcasm. Amazon is the one true exception, and they do not offer such a service in many countries, in part because of EC activism/intervention such as is being requested in this case.

Isn't that the game of all mobile operating systems these days? iOS tries to leverage you into their universe by corralling you into their shop system, but here you can't easily escape. MS is hoping for the same thing, hooking you into their universe, with no escape. Amazon is doing the same, with their gimped version of Android. At least Google allows you to escape, and install apps from other sources, and avoid using their services (which obviously they'd prefer you use, but they are still mostly optional san third party shenanigans).

Have you tried non-Play alternatives?

Other than The Pirate Bay style services (which constantly bring up "Use the Play Store!" comments whenever a new Android malware comes around), very few alternatives exist. Amazon is probably the most viable, but they're still a tiny fraction of what's available, and not available in most countries where Android is available (just two, I think).

If you're lucky, it's open-source and the APK is available. If not, you're pretty much hosed as the developer chose to stick with play.

Fact is, unless you're China (where Play isn't available), you can't really sell an Android without the Play store. Has also pretty much always been true. Heck, Google managed to get exceptions to Taiwan's consumer protection laws (which everyone else, including Apple, agreed to follow) when Taiwan started enforcing them and Google withdrew Wallet support.

Anyhow, there's an interesting absence on that list of companies forming the complaint.

What's so special about this language anyway, that couldn't be done using C source (perhaps with some extensions) but a different compiler and runtime system?

So I should risk harm because my rights are so important. If I'm not willing to die for my rights, I shouldn't have them. Great elitist attitude you have there.

But in my entire life, I've never heard anyone talk about a woman's cunt size.

There's a reason for that - nobody cares about the size of that.

But everyone knows that men are self-conscious about the size of their penis, and so one method used for destroying the confidence of a bloke is to suggest that they are "insufficiently equipped", to suggest they wouldn't be able to satisfy a woman. Hence why people talk about dick sizes.

Now one might say the equivalent for a woman is the size of her breasts, however I'd argue women have greater latitude with that. There are men who prefer nearly all of the breast size spectrum; from small to large there's something for everyone. But men only care about a big dick and so it's easier to offend them by talking about sizes.

Cunts are digital - you either put your digit in it or you don't. There are no other specifications to worry about.

Still doesn't show that it's "easy". Grandparent AC is correct to call bullshit on you.

Innovation differs from invention in that innovation refers to the use of a better and, as a result, novel idea or method, whereas invention refers more directly to the creation of the idea or method itself.

Innovation differs from invention in that innovation refers to the use of a better and, as a result, novel idea or method, whereas invention refers more directly to the creation of the idea or method itself.