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eXpletive Archive Shutting Down Due to Resources and Low Conversion

eXpletiveArchive — Sun, 15 Jan 2023 15:56:03 -08:00

eXpletive Archive is shutting down due to high resource usage and conversion rates too low to justify purchasing additional resources. eXpletive Archive detected use of expletives, ethnic slurs, homophobic remarks, and accusations on social media before archiving the results. Unfortunately, most content aggregated by eXpletive Archive saw little engagement largely due to it being left out of search engines and most people just not caring if they got caught using the words. Categories that saw more engagement have been migrated to a different site focused more on content known for better engagement instead of simply taking broad collections of data based on broad keywords. eXpletive Archive consumed large amounts of storage space due to images. We frequently found ourselves having to run plugins designed to compress images or remove unused images in bulk but even that couldn't make up for the fact that expletives are used so often that most of the content we ended up with was low quality Tweets that just happened to use the f-word or one of George Carlin's other 7 dirty words you can't say on television. Our newer site looks more for statements of substance indicating allegations of wrongdoing. Ethnic Slurs and Homophobic Remarks Often Not Used Hatefully The biggest surprise of eXpletive Archive was how hard it was to find homophobic and racist remarks based on use of homophobic terms and ethnic slurs. Those words seemed to be used often by those they've typically been used against. Gay men often use the word "fag" in reference to themselves, the same is true with the ethnic slur "beaner" regarding Latinos, and the n-word with blacks. We got more complaints from gay men angry over being caught calling themselves "fags", Latinos calling themselves "beaners", and blacks calling themselves the n-word than we did straight people caught calling homosexuals "fags" or racist people calling Latinos and blacks their ethnic slurs. People caught using ethnic slurs historically directed at them often demanded removals on the grounds of their race or sexual orientation as if a computer incapable of knowing what race someone was were somehow racist for treating everyone who used the same words the same way regardless of their race. They didn't seem to understand that the computer doesn't understand context and that any policy which would give people preferences based on their race would be racist. It would mean that people of certain races could get anything removed simply by claiming membership of the historically marginalized group in question. On top of that we don't hire staff to review complaints beyond pasting directions in response to emails normally. We were not in the position to hire anyone to review content for any type of context, so our policy options were limited to only things that wouldn't increase the need to manually do things. Accusations Migrated Accusations seemed to convert the best, so those have been migrated for the most part to a new site which focuses more on accusations. People seem to engage most with accusations against businesses followed by accusations against people. Accusations against businesses typically involve scams or ripoffs while allegations against people typically involve being unfaithful to intimate partners or engaging in other taboo activity. Associates Migrated eXpletive Archive began monitoring people mentioning associates of theirs. That section was one of the first to be migrated last year. That section focused primarily on people talking about their exes or employers. Be careful what you say about your ex or your boss online. Conclusion eXpletive Archive was an interesting project which swept far too broadly to be feasible long term. We hope to further build upon what we began with eXpletive Archive build better archives with more interesting information.
Learn more: eXpletive Archive Shutting Down Due to Resources and Low Conversion

People Trying to Bury Embarrassing Posts with Cam Model Protection

eXpletiveArchive — Tue, 03 May 2022 16:35:24 -07:00

These people thought it would be a good idea to hire a Dutch company called Cam Model Protection B.V. to suppress information about them from appearing in Google search results. The company seems to function by spamming Google with Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown complaints whenever they find images of their clients appearing on sites without their permission regardless of context. The context is key because it makes all the difference between fair use and copyright infringement. To their credit, it appears that most of the URLs they submit to Google are probably cases of legitimate copyright infringement claims, but the complaints sweep too broadly which is our gripe. We feel that this company is abusing the DMCA to get Google to remove pages that criticize their clients on the grounds that they include copyrighted images. As you can see by the carousel of screenshots on this page above from DMCA notices filed with Google by Cam Model Protection, most of the URLs they are complaining about appear to be adult websites hosting content originally created by their clients for commercial gain elsewhere without permission in violation of most applicable copyright laws we know of. However, you will also notice the domain name eXpletiveArchive.com among URLs listed even though eXpletive Archive is an archive of people saying specific things for which they are being criticized. For their clients to show up on eXA in the first place they typically must post something on social media containing an expletive, ethnic slur, homophobic remark, or an accusation of some kind. Any comment containing an expletive is ripe for criticism on such grounds as are comments containing ethnic slurs and homophobic remarks. The criticism being that people should post that stuff online. When a client of Cam Model Protection posts something on social media containing certain things, we have the right to criticize them for it. They cannot absolve themselves of criticism simply by pointing out that amongst the criticism is a copyrighted image they produced for their own commercial gain that we are using without their permission. They can't do that because we are clearly using it to identify the subjects of the criticism and not to profit off copyrighted works. If you appear in a newspaper and someone posts your picture from that paper for the purpose of criticizing you, the paper cannot then file a legitimate copyright complaint just because they own the rights to the image. Even if the DMCA complaints were legitimate, using Cam Model Protection would still be a bad idea because they submit the full names of their clients to Google with the DMCA complaints. The webmaster then receives a notification in webmaster tools that a page has been removed due to a DMCA complaint. That notification includes a link to the Lumen Database which includes a copy of the DMCA complaint complete with the full legal name of the client. Judging by the nature of their clients' work, we don't think having their full legal names publicly associated with their work to be something they would consider an improvement in their circumstances over seeing eXA on Google when people search for them. Cam models often operate behind a cloak of anonymity that allows them to feel comfortable performing in all kinds of ways without anyone knowing who they really are. To illustrate what we mean, check out the following examples of DMCA complaints we've received complete with the full names of the clients as provided to Google by Cam Model Protection: Name: Elaine H. McNamara Alias: CursedArachnid URL: https://expletivearchive.com/459882/spider-monarch-cursedarachnid-twitter-fuck-1/ Category: Expletives/Fuck DMCA Complaint: https://lumendatabase.org/notices/27375154 Date: April 30, 2022 Relevant Comment: "A mental mind fuck can be nice!" - @CursedArachnid on Twitter Name: Sabrina L. Olszewski Alias: Lexual__ elexus URL: https://expletivearchive.com/102705/lexual__-elexus-jionde-twitter-nigger-1/ Category: Ethnic Slurs/N-Word DMCA Complaint: https://lumendatabase.org/notices/27385238 Date: April 30, 2022 Relevant Comment: "The only thing I know about Jeffree Star is that he was screaming “niggers” at some girls in a video so I’m quite confused when I see him securing multi million dollar deals with makeup brands like Morphe. White people really get away with anything" - @Lexual__ elexus on Twitter Name: Evelyn Spillers Alias: boomshakhalaka URL: https://expletivearchive.com/197052/v-boomshakhalaka-twitter-tits-1/ Category: Expletives/Tits DMCA Complaint: https://lumendatabase.org/notices/27307368 Date: April 22, 2022 Relevant Comment: "I wonder what would happen if I told the story of how a UH professor grabbed my tits in class and got away with it after the University forced me to stay in his class for the remainder of the semester" - @boomshakhalaka on Twitter Those are just the three most recent. More will be coming soon, especially if Cam Model Protection files any more complaints. For a company that promotes privacy protection among the perks of its services they sure have a way of showing it.
Learn more: People Trying to Bury Embarrassing Posts with Cam Model Protection

Thomas Moody II of Quantum Metric in Washington D.C.

eXpletiveArchive — Thu, 06 Jan 2022 19:13:35 -08:00

Thomas Moody II sent an email to eXpletiveArchive.com today claiming to have filed a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) after a failed attempted theft of services by means of extortion. Specifically, Moody made implied threats to file police complaints falsely accusing eXpletive Archive of extortion if he were not provided with removal services free of charge. In the state of Oregon, where the message was transmitted to, it is illegal to attempt to compel another to provide someone with a thing of value against their will out of fear that if the thing of value is not provided they will file a complaint with law enforcement. Oregon Revised Statute 164.075 (https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_164.075) governs extortion. The relevant part reads as follows: "A person commits the crime of extortion when the person compels or induces another person to either deliver property or services to the person or to a third person, or refrain from reporting unlawful conduct to a law enforcement agency, by instilling in the other person a fear that, if the property or services are not so delivered or if the unlawful conduct is reported, the actor or a third person will in the future: ... (d) Accuse some person of a crime or cause criminal charges to be instituted against the person." The Maryland extortion statute where Moody lives uses similar language (https://casetext.com/statute/code-of-maryland/article-criminal-law/title-3-other-crimes-against-the-person/subtitle-7-extortion-and-other-threats/section-3-705-extortion-by-verbal-threat). We believe that Mr. Moody violated the Oregon extortion statute by implying that he would accuse us of a crime if we did not provide him with services free of charge. The total dollar amount of the attempted theft is $29.99 which is the amount charged to perform removal services. Although Mr. Moody technically attempted to commit a felony we are not snitches, so we are going to be better men here and not report him to the police. Even if we were snitches we would still have a problem with subjecting someone that appears to be a person of color to the presence of a police officer for such a petty offense. We have a disagreement at the moment, but we don't want anything bad to happen to him. The only plausible defense Mr. Moody could try to raise at a trial would be one of only threatening to report what he believed to be a crime if he were not given something he had a legal claim of right to. For instance, if he were a clerk at a store and threatened to call the cops if a customer did not return a stolen candy bar that is not a crime, but it is a crime to demand that the clerk give you something for free even if you feel entitled to it. You can't drink a beer, tell the bartender it sucked, and threaten to report the place for health code violations if not given a refund. Nobody has the right to have accurate quotations of themselves taken down when used in a context of comment or criticism. If a website has the right not to remove something they also have the right to offer to remove it for a fee. In this case our bot merely detected use of an ethnic slur by a Twitter user and added it to an archive consisting of statements made by social media users containing the ethnic slur in question. The bot usually copies the full statement containing the ethnic slur, takes a screenshot, and includes the author's name with a link to their profile. This was the case with Mr. Moody when he demanded removal of the page. We reviewed the page and determined that it accurately documented him using an ethnic slur as he used it. He seems to think that because of his claimed ethnicity that he should be entitled to free removals whenever he is caught using the particular ethnic slur that he used. Unfortunately for Mr. Moody we lack the resources necessary to manually review about 20,000 pages of people using the ethnic slur that he used just to figure out which ones appear to be of a certain race when it is not necessary to do so in order to document use of an ethnic slur accurately. We are looking for an automated solution that would significantly reduce the number of individuals whose use of ethnic slurs pertaining to ethnic groups they themselves appear to belong to are aggregated by the bot, but that requires that we first locate a tested dataset of keywords capable of identifying the specific ethnic group based on their speech with a high degree of certainty. We think that developing such a solution could have far reaching benefits beyond just our site, but right now we have yet to find a dataset perfected for such purposes and don't have time to do the amount of analysis necessary to create such a dataset in the first place. As an educated man with a business degree, Mr. Moody should know the importance of not making decisions too quickly or doing what seems easiest at the time. He seems to think that the easiest option is to remove the page about him because of the stink he will raise if we don't do what he wants. In such a scenario the only thing making removing a page the easiest option would solely be due to circumstances created by Mr. Moody in an effort to scare us into doing what he wants. We have never done that before and we won't do it now. Mr. Moody should have learned in Business 101 that incurring unnecessary costs in not the right choice for a business. What form those costs manifest themselves as or for what purpose is not relevant. We could be talking about actual monetary expenses necessary to pay someone to respond to complaints like his or the opportunity cost associated with responding ourselves. In either case if doing what he wants is not necessary then doing what he wants in not the right decision. That is not to say that removing stuff is never good for business, but there has to be a reasonably direct relationship between the bottom line and the removal. For instance, in cases of pornography we remove it as soon as we become aware of it because we are not running an adult site and do not wish to be categorized as such by search engines. If it were not for that then it wouldn't make sense to remove porn either unless knowingly hosting it were a crime. Mr. Moody claimed that our site contains revenge porn, but refused to give us a single URL. We asked him to set our differences aside for the benefit of revenge porn victims and send us the URLs so that we could investigate, but he wouldn't do it. He seems to think that we were somehow liable to do a content audit the second he made the revenge porn claim. At one point he said, "That's the thing about aggregators, ya never quite know what's on your site. I'm sure that they will be reaching out about it! Have a wonderful evening!" That statement proves that Mr. Moody knows or at least should know that we are not knowingly hosting revenge porn, so if he did in fact find revenge porn on the site and accuse us of knowingly hosting it he would be making a false report. We are not going to attempt to manually review nearly 300,000 pages because one guy claims to have seen revenge porn on just one of them. If you know of any links on the site with porn please send them to us. We are now writing this article because we are following standard operating procedure for dealing with people that file complaints against us with government agencies. That procedure is to criticize them for their complaints online. We have a First Amendment right to criticize people for working with the government. Finally, Mr. Moody seems to think we are arrogant for thinking that we don't have to comply with his demands or that he can't shut us down if we don't. Mr. Moody was likely unaware that the founder of eXpletive Archive successfully defeated a federal challenge to a similar service on a different website years ago, but was convicted of a lesser offense unrelated to that business model. As such he knows that his business is not illegal because it has survived judicial scrutiny in federal court. In fact, when Mr. Moody's Tweet was picked up by the eXpletive Archive bot the founder of the site was on active federal supervised release, probation received complaints about his business regularly, and the AUSA assigned to the case repeatedly told people like Moody that no crime was committed. If he had committed a crime he would have been charged with violating the condition of supervision which prohibits new criminal conduct. Despite the court's understanding that the business is legal it was still used against him to justify keeping him on supervision longer, but despite that he was still terminated early for good behavior. Nothing about the operation has changed since he got off supervision. Mr. Moody's complaint will likely find itself on the desk of the same AUSA that has been telling people no crime has been committed for the past three years.
Learn more: Thomas Moody II of Quantum Metric in Washington D.C.