RESCQU NET (TYC)
  • Resources
    • HardBeauty Youth Coaching
    • Resource Blog
  • volunteer
    • Start a Support Group
  • Donate
  • Partner With Us
    • contact
    • About RESCQU NET
  • Escape

Good Stories are Powerful Lifelines.

Let’s Celebrate Transgender Day of Visibility: Here’s How to do so Safely

3/20/2019

2 Comments

 
Trans pride flagOfficial trans pride flag
​It’s Ricki here! Transgender Day of Visibility is a powerful day for the trans community to be seen and heard. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be looking for ways to celebrate in Colorado. Well, one event I can point you to is a movie screening in Denver. 

Just as importantly, whether you are in Colorado or not, we want to make sure that you stay safe while trying to find events. So I’ll also be going over ways to keep your online activities secure.

Honorable Mentions

Before diving into a TDOV event and internet safety, I want to take the time to honor some trans*, Colorado-based public speakers who have taken visibility as a career. 

Todd Garrity is a transgender public speaker who lectures on the importance of trans healthcare knowledge, mediates conferences and support groups, and has a trans-oriented acupuncture and meditation center called The Om Flow.  
​
Anunnaki Ray is a motivational speaker, blogger, artist, and activist. Assigned female at birth, they grew into their non-binary, male-presenting self and is the first person in Colorado have their biological sex changed to ‘intersex’ to properly reflect their natural body. 

Personal Stories also features trans* stories about both transitioning and visibility and is constantly updating their database. 

Picture
CELEBRATE IN DENVER!

If you can go out to celebrate TDOV and find yourself in Denver, The Center on Colfax is hosting a screening of Becoming More Visible, which follows the lives of four people in various parts of their transition. The documentary dives into who they are beyond their transition and how they exist in the world around them. It addresses religious family issues, the shelter system, and developing a successful career as a visible trans person. 

This event is free with an online RSVP here. Otherwise, Becoming More Visible is available on Amazon Prime—a fun activity for people with their own Amazon Prime account. 

CELEBRATE WHILE STAYING SAFE ONLINE

Being safe on TDOV includes knowing when not to be visible. You know your situation better than anybody, but here are a few tips that you can use. 

If you are on a shared computer make sure you’re using an account that is only accessible to you on a secure browser type, like Brave, that won’t track your Amazon choices for advertising if you do choose to watch Becoming More Visible. 

Before I go into how useful this browser is in order to surf the gay, gay web I want to disclose that this is NOT a paid advertisement. This is a genuine push for a browser that is compatible with our mission statement and with programs we already endorse. 

Brave recently hit the market with an incredible amount of customizable security and privacy dependent on your needs—choose which kinds of cookies and device recognitions to get through to you and what doesn’t. Brave is built on not collecting personal data while also being as user-friendly as possible. It’s compatible with DuckDuckGo, a functional search engine that doesn’t collect personal data and we highly recommend through our resource database. 

Because of privacy risk to you, Brave automatically blocks plug-ins and upgrades encryptions. The browser is also available.  And it’s totally free. Surfing the web for visible trans* people shouldn’t put you in the digital spotlight—part of TDOV is being visible in order to acknowledge, protect, and fight for stealth and closeted individuals. 

Ricki Palmisano

Writer and volunteer for Rescqu. Manager of the resource database. So Goth that she sacked a Roman village on the way to work.

2 Comments

Fine. We're Proud of You Zuck - Wary, but Proud

3/12/2019

2 Comments

 
It's just a picture of Mark Zuckerberg.Zuckerberg emoting. Credit to NBC.
​We are VERY hard on facebook.  

And for good reason.  

This organization started because of the Facebook Real Names Policy in early 2013 and to this day we harp on Facebook’s refusal to protect LGBTQ+ people by providing alias names, securing data and information better, not catering to peoples’ privacy, and generally sucking at community anonymity when we ask them to.  

But something changed recently in Mark Zuckerberg’s little scrooge heart (possibly robotic?).

A week ago Zuckerberg published a near 3,200-word blog about a shift from public information social networks to private networks.  And that’s VERY good for all of you. 

In this blog, Zuckerberg admitted to the security problems with his platform and announced he will be pivoting to a security-based social platform that we feel holds a lot of promise for your safety, security, and anonymity on the web.

So in this blog, we’re going to go over his letter to let you know what may or may not be “troubling”.

A quick summary of his Blog

Now fortunately for you, there is no need to read all 3,200 hundred words of the CEO’s admission of guilt because it’s all pretty technical.  

Zuckerberg starts out by suggesting a few ideas about what the future of the internet will entail and we are VERY proud of him here.  He is championing from here on out:
  1. Private interactions between people without any “eyes” on your conversation,
  2. Encrypted Data so no “eyes” are watching the mail process in the first place,
  3. Temporary & Secure Data Storage so they’re not holding info longer than needed,
  4. Safety for everyone involved as they interact on the platform and,
  5. Platform Inter-operability that rolls these changes out to every platform they own.
As for why he has changed his views on the future of social media,
We’ve super-cut all the parts that are important to you in a way that makes sense*:
(also check the P.S for more below!)

“I believe a privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today's open platforms. Privacy gives people the freedom to be themselves and connect more naturally, which is why we build social networks. [...] But people should be comfortable being themselves, and should not have to worry about what they share coming back to hurt them later. ” [...] Now, with all the ways people also want to interact privately, there's also an opportunity to build a simpler platform that's focused on privacy first.

[...]  Frankly, we [Facebook] don’t currently have a strong reputation for building protective privacy services, and we've historically focused on tools for more open sharing. [...] There is also a growing concern among some that technology may be centralizing power in the hands of governments and companies like ours.

​[...] But in WhatsApp, for example, our team is obsessed with creating an intimate environment in every aspect of the product. [...] I believe we should be working towards a world where people can speak privately and live freely knowing that their information will only be seen by who they want to see it and won't all stick around forever.​"
 ~ Mark Zuckerberg; Wed. March 6th

​So can we trust him?

Picture: Read the full infographic at: http://onlineprivacydata.com/Read the full infographic at: http://onlineprivacydata.com/
​That sounds all well and good but how is he going to make the current Facebook Juggernaut of platforms (that run on modern marketing companies abusing customer metadata in surveillance marketing) into a safe privacy first, encrypted network that we feel safe using?  

Right now, according to the Online Data Privacy survey, a whopping 83% of Americans believe that too much of their personal information is being made public without their consent and virtually all of them are worried about that information being stolen or abused.  
​
So in my opinion...

It’s too soon to tell when these features will be rolled out, if they’ll be useful, and whether they are going to be made in your interest.  Plenty of politicians submit well-meaning population focused bills to Congress that turn into money-grubbing industry-focused laws and that’s no different for technology.  

So we suggest

​Take your safety security and anonymity into your own hands.  Follow our 5-steps to your anonymity and join our already implemented social communities on known safe platforms:
Picture: 5 easy ways to stay safe on the internet Link: https://www.rescqu.net/blog/5-easy-steps-to-stay-safe-anonymous-on-the-internet
Protect yourself Online
Picture: sign up for our anonymous weekly digest!
Get our Anonymous Weekly Digest
Picture: Sign up for our Private Whisper Community!
Join our Whisper Group
Picture: Samantha with Suzanne Dibble

Samantha V Logan

Samantha is the Executive Director of RESCQU.NET as well as a full-stack digital marketer.  She struggles with both of these roles as her primary job asks her to collect  as much information as the internet will allow, while she also actively fights that surveillance marketing for you here at RESCQU.NET.  

Samantha's Bio
View my profile on LinkedIn

*​P.S: We C/P'd some interesting quotes from his blog below:


Read More
2 Comments

Announcing This Year's Unsung Internet Hero Award  |  Shh, she has no idea!

3/6/2019

1 Comment

 
Picture: Samantha V Logan with Suzanne Dibble at Traffic & Conversion Summit 2019Suzanne Dibble (left) and me (fangirling) at Traffic & Conversion Summit 2019 in San Diego.
For today’s blog, I want to introduce you to a person who has no idea they’ve made a massive impact on the closeted LGBTQ+ community.  

She is a very prominent lawyer who has worked for one of the richest men in the world.  She’s an online small business lawyer, and as far as I am aware, she has nothing to do with the queer community.

This woman’s name is Suzanne Dibble.  
​
​Before I can tell you about Suzanne, we need to go back to a specific event in LGBTQ+ history:  The Facebook Real Names Policy.


Some Back Story:

​See, way back in 2013 Facebook had been collecting all of our data on an epic scale. 

Everyone was. This was the same for Google, YouTube, Twitter, and every other website because your data was insanely useful for advertising.  It got so bad that a small little-known site called 
Ello.Co was started to change the way we view ads as a public.  

Then Facebook made a major mistake.  

To prevent fake accounts, and to ensure that their data always included “real” and “reliable” information on each person with an account (to sell ads more easily), Facebook took a step to ensure that no "fake names" could be used on the platform.

​To implement this policy, Facebook made an algorithm that decided what a name looked like, and made a new rule that stated you could report accounts that had “fake names” or names that were not attached to a real person.  Once flagged the algorithm would either shut down the account, throw the doors wide open on its privacy, or worse - ask for legal documents to prove the name.  
Picture
The real names policy effectively crowd-sourced account deletion to the masses, and the masses then unfairly targeted people with “odd” (ethnic) names and LGBTQ+ people who they just simply didn’t like. 

Needless to say, it It affected minorities heavily.  

​Entire swathes of the LGBTQ+ community were dead-named, accounts trans people were previously using as other identities were deleted, people ended up homeless, and 
Trans Lifeline, The Trevor Project, and other emergency LGBTQ+ organizations reported record suicide calls. 

"The masses unfairly targeted people with “odd” names and LGBTQ+ people who they just simply didn’t like.  It affected minorities heavily. "
Entire families and lives were ruined because Facebook wanted to stalk more accurately.

This Policy created 2 things:

First: 
It created a mass exodus of LGBTQ+ people from Facebook's platform and they flocked to "anti-social networks" like Whisper and the previously aforementioned Ello.Co. 
(We have communities on both BTW!)
Join our Whisper group!
And Second: 
It created a massive rift of trust between Facebook’s use of data, their moral integrity, and whether its public could trust them which ultimately lead to the Cambridge Analytica Scandal and scrutiny for all other platforms.
Follow us on Ello!
​Fast forward several years and we can see that a vast majority of the distrust against Facebook and literally every other data-mining business including Google and YouTube largely began in these early years of social media between 2010-2014. 

Today we live in a world where it's legal for any company to pigeonhole users into disclosing every aspect of themselves for "marketing based on surveillance" which we call "analytics".  

These are marketing tactics based on stalking every user every second of their life.  I discussed how this works in my previous blog, "Why the Web is Built to Out You, and How You can Avoid it."

Enter Suzanne Dibble...

Picture: Suzanne actively teaches businesses the danger of surveillance marketing.Suzanne actively teaches businesses the danger of surveillance marketing.
​Since the Facebook real names policy and Cambridge Analytica scandals, the small businesses and the marketing industry as a whole has been in the spotlight for abusing surveillance marketing tactics.
​
And in this world Suzanne Dibble has made her career navigating small businesses ethically and properly through this gigantic mess of big data farming for marketing purposes.  

When a broad-sweeping set of regulations and laws called the General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR passed in the European Union in 2017, marketing companies FLIPPED. 

GDPR severely restricts how the internet uses your user data.  This is the reason every company HAS to inform you cookies are a thing and why. If you don't know what cookies are we made a blog here.

PictureHere's your Trophy! wait....Well, we'll make one when we have money!
But Suzanne went a step further. 

Suzanne made a businesses that not only allowed businesses to navigate GDPR, but she discussed the future of data protection and the END OF SURVEILLANCE MARKETING!!!

For her, this era of mass data abuse will end.  There is no stopping it. Instead of waiting for hard-fought laws to change businesses, she's making businesses change culturally BEFORE the laws even change at all! 

Every client who takes her advice, will naturally, without knowing it, become a little more closet-friendly. 

And for that, Suzanne Dibble, Lawyer extraordinaire, is helping to end a dangerous era for LGBTQ+ people, People of Color, and virtually every other net-citizen.  

So I would like to nominate right now,  Suzanne Dibble for the just now invented, totally should be real, “RESCQU.NET Unsung Internet Improvement Hero Award".
​
From the bottom of my heart, thank you.  It was amazing to meet you. And I hope you read this.  Keep doing your work in amazing and fantastic ways.  

​~ Samantha


Picture

Samantha V Logan

Samantha is a full-stack marketer and the Executive Director of RESCQU.NET.  Her experiences in marketing allow her to keep closeted and stealth LGBTQ+ people safe by working to combat the more nefarious aspects of marketing in her communities and on RESCQU.NET's site.

1 Comment

    Community Voices

    Blogs provided on a bi-weekly basis plus others are available for you here, to learn, listen, and connect with others.

    Categories

    All
    Announcement
    Capitalist Realism
    Community News
    Expression
    Gender
    He
    Identity
    Internet
    Intersection
    Invisible Community
    Mark Fisher
    Mental Health
    Net Security
    Net Sexurity
    Politics And Mental Health
    Polyamory
    Pronouns
    Resources
    Sex
    Sex Ed
    Sexualities
    She
    They
    Transgender
    Valentine's Day

    Archives

    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    July 2016
    June 2016

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Resources
    • HardBeauty Youth Coaching
    • Resource Blog
  • volunteer
    • Start a Support Group
  • Donate
  • Partner With Us
    • contact
    • About RESCQU NET
  • Escape