Over the years, I’ve transitioned my websites from basic HTML to XHTML to modern Wordpress / Woocommerce / Discourse / merchant providers etc. In this time, I can’t help but notice:
Forced to update
Security Vulnerabilities if I do not
Security Vulnerabilities if I do
Bot Spam
Failure to register
Registration spam
Premium plug-ins (plug-ins that I paid for) failing, either if I update, do not update, or both
Plug-ins intentionally breaking (exploitive as it is)
Orders failing to go through
Scam or fraud orders making it through just fine
The list goes on and on
I’m starting to feel like these entities are complicit. Well, no, I felt that way a very long time. It would seem the backdoor is, in some way or another, handed to these fiends. And I take great offense to that.
I ought to be able to set it and forget it. Don’t give me that BS about the need to maintain websites. I’ve had websites which were bulletproof for years the last few years become broken almost as quickly as I fix them. Something has changed, and the brokenness accelerates.
I’m not going for anything fancy. I’m not going for anything new. I’ve not expanded my attack surface in the least!
Although I helped pioneer early derivatives of WooCommerce ‘Composite Products’ before it was a thing (I used to edit manually using phpMyAdmin and MySQL before that plugin outfit existed), and participated in their earliest programs, I’ve not really changed my legacy websites since ~2017. What gives?
Then there is also:
E-mail flooding
E-mail failing
Phone spam flooding
Huge phone bills (800 number), even though almost nobody seems to get through
Normal Phone traffic failing
Website Exploits
Sales Exploits
Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam
Monthly Sales Volume Limits (read: austerity)
Are these entities complicit? And just where are our regulators hidden? Lets talk about it.
Feb. 24, 2024
"Just taking good notes… I lost admin access to my own forum yesterday, zchg.org. Strange timing, isn’t it? The forum had long since lost the ability to register new members and was shadow banned. I retain control over my own URL, host, files, so this is more of an annoyance than a loss.
My work on there has around a 2 day reading time according to the built-in tool. Good thing I backup regularly! That’s certainly an overestimate but needless to say I’ve spent a lot of time building content. Without Yah, my work would be nothing!!
Discourse is captured, not unlike Wordpress. The Wordpress website broke a couple years ago, so I was limping along with the forum. And StealthMachines and WeCharg (Wordpress, also) have had e-commerce or other problems a while now, even though I pay extra for my custom checkout solution. Sort of reminds me of when they kicked me off Facebook but more funny when I’m kicked off my own websites! The illusion of free and distributed is just that - an illusion.
I recommend boycotting Discourse and Wordpress while you still can, if you are able. Docker is also pseudo-distributed all you lazy nerds. I recommend instead LXC, sort of…. And remember, adversity breeds new growth, friends!
For all you out there who think it’s me breaking my own sites, I encourage the reader to look into my extensive tech background as a forte. It’s not just me, this is censorship.
Maybe it’s time for me to go back to good old fashioned HTML, PHP, MySQL, or perhaps even further back? StealthMachines used to run on a custom PHP for years, there was a time when radio buttons were state-of-the-art! Often imitated by boutiques and pizza shops alike. Prior, the legendary B. Cairns (a classmate) wrote me and T. Layer up a custom script (think it was based on XHTML), impossible to break in its simplicity. Nearly as impossible for my employees to make simple edits. Those were the days!
I regret changing over to Wordpress from native PHP and MySQL, having paid an awful lot of money for its clunkiness at the time, and seeing this centralized writing on the wall from the start.
Me and a contractor pioneered at the time the usage of the custom e-commerce solution which Woocommerce acquired and streamlined into its modern premium product. This contractor used to tell me not to change anything on the PHP side, guess he didn’t understand I helped pioneer the PHP / MySQL underlay, prior.
I still go into MySQL when woocommerce is annoying me. MySQL / PHP was the pep that made StealthMachines unique at the time, kept the date money rolling in I used to say. Now you throw a stick and you’ll hit a (cloned) boutique.
For all who think I should just choose a profession or topics where I don’t get censored, wouldn’t that make me a slave? Food for thought… I bend on one knee for no man.
How DOES one measure the depth of an iceberg? What is vertical integration as relates? You think this won’t affect you so you will continue ‘staying in your own lane,’ but it will. Eventually, the soft underbelly of the society becomes the only food for the MIC. The canary in the coal mine…
Folks I gloat for posterity. I tell tales which seem tall because they are true and because the truth really is stranger than fiction. I was the original OG kush and I never bothered anyone to know that I know before the war on private property began to show literally in my front yard. It’s also all that I have when everything else was taken from me - this ‘Big Fish’, the use of my mind, God willing, and all the colors of this paint by number dream to remember it all by. My life has been rich beyond my wildest expectations. I am blessed.
I want you to see something poignant in all of this. I don’t want anyone to go through what I started going through heavy circa 2013 and escalating the more so into today. I am the canary in the coal mine, and as Robert De Niro would say in ‘Awakenings’ “learn. from. me.” Please!?
It’s never too late to help your fellow man in any way you can to get the word out. The ONLY cure to censorship and these fascists is YOU working together to end this. But are you going to wait until it’s in your yard to fortify the 5th and 6th estate? Is that what being American has become? Waiting until it’s too late to speak up, your first Amendment RIGHT?
Annoyed, but not defeated, and otherwise in good spirits! God bless!
