OUTLINE:
1. Introduction
2. Enumerated Problems:
- Sanctions, especially when ineffective and based on a narrow view of history
- Lack of communication within organizations (again, I’ve fallen victim to this)
- Assumption of ignorance
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This is an open letter to the American banks JPMorgan / Chase and Wells Fargo. Welcome to Free World Blues. I won’t be mentioning any names in this recording – aside from the names of C-suite executives. Therefore, if you’re part of the rank-and-file at any of these companies, have no fear – I won’t be mentioning you by name, nor any identifying information. It’s not my intention to sic an Internet mob, or any other sort of mob, on you. Those involved know who they are, and that is enough. There’s nothing wrong with being rank-and-file, by the way – I’m rank-and-file myself. I’ll also note that the responsibility for what I’ve experienced falls more heavily on upper management than with the employees and contractors I have interacted with.
The purpose of my open letter is to expose, discuss, and suggest resolutions for the egregiously wrongful treatment that I’ve received at the hands of JPMorgan/Chase and Wells Fargo. As always, this criticism – while it is harsh, and harshness is certainly justified – is intended to be constructive. When I say “egregious”, I do mean “egregious”. I’m not going to be talking about innocent mistakes, or about having to wait ten minutes on the phone, as frustrating as that can be. I will be discussing problems that have meaningfully impacted my life, and that are the predictable results of decisions that were intentionally made by these banks. I will also, in passing, mention a number of other companies. These include:
1. Reddit, a social media platform for Redditards;
2. OpenAI, an “artificial intelligence” slop-generation service;
3. ID-dot-me, an identification and login service which operates primarily as a US government contractor and is notably used by the IRS;
4. X, originally known as Twitter, once Jack Dorsey’s microblogging service, though now under the control of the Elongated Muskrat;
5. CloudFlare, a multifaceted Internet infrastructure company which delivers cybersecurity services to website operators and is guilty of unleashing a flood of CAPTCHAs on users, wasting ungodly amounts of everyone’s time, and also degrading privacy; and finally:
6. LucidChart, a technically-excellent platform for creating flowcharts and scientific diagrams, as well as visualizing SQL database structures.
The problems I’ve experienced as a result of these six company’s actions are in many ways related to those I’ve experienced at the hands of JPMorgan/Chase and Wells Fargo, so the stories are intertwined – as are they intertwined with the history, and current degradation, of the Internet.
I have divided this recording into the following sections:
1. Geographic Denial of Service. Here, I’ll focus on Wells Fargo, ID-dot-me, Reddit, OpenAI, and CloudFlare.
2. Sanctions Enforcement. Here, I’ll focus on JPMorgan/Chase, Wells Fargo, and LudidChart.
3. Lack of communication within organizations. Here, I’ll focus on the two banks – JPMorgan/Chase and Wells Fargo.
4. Lack of internal trust, and particularly, trust of employees. Here, again, I’ll be discussing JPMorgan/Chase and Wells Fargo.
5. Privacy degradation via discrimination against VPN and TOR users. You know this section will focus on CloudFlare, though X-slash-Twitter also has a role here.
6. Passing-the-buck to algorithms. This is an issue whereby companies establish automatic systems (whether known as “algorithms”, “AI”, or any other term) and subject their users- including me- to adverse treatment based on the outcome of these systems, which are typically highly-complex, constantly-changing, completely opaque, and inflexible. The issue isn’t primarily that such systems are terrible-though they are-but that they are used to excuse wrongful behavior with cries of “the algorithm did it!”.
7. False accusations and assumptions of guilt, ignorance, and irresponsibility. Here, I will focus on Wells Fargo and JPMorgan/Chase.
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Section 1: Geographic Discrimination and the Desecration of the World Wide Web:
In order to understand how companies are spitting on the foundational principles of the Internet, we first need to recognize what those principles were. Although the Internet and the World Wide Web are distinct – and I am aware of this distinction, so there’s no need to pester me about this – the Web is by far the most important Internet application, and I will be using the terms “Internet” and “World Wide Web”, or simply “Web”, interchangeably in the bulk of this recording. To start, however, it’s helpful to look at them separately.
The Internet has a history which stretches back to the 1960s, and no single author or inventor created it. The assertion that Al Gore created the Internet is false, but so is the assertion that Gore made this claim – he never did. The World Wide Web, by contrast, has a much more recent genesis
My Experience With Cryptocurrency In America:
My Experience With Cryptocurrency In Russia:
The cryptocurrency situation in Russia is complex, in large part because the relationship between the Russian Government and cryptocurrency is very nuanced. This is a subject that I could write a book a meter thick about. I won’t be doing that here, partly for the sake of your time, partly for the sake of my time, and primarily because the vast majority of what I’ve experienced consists of events that I can’t speak openly about. Some of what I’m going to discuss dates back a decade, and in another decade, enough time will have passed that I’ll be comfortable sharing more of what I’ve seen. Some of what I’ve seen, I’ll never share – I’ll take it to my grave. That is life.
From the time of the Tsars to the Soviet Union to the деваностах – the wretched 1990s – to the present day, you MUST understand this: The Russian government, in whatever form, is FAR more concerned with people challenging laws than breaking laws. There is a saying:
Нарушать закон – ошибка. ОспAривать закон – смертная ошибка.
To break the law is a mistake – to challenge the law is a deadly mistake. Violating a law – when done in secret, as most law violation is – represents an attempt to evade the authority of the Russian state. Criticizing a law – when done publicly, as most political criticism is – represents an attempt to challenge the authority of the Russian state, and is a vastly, vastly, VASTLY more serious matter.
I will give concrete examples.
Cultivation of marijuana for recreational use is prohibited in Russia. If you are caught growing marijuana in your house, you’ll be in a decent amount of trouble, because you have evaded the law – at least, you evaded it up until the moment you were caught. Yet, the fact that you cultivated your contraband crops in secret – tinfoil over your windows to block the glare of grow lights, activated carbon air filters to reduce the odor – shows that you at least acknowledge the law’s authority – indeed, it’s that very authority that you’re trying to hide from. The act of concealment is a tacit acceptance of authority.
Suppose that you and I are walking in a forest. As night falls, I start digging a hole. You ask me why I am doing this – after all, digging a hole is hard work. Suppose that I tell you – “I am digging this hole because I need to hide from Bigfoot”, and I say this with fear in my eyes, trembling. In such a scenario, you can infer that I acknowledge the existence of – and, indeed, the power of, and the danger posed by – Bigfoot. We can infer that a man who hides from Bigfoot accepts that Bigfoot exists, and similarly, we can infer that a man who hides from government authority accepts that government authority exists. You’ll still be in trouble growing weed in Russia, of course, but your acknowledgement of authority will weigh in your favor when the State determines your punishment.
Suppose that, instead of cultivating marijuana, you go about saying “Prohibition of marijuana is wrong – the Government is mistaken – 420 blaze it, bro”. Even though you are not violating drug control law by making that statement, you have done something far more serious in the eyes of the State: you have challenged the State’s authority and wisdom – you implied that the State has made an oversight, or even an error, or even worse, that the State lacks the right to legislate such matters.
The same is true of tax laws. If you are caught dodging a billion-dollar-equivalent tax bill, you’ll be in a decent amount of trouble – again, because you have evaded the law. Suppose instead that you pay every last ruble, every last kopeek, of your tax bill, but speak out against Russian tax laws – perhaps you say that the tax system is too regressive, or too progressive – that the rich pay too little or too much, or that the balance between individual and corporate taxes is improper. Suppose, even, that you question the State’s wisdom in how tax money is spent. This is defiance. In the eyes of the State, evasion of authority is merely a Venial sin, but defiance of authority is a Mortal sin.
The melanin in your skin, and in mine – the pigment which protects us from the ultraviolet of the Sun – is the same substance, and encoded by the same gene, as the melanin produced by squid and cuttlefish and octopi – this melanin is an ingredient in “cephalopod ink”. In the case of these sea creatures, the concern is not sunburn – water shields UV radiation very effectively – but escaping from predators, where the melanin, squirted into seawater, forms a sort of blinding smokescreen. In isolation, this seems a bit odd – humans are not, at first glance, particularly similar to cuttlefish. Why, then, would we carry the same genes? The reason is that melanin first evolved as a mechanism of skin coloration and camouflage in Cyclostomata, a group of jawless fish – similar to modern-day lampreys and hagfish – approximately 535 million years ago. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – and, it wasn’t broke, so the same gene that first evolved those eons ago has been passed down to the descendants of those ancient fish – and among those descendants are octopi, and among those descendants are cuttlefish, and among those descendants are squid, and among those descendants are we.
Феодосий Григорьевич Добржанский wrote: “Ничто в биологии не имеет смысла, кроме как в свете эволюции” – that is, “Nothing in biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution”. I’ll say this: Nothing about Russia makes sense, except in the light of the fact that the Russian state considers challenging a law far more objectionable than breaking a law. This is FOUNDATIONAL. You simply cannot understand Russia, except in the light of this reality.