Dropped a Pin in my Coffee on Twitter

OR:

The Painful Sting of Spam

When I posted my Ko-Fi link to Twitter and pinned it to the top, I was very surprised by the response it got. It got a number of likes, and even a few retweets. I was very appreciative of this. Unfortunately, it also got replies in the form of spam. A self-proclaimed artist who steals most of his assets and then slaps his own name on them has a habit of posting spam links on forums on Thingiverse. He's been banned from Thingiverse at least twice by now, and had some of his models taken down on other sites for violating the Creative Commons agreements on his stolen assets. I've written about him several times and talked with many of the artists he's ripped off. I've openly mocked him, for which I make no apology, and he's done absolutely nothing to prove me wrong. 

There was retribution, however. It's extremely petty retribution, but annoying in its toxicity nonetheless. 

The way many sites handle spam is not to delete the comment so much as obfuscate it. The first time I saw this was on DeviantART, when I was dealing with an art thief and all-around bully who didn't quite understand how comments worked. What would normally have gone in a private message or even the main comment thread on my profile page went straight onto my most recent upload. I didn't want to outright delete the comment because that would leave a "comment deleted by artist" label, which looks really tacky and potentially makes it look like I'm censoring criticism rather than cleaning up spam. The matter's academic by now since DeviantART handles comments a little differently since then, and this particular individual had been banned before for similar behavior, so now those comments have their own special sort of "There Once Was a Hole Here" label. In short, he's gone and I get to save face. 

Bringing it all back to the semi-current situation (I did this circa October of last year and kind of forgot about it until today while rearranging my Wordpress page), this spammer replied to my pinned tweet about my Ko-Fi page with his own damn site. Now, you would think I could simply delete a tweet that is a reply to my own post, but Twitter isn't set up that way; every reply is a comment unto itself, so to speak. This isn't necessarily a problem, except that when it comes to spam, what I would hope should be an obvious thing to spot, Twitter likes to give the benefit of the doubt a little too much. It's funny to me how much people complain about Twitter being trigger-happy with suspending accounts and deleting tweets that are barely offensive, while I can't seem to get spam off my own pinned tweet. 

If I pin a tweet linking my own Ko-Fi page, how does a reply that's nothing more than a URL to someone else's website not qualify as spam? Better question, when he replies two or three times with the same URL to his own site, how is that not spam? Why does that report need to be queued? Harassment and bullying can have a lot of reasonable doubt to it when it isn't outright racist or life-threatening, but a URL with no context posted multiple times not only to me, but to several others virtually picked at random should be as open and shut a case as it gets. 

It may seem that the obvious solution would be to block the user in question. Sure, but blocks aren't retroactive. Yeah, my page would effectively be invisible to him, as he would also be to me, but everything he's already posted as replies to my tweets are still there, and still visible to anyone else. It's literally the same problem as reporting his replies as spam. The only difference is that the spam may eventually be dealt with, whereas if I block, the best I can hope for is he gets banned and all his tweets receive the unperson treatment. 

Sadly, it seems Twitter is holding onto a very archaic idea of what spam is. They're more than welcome to prove me wrong, but it's based on whether or not they think there's a real person behind it or simply a bot programmed by someone and left to run. I don't know if these are really a thing anymore (I haven't seen them on Twitter in years, and they only cropped up on Instagram for about a month before disappearing), but there used to be these "promotional service" accounts that would temporarily take control of your account and tweet a self-promotion on your behalf. It would seek out relevant hashtags and then add your message as a reply. For example, if you were trying to push your 3D printing services, your stock reply would show up attached to any tweet that used the hashtag "3DPrinting" or whatever. If this sounds like a bot, that's exactly what it is, but here is where things get a bit Kafkaesque. The bot works at a speed that is only about equal to a human being. That is, there's enough of a delay between posts that it could just as easily be done by someone casually browsing the hashtags and typing up the reply themselves. The idea is twofold, that this tricks any automatic algorithms searching for hummingbird levels of communication, and that it doesn't violate Twitter's terms of service anyway because it's self-throttling. 

I've heard some sects of the Amish have a similar attitude about technology, that there's nothing wrong with them using a machine to do a job, so long as it only works as well as a person or an animal. That's fine for them, but Twitter isn't trying to maintain a lifestyle consistent with a particular era of history. Spam in 1998 is no different than the spam of 2018, and every bit as irritating and unwelcome. The only difference is that I am fundamentally lord and master of my e-mail's inbox, while my social media page is a little more democratic by comparison. The former is a letter SLIPPED UNDER my door while the latter is a wheat-pasted flyer SLAPPED ON my door. 

My point is Twitter may be more aggressive with spam than I am giving them credit for, but my experience has not given me any reason to rethink my position to the contrary. When I flag something as spam, and it only hides it from my view until the report is deemed worthy of action at a later point in time (possibly never), that is not even addressing half the problem. I don't want my front door used as someone else's billboard, and the fact that I can't see it from inside my house is not peace of mind. 

Basically, I wanted to use a paint scraper, but had to get a new front door. I deleted the pinned tweet (which I hated doing), reposted it (likely to the annoyance of followers), and repinned it (effectively erasing all the likes and retweets along with the spam). Twitter, we need a better solution than this. 

Distro Fever

Thingiverse has recently been beset by some "enterprising" individuals and small groups who think spamming forums at best tangentially related to what they have to offer is a legitimate form of advertising in this day and age. Thingiverse is owned by Makerbot, in turn owned by Stratasys. It acts as a file repository for digital files created by its community for purposes of 3D printing, CNC, Laser-cutting, and many other forms of computer-aided manufacturing and rapid prototyping. There is no advertising on the site. 

Without getting into a long, drawn-out retrospective of what Linux is, one of the great aspects of Linus Torvalds' original source code is that it can be customized to whatever extent computer engineering allows. As a result of this, there are hundreds, if not thousands of individual "flavors" of Linux, with Android being the most widespread. The trouble this paradigm presents, however, is one of saturation. Operating Systems are vast technical undertakings, and barring anything simpler than a graphing calculator, they're not handled by small groups on their downtime. Debian, for example, is the culmination of thousands of hobbyists working piecemeal over many decades. The point is that while everyone starts somewhere, "humble beginnings" aren't as endearing a selling point as they once were when there were maybe a dozen computer manufacturers worldwide with virtually none of them having any interest in the consumer market. 

Okay, first big red flag. Never, ever, ever trust anyone who uses "Good day" as a greeting. I know it's more of a language barrier thing than anything else, but I've seen too many e-mail and telemarketing scams that use this slightly-broken English to ignore it. As a rule, "Good day" is a parting phrase, especially if you're Willy Wonka and/or you really want to stick it to somebody. Call it a pet peeve, but couple this with the fact this exact same message was posted in at least 8 different interest groups, and matters start looking more than a little shady, and we're only at the first line. 

What follows is a standard laundry list of claims. While many well-known Linux or other cross-platform applications such as OpenSCAD, FreeCAD, Blender, and Inkscape are as free of charge as they are easily available, certain flavors of Linux like to separate themselves from the endless cacophony by offering included bundles of programs. It's more a stamp of approval than anything meant to be convenient. By having a program preinstalled, you're showing that it's passed your various benchmarks and is guaranteed to work, whereas some Linux flavors may not play nice with others for the sake of favoring a different suite of programs. Again, there's nothing wrong with that (though some argue whether or not it violates the various open source licenses some programs are made under, but those cases are few and far between) and it's honestly very convenient, no more guesswork for one's workflow. 

Then there's this part about giving out free goods and services:

Along with the "Good Day" greeting and the faux pas that is forum spam, another red flag is unqualified promises. Something I used to see on Yahoo! Answers all the time was someone asking a fairly vague question about Risc Management or Viral Marketing or whatever, all wrapped up with the promise, "Help me out and I'll give you anything you want."

 

Yes, yes, I know they're just a phishing operation trying to get my e-mail and can't REALLY get me anything I want, but that's precisely my point. These InventOS yahoos answering the prayers of designers and makers are making the same vague, unqualified offer that a con artist does. If your product, an operating system, is still in the alpha stage as you say, are you sure you've got the resources to back up this 

Let's start with the elephant in the room concerning the economics of this claim. Yes, everybody starts somewhere, and of course you often have to spend money in order to make money, but there's a fine line between a free sample and a free ride, to say nothing of not being able to spell freeloader without free... and load. 

While the technology behind 3D printing is nothing new, with roots going back to the early 1970s, this recent wave of "Open Source Prosumerism" that started with the original Makerbot Kickstarter campaign and the explosive popularity of the Arduino microcontroller is still fairly young. We've had a lot of promising startups rise as quickly as they fall. Many a career has been made and ruined on the power of a few calculated risks. Still, a broad range of events across the board plus a little common sense have given this particular subculture of designers/inventors/makers/artisans/what-have-you a better perspective on how to market themselves. 

Your skills have a value, even if the only cost is your time. 

Offering a service of value for free drives down that value for everyone else in that profession. It's kind of ironic that the open source nature of the software you're using to make your OS (which comes prepackaged with applications other people have made) has seemingly driven you to offer physical printing services and design consultation for free. 

As of this writing, they have no responded, and I rather doubt they will. 

Actually, they're not offering everything for free (they're just asking for volunteers to help them back up their claims). I don't personally know of any Linux distribution that makes use of Patreon, but it's not necessarily a red flag. Ubuntu has a similar business model, offering its software for free but asking fees for technical support. Google doesn't offer Android as a standalone download, instead licensing it to hardware manufacturers with part of the sales helping support further developments. So, technical support and customer service has a dollar value, but a physical print of a design someone has volunteered to me is free, so long as...? 

So, is InventOS a scam? Probably not, but they sure act like it. Between the broad, sweeping claims, sketchy "marketing" efforts, too-good-to-be-true promises of free lunches, and wait-and-see attitude towards valid questions of their business model, it's certainly hard to tell their message apart from the many offers from Nigerian diplomats trapped aboard the ISS who need me to buy them 1,000 spark plugs with unsigned checks they'll mail me before getting sent off to out of state PO boxes. More likely is that they're simply inept. 

By the way, here's what their community forums look like as of today:

Just Do It... not be jerks, that is

I’ve said at some great length that I’m not a fan of the Creative Commons, at least as far as its role in the art community is concerned. In short, it’s workings are more befitting to a patent enabling software programmers and developers to interface with users/modders without the hassle of red tape. This was called Copyleft. It was later formalized by Richard Stallman when he created the GNU. This was later modified again into the Creative Commons, the primary difference being the “noncommercial” and “no derivatives” clauses as available options. 

My point is, for as much as I dislike the CC, I still acknowledge its place, I respect people’s right to use it (responsibly), and I certainly do not ignore it. 

The following story of people who blatantly ignored the CC license is somewhat old news, with the offending party’s eBay store having not only all of its listings removed, but feedback as well. Just3DPrint is three college kids who offer 3D printing services on commission. If you’re new to 3D printing, don’t worry, you don’t need to understand more than the basics to see exactly how complex this problem’s root system is. As you know, DeviantART offers you a choice of standard copyright or a handful of CC license variations when you post any of your work here. Due to the open source nature of 3D printing on both the hardware and software fronts, sites like Thingiverse and Pinshape, which host user-created CAD models, the standard copyright is not available, only CC or GNU. This may seem onerous, but we have to remember what it means to copyright a work. Copyright reserves the rights to make copies to the rightsholder (hence “all rights reserved”) but putting your file on an online repository with download options specifically meant for people to make a physical copy of your sculpture needs something a little less “reserved” than copyright. There are numerous other reasons why 3D file repositories are set up this way, but that’s the most prominent aspect to the hosting arrangement. 

There is kind of an odd, nebulous gray area to this hosting arrangement involving third-party printing services. 3DHubs is a social network wherein owners of 3D printers, be they big quasi-corporate printer farms or yahoos in their living rooms, can offer their services for a fee. So, what then does that mean for uploaders of 3D files who select the “noncommercial” clause for their CAD file? Sure, DeviantART has an on-demand print service for artwork, but there’s two important things to remember. First, it’s entirely optional regardless of what license you select. Second, you get a cut of the sale. With 3DHubs, you may not even know your file is being printed. Thingiverse uploaders can have “Print” buttons to streamline the process, but a user can still download the file to their own drive and then upload it to 3DHubs directly. With thousands of transactions daily, 3DHubs can’t watchdog every single upload to make sure a noncommercial clause is being violated. The saving grace is that 3D printing is still a fairly niche hobby, so the total amount of “monetary damages” if we’re to use an extreme example is negligible. It’s still a little odd that a transaction started on Thingiverse using their “print this” button doesn’t in some way come back to the original maker. 

I’ll step out of the journal entry to give some advice to any 3D artists or sculptors who may like the idea of people having their own version of your creation. Although 3DHubs does not compensate the creator of the original model directly, Thingiverse has recently implemented a tips jar feature allowing users to send money directly to makers. Meanwhile, Pinshape, which I would consider the superior service from a commerce standpoint, lets creators set their own price for downloads. 

I suppose the saving grace for this flaw, besides the overall small market that 3D printing is today, is that no matter the license you select, due credit must always be given. Granted, this “free publicity” doesn’t put money from a sale directly in the hands of a rightsholder, but it helps deter price gouging by letting people use any printing service they choose. The service does not own the product, so it’s in their best interest to stay competitive. 

Just3DPrint, however, not only offered prints of items carrying a noncommercial clause, but did not even acknowledge, credit, or link the original creators of the models. Thousands of models on Thingiverse were being offered through Just3DPrint’s eBay store, with none of them having attribution details. A well-known Thingiverse user by the name of Loubie helped shed light on this story when she found one of her sculptures available on eBay sans a shout-out (They later said they would correct the listings to give proper credit if politely asked). There was also a noncommercial clause to her CC license, so she did what any rightsholder would do and asked them to remove the listing. 

She was utterly snubbed and told to go fly a kite. 

Loubie reached out to the community by posting some of the correspondence and encouraging other users to check the eBay store to see if any of their models were misappropriated. The comment section of this post exploded when J3DP themselves tried to run damage control and profess their innocence. However badly you may be guessing they failed, the reality is worse.

Their reply was a 3,000+ word diatribe covering a wide variety of subjects under the IP and patent umbrella, nearly all of which was so categorically false that there was no shortage of replies pointing out basics like what a trade secret really is and how the Berne Convention works. 

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1350837/#comment-801359

If you don’t want to go through the whole manifesto, here’s a vertical slice: the original reply from J3DP to Loubie upon her asking they take down their listing of one of her sculptures per its noncommercial license, emphasis mine. 

"When you uploaded your items onto Thingiverse for mass distribution, you lost all rights to them whatsoever. They entered what is known in the legal world as "public domain".The single exception to public domain rules are "original works of art".No court in the USA has yet ruled a CAD model an original work or art.Therefore, you have no right to exclude others from utilizing the CAD models you have uploaded.Furthermore, if in the future we do get a precedent in the USA for establishing CAD models as "original works of art", we would still likely be just fine as we are not re-selling your CAD models, but rather "transformative" adaptions of them in the form of 3D printed objects.
SFEP.S. When you created these CAD files, did you really want to limit the amount of people who could enjoy them to the 0.01% of the USA with a 3D Printer? 100% of America can purchase the items from us at a reasonable cost and enjoy them-creating made in the USA jobs in the process as well. Furthermore, if you hate the idea of people profiteering from your work, you may want to take it up with Makerbot/Stratasys who only hosts Thingiverse for AD revenue, to sell more 3D printers."

The Creative Commons is not the public domain (even the CC-Zero license is merely a formality). The Creative Commons does not replace Copyright. The matter of whether or not CAD files are protected is complex, but only in terms of nomenclature. What J3DP are insisting is that instructions for something are not copyrightable, which is like saying a screenplay is public domain until the movie of it gets made (at which point only the film would be copyrighted and anyone else could still adapt the screenplay). Computer Aided Drafting is not art the same way a painting or an illustration is due to the distinction between form and function, but it is nonetheless sweat of the brow, a product of human endeavor. If you invest the time and energy into creating something, copyright and patents guarantee you protection from what legal experts call freeloading assholes. 

Stratasys themselves have a wonderfully informative post about this: http://consulting.stratasys.com/2016/02/cad-copyright-and-creative-commons-the-infringement-saga-continues/ 

Further comments from the three stooges refer to the license agreement as “a fiction” created by Thingiverse as part of their scheme to profit from its users. We are now officially in foil hat territory. The Creative Commons was not made up by hosting services for nefarious purposes. I would love to see the evidence saying otherwise, but I have a feeling they’d just bring up reptoids or Freemasons or some other garbage boogeyman organization. 

Is it even worth pointing out that Thingiverse does not have advertisements on their site? 

I’m working on a much larger dissection of the J3DP manifesto I hope to have up on my WordPress site in a few weeks. Albeit it’s old news, it’s still so monstrously hilarious in its ignorance and stupidity that until these man-babies own up to their bullshit, I don’t think enough attention can be called to it. Their eBay store may be shut down, but their main site is still up and they are still offering their services. 

Update: This Article https://technical.ly/philly/2016/02/26/just-3d-print-makerbot/ sheds a little more light on their "advisors"