Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
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Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
you have activated call trace the telephone number will automatically be sent to bell
atlantic for further information call your business office if this is an emergency
contact your local law enforcement agency thank you
the telephone keeps ringing so i ripped it off the wall
i cut myself while shaving now i can't make a call
we couldn't get much worse but if we could we would
one day
so
Thank you.
Thank you.
This time is off the hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you, joined tonight by Kyle.
Hi, everyone.
And out in Signal Land, we have Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
And we have Gila.
Good evening.
Welcome, everybody.
It's good to have everybody here.
And we're not doing overtime tonight, so it's just going to be the one-hour show here on WBAI, which is just fine.
A couple of stories, interesting stories going on out there, some really kind of bizarre things.
We've talked about this whole Madison Square Garden thing before, where lawyers have been banned from the venue because they're involved in lawsuits against not necessarily the venue, but the company that owns the venue.
It's pretty shocking how this could even be considered legal, but they've been getting away with it, basically pulling people out of the crowd because of facial recognition and saying, you're not allowed to see this concert or to go to this game because you work for a firm that has crossed us somewhere.
Yeah, that's what's going on.
That's how technology is being misused.
Well, a couple of Mondays ago, there was a concert at New York City's Radio City Music Hall.
Yeah, they own that, too.
And this guy named Frank Miller was there for his parents' wedding anniversary, but he never got to go to the event because he was basically told that he was banned for life.
From the venue and all other properties owned by Madison Square Garden.
Yeah, after scanning his ticket and promptly being pulled aside by security, Miller was told by staff that he was barred from the MSG properties for an incident at the garden in 2021.
Now, here's where it gets interesting.
Miller said he hasn't been to the venue in nearly two decades.
So, what's going on here?
Well, they handed me a piece of paper letting me know that I've been added to a ban list.
There's a trespass notice if I ever show up on any MSG property ever again.
That includes venues like Radio City, the Beacon Theater, the Sphere, Chicago Theater.
You know what?
He never finished that sentence.
It's not like the printer didn't print it.
Yeah, read the story.
Wow.
It's from The Verge, and the sentence never finishes.
If I ever show up on any MSG property ever again, I guess that's just leave it to your imagination.
Anyway, he was baffled at first, then it dawned on him.
This was probably about a t-shirt he designed years ago.
MSG Entertainment won't say what happened with Miller or how he was picked out of the crowd,
but he suspects he was identified by a controversial facial recognition system that the company deploys at its venues.
Now, back in 2017, that's how long this has been going on for,
1990s New York Knicks star Charles Oakley was forcibly removed from his seat near Knicks owner and Madison Square Garden CEO James Dolan.
The high-profile incident later spiraled into an ongoing legal battle.
Now, for Miller, Oakley was a vital part of the 1990s Knicks, he says.
With his background in graphic design, he made a shirt in the style of the old team logo that read Ben Dolan,
a reference to the infamous scuffle and the Madison Square Garden CEO.
Now, a few years later, in 2021, a friend of Miller's wore a Ben Dolan shirt to a Knicks game
and was kicked out and banned from future events.
That incident spawned ESPN segments and news articles and validated what many fans saw as a pettiness on Dolan and MSG's part
for going after individual fans who criticized team ownership.
But this week, well, last week, actually, Miller wasn't wearing a Ben Dolan shirt.
He wasn't even at a Knicks game.
His friend, who was kicked out of the shirt, tagged him in social media posts as the designer when it happened.
But Miller, who lives in Seattle, hadn't attended an event in New York in years.
So he says, after he scanned his digital ticket, but before he went through security,
a person working at Radio City stopped the line, pulled him aside, and asked him for his ID to verify who he was.
They then walked him to another entrance of the building, where five or more staffers stood with him as he was told he was not allowed to return.
He's not sure how exactly MSG connected him to the shirt or a 2021 incident during an event he wasn't even at.
But Miller told The Verge that until the concert, he had never actually purchased tickets to MSG events.
They were either gifts from other people or he got them through work.
I've been reading articles about this facial recognition stuff that Dolan and MSG properties use.
But I hadn't been around, I hadn't been in or around the garden outside of Penn Station to take New Jersey Transit to Newark Airport in almost 20 years now.
Okay, you know, I said this went too far when they were banning people for working for the legal firm.
But this, a guy that hadn't even been to an event, his crime, not even wearing a t-shirt, designing a t-shirt, and somehow being connected, this is Orwellian here.
This is worse than Orwellian, and I cannot, for the life of me, imagine how this is legal.
And are we going to be banned from MSG for saying that MSG is doing some horrible stuff here?
I just think what happens when the owner, this CEO, Dolan character, what happens when they're long gone?
I mean, the technology and the tendency for this to work in this way will still be in place.
And even when perhaps the next ownership or the next sort of authority is in place, that perhaps forget, like when this is long forgotten, these bans, the reasons for them, and they transcend the pettiness, what will happen?
I mean, they'll just lose track or they'll have these bans in place that what happens when they, I guess I'm asking,
what happens when they don't comport with the policies in the future, but they're still there because the technology isn't necessarily going to go away.
So people will sort of have it in place.
It'll be automated as it is, but all of this will change at some point.
It won't be necessarily the same owner with the same sort of beliefs.
This computer says no.
I'm assuming that his pettiness isn't widely shared necessarily or may not be shared in the future.
In that case, when people totally have forgotten about why any one person might have been banned and it's a very large list, how will that even be sorted out or will this change?
Will they even have anyone left to come and go to their events?
Or will it cut across such a huge cross section of society that to appeal it or to do anything after the fact, after the reasons aren't really, aren't something they want to enforce, who will even be able to make those determinations?
Or how will you appeal it if it's even ever possible?
We seem to be living in a time of petty, vindictive little tyrants that have their fiefdoms and guard them like a jealous pit bull, all right?
And just lash out at anybody they deem to be not even a threat, just somebody who they're probably envious of for having the guts to speak out for themselves.
It's not a good time for freedom.
That's for sure.
And you know what?
I'm giving listeners permission here.
If you can find a picture of me, tag me, tag me as the number one enemy of, what's this guy's name?
Charles Dolan?
Is that his name?
I don't even know his name, but whatever his name is.
Yeah, the petty tyrant owner of all these, of Madison Square Garden, whatever.
And you know what?
I even took MSG's side in the battle with Optimum recently, which I thought Dolan owned that too.
How can he own both of them if they had a fight?
I don't know.
But, you know, say that, say that and say I'm the enemy, you know, without any evidence whatsoever.
I haven't even designed a T-shirt.
I haven't been to Madison Square Garden.
And see if I get banned from some event someplace because somebody tagged me as an enemy of this idiot.
And yeah, I called him an idiot.
Maybe you can play the recording.
And, you know, I'm looking forward to the lawsuit.
I really am.
If there are any honest lawyers left by this time, we'll get into that in a second.
Go ahead, Rob.
There are so many angles in this story that are really troubling.
I mean, the first one is, and I'm sure I brought this point up when we talked about the case of the person being banned because they worked for the law firm that happened to be on the other side in one or more of their lawsuits.
But Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, I think these sort of, there's a line between, like, a private business and a public utility.
And especially in cases like this where those stadiums, those venues take in so many city benefits, their tourist, you know, destinations and everything.
They get so many tax breaks and things like that from the city.
They bring people to the city.
They're intertwined with city life and visitors to the city coming and enjoying the culture.
And the ability to just willy-nilly ban people from that without a direct cause, like, they weren't in the venue causing trouble.
They happened to do something in their outside life that just made Dolan feel sad.
And that's terrible.
And the other thing is, if you make a spoof basketball shirt because of something that happens at Madison Square Garden and you're banned from a rock concert at Radio City, I mean, there's got to be some sort of monopolistic practice going on that allows, you know, one switch to be thrown somewhere that gets you just banned from completely unrelated events.
Right.
And that is part of the concern that I've had this whole time.
And I remember when we were talking about it when the lawyer got kicked out of the Rockettes Christmas show with her daughter's Girl Scout troop.
That's cold.
Right.
So the man owns the team.
He owns the Knicks.
He owns the venue.
The man controls Madison Square Garden, Radio City, the Beacon Theater, the sphere in Las Vegas.
Like, if this poor guy is a deadhead, he can never go to the dead and company at the sphere because he's not allowed to go now.
And I think it is very monopolistic that he owns the venues.
He owns the team.
He has a stake in everything.
It smacks of self-dealing.
And the question I remember bringing up in 2022 is, where's the line going to stop?
Because he also owns the New York Knicks.
So is he going to insist that every venue this team goes to play at employ the same facial recognition surveillance technology?
And if he sees someone on a hit list, not let them go watch them play the Seattle Supersonics, which I don't think even exists anymore as a team.
But you know what I'm saying?
Yeah, they're in Oklahoma now, I think.
They exist.
They're in our hearts.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a whole other issue.
But you know what?
I don't think that would happen because I believe all the other owners of every other NBA team hate his guts.
Because, I mean, think about it.
If you were in business with Charles Dolan, wouldn't you hate his guts?
I'm digging myself in deep here.
But seriously, when you do something like this that is that offensive to just free speech, wearing a T-shirt, and not even wearing a T-shirt, designing a T-shirt that somebody else wore at a different event in a different venue, this is out of control.
It's absolutely out of control.
And I was going to suggest, before Gila spoke up just now, you know, what should happen is that the people using the venue, i.e. the teams, need to speak up and say, we're not going to play in this venue if you keep up with this crap.
But he owns the team, too.
Okay.
All right.
I've got more ideas.
So the players, the players refuse to take to the court unless this nonsense stops.
Yeah, they'll get fined, but they're all millionaires anyway, so I'm sure they'll be okay.
But they bring attention to this.
That's the important thing.
All it takes, you know, no one's going to listen to us, but all it takes is somebody with some kind of influencer status or some kind of superstar status to say, you know what?
I'm not playing your venue unless you stop this nonsense, not only here, but at all the venues you own, because this ain't right.
Until somebody does that, this is the kind of abuse we can look forward to.
Rob?
And a complete other side of this is the technology angle, because, you know, we're a bunch of hackers here.
We think about these things.
Facial recognition technology is still, in so many ways, not very good.
It doesn't work well against people of color.
It doesn't work well against, you know, people with certain things on it.
It will definitely confuse identical twins and people who just happen to resemble each other enough to fool a computer.
And those arbitrary, you know, sparks of information, which are being privately controlled, without accountability, without any sort of look or regulations around what it's doing, can be used to arbitrarily ban people from really important things in this city.
Not that I'm saying sports are important.
I don't care about sports.
But, you know, rock concerts, those are cool.
Or comedy shows at the Beacon, because he owns the Beacon, too.
Yeah.
Okay, here's a statement from Mikel Cordova, who's the Executive Vice President of Communications and Marketing for MSG.
He said, Frank Miller made threats against MSG executive on social media and produced and sold merchandise that was offensive in nature.
His behavior was disrespectful and disruptive and in violation of our code of conduct.
Okay.
There's absolutely nothing, no evidence to show that any of that happened, other than making a T-shirt that they didn't like.
I don't know about this.
Threatening on social media.
I'd love to see what that means, what they consider to be a threat.
No doubt the shirt itself is the threat.
Rob?
And in terms of being a threatening and offensive thing, I'm looking at this T-shirt right now,
and it is just a picture of a basketball with the words Van Dolan above it in, like, a 3-D comic font.
And that's that.
It's like the 90s graph, the 90s logo for the Knicks.
It's exactly what it looks like.
You know what?
Yeah.
We can make a better T-shirt than that.
I mean, no offense to Mr. Miller, but, you know, we could do something that would, you know, give him nightmares.
How about that?
You know, something that really will get attention.
I think their characterization really is a leap of logic.
The thing that they're actually policing is an enlightening opinion, something that makes people think.
They don't want that.
Well, good job on that, because I'm sure thinking that.
They want conformity.
They want compliance.
They want their concept of this whole business model to be totally validated and unthreatened by anything that might make people consider the ownership or consider what goes on behind the scenes.
I'm just thinking of many ways to mess with these people right now.
Well, that line, that line, like, if you hold an opinion, if you simply have an opinion, it's somehow, quote, a threat or disruptive.
Like, if someone, I'm not going to admit it to me, but if someone holds the opinion that this sphere is just not that big.
Oh, you can't say that.
Yeah.
You can't say that.
What if they hold that opinion?
Is that a threat?
Apparently, in their little world, it is.
Because if you look at what this guy is alleged to have done, it's nothing.
Making a T-shirt with just the simple words, Ben Dolan, the owner of the team, the owner of the venue, you know, it's an absurd statement.
That's meant to be funny.
It's meant to show how absurd the other thing was that they were involved in.
You know, it's basically showing support for somebody that you're a fan of, you know.
And for all this to happen because somebody is so thin-skinned that they can't take.
You know, this reminds me of Elon Musk.
This reminds me of people who can't take a joke, who are very sensitive to any kind of criticism whatsoever, and have way too much damn power.
Sorry, Gila, go ahead.
No, that was exactly what I was going to say.
This sense right now we're living in a world where so much is subject to the whims of oligarchy and umbrage.
And if this small number of very wealthy men, for the most part, who have bought their way to the upper echelon of power, get their little fee-fees hurt, then all hells can break loose.
Yes, I think you mean like the fragile alpha archetypes.
It's the toxic masculinity, man.
It really is.
I personified here.
I just, I cannot say enough about this idiot who thinks he's got undue power to do anything.
He owns Pacifica?
Very funny.
Hey, that was yesterday, April 1st.
No, he thinks he can do anything he wants.
You know, that will never happen.
You will never have somebody with that kind of entitlement in charge of this radio station or this radio network.
And that's why I hope people support WBAI.
833-WBAI-NYC is the phone number.
I don't have a phone in front of me, so I can't translate those into numbers, those letters into numbers.
Hopefully, one of you has the number written down and can encourage people to call that number and support WBAI.
Keep us on the air like we've been since 1960, espousing our opinions, no matter the cost, and allowing listeners to do the same, because this is what freedom of speech is all about.
Absolutely.
You could call to help out at 833-WBAI-NYC, which, if you're a numerical string sort of person, that's 833-922-4692.
Or if you're not into that whole telephone thing, just go to buddy.wbai.org and do your business online.
Don't say it like that.
Do your business online.
We're not dogs, you know.
So, yeah, just to help out.
It's all about people power.
Go ahead, Kyle.
I'll just say it extends into the future.
You're paying it forward so that operations and stuff support speech about things we don't even know we want to talk about yet.
That goes for you, the listener, and every other program on the station, but especially off the hook.
If you mention our program, it really helps them understand the kind of power that this topic and our area of conversation is to their listenership.
And when you write in, when you call us on days we're taking calls, that contribution will have made it possible for us to speak out on something we don't even know we need to speak out on yet.
It will occur someday.
There will be other issues.
It may not be this necessarily.
You may not even agree with our position on this.
That's all the more reason to support the place.
How do people not agree on this?
This seems so obvious.
Who would back this guy up and say, yeah, he's got the right to throw people out because they made a T-shirt that said something slightly insulting to him and really was just, you know.
Oh, there's a heavy contrarian listenership, especially of our program.
I'm not talking physically, although I don't know, but there are people that would talk about our code of conduct for various radio station ideals and things we have to conform to for the FCC and all of those kinds of things.
You know, they'll make up all kinds of straw man arguments.
That's not the point.
The point is they are still a part of this place, and we value the dialogue.
We value the discussion.
We want to be able to advance discourse and advance the multiplicity of ideas out there on all of these subjects in every regard, and I'm saying including things we haven't even experienced yet as a society.
We need this place to be here, and every bit of those contributions matters.
And I do know if Charles Dolan shows up at WBAI, he will not be let in.
James Dolan.
Is it James Dolan?
Who is Charles Dolan?
I'm so sorry, Charles.
I have no idea.
Oh, why did I get Charles Dolan?
I wonder who that is.
James Dolan.
I've been insulting the wrong person for 20 minutes now.
He didn't stop me.
Go ahead, dealer.
Maybe he's got a relative.
I feel like probably the whole family could use an insult every now and again.
If James Dolan dares to show his face, yeah, he won't be let in.
Charles Dolan, whoever you are, you can come by.
So I think firstly, it is important to remember that because of who we are and how this station works, we are never going to have to appease a potential advertiser, or we don't have to preemptively or proactively attempt to head off an oligarchy and temper tantrum, because that's not how we operate.
The other thing is, I don't know how many people who were with us heard the announcement we were about to transition into this show.
So what I've often said when we're in fundraising mode is the more you give, the less we have to ask you for.
And the station needs to make up a significant chunk of funding.
And again, the more you donate, the less we have to ask you for it.
This fund drive is going to keep going until I think we raise another $160,000 or something like that.
The sooner we get to that number, the sooner we can spend all our time talking about James Dolan and what a creep he is and not asking for funds.
Spends $160,000 on lunch.
Yes, as a reminder, the WBA...
Doesn't even tip.
The Pacifica Foundation, which is the parent organization of WBAI, is a 501c3 organization.
All you're giving is completely tax-deductible if you have a matching gift program at your employer or you have a donor-advised fund or an individual retirement account you need to make allocations from.
Those are all great ways to support WBAI.
Okay, I'm done.
Me too.
I'm bored with this story.
I'm bored with this person.
I'm moving on.
But boy, you know, we've got to get angry at these things.
We have to stop.
This is just an indication of how technology is going to be abused in the hands of the wrong people.
Fortunately, fortunately, we have lawyers, legal firms with integrity that will stand up and fight, you know, because that's what it's all about.
If you see one, let me know, because, boy, you know, reading the news lately, I am not enthused.
Another one of the big law firms has caved to Trump.
Yeah, we thought it was just the tech firms that were doing this, but no, it's legal firms as well.
Yeah, another big law firm has reached an agreement with the Trump administration over the kind of free legal services its lawyers can now provide.
Why?
Why?
They want to head off an executive order that could impair their business.
Trump announced on his Truth Social outlet that Milbank had agreed to provide $100 million in pro bono legal services to causes supported by his administration and the law firm, including helping veterans, active members of the military and people who are victims of inequities in the criminal justice system.
Well, that sounds nice, but you're working for Trump.
That doesn't sound so nice.
The law firm also agreed to use a merit-based system and to not engage in illegal DEI discrimination.
Those aren't their words.
I know those aren't their words.
Yeah.
I also promise not to deny representation to a client because of his or her political views.
So, Arya Nation, here's your legal firm you can now join and be represented by because they have no integrity whatsoever.
And it's not the first time it happened.
The settlement comes on the heels of similar deals that Trump announced with two other big firms, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Megger, and Flum.
I swear I'm not making that up.
It sounds like something from Futurama.
Or like someone choking.
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Megger, and Flum.
Wow.
And that's just one of them.
The other one is Wilkie, Farr, and Gallagher.
I don't mean to laugh at names, but Wilkie, Farr, and Gallagher.
That's just okay.
A number of big law firms have rushed to strike deals with the administration after Trump signed executive orders against three firms that crippled their ability to represent clients with government contracts or other government business.
You know, instead of rushing to strike these deals, you should be rushing to fight him in court because this kind of action against legal firms is not right either.
And you don't show much integrity when you immediately cave and give them what they want.
It's really pathetic.
And we're seeing a lot of this.
We're seeing so much, you know, bowing down and caving because of a little intimidation.
And, yeah, you know, it's not pleasant out there.
We know that.
But they're going to win if we don't fight back.
That's a lesson I think the Democrats might actually learn in the years ahead, but so far they haven't.
You have to fight bullies.
And you fight bullies by punching them.
I'm not saying physically punch them.
Unless you have to.
So I'm saying do what you have to do to fight them in whatever venues you have available to you.
Otherwise, you know, what's the point of any of this?
You know, the Constitution will be shredded and rules like what we saw with James Dolan will be the norm.
And these people will just run roughshod over all of us.
I don't think that's what we want.
So you've got to remember you're not alone.
There are other people in your corner.
We just have to talk to each other.
Go ahead, Rob.
I do wonder if their willingness to do free work for the Trump administration is related to the fact that, like, everyone knows Trump does not pay his bills.
So if it weren't free, they would basically have to make it free eventually.
Yeah, I guess that's rather shrewd of them to do it that way.
But think about, you know, well, maybe they can overcharge him an awful lot and say, yeah, that one session, that was a million dollars just now.
I don't know.
Not going to help them.
But it's not a good place to be.
A better place to be is on the other side of the courtroom and fighting against this and getting, you know, getting recognition for standing up against unfairness.
It's not easy.
It's never easy.
But it's so, so necessary.
OK, what do we got here?
Twitter has been compromised.
2.8 billion Twitter IDs have been leaked.
2.8 billion?
Wow.
That's a significant chunk of the world's population, isn't it?
200 million user records released.
I'm not really sure what the difference is between that and Twitter IDs.
But whatever.
Elon Musk's social media platform, now known as X, is certainly no stranger to the news.
With the purchase of, yeah, somehow X sold itself to itself.
The reported purchase of X by XAI for $33 billion.
Attackers claiming responsibility for platform outages.
There was one last week, in fact.
And password scams targeting users.
Now there's another shock awaiting the users of what used to be Twitter.
A self-proclaimed data enthusiast has just given away what is claimed to be a database containing details of some 200 million X user records.
This story started back in January of 2022 when Twitter, as it was known back then, learned of a vulnerability through its bug bounty program that could enable an attacker to access data relating to platform users just by knowing an email address or a telephone number.
By July of that year, Twitter found out that somebody had exploited the vulnerability before it could be fixed and was selling a large amount of user data that had been collected in this way.
After reviewing a sample of the available data for sale, we confirmed that a bad actor had taken advantage of the issue before it was addressed, according to Twitter.
Now, fast forward to today, and that incident would appear to have come back to ByteX users once more.
Now a data enthusiast called ThinkingOne says they have accessed that data and added it to a further breach, which they claim was leaked in January of 2025.
Now, according to a posting on a well-known data breach forum, that's right, a well-known data breach forum, they decided to give the data away for free, having tried to contact X with no response.
Yeah, because they don't respond.
They fired everybody.
According to the Safety Detective Cybersecurity Team, which broke the story, ThinkingOne claims to only have included records of X users present in both data sets.
The result is a 34-gig CSV file containing 201,186,753 data entries in total.
Yeah, so according to this reporter from Forbes, I had an email conversation with ThinkingOne who told me they don't consider themselves a hacker, but rather a data enthusiast who tries to ensure everything they do is legal.
Well, good luck with that.
The real story, to me at least, is that 2.8 billion records were exfiltrated from Twitter slash X, ThinkingOne said to him.
This is by far the largest social media breach ever in terms of number of users, and there is at least a possibility that the person responsible for the breach has other data, including emails, phone numbers, and passwords.
That's according to ThinkingOne.
The huge number of user records exceeds the normal figures thrown around of a few hundred million users because the latter is a monthly active user's amount.
The users who logged on during a given period, in other words.
So the data set leaked in January 2025 included over 2.8 billion unique Twitter IDs and screen names, according to ThinkingOne.
I checked a representative sample of 100, and 92 had the correct user ID and screen name, all of which left ThinkingOne thinking.
How could someone enumerate all Twitter user IDs unless they were an employee or this was a very serious hacking job?
So, yeah, that story appearing in Forbes, written by Davey Winder, fascinating.
2.8 billion Twitter records, or X records, whatever you want to call it.
Well, I call it insecure.
I call it not a very good platform.
So that's, yeah, that's where things stand.
Wow, it's wild Internet out there, huh?
So I guess, yeah, what one does to remediate such a thing, do we, should we care?
You move to a different platform, for one thing.
Well, it's a great, yeah, move.
And also, don't use, don't use really easily identifiable information when you set these up, because this is the result.
And there are countless examples of situations in real life where you're demanded various information to do normal things.
And that demand, if you flip it around, if you think about it rationally, could very easily become a vulnerability.
And the way people treat you, you know, just insisting that you comply with their standards.
And as soon as something like this happens that isn't a normal course of what they're insisting you comply with, all of a sudden the tables turn.
And your compliance has then become a way for you to be victimized, either directly or indirectly.
And, boy, it just stands to reason you've got to obfuscate how your presence is organized on multitudes of levels.
Because you're just making it wildly easy for large databases and things like this to emerge.
As if there isn't already a plethora of it out there already, this just reorganizes it anew in a larger, more organized form.
Or it's just yet another thing that can be cross-referenced and stuff.
And it's just, it's not the utopia we think it is.
You know, I had some interesting experiences and witnessed some interesting experiences on social media this week.
I got under the skin of some MAGA people on Twitter, which I still occasionally post on just to annoy them and other people, too.
And I also annoyed Elon fanboys that were out there basically saying, this guy did nothing wrong.
He's trying to help everybody.
You know, what I did was post details on the people that he harmed.
And that resulted, I don't know how this happened, but some, you know, you post one thing and all of a sudden it goes viral.
And within a matter of minutes, I had over 100 hate-filled replies to me.
It didn't bother me at all because I don't care about that platform.
I'm just there to disrupt things.
And it seems like, you know, I did a pretty good job there.
But, boy, you know, it's really, it can be concerning to see just how quickly the hatred spreads simply by saying, no, Elon, I disagree.
I think you did cause harm to people.
You know, something as simple as that.
Again, you know, the James Dolan level of offense that if you say the slightest thing critical, they go ballistic.
That's what happened here.
You criticize Elon, you're the enemy.
I was called a dirty Jew.
I was called a dirty Muslim.
I was called a dirty trans person.
You name it.
I was called, and all of this has absolutely nothing to do with the argument that I was making that he's causing harm.
Just filled with hatred and hostility and quoting facts that make absolutely no sense.
This is what a lot of social media has turned into, as we well know.
But, you know, when you see it firsthand, it can shake you up a little bit.
The important thing is to realize it doesn't matter and that, you know, the individuals there who are individuals and not bots, you're never going to sway in the slightest bit.
It's not worth it.
It's not worth getting upset over.
It is worth it to rile them up, though, and to know that you're upsetting them just by stating facts and just by keeping your cool and not engaging.
Yeah, I wanted to answer every one of those idiots and say something, but it's just not worth it.
It's just not worth it.
Of course, you know, I posted something that had a Washington Post headline.
The reason was the headline was the story, not the story itself.
Just I forget what it was.
So many crazy things happened in a week.
Instantly got scolded for posting from the Washington Post, which you're not supposed to post from anymore because, you know, they caved to Trump.
You know, I am sick of being lectured and told I can't refer to this particular publication because they're bad now.
Look, I posted something because it had a headline and that was what I was trying to convey.
So I don't care if I offended people there.
And there are numerous instances of these, you know, social media run ins.
Blue Sky, I think 2600 this week posted a list of all the Tesla dealers in the country.
Yeah, you know, because as it was said on the Blue Sky Post, for some reason, people seem really interested in finding out there's a Tesla dealer near them.
So here's a list.
The list came from the Tesla site.
It was their list.
And they simply had a link to their list.
Some people might call that a favor.
But at least one person on Blue Sky accused us of terrorism for posting a list of where car dealers are.
And that's because, you know, Trump and his followers have decreed that if you do anything damaging to a Tesla or a Tesla dealer, you are a terrorist.
You are, you know, a domestic terrorist.
And people have taken that to mean if you show up and demonstrate outside a Tesla dealer, you're a terrorist.
You could be sent to El Salvador.
I've heard people say that.
I've heard people in government say that now.
If you're born in this country, you can wind up in an El Salvadorian prison for protesting outside of a Tesla dealer.
That is where we are today in this country.
And wow, that is that is something.
That is something to see.
It's all playing out in front of us.
We can either ignore it or we can fight it.
But this is something crazy.
This is something, indeed, I had never thought I would see.
Drop ahead.
It's just really fascinating, the entire landscape of social media.
And, you know, those of us who have been around since the start of these things have known since the beginning of the main rule, which was don't feed the trolls.
You know, moles and trolls, moles and trolls.
But the thing that's going on now in the current social media environment is fascinating to me.
Having used Twitter years ago, saw how it was going, gotten out of there.
I've done Mastodon.
I've been trying Blue Sky for the past week.
And just the sort of different vibes that come up on different sites that have different takes on whether or not to incentivize being that kind of person.
Being the person who's there to get infuriated and infuriate others and start some crap, basically.
And the immediate response on things like Twitter is because the main, I think, population of Twitter right now is people who really want Senpai Musk to notice them.
And, you know, go, we're being good.
We're just like you.
We think you're cool.
And those are the people that are going to respond to tweets.
Whereas, like, this program has a Twitter account.
We post not really anything apart from, hey, the show's on.
Hey, the show's, you know, the recording's up.
We're on overtime now.
We're doing this.
We're doing that.
Strictly for that, we don't get much engagement.
I think the reward to remaining on Twitter to very many people, I think probably, I think it's safe to say the majority of people on it, is to start arguments, start flame wars, as we used to call them.
And I think that's what's going on.
Well, you know, it is good to antagonize the people that are opposing your existence.
And I found that you are able to do that successfully on that platform.
Yeah, it drives up engagement.
I suppose that's a good thing for Twitter slash X.
And, you know, that's not really something that I want.
But there are lots of good people that are still on that platform.
And, you know, we have to try to get them to try other platforms.
But we also have to make the other platforms easier and a better experience.
Because, you know, for instance, if I want to reach out and, you know, tell Cory Booker that he did a great job yesterday by standing in the Senate for 25 hours with his filibuster, I can only do that on Twitter, you know.
And there's a chance that he might actually get that recognition because he's not on Blue Sky, as far as I know.
He's not on Mastodon.
And until we get to a stage where people have transferred over there, there's still going to be a use for that site in communicating with people, not necessarily people that you disagree with, but people you agree with because there are still plenty of them there.
And, you know, I just wonder, what are the rules here in the eyes of the people who condemn anyone who uses that platform anymore?
You can't engage with the other side at all.
You can't fight them.
You can't argue with them because, you know, they're not coming over to these other platforms.
And that's fine with me.
But I still want to be able to piss them off.
How do I do that?
You know, that's very important to me.
So don't tell anyone what they can and cannot use.
Accept what people use and, you know, try to make a better environment that will draw more people into something better.
That's what I think we really should be shooting for.
We're almost out of time, but I just wanted to mention this other story about a genetic sharing site called OpenSNP.
OpenSNP, yeah, the leader of that site, I'm trying to find their exact co-founder, I guess, Bastion Grishak Savaris, confirmed that OpenSNP, which is a large open source repository for user uploaded genetic data, will be shutting down and deleting all of its data at the end of the month.
In a blog post, they attributed the decision to shutter the site due to concerns of data privacy following the financial collapse of 23andMe, which you might have heard of, and the rise in authoritarian governments around the world.
This was founded in 2011.
OpenSNP became an open and public repository for customers of commercial genetic testing kits, including 23andMe, to upload their test results and find others with similar genetic variations.
The site had close to 13,000 users at the time of its closure announcement, making it one of the largest public repositories of genetic data.
Since its founding OpenSNP has touted its contributions to academic and scientific research and identified more than 7,500 genomes.
The risk-benefit calculus of providing free and open access to individual genetic data in 2025 is very different compared to 14 years ago, the co-founder wrote.
Sunsetting OpenSNP, along with deleting the data stored within it, feels like it is the most responsible act of stewardship for these data today.
That is integrity right there.
Taking something that you could probably make a fortune at and shutting it down because you realize this could be a real threat.
This could really hurt people.
And I just wish we had more people like this in charge of things.
People are talking about 23andMe and how the data that 23andMe has been storing could be compromised and that the people who submitted that data have no control over it.
And that, unfortunately, is more the reality today.
Thoughts?
Absolutely.
The OpenSNP project was really fascinating because your gene sequence is pretty much the most private thing you'll have, and it will not change.
You can, you know, in extreme circumstances, you could get a new social security number maybe, but more easily than you could get a new gene sequence.
You can't.
And the people who volunteered to share that information and contribute to open research in this manner, that is a certain kind of bravery.
That is nuts.
But, yeah, it is just too easy to abuse now.
And the 23andMe situation is perfect proof of that.
Their database is up for sale now to the highest bidder, and that is not something that the users of the service signed up for, and it's not something that is going to go back in any toothpaste tube.
Unfortunately not.
And, okay, let me just finish with this other bit of cheering news.
The crypto industry is set to conclude the worst quarter for hacks in its history, registering $1.64 billion in losses across 40 incidents so far.
Wow.
All right.
You know, that's something to consider before you pour your savings into crypto that these kinds of things do happen.
And I believe most of it was one instance, but that's not much comfort to those people who are a victim of that.
Yeah, the sheer scale of the Bybit and Femex attacks, which totaled $1.5 billion of that $1.64 billion, shows how state-backed actors are arguably the most pressing threat to the industry.
Their success in breaching renowned battle-tested platforms is a reminder of the need for security measures that protect the entire stack and help projects prevent catastrophic attacks before they happen.
A little public service announcement from Off the Hook.
Keep your crypto safe, and keep listening to Off the Hook and WBAI.
Remember, support WBAI 833-WBAINYC.
Do you have that number handy, Rob, or Gila?
That is 833-922-4692, or buddy.wbai.org.
And you can write to us, OTH, at 2600.com, with your feedback and ideas and questions and criticism.
And, Rob, I believe there are meetings this Friday.
Am I incorrect in assuming that?
You are correct.
The April 2600 meetings will happen all over the world this Friday evening.
Go to 2600.com slash meetings to find one near you or start one near you.
All right.
With that, we are out of here.
No overtime tonight, but we will be back next week.
Good night.
I see the clouds that move across the sky
I see the wind that moves the clouds away
It moves the clouds over by the building
I pick the building that I want to live in
I smell the pine trees and the teachers in the woods
I see the pine cones that fall by the highway
That's the highway that goes to the building
I think the building that I want to live in
It's over there, it's over there
My building has every convenience
It's gonna make life easy for me
It's gonna be easy to get things done
It's gonna be easy to get things done
I'm gonna relax along with my loved ones
Love ones, love ones, love ones
Visit the building, take the highway
Walk and come up and see me
I'll be working, working
But if you come visit, I'll put you on what I'm doing
My friends are important
Don't you worry about me
I wouldn't worry about me
Don't you worry about me
Don't you worry about me
I see the states across this big nation
I see the laws made in Washington, D.C.
I think of the people that are working for me
Some civil servants are just like my loved ones
They work so hard and they try to be strong
I'm a lucky guy to live in my building
They call me buildings to help them along
It's over there, it's over there
My building has every convenience
It's gonna make life easy for me
It's gonna be easy to get things done
I'm gonna relax along with my loved ones
Love ones, love ones
Visit the building, take the highway
Walk and come up and see me
I'll be working, working
But if you come visit, I'll put you on what I'm doing
My friends are important
I wouldn't worry about me
They couldn't worry about me
Don't you worry about me
Don't you worry about me
You worry about me
You don't worry about me