this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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I wish hackers would invest their time in clearing credit card debt, deleting hospital fees, or something else that actually serves the public good, instead of hacking ordinary people just trying to get by.
Deleting hospital fees/debt is very dangerous... In many HUGE regions in the US there's only one hospital and if that hospital suddenly can't pay its bills it could shut down, leaving a whole lot of completely innocent people in a very sad, people-are-dying sort of state.
In fact, something like this already happened:
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/st-maragrets-health-central-illinois-hospital-closing/
Hospitals are special in that they're often evil organizations (not all though) that are some of the easiest to hack but also provide critical services to the most vulnerable. One should tread lightly. Political solutions are better (hack some politicians that are against healthcare reform instead).
Clearing credit card debt via hacking is nearly impossible but I agree it would be a much more ethical choice for hackers to target. I used to work for the credit card industry. My unique insider perspective, deep industry knowledge, and personal experience is here to let you know they suck. They are just as evil and unethical and unnecessary as everyone thinks they are! Seriously: If Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and all the lesser players suddenly disappeared the world would be a better place.
Before that can happen though people need a backup payment method that doesn't go through their systems and no: Cash won't work (there's not enough in circulation and it's dangerous to carry large amounts of it). The credit card companies know this threat exists which is why they lobbied Florida (and probably other states) to outlaw alternative, government-run forms of payment (e.g. central bank currency).
As soon as people have a widely accepted payment option that doesn't go through Visa and MasterCard's middlemen (e.g. First Data) then hackers can take their gloves off! Until then though... Let's keep the payment infrastructure working, OK? Thanks!
There's no limit to the amount of good deeds hackers can do though. So let's encourage that! For example, there's plenty of cartels and evil religious organizations (e.g. Taliban, ISIS, Mormon Church, Prosperity Gospel scam artists) that have plenty of money to spare and enormous attack surfaces 👍
Just want to state the obvious and say, this is pretty much only the case in the US.
I think the alternative payment systems in the developing countries are actually good. UPI in India is very utilitarian. China also has the wechat thing. I guess the issue with these are that they are not universal and limited to a single country.
I thought we weren’t going to be Reddit-brained over here
Reddit, Threads, Twitter, Elon, and, Zuck seem to be all people know how to talk about in the more popular communities.
And don't forget circle jerking about how the average IQ of a Lemmy user is higher than average.
As I pointed out in the thread it was probably a few Lemmy users themselves that did it.
And some people do it for teh lulz.
Not everything has to be some conspiracy theory.
Yeah it seems like the attack wasn't "malicious" per se in that the attacker didn't seem to want to completely take down the site. They just seemed to want to mess with everyone by redirecting to lemon party and other mildly shocking things like racist remarks. Reads more like a bored person to me than anything.
2008 4chan humour
Gotta bring back the classics
Pool's closed, sorry!
it doesn't matter who, it's the "why". They get nothing from this, the only one who benefits from Lemmy going down is spez
I've sat at keyboards beside people studiously working their own. My presumption was that we were working on the same project. Then they have their AHA moment, and show me how they've hacked into our host machine.
They didn't do it for money or to cause disruption. They did it to see if they could, and succeeding was reward enough. Then, happy as could be, they set off in pursuit of their next accomplishment.
Ya never know what's going through others' minds or what motivates them.
If anything an annoyed Reddit “hacker” doing it to see if they could and for the lulz
Nah. There's far too much risk for Reddit to be involved. If even one hacker spilled the beans it'd cause a massive panic for Reddit investors.
"It would be extremely stupid and would inevitably backfire if reddit was responsible. Seriously, if spez has one ounce of foresight he would not be involved."
Well you have convinced me reddit is behind it.
There's a huge difference between alienating people in an effort to make the website profitable, and outright paying hackers to go after Lemmy, which would be a criminal action. Let's not get all big brain on here and pretend Lemmy.world is a threat to Reddit and is pulling away tons of users, to the point that Spez needs it out of commission. I didn't jump here from Reddit to promote conspiracies
I mean if they spilled the beans, we'd have to upvote them.
It's well established that Rdeadit* doesn't make foolish moves. /s
I'm not saying they're behind this. I think they are not. But I'm not ruling them out because of their acumen.
During the event a message flashed on my screen, "This website has been seized by Rdeadit for copyright violation". That suggested two things to me. Rdeadit didn't write that. Whoever did write it doesn't understand how a domain would legally be seized.
Considering some of the targeted instances and the stuff they left behind, it was likely some nazi.
“Marty we started this journey together!”
“It was a prank, Cos’!”
Ribbit
Inflation does very clearly not serve the public good. That aside, causing havoc in banks and medical institutions would have other unpleasant effects.
How about cleaning the bottom 10%'s debt, with the earings from one week of the top 0.1%?
I already know I'm gonna be downvoted for this, but the top 1%/0.1% spending isn't gonna change, whereas the bottom 10% will cause inflation... That's why there's no magic bullet.
The bottom 10% don't have enough money to "cause" inflation, not even the bottom 90% have that much money. Inflation is driven by the top 5-10%, representing 70% of the wealth; the rest just get taken for the ride.
You're right the top 1%'s spending won't change, it's already 1000x above a person's basic needs, so what's the difference between 1000x and 900x (10% inflation).
Exactly, the bottom 10% don’t have enough money, meaning that any money you give them will go towards consumption. The top bracket’s spending as % of income or wealth is tiny and is mostly independent of their income. Their money is spent on investments, not basic goods and services. They practically don’t affect inflation.
I think money should be printed during periods of low inflation. E.g. Japan could have benefited from that. After this bout is over, governments can return to printing, carefully.
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Having a dedicated sub for bad understanding of economics seems stupid, it's already spread over all subs, it's normal.
Of course, the extremes of bad economics would be usually found someplace with "soc" in the name.
I'm saying your statement is bad economics. Debts get discharged all the time and they have no impact on inflation. It's called the Bankruptcy System and it's been a part of American economic reality since the mid-1800s.
Yes, so?
Measured by whom? Logically they should.
So in your idea of good economics it doesn't matter for inflation if debt of NxM total gets discharged per month or of NxK total per month where K is much bigger than M?
I just don't get that pretentious acting.
No, they shouldn't. The money supply is unaffected by discharges.
Discharge does introduce short-term shocks but it's not the doomsday scenario you're painting it to be. We did it in the 1800s and it was mostly fine compared to the regular bank panics before the greenback was adopted.
Ah, OK. Maybe "inflation" is the wrong word, but there's a response. Insurance becomes more expensive, loans become more expensive, basically everybody for whom such an event is a risk reacts to its probability growing.
Well, I'm not saying it's literally a doomsday scenario, just that it likely wouldn't benefit the person dreaming about it more than it would harm them.
Nono, inflation is the right word. Inflation isn't caused by the money supply, but by supply vs demand. If demand suddenly increases, there will be inflation. If a lot of money is printed and is thrown in a hole, money supply will increase, but there'll be no inflation.
Well, yes, I'm just always floating in economic terms, it really doesn't help that people around often have differing ideas on what these mean.
Only decreases (if we are speaking about demand for money, not demand for commodity bought with it), not increases, but I think it's an error, not a mistake. =\
Ah, I was talking about the demand for commodities/services.