LinkedIn is copying the contents of my clipboard on every keystroke - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/doncubed/status/1278757106468806656 <comment><USER2> An explanation from LinkedIn:

[https://twitter.com/eberger45/status/1278843576638570496](https://twitter.com/eberger45/status/1278843576638570496)

\</comment><comment> Hi @DonCubed . Appreciate you raising this. We've traced this to a code path that only does an equality check between the clipboard contents and the currently typed content in a text box. We don't store or transmit the clipboard contents.

\</comment><comment>----

An example of this is in a library we have open sourced, and you can find the fix here [[https://github.com/linkedin/Hakawai/](https://github.com/linkedin/Hakawai/) ([https://github.com/linkedin/Hakawai/pull/161/files/3881de368...](https://github.com/linkedin/Hakawai/pull/161/files/3881de3686e03920e367a508b21664d4a2985e94#diff-8dd7fa9c03c488418eef19eaa4489405)). We will follow up once the fix is live in our app.

\</comment><comment>-----

<comment><USER3> This should be higher, above all of the mobs teething for vengeance. It's an innocuous comparison of text input to the pasteboard to prevent unwanted autocorrect insertions.[0] Probably the same code used by TikTok too.

the code and and comments are here: [0] [https://github.com/linkedin/Hakawai/pull/162/commits/c3f8958...](https://github.com/linkedin/Hakawai/pull/162/commits/c3f89585c097863c2017beb2a1774df21ad42da4#diff-8dd7fa9c03c488418eef19eaa4489405L369)

<comment><USER4> Seeing the mob mentality surrounding this is honestly scary. All the top voted comments have pretty much decided that this is used for nefarious purposes, with absolutely zero evidence. Same goes for TikTok and the DDG favicon saga from yesterday. Whatever happened to Occam's (edit: Meant Hanlon's) razor?

<comment><USER5> Eh. It's like I already punched you in the face 9 times. The 10th time I'm making a punching motion, you're probably going to duck away. Even if I wasn't going to punch you, but instead giving you an ice cream.

If you're a shitty company (TikTok, LinkedIn) people are going to assume you're acting shitty when it looks like you're acting shitty.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, it's like _The Boy that Cried Wolf_ \- sure, people shouldn't jump to conclusions, but if we're shown something enough times it's easy to become conditioned to a particular expectation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> LinkedIn has a history of acting like a cretin: multiple data breaches, dark patterns where they don't fix their buggy mobile site and just put up a disclaimer "problems with the mobile site - download our app" (just so that they can harvest a wider range of data).

I managed many marketing campaigns on Linkedin over the years and spent thousands each month on the platform as a corporate user. If you think that paying for the service you'd be excluded from their shitty ads and get more granular opt-out features than under a free-subscription model - but nope.

they have literally done nothing to deserve any trust from their users. People still use it because they tell themselves "I might need it one day when I look for a job". That's also wrong - if you're doing it right you build good social connections in the real world because most (if not the only things) you get from LinkedIn is scams.

The only upside where I find LinkedIn useful is for OSINT purposes. It's very easy to find all types of people there and get a rough picture how companies are run (what their employees are working on and what security problems that might imply) and build what the recruiting industry calls talent-maps (competiter analysis) which can be useful in infosec for threat & counter- intel. But it has 0 value for any legitimate purposes (that they advertise the service for).

<comment><USER8> We were trying to recruit via LinkedIn for our startup but soon realized what a shitty business model LinkedIn has.

We had to pay around ~5,00EUR for each and every click on "Apply" to our job posting, which doesn't mean they even filled out the form.

And now, where LinkedIn is full of Indian scammers (not meant in a racist way, but it is definitely perceived that way) we had costs for a "Local Area" limited job posting for hundreds of people from India because they seem to use LinkedIn via proxy.

When we had costs of over 2800EUR for an ad that was displayed less than 8 days, where literally 100% of people were not even from Europe, we decided to fuck this shit and move on to other platforms.

LinkedIn is absolutely useless. Use University job sites, local meetups (during non COVID times, of course), or open source projects to identify devs that actually care about code.

Also, stackoverflow talents is useless. Their "special startup package" of getting access to the platform for 2500EUR is only for one user, limited per email and phone number, not allowed to login in parallel. Every job posting costs additional 400EUR even if nobody applies for it.

You get nothing, as over 90% of people we have actively talked to are not even looking for a job and never clicked that on any stackexchange platform.

I didn't realize how fucked recruiting is. Srsly, somebody needs to fix this.

<comment><USER9> > full of Indian scammers (not meant in a racist way, but it is definitely > perceived that way)

(I'm not Indian but) the non-racist way to say that is 'full of scammers', since the scammers' nationality has nothing to do with your distaste for their behaviour.

<comment><USER10> If all your scammers are from one geographical location halfway across the world, it is fine to refer to it and you shouldn't be shamed for naming it. Lest we police ourselves into ignorance.

<comment><USER11> Only if you are having a conversation where the demographics of the scammers has relevance.

In the case of discussing LinkedIn, it doesn't matter where the scammers are from. The adjective is redundant in this context.

In this thread, almost any other adjective would have allowed the main meaning of the sentence to continue uninterrupted ("filthy scammers", "frustrating scammers", "purple scammers", "fearless scammers"). "Scammers" already includes a negative connotation. By adding a redundant adjective to an already pejorative noun, you run the risk of imparting some of that negativity onto the adjective as well. This easily leads to the perception of racism.

<comment><USER10> I don't agree with that. By giving the unique location you have indicated there is a big problem that is perhaps more solvable than it would have been otherwise, since there is a limited group of people, many who are presumably organized, in a specific location. That is something much easier for LinkedIn to deal with than a generalized trend to scam the site from around the world, presumably with a much greater variety of tactics and targets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> You have to imagine the Apple engineers who implemented this new clipboard notification knew this shitstorm was coming.

<comment><USER13> I'm guessing that's part of the reason they didn't implement a clipboard permission. It would probably have broken a TON of stuff in weird ways.

I expect to see an actual clipboard permission at some point.

<comment><USER14> Maybe I'm missing something but a clipboard permission seems to be pretty useless for most apps.

When I want to login I have to paste my password, when I want to paste an email address into a Linkedin chat I need the clipboard.

So everyone would just grant that permission anyway as it makes a lot of apps useless without and they'd just continue their harvesting after that. It would be a very small percentage to selectively enable/disable the clipboard permissions for certain tasks.

<comment><USER15> The clipboard is controlled by the OS. When you 'paste' the OS sends the contents to the app. There is no need for an app to have access to the clipboard.

<comment><USER16> I'm curious - have you ever actually looked into how clipboards work across various OSes? Because programmatic clipboard access is the norm pretty much across the board.

<comment><USER17> Except on the most popular application platform available of today: the web. Imagine if every website could read your system clipboard at will.

I'm honestly amazed and horrified to learn that smartphone apps on the 2 OSs have this capability. This capability, used legitimately, can only bring a very, very slight UX improvement.

At this point, we know smartphone apps exploit any avenue they have to extract data from their users, regardless of the perceived ethicality of their vendor. The smartphone vendors more than any others know this. If there's an entity to direct the blame towards it's Apple and Google for allowing this, when fixing it on their part would be so trivial.

<comment><USER16> > Except on the most popular application platform available of today: the web.

The web is not an operating system, for goodness' sake. A browser is itself an application no different from a terminal emulator + shell (which also is capable of running arbitrary other applications within its context).

> I'm honestly amazed and horrified to learn that smartphone apps on the 2 > OSes have this capability.

Prepare to be even more "amazed" and "horrified": I am willing to bet that whatever desktop OS/distro you use does the same damn thing (providing apps with programmatic access to the clipboard or clipboards).

If you don't want other applications to access some data, for heaven's sake don't put it in what is literally a _shared buffer between applications_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've used plenty of software before that offers to do something based on clipboard contents, often when there isn't even anywhere to paste.

E.g. a phone dialer app that asks if you want to dial the number in the clipboard when you start it, an image editor that asks if I want to create a new image size the dimensions of the clipboard, a torrenting program that when I choose to import a torrent automatically grabs it from the clipboard before I even get the choice to pick another option (though I still can).

I would be very surprised if this wasn't originally part of something like that, and maybe the feature was removed but the detection function wasn't.

Because if we put down our pitchforks for a second, LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft, which _also owns a major browser and the world 's most popular operating system_. Microsoft _sure_ as hell doesn't need to sniff your clipboard in LinkedIn, if it wanted to do something for nefarious purposes.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

<comment><USER19> Negligence from a trillion dollar corporation is a form of malice. They have the money to audit their products for quality and privacy issues. Instead they choose to not give a shit unless the media calls them out (and sometimes not even then.)

<comment><USER20> I feel like many of the people that has this opinion never worked at a big company in a big code base. It's probably a poorly coded feature from an intern that was left in because it had some value but operated in a way it shouldn't. Nobody is ever going to touch it until something like this happens. Then someone will go. "Oh shit we better fix this. Tell the product manager feature x is delayed so we can fix this shit storm."

<comment><USER19> > _I feel like many of the people that has this opinion never worked at a big > company in a big code base._

Well you're wrong about that.

> _Nobody is ever going to touch it until something like this happens._

And that's the problem. A problem a company like Microsoft has the cash to avoid. They could hire more QA staff, but instead they've sacked tons.

Note that malice on the part of the corporation does not necessarily imply any individual at the corporation had malicious intent, although that can never be ruled out. Specifically, I am not claiming the intern who wrote the shitty code and forgot about it had malicious intent. Rather the _organization itself_ is malicious, because it's a paperclip maximizer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is apparently coming from an open-sourced component called Hakawai.

Somebody had to scramble to remove the clipboard code ASAP: [https://github.com/linkedin/Hakawai/commit/fa7e8497040f5c36e...](https://github.com/linkedin/Hakawai/commit/fa7e8497040f5c36e0fc0a5879acc00f13f902ed)

Edit: Don't do mobile, but seems like it was a hack to distinguish between text that was pasted and text added by autocorrect

<comment><USER22> As I understand, it is closed-source code causing the problem described. Erran Berger linked to that Hakawai commit as an example of a different, open-source project under the LinkedIn umbrella that has the same problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Guess I'm never copying and pasting anything sensitive on my phone ever again. Still don't understand why clipboard-sniffing isn't behind a permissions flag.

<comment><USER24> Well, once upon a time you trusted the code running on your device.

In Chrome on Android, the flag you want is under _Settings | Site Settings | Clipboard | Ask before allowing sites to read text and images from the clipboard_ , and I think it's on by default.

<comment><USER23> iOS very early-on took on a model of not trusting the software you install on it, and for good reason. Android and the web followed soon afterward. This is the expectation today. Doubly so given Apple's chest-beating about privacy. This clipboard scandal is unacceptable.

<comment><USER25> Which is the whole point behind giving a notification about it. Clipboard use is so core and fundamental, literally every app with any kind of entry box would need to ask ahead or you'd hit that so randomly all the time nobody would pay any attention to the warning.

The current feature being added allows _this_ to happen, for awareness to be raised.

To be honest, I'm surprised we haven't heard of more snoopy apps already, but, I guess that will come when the feature's out of beta.

<comment><USER26> Apps wouldn't have to ask ahead for a text entry box.... you just have to only grant paste read access when a user explicitly chooses to paste by hitting a button.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> LinkedIn has had so many privacy disasters over the years, and it's kinda crazy how we kinda tend to forget most of that eventually. I definitely wouldn't trust them with much of your data.

</comment><comment><USER28> Very not cool. I am a medium LinkedIn user, but now it is going to be limited strictly to a PC browser, where I have some control. I just uninstalled it from my cell. I got caught in the siren song of convenience.

Now how many other apps do this.

<comment><USER29> If someone steals your wallet, my advice is don't let them drive you to the airport.

<comment><USER28> I hear you, but I do get some value from LinkedIn ( few prospects, interviews and so on ). In my little corner of the world, it has become defacto online resume. I stand by my initial reaction. I am not sure I am ready to drop it altogether.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> My hunch is these things are more boneheaded than nefarious. Probably looking for URLs to share or something silly like that and just implemented poorly. Obviously not good for the PR, but say sorry and fix the bug. Luckily this shouldn't happen much longer once iOS 14 is properly released.

<comment><USER31> A few years ago, linkedin purposefully changed their notification emails to have less information so you're forced to log in and read the notification on their platform. Linkedin is also widely known for when they scraped users contacts and then spammed them.

Call it incompetence if you want, but there's a certain flavor of evil incompetence here.

<comment><USER24> Facebook (including Messenger) does it too.

There might be a thin guise of "security" (i.e. email isn't a secure place to send your top-secret inbound message) but I'm inclined to suspect the main motivation is to drive people back to the platform and drive up their stickiness metrics.

It's user-hostile.

<comment><USER32> It is not just Facebook and LinkedIn. I've seen this from random small sites.

Some other silly shit that come to mind - having the unsubscribe link after half/full page of white space, once you click on unsubscribe "give us 24 to 48 hours to remove your email" etc. Really? they need 24 hours to delete (or change a flag) in the database?

<comment><USER33> Sometimes it's some freaky ETL script that runs daily to put your address in a marketing message integration system. Not that it's a great excuse, just usually more than a single flag update.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> One little weird trick I found is to use the browser for websites.

All the limitations I found on web pages that asks me to download the app are artificial. What is reddit doing that requires an app? What is facebook doing that requires an app? There is even less reasons now to use the YouTube app.

<comment><USER35> can't use reddit enhancement suite on mobile browser. however linkedin, amazon, twitter, etc all work well enough on mobile browser.

<comment><USER36> Can't speak for others, but LinkedIn's web is annoyingly slow on mobile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I thought I was safe if I blocked all of the permissions these apps "require" like Contacts on Android.

I'm uninstalling this app from my phone now. This isn't acceptable!

</comment><comment><USER38> The TikTok edition:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23634138](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23634138)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23691190](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23691190)

</comment><comment><USER39> Ever copy and paste sensitive data on your laptop? Clear that clipboard before using your iPhone.

Apple's Universal Clipboard may share your clipboard across devices.

<comment><USER23> You can disable it by turning off "Handoff" in your iOS settings

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> One of my hobbies is looking at url strings with GET key/value pairs. Programmers must forget that they're visible to users. LinkedIn has a search workflow that shows "origin=TYPEAHEAD_ESCAPE_HATCH" which I've always found humorous.

<comment><USER41> > Programmers must forget that they're visible to users.

GET parameters aren't usually visible to users; with the deemphasis of the URL bar, you'd have to have an incredibly short URL for that to even be a possbility. Right now I'm looking at

        https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=23717577&goto=item%3Fi .......

That's one visible parameter. There's PLENTY OF SPACE for firefox to show the rest of the URL, but it won't; instead, a bunch of icons are unhelpfully crammed into the same horizontal layout.

In the larger sense, where users can see the parameters if they intentionally look for them, despite the fact that they are normally invisible, POST parameters are just as visible.

<comment><USER42> > That's one visible parameter. There's PLENTY OF SPACE for firefox to show > the rest of the URL, but it won't; instead, a bunch of icons are unhelpfully > crammed into the same horizontal layout.

Right click on the "crammed" icon area, pick "customize", and then you can drag and drop the icons crammed into the space into another bar (or out of the UI entirely if they are icons for things you never use), which should then recover much of the lost space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Discord throws the warning every time you tap on the text box. [https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/hfcvbu/is_disco...](https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/hfcvbu/is_discord_ios_spying_on_your_clipboard/fvxc74s/) fixed with a single line change. They were trying to determine if the paste button should show up or not.

I am curious what LinkedIn is actually doing with the data. Is it being exfilled somehow? Or is it just doing something in a really dumb way? I don't trust them at all to not be taking the data, but what purpose does it have?

</comment><comment><USER44> This is precisely how Chinese authorities track down activists using apps without Location data, it was disclosured few weeks ago.

They patiently read user's clipboard data and wait for a picture taken and copied to clipboard, then extract its EXIF geoloc tags and send the coordinates to the police.

<comment><USER45> Mind linking to a news source for this? Curious to read more about it.

<comment><USER44> I tried but it was lost in my twitter feed.

Damn those non-chronological timelines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> hypothesis: "technology" is largely data collection platforms with thin veneers on top (social networking, dating, food delivery, etc)

if you agree with that premise, then it's no surprise that every possible source of data that can be collected upon, will be collected upon.

<comment><USER47> That's a near restatement of Zuboff's Third Law:

 _Every digital application that can be used for surveillance and control will be used for surveillance and control, irrespective of its originating intention._

Coined in the early 1980s, in _The Age of the Smart Machine_.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshana_Zuboff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshana_Zuboff)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Has anyone replicated the issue described by the Twitter user? It's probably important to verify these kinds of claims before they get upvoted. This looks and feels like disinformation.

<comment><USER7> why? that is nonsense. they have a history of dark patterns and and are ignorant despite 2 data breaches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> LinkedIn is actually copying the clipboard while that user types in a _different_ app.

[https://twitter.com/DonCubed/status/1278757201310388225](https://twitter.com/DonCubed/status/1278757201310388225)

<comment><USER50> No, that is the LinkedIn app. It's the messaging dialog (you can see their custom "send" button at the lower right corner).

<comment><USER49> I might have linked the wrong tweet, but the user says "Here is LinkedIn copying and pasting from my notes app "Bear""

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Wasn't the same thing reported just 2 days ago about TikTok?

And people immediately jumped to the conclusion that TikTok is some evil company, controlled by the evil China government?

But yet, here, people are giving the benefit of the doubt, that LinkedIn just made some boneheaded decision without thinking things through.

<comment><USER52> I am sure it is true that _some_ people think TikTok is evil, and _some_ people are hesitant to assume the worst about LinkedIn.

On a close reading, I don't think you have actually asserted that any person is biased or inconsistent...despite your tone that the climate is biased.

What are you really saying?

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Microsoft Teams does this in the chat box for every keystroke. It says "Pasting from device" on each press. I filed a RADAR with Apple before the TikTok report but now I feel stupid.

Apple is doing the right thing. These other companies appear to have the issue.

</comment><comment><USER54> Does this recurring problem suggest a missing API?

<comment><USER55> Make clipboard behave like a channel[+], like GNOME native apps do, additionally require a standard paste command to paste, then this clipboard attack will be impossible to conduct.

[+]:A sample pipe might be a good analogy for this behaviour. You cut or copy the input, send through the sample pipe, and the receiving end unpacks, receiving itself makes the sample disappear for further use. Multiple samples could be sent through the pipe, though the pipe should behave in a LIFO, no sample adding allowed after removal starts, manner if this is desired.

<comment><USER16> GNOME is based on X11, which _very_ much grants programmatic access to the clipboard to pretty much any application that asks.

Seriously, has anyone complaining about this actually paid any attention to how clipboards work on their OSes before this?

<comment><USER55> > to how clipboards work on their OSes before this?

GNOME has a Wayland implementation too, and what I said only applies to GNOME native apps.

<comment><USER16> GtkClipboard, like many, many other clipboard implementations, provides programmatic access to applications[0].

I am thus very curious indeed about how a "GNOME native" app differs in this context.

0\. [https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk3-Clipboards.html](https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk3-Clipboards.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> The potential of this sort of malicious behaviour always makes me nervous when I have to copy a password from password managers (generally I'll rely on Autofill, but when Autofill fails I have to copy my 128+ character passwords).

</comment><comment><USER29> Illegal _and_ immoral. How can anyone trust these people with personal data and access to your devices?

We have allowed empires to be built on scummy business practices that are fundamentally user hostile. We are under no obligation to maintain them.

<comment><USER57> The worst is the implicit social shame when you tell people you would prefer to use something like signal or telegram to mitigate risk.

This shit is on literally every platform, it's inescapable, and at this point necessary to participate in society.

<comment><USER58> I've actually been reassured by how many of my more thoughtful friends have appeared on Signal (and other less well-known but more trustworthy tools) recently. Sure, lots of people are just using something like Zoom or one of the Facebook-owned privacy invaders, but I get the feeling that with so many more people relying on these tools for both personal and professional reasons because of the virus situation, awareness of the issues is at least in moving- the-needle territory now. It's not much, but it's still progress in the right direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Glad Apple added this feature, it seems to work well as it exposes these issues.

He's typing IN the LinkedIn app though, right? Can apps read the clipboard when running in the background too?

<comment><USER60> Yes they can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> When you install software from JetBrains and have the registration key on your clipboard it will autofill it into the key input field.

There are so many programs using this that it all boils down to trust.

Personally I don't trust LinkedIn so I keep away from them. But in this case they still might have a valid reason for this.

The fix: be more transparent about why the app is doing it. And the browser/OS could show a popup every time an app reads the clipboard to make the user aware of this.

<comment><USER62> The OS really shouldn't grant apps access to the clipboard until release by the user in my opinion.

<comment><USER61> Well the moment you allow access because you think the app has good intentions it can misuse it later.

Maybe the popup should not show when the user presses 'paste'. But I believe awareness is the first step.

<comment><USER62> I meant the only time an app should be able to get anything out of the clipboard is when the user specifically uses the OS feature to paste the content. I don't think apps should ever be allowed to access the clipboard on their own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Apple has it's 'rigorous' app approval process, why is this not found in there? I've gotten rejected for all kinds of stuff. But I guess they are not doing any quality checks on the apps during this approval process?

Here I've justified the $100 yearly developer fees in that they have this rigorous checks, but apparently they're not really checking the apps?

This is apple failing us, nothing else.

</comment><comment><USER64> After LinkedIn took the contents of my Contacts and uploaded it. I swore I would never install it to another mobile device again.

</comment><comment><USER65> I'm glad iOS14 is showing this but IMO it's the wrong solution. I know this is easier said than done but basically the OS should make it impossible for an app to read the clipboard unless the user chooses "PASTE". I have no idea how that would work on iOS. It can work pretty well in the browser. I'm not saying the browser is doing this well, but it is possible for the browser to be made so only a browser level paste gives the current page/iframe the contents of the clipboard so you know the user specifically wanted whatever is in the clipboard passed to that page/app.

</comment><comment><USER66> Why does a website or app even need access to the clipboard? I would maybe naively think that the OS could send the characters on the clipboard as if they were typed quickly, end of story.

<comment><USER67> You can copy-paste styled text, images, and other kinds of non-plaintext data, so it couldn't be implemented quite that simply.

<comment><USER68> I wish this wasn't a feature.

Every time I paste something in iOS Mail it will inevitably get pasted as "rich" text where I have to put extra effort to clear that formatting (paste it into a plaintext-only input field, then copy from there).

<comment><USER66> Use Command-Shift-V, but I agree that pasting as plain text should be the default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I spent some time today looking at the apps that have been reported to read clipboard data. Details here[0] and here[1].

0: [https://twitter.com/K0nserv/status/1279041484688424960](https://twitter.com/K0nserv/status/1279041484688424960)

1: [https://twitter.com/K0nserv/status/1279015057939148801](https://twitter.com/K0nserv/status/1279015057939148801)

</comment><comment><USER70> Even after all explanations and presented use-cases, I fail to understand how full reading access to a users clipboard by random third-party apps was ever considered a good idea - from apps in the background nonetheless! Only in a world were I, the device manufacturer, write all apps exclusively, maybe.

The moment I draft such a feature my head turns red from all the alarm-bells going off. I sincerely fail to follow the though process here.

</comment><comment><USER71> This is atrocious. LinkedIn isn't even in for ads.

I wonder if they are using some tracking software and that is doing this. My guess is every tracking software does it.

</comment><comment><USER72> Could they be doing this as a way to detect scrapers? I think Linkedin has always been a hot target for smart sales tools to scrape for information.

</comment><comment><USER73> Considering the abysmal performance of the LinkedIn website and the fact that sometImes it seems to get stuck in some race condition, causing 100% CPU load, my guess is, that they do a lot of other shenanigans, not only every keystroke, but every millisecond. That, or I guess they are farming bitcoins on my machine sometimes. Not sure which one it is.

I try to visit it as little as possible.

</comment><comment><USER74> Could this be a bot detection feature? If a user types something instantly or pastes a whole comment, good chance it's a bot.

</comment><comment><USER75> I'm going to stop referring to these apps as copying the clipboard, and use the proper and accurate terminology: 'keylogger'

</comment><comment><USER76> I deleted linked in. I wish i still had the 'connections' and their kind words about my work. Beyond that it hs mever done anything for me. Well with the exception of fooling me into trying to use it and it never being useful

Looking forward to msft/linkedin employess minusing me into oblivion haha

<comment><USER77> I deleted it years ago but then had to reactivate it because job searching was proving difficult without those contacts. Soon as I've got enough "real"* Go mileage under my belt, I'll delete it again.

* Remember kids, experience only counts if you've done it for realsies at a job, never mind how long you've actually done it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Does anyone know if there's a firefox extension to show when a site reads your clipboard?

</comment><comment><USER79> LinkedIn is a website. It works just fine as a website. Why would anyone install it as an app?

</comment><comment><USER80> It's interesting that GNU/Linux apps don't seem to have this problem even though there's limited rather than total curation.

It's almost like letting the community maintain and control the software results in better user experience.

<comment><USER16> They do have this _problem_, if you're at all aware of how X11 works.

In fact, Linux literally does not have a built-in system clipboard.

<comment><USER80> Not this problem. The apps can access the clipboard but almost none of the ones you'll find in Debian repos are exfiltrating data to a cooperation that way.

These apps have access to everything and don't abuse that access.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Can Unix pipes be implemented using a clipboard? Are there any apps that explore this? Every app is so self contained on mobile that they all become useless for all but the most trivial or planned for task.

</comment><comment><USER82> This is strange given how sanctimonious Weiner was about caring for people. Maybe the focus on data theft and advertising of why they haven't improved the product in a decade.

</comment><comment><USER83> So... I can just create an app and take all your private data?

<comment><USER60> Not all; unfortunately you can't access previously stored data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Why do all these social sites do things like this? They know that someone is going to find out eventually. I guess they just don't care if they get caught.

</comment><comment><USER85> What does the venn diagram look like for [set of people who are crying about LinkedIn app] & [set of people glad about the GitHub acquisition] ???

</comment><comment><USER86> When I learnt Tik Tok was doing this I immediately said to myself that LinkedIn is 1000% doing this too. They are awfully sneaky

</comment><comment><USER87> Wait, is it possible to read the clipboard without an explicit paste action by the user?

Sounds like the OS is the root problem here.

</comment><comment><USER88> Anyone know if the data is going directly to their servers or the reason they're doing this on every keystroke?

</comment><comment><USER89> how important is it to have LinkedIn? as somebody just starting their career, I've never really been told to have it but it's as if it's sort of assumed. in general I don't have other social media, and if LinkedIn isn't that important then I'd rather not have it, too.

<comment><USER90> It's nice to have as a resume page. You don't need to use the mobile app or connect with anyone to use it like that.

As a hiring manager it makes looking at work history easier. I can click through to companies I don't recognize to learn more about them. Not having a LinkedIn profile wouldn't be a negative for me, it just makes my life easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> I always feared sites would do things like this so I clear the clipboard/fill it with garbage after usage

</comment><comment><USER92> How to discover this kind of activity? Any insight on the technical tools for this discovery?

</comment><comment><USER19> LinkedIn is a subsidiary of Microsoft. I know the title of this post is an excerpt from a tweet, not a headline, but I think it's generally appropriate to call out the parent company in cases like this. For instance: _" Microsoft's LinkedIn app is copying the contents of my clipboard on every keystroke."_

</comment><comment><USER93> And linkedin is probably installed on a hell of a lot of corporate phones...

</comment><comment><USER94> How's your long July 4th weekend going, linkedin/microsoft?

</comment><comment><USER95> Deliberate problem. Any JS can do it. Fix the browser.

</comment><comment><USER96> why are you surprised ? Did you pay for the service in the first place ? Then everything you do in their site is valuable. You are the product

</comment><comment><USER97> Let's just get this one banned from web apis already.

</comment><comment><USER98> Apple, make clipboard access a permission already.

</comment><comment><USER55> TikTok first, then LinkedIn, then what?

<comment><USER99> I imagine many companies are doing this, only a small number have been caught. Some of them might yank the code before they get caught.

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> Could it be the apple clipboard.

</comment><comment><USER101> If you're a multi-billion dollar company with a "government relations" team, it is better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

If you're a random internet weirdo who uses a public interface in an unexpected way, you face decades in prison. [1]

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704312104575299...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704312104575299111189853840)

<comment><USER102> I'm not going to create an account with the WSJ just to read that article, but from the opening paragraph I don't see how it support your claim. It appears to be talking about something AT&T did?

<comment><USER103> If you cannot access the WSJ article, the random internet weirdo has a Wikipedia page that touches on some of it: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER104> Every day I read about another outrage being committed by another garbage app that I do not have and would never install on my phone. Why do people need a LinkedIn app? Even if you think that you need LinkedIn, can't you access your please-spam-me account through your browser? Isn't it obvious that every closed-source mystery program that you install increases your attack surface? You wouldn't click on an email attachment from a stranger in Russia, so why install an executable from a company that you already know is unethical?

<comment><USER105> Perhaps not relevant to LinkedIn specifically, but in general people install these apps because they eventually get fed up with the purposefully crippled mobile website badgering them about it. Ever tried to use Yelp or Reddit's mobile websites? Impossible.

<comment><USER106> >Ever tried to use Yelp or Reddit's mobile websites? Impossible

The other day I tried to view a subreddit in Safari. It was literally impossible, it was claimed to be only available in the app.

<comment><USER107> If you don't mind seeing the desktop interface, prepend "old" to the domain on any reddit page (i.e. change the domain to old.reddit.com) to bring up the legacy interface. Loads quick and works fine on mobile if you don't mind zooming.

That said, it's ridiculous that this is necessary.

<comment><USER108> For a super legacy experience, try i.reddit.com

[https://i.reddit.com/](https://i.reddit.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER109> Meanwhile as an indie dev I can't sleep because of GDPR... Hah, my shoulder just started ticking. :>

<comment><USER110> All new laws make it harder for indie devs and benefit the megacorps with armies of lawyers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER111> Does anyone remember when Linkedin used to upload your entire phone book, no questions or permissions asked just a few years ago?

That kind of stuff is not beyond them.</comment>


The natural borders of Azure Cloud Queue scalability - <AUTHOR> http://codingsoul.de/2016/01/25/the-natural-borders-of-cloud-queue-scalability/ <comment><USER2> TL;DR; Azure Queues (and any other component of Azure Storage) have 20000ops/sec limit per storage account. Those guys used a single storage account for all queues. They increased load a bit, and hit this limit. Azure throttled them every now and then to a complete stop.

Solution was to have multiple queues in multiple storage accounts.

IMHO, important information to keep in mind when building horizontally scalable service. Every message channel/storage should be ready to be sharded in some way.</comment>


UN Committee Approves Text Titled 'Right to Privacy in the Digital Age' - <AUTHOR> https://www.un.org/News/Press/docs//2013/gashc4094.doc.htm <comment><USER3> In other news, the 4th amendment doesn't cover internet communications because "there's no social consensus on an expectation of privacy" there.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6803409](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6803409)

<comment><USER4> Good job taking my post out of context. That post was in a sub thread about a broad general right to privacy. Not just narrow protections of electronic communications, but all sorts of tracking that doesn't qualify as a search or seizure. No such right exists. The Constitution doesn't even say the word privacy, nor did the framers write about it in the federalist papers or contemporaneous writings.

My post was about what it would take for the Supreme Court to conjure such a broad right to privacy out of thin air. What it would take is a broad social consensus that such a right should exist. My point was that the tech community is undermining the establishment of that consensus by conditioning people to see online communications as a commercial transaction that can be data mined for advertising and tracking.

<comment><USER3> What specifically did I misrepresent? Can you fit it into this format:

SilasX's post suggested this about rayiner's post: [ ]

But, upon reading the full context of rayiner's post, that would be a misrepresentation because: [ ]

As it stands, all I get out of your comment is, "Hey, you took my post out of context. [Reiterate the post]."

Please tell me it's something more than "you made my argument seem bad".

<comment><USER4> Your post makes it seem like my post is about Internet communications. But that sub thread was about a general right to privacy, which is a broader concept. You can shoehorn some elements of Internet privacy into the existing 4th amendment framework. Straightforward analogies to wire taps will get you a long way. But there is a lot of surveillance that doesn't fit the mold of existing 4th amendment protections, particularly those based on tracking using third party or even public information. My post was about what it would take for the Supreme Court to find a general right of privacy that could encompass things that aren't obviously searches or seizures.

Obviously finding a broad right of privacy would take an act of legislating from the bench much larger than simply extending existing wire tap protections to Skype calls. Your post implies that I think a broad social consensus is necessary for the latter.

<comment><USER3> >Your post makes it seem like my post is about Internet communications.

So? It was, in part. If you're going to say someone is "misrepresenting" you simply on the basis that you talked about more than that one thing, then no one has every been correctly represented in the history of humanity.

Please stop crying wolf, and apologize for your baseless accusation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Canada, Israel, United Kingdom, United States voted against the motion. Interesting.

<comment><USER6> Not much surprising, though. The US and their minions.

Full stat for a bigger picture: 148 in favor, 4 against, 27 abstained. It's like 4 against the world.

<comment><USER7> The U.S. delegation did get the right to privacy text watered down (and argued that there is no internationally recognized human right to privacy!), but the text still expresses serious concerns over mass surveillance.

The 148-4 vote is not on the right to privacy, but on a different text about the "right to development". The U.S. delegation actually voted in favor of the right-to-privacy text.

If you search this transcript for "The Committee then", you can see that they had many different work items considered at this meeting, not just the privacy item.

<comment><USER8> > and argued that there is no internationally recognized human right to > privacy!

Maybe there isn't, but maybe there should be..

[http://en.necessaryandproportionate.org/text](http://en.necessaryandproportionate.org/text)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does UN have any power at all? When was the last time they said something that resulted in a change somewhere?

Related: Greece: "Troika bailout conditions are undermining human rights," warns UN expert on debt and human rights - [http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?Ne...](http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=13281&LangID=E)

<comment><USER10> The UN really has as much power as we give it, in situations like this. It comes down to your contempt or otherwise for global consensus opinion.

But, if we're justifying the UN, as seems to be necessary by this thread, the UNHCR and the WHO make huge differences, these are the organizations which have been coordinating help for refugees in Syria, and efforts to completely eradicate Polio, for instance. The Security Council is the major means for forcing Russia, China and the West to come to a shared position on Syria, which has led to the decommissioning of chemical weapons. It's also instrumental to avoiding war in Iran - the non-proliferation treaty provides a framework for negotiations, and the IAEA does the actual inspections - <USER2> failure to reach consensus in the Council was a major reason why the war in Iraq went so badly.

It's a bit tiring hearing the old John Bolton-esque bullshit about the UN; it's a vital international institution, even if just for diplomacy and discussion.

<comment><USER11> It's not that the UN as a whole is a bad thing. Its the perfect place for countries to sit and talk. And they do tons for the world. But the view that it is some sort of superior body that governs all the countries is rather... naive. Even the security council for that matter, has had a terrible record track. And i need not remind the absurdity of the veto rule...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As far as I can figure out, the actual resolution is:

[http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/C.3/68/L.4...](http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/C.3/68/L.45/Rev.1)

</comment><comment><USER13> Most of the problems arise from the existence of asymmetric information. Consider how a blackmailer's power evaporates when the information they possess is made public. I think the simplest and most likely outcome is that all of the collected data will be made public.

While it would be nice to maintain the illusion of privacy, it is only that, an illusion.

<comment><USER14> _Consider how a blackmailer 's power evaporates when the information they possess is made public._

The blackmailer's power to exploit the victim evaporates, but the victim's situation may still deteriorate. For example, you discover that I am a former stripper, but nowadays I teach elementary school. You contact me and threaten me with exposure. I turn the matter over to the police. Through police carelessness or some other unrelated cause,t he information becomes public anyway. Your abaility to exort money in return for silence is gone, but I get kicked out of my teaching job anyway and can't find another one, so I lose several years of my economic life, and possibly social standing etc.

A common problem with blackmail/privacy hypotheticals is an ambiguity over the moral culpability of the secret information. I personally don't think being a former stripper is a moral impediment to teaching elementary school but )a many disagree and b) I can think of many other things that I would consider a moral impediment but not one that I could necessarily justify on objective grounds.

<comment><USER13> Right. I needed to define "problems." Problems at the level of society. If everyone has access to everyone else's behavior on the internet, society would change, yes, but I do not really believe the possibility of 'change' to be a problem itself.

Considering your former stripper example: \- If they would be kicked out of the job, is the former stripper not defrauding the school and the parent in this example? Privacy in this case is helping the former stripper deceive the (possibly overprotective) parent. Is reducing the incidence of fraud a problem? \- people having false beliefs and biases that are shattered by new information (possibly harmful by causing them emotional distress?) is not a reason to prevent the discovery of that new information. Generally, I don't think it is a problem if the reality of the world causes trauma in the form of preventing foolish ideas from continuing. I imagine Ted Haggard's outing was very emotionally traumatic for his parishioners. \- Relative social morals would obviously change. Almost everyone has done something society deems weird on the internet. Social norms around pornography, for example, will change. The moment this happens, the parent would likely realize, everyone has done something possibly deemed objectionable in their past. Further, the parent would have better information about how the former stripper is currently behaving - the best way for them to make decisions about their child now.

<comment><USER14> I picked that example because it's not actually illegal to be a stripped in many jurisdictions; while it's a stereotypically sleazy job, the sleaze factor arguably attaches to what strippers have to put up with as much as their activities. Thus, I'm not sure if or why parents should have an expectation of awareness about such activity in a person's past.

To be honest, I think you're overly optimistic about people's willingness to go with the flow of social permissiveness. Quite a lot of people are reactionaries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Let's define privacy first. Does privacy mean my communications are monitored by the NSA? Or does privacy mean Facebook has to display some message to people who voluntarily make their private information public?

</comment><comment><USER16> It is unfortunate that there is no UN definition of 'terrorism', since those fighting this privacy resolution would be the biggest 'terrorist states' in the world. Best to remove the meaningless 'countering terrorism' term altogether and build a world based on trust, freedom and cooperation.

</comment><comment><USER17> Yet another motion from a useless organisation.

</comment><comment><USER18> a symbolic gesture with zero teeth, exciting.

</comment><comment><USER19> I am very skeptical to anything coming from UN, they as an organization are completely deprecated. As for this shameful bunch that voted against this, it is just state of where they are and all of us in terms of freedom and civilized conduct.

<comment><USER6> > they as an organization are completely deprecated

What deprecates them is countries like the US who don't give a shit about international agreements.

<comment><USER20> There is no international agreement which requires costly action, and is adhered to; most simply require signatories to do what they would have done anyway. International agreements simply are a method of signaling at very low cost.</comment></comment></comment>


White nationalist group posing as antifa called for violence on Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/twitter-takes-down-washington-protest-disinformation-bot-behavior-n1221456 <comment><USER2> Blaming the boogy man of White Nationalists, Russia, or outside outside agitators is a way to shift blame by politicians and an easy scapegoat. Amusingly the governor of Minnesota, and a big city MN mayor blamed vandalism & lootingrioters as being the work of people who were all from out of state, thereby parroting Trump's same line (or he theirs).

They (not Trump of course) had to walk it back when it turned out not to be true.

Is there some outside groups posing as others, possibly, but to blame a majority of problems on them is just BS.

<comment><USER3> The problem is antifa has become the new boogy man for the GOP, and they've been pushing this narrative extremely hard. It's apparent they've identified their enemy, but this approach has me worried that "First they came for the antifa..." might not be far off.

I see a lot of mischaracterization of what is a category, not a group. From what I can tell antifa is anti-fascism, and somewhat characterized by people willing to take direct action.

<comment><USER4> They've already tried to paint BLM as a violent organization, so no new low surprises me.

<comment><USER5> Who do you attribute the assassinations of police officers to? I guess you could argue that they weren't "organized", but it seems about as organized as right-wing terrorism like the shooting in Charleston (a.k.a. the fascism the anti-fascism is counteracting).

<comment><USER4> I don't consider Christianity a violent organization despite the crusades and the inquisition, nor do I consider Islam a violent organization, or most other religions.

I consider an organization on their tenets, under which Black Lives Matter is completely fine.

KKK for example isn't.

Right-wing terrorism has no redeeming kernel of decency, nor does it have a productive movement behind the (few?) bad actors.

<comment><USER6> > I consider an organization on their tenets

No, you don't, or you would consider a religion that endorses literally infinite amounts of torture for anyone who disagrees with them to be violent. There's also its attitudes toward homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22), slavery (Exodus 21:7), murdering people for working on saturdays (or maybe sundays?) (Exodus 35:2), and touching pig remains (Leviticus 11:7), among others.

<comment><USER7> You're quoting the Old Testament. The "lesser laws" of which were superseded by the "higher law" instituted by Jesus.

<comment><USER6> "Slaves, obey your earthly masters" (Ephesians 6:5 and Colossians 3:22) (the easiest one to grep for, since I remember the exact phrasing). Doesn't sound very superseded to me, and Christians continued supporting _that_ right up until the South lost the Civil War (and a fair bit past that in other places) and slavery became politically impractical to defend. So it wasn't a case of a misquotation (by two different sources? really?) being corrected; it was a case of explicitly heretical values being forced on the church at (rather close to literal) gunpoint.

As someone more eloquent than me put it: Christianity had it's chance to rule the world; we call it the Dark Ages for good reason.

<comment><USER5> Read up on what the Quakers did that whole time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> looking at the videos over the past few days its pretty safe to safe it was for the most part not white supremists. the last day was questionable like those bricks in dallas but other than that. there were a lot of young black people doing stuff on their own.

<comment><USER9> In Denver it seems that the day time protestors are older and more diverse (latino-american, african-american, etc) and the night time protestors are younger and more white-american looking to start trouble, though things are changing rapidly. [0]

There are confirmed reports of agitators that have been stopped before violence occurred, thank God. [0]

Last evening, Denver's PD chief marched with protestors and mostly allowed them to walk and shout well past curfew. I've not yet seen looting reports (though that may change), and the injuries to protestors and PD seem to have been much less as of now. Compared to other nights, it was successful.

Each city is different. Lumping people together nationally is not helping anyone discover what is happening locally.

[0] [https://twitter.com/KyleClark](https://twitter.com/KyleClark) I suck at twitter, so I can't figure out how to link specific tweets here. But Kyle Clark is the head anchor for Denver's 9pm news broadcast. The tweets in his feed specify the facts much better than I can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Note that while this particular account was fake, real Antifa groups were organizing to attack those areas, according to multiple police sources. [1]

Disinformation campaigns don't mean all such activity is by political shills.

[1] [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/law- enfo...](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/law-enforcement- plays-catch-stop-violence-radical-groups-protests-n1220486)

<comment><USER11> Antifa is not a single organized group, it's anyone who is anti-fascist. So there is no 'real' antifa groups. The police don't have a very good track record releasing truthful information regarding these events, so why not chill out before drawing your own outrageous conclusions.

<comment><USER12> > So there is no 'real' antifa groups.

How do we actually know this?

Or to put it differently, how much do we know about the interconnections of such groups? I'm sure that some are just kids who like the look & dress up with their buddies (no connections). Some seem pretty organised. How do we tell the extent from outside?

I would hope there is effort put into infiltrating and studying such things. But presumably any serious FBI or whatever effort isn't going to be keen to spell out how they know what they know. (IIRC this was part of what broke up the KKK, that and anti-mask laws. Which at its height was also a mix of fairly organised & not at all, although I don't claim the same mix.)

<comment><USER13> > _How do we actually know this?_

We don't which is why it's weird the current administration is trying to declare 'antifa' a terrorist group without presenting any real evidence. If they know something we don't this would probably be a good time to tell us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Dehumanization (of any group, by any other) preceeds crimes against humanity:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehumanization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehumanization)

</comment><comment><USER15> Also, if NBC calls something misinformation with "little evidence", then it would be unsatirical to reference some primary sources itself.

"according to a Twitter spokesperson". Which spokesperson and where was this said? I don't see anything on [https://blog.twitter.com](https://blog.twitter.com). Nor could I find any primary recent references to Twitter and white nationalists or Identity Evropa except the editorials themselves.

</comment><comment><USER16> Well, AntiFa exists to engage in violence, by their own statements, so anyone "posing as" them to "call for violence" is just playing catch-up.

</comment><comment> nil-sec It is utterly ridiculous to try to blame either, far right or far left wing organizations for what is happening in the US right now. None of these groups have the power to cause that much damage. I'd be surprised if the number of antifa/black bloc people in these protest is more than a tiny fraction of people, like in any protest. Yet the discussion is shifted to these groups as an explanation for violence and this entire thread is full of people arguing about whether the Antifa is an organization. The antifa doesn't even matter. What is happening to this discourse?

<comment><USER17> If there are 1000 people at a protest and 50 start brawling with the police, that changes the entire character of the day, no matter whether 50/1000 is a small number or not.

<comment> nil-sec This is the point. There are many people at these protests. This is a heated, complex situation and at any large protest the people there are not homogeneous. The majority wants to peacefully protest, some loot, some want violence, the police is aggressive. Given that it is understood that every protest is a complicated social phenomenon, the narrative pushed by major news outlets in the US, and echoed in parts here, that somehow this is led and organised by Antifa, or the far right, is delusional. There are protests all over the US. In suburbs. How do you imagine this is working? The Antifa/Right has some chapters in every suburb of the US, just waiting to be unleashed upon the masses and this is the reason why protests turn violent? It's a gross oversimplification of the actual dynamics, it's a child's story that is easy to tell and easy to digest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Inevitable I guess, given how this violence is likely to boost support for Trump and the right. It raises the possibility that some of the people supporting, defending or excusing looting and violence on HN are secretly right-wingers. Nah, probably not, but still...

</comment><comment><USER19> antifa is a term that only serves fascists.

fascists do not call themselves that since the 40s.

calling the normal of not being fascists antifa is only enabling easier critic amd blaming of something that could not be criticized or blamed.

the term antifa only benefit fascists. who can now easily direct blame and critic to their critics, as shown in the article (which is not the first and hardly the last)</comment>


How I started BetaList - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@marckohlbrugge/248083eb0c34 <comment><USER2> As someone who went through almost the same exact process, these are my tips for getting coverage:

-Keep your email brief (three sentences, tops).

-Tell a story. Many of the stories on publications like TechCrunch are as much about the founders as they are about the startups. Look for an interesting angle related to yours and pitch it accordingly.

-Bloggers have to create several stories a week. Do as much of their job for them as you can by framing the outline of the story they will write in your pitch for coverage (related to previous point). If you started it as a side-project while in college, great, mention that. If your startup is in the same space as [hot trendy startup], great, mention that. Just make sure the whole thing is less than four sentences.

All that said- don't waste your time trying to get covered if you don't have a regular user base. Yes it is true, if you are covered it will result in an enormous spike in traffic. That spike will quickly diminish and you will be back to trying to find more users. I'm very happy for the author that BetaList turned into a profitable business, but getting covered and hatching a profitable, sustainable business because of it is the exception, not the norm.

Not to say PR isn't useful (and surprisingly easy to game), but that should come after you've grown a reliable customer base.

<comment><USER3> I totally agree with keeping the message short. Also I have read from several other sources that telling a story is key. But how are you supposed to tell a story in 4 sentences?

<comment><AUTHOR> You don't have to tell the whole story in the first email. In fact, it's often better to only tell half the story so they get curious to hear the rest.

The title of my article is a decent example: "How I tricked TechCrunch into writing my startup"

Happy to give some feedback based on your individual situation if you like. Email: marc[at]betalist.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The title should actually be "How I trick all of you into reading this story". I'm probably not alone in hoping that this story contained some slick hack.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! That will be my next article:

How I tricked Hacker News into reading about my writing about how I tricked TechCrunch into writing about my startup.

<comment><USER5> +1 Sending a journo an email is hardly an innovative trick. All online journalists have a minimum number of articles they have to publish per day mandated to them, so are quite happy to receive unsolicited suggestions to meet their quotas.

<comment><AUTHOR> The 'trick' wasn't so much in emailing TechCrunch, as it was creating a separate website altogether (BetaList) and emailing them about that instead. And then leveraging the publicity that platform is getting through TechCrunch to get publicity for the startup (Openmargin) I was trying to promote in the first place.

<comment><USER4> Ah! I think this gets lost somewhere in the telling of the story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was honestly out to thrash you guys in the comments when i read the title. But the article indeed turned out interesting. I guess this is what people have now termed "growth hacking"!

<comment><USER2> And don't forget, while it is unethical to intentionally deceive a reporter, a large part of a journalist's job is to vet sources and do some research to make sure claims are true.

In reality, blogs make their money on advertising so if they publish downright fabrications or knowingly stretch the truth, they do not care as long as they are getting clicks.

In other words, don't feel bad for the blogs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure if you're saying this was unethical, but what I emailed them was 100% true. It's just that I disclosed only one reason for starting BetaList (wanting a platform like that) and not the other one (wanting to leverage TechCrunch's article to also promote my own startup). Whether that's deceit depends on whether you consider the other reason being relevant to TechCrunch. As far as they were concerned they wrote about a cool platform that was interesting to their audience.

It would be different of course if I swapped out the sites at the last minute, lied to them about how long I've been working on it, etc, etc, but that wasn't the case.

Again, not sure if you were saying you thought it was unethical, just trying to clarify.

<comment><USER2> Certainly not. I don't think there's anything unethical about what you described.

What I wrote was in response to the notion that he would be angered had you actually "tricked" TechCrunch into writing about you. They, after all, are the one's publishing the story so if they print information that is untrue that they didn't bother vetting, that's their fault, not anybody else's.

If I send a bogus tip to the Washington Post and they immediately run a story on it without question, that's incredibly irresponsible on their part and the fault lies with them. That may seem like an unlikely scenario, but the same thing happens on a daily basis on blogs and slightly lesser-known news outlets with readership in the millions.

<comment><AUTHOR> 100% agree. Thanks for clarifying.

(In this case there was not much to vet for TechCrunch of course as they could see what I described exist)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This was actually an enjoyable read. The best part for me was making good on the promise they made with BetaList, having successfully featured Pinterest, Mailbox, IFTTT, and so on.

<comment><USER8> Love the hacks that turn into something useful. I know it may have been a 'trick' or whatever, but this is an example that proves that "scratch your own itch" to build a great product. He could've used BetaList for his own startup, so he built it.

That it was built quickly, using Tumblr, and then evolved is just being fast on your feet and doing good work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's a great IFTTT trigger that takes betali.st startups and adds them into an email[1]. I have it directed to a folder in my mail which I go through once in a while to find good products I like.

[1]: [https://ifttt.com/myrecipes/personal/678098](https://ifttt.com/myrecipes/personal/678098)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! Thanks for sharing.

Keep in mind we publish about 4-5 startups a day, so if it's too much we also offer an 'official' newsletter which you'll receive either daily or weekly depending on your preferences. [http://betalist.com/newsletter](http://betalist.com/newsletter)

<comment><USER9> I prefer the individual emails for each startup so I can read the startup name and first line of each description quickly. This is what my email folder looks like right now[1].

It quickly builds up to 100+ emails if you don't check it every second day.

[1]: [http://i.imgur.com/oUNaFSO.png](http://i.imgur.com/oUNaFSO.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh wow, thanks for sharing. That's great feedback. I didn't consider that approach.

Would it be helpful if we provided a daily or weekly email that showed the startups like that? Name + pitch.

<comment><USER9> Glad I could help! That kind of option would be nice. Someone in this thread mentions that short pitches are easier to consume.

Since there are many startup posts everyday, it's hard to go through all of them in detail, so I have to pick out the best one from all to discover at the end of the day.

Maybe there's a way to build up on this concept? Looking forward to seeing what comes out, good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So in order to "trick" techcruch into writing about your website, you made a more interesting website that techcrunch would write about which would in turn, help you gain enough leverage for them to write about your other website.

This is like writing a guide on how to obtain 1 million dollars and the first step being to obtain 5 million dollars.

<comment><USER11> "How do you make a small fortune in the airline industry?"

"Start with a large fortune..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> He didn't trick them. He stilled emailed them.

That headline makes no sense.

<comment><AUTHOR> My goal was to get publicity for Openmargin. I created a quick site called BetaList, emailed them about it, and as an end result got publicity for Openmargin. That was the trick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Thank you for taking the time to write this inspiring post!

<comment><AUTHOR> You're welcome!

Of course part of why I wrote it was to create additional publicity for BetaList and myself, but IMO one of the best marketing strategies is to inspire others with your own stories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> linkBait spammy spam spam. Bah.</comment>


A Lawyer/Photographer Just Deleted All Her Pinterest Boards Out Of Fear - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fg%2Fa%2F2012%2F02%2F29%2Fbusinessinsiderpinterest-copyright-.DTL

<comment><USER2> If you talk about _any_ activity you undertake daily on or offline seriously with a lawyer, you will become so scared you'll want to stop doing it. Even the legal ramifications of walking your dog will make your head spin.

<comment><USER3> No, you won't. I say this as a lawyer: if you're scared of doing something because of the legal "ramifications", then you clearly did not understand what you were told, or you're thinking of doing some really serious stuff.

The lawer in the linked post has an incomplete understanding of copyright law, especially in regards to the fair use doctrine and the DMCA, and indemnity as it is practiced in most of this country.

<comment><USER2> Not all lawyers are good lawyers. Not all clients are good clients. A lawyer's job is to help the client understand the risks of his actions. The client's job is to decided if the risks are outweighed by the potential rewards. In practice, these roles are often very much confused. What should have been a mere threat assessment becomes strong advice on a course of action. The lawyer overstates the risk in a CYA type way, the client interprets this as a "should do" and everyone feels that the safest thing to do is just to lock themselves in padded rooms. (except for paying the $250/hour legal bill; That's always safe).

<comment><USER4> Though it looks like lawyers are the only ones profiting from it, also blame the sue-happy culture in the US, and the lawmakers for making that possible.

And due to the chilling effects, only criminals and crazy people even dare to do anything anymore. Others listen to the advice to "be afraid" and sit cowering in their homes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I disagree with her interpretation on fair use. Adding something to your favorites is "commenting on it"; inclusion is an implicit comment along the lines of "I like this."

A court would have to decide if that's good enough. In the mean time, ignore obscure laws and enjoy your life. The worst case is that you'll get a nastygram. The best case is that you'll be able to make other people's lives more enjoyable by curating a list of good work.

<comment><USER6> I don't think your position would be very compelling in court. By analogy you could argue that adding a movie to your hard drive is 'commenting on it' because its inclusion represents an implicit comment of liking it. And the courts have already ruled on that. Basically I find it hard to believe that you will get away with copying something by arguing you like it and that's a comment. If you could anyone could copy anything.

<comment><USER7> I disagree, I think the situation you're talking about sounds like the classical napster/kazaa/bitorrent kid with a ton of songs on their hard drive who is ripe for legal action, whereas the pinterest situation -- even in a worst-case martial-law scenario -- is more like you've streamed a movie to your hard drive from Youku or something like that.

The end user, when they don't have anything sitting in their house, is much less liable to be prosecuted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Kirsten likens Pinterest to Napster as an enabler of illegal activity. It > wasn't just Napster that went down -- 12 year old girls who downloaded music > were sued too. > > She concludes: > > "My initial response is probably the > same as most of yours: 'Why [can't I pin their work]? I'm giving them credit > and it's only creating more exposure for them and I LOVE when people pin my > stuff!' But then I realized, I was unilaterally making the decision FOR that > other photographer...Bottom line is that it is not my decision to make. Not > legally and not ethically."

Is it me or these two paragraphs look way too much hyperbolic? I have the feeling that the article subtext is something like "In the next months you may hear about this thing called Pinterest. Just ignore it, it is illegal, you will get in trouble. Stick to the sites you know. How much illegal? Remember Napster? Everybody remember Napster."

<comment><USER9> Yeah, that section bothered me to.

To be blunt, I have to wonder if this 'lawyer/photographer' is not a 'concern troll' ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29#Concern_tr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29#Concern_troll))

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> That has to be the worst summary of Fair Use I've seen in a long time. It's such a short section too, it's a wonder they didn't copy-paste it verbatim like a proper reporter should:

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

<comment><USER11> It is a horrible summary of Fair Use.

Unfortunately, posting the statute itself is also a horrible, and nearly meaningless, summary of Fair Use as well. The doctrine is so case driven that you simply cannot understand the boundaries without delving deep into the chaotic and often nonsensical caselaw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> With regards to Pintrest's server fetching a copy of the original, it sounds like responsible caching to me.

If it was just a link to the original, then their server would have to take the hit to serve the image. Seems a fair thing to do to.

Imagine a photographer runs his own little site. Has a bare minimum cheapo set up, because he is not Amazon. Now, imagine one (or more) particular high res image gets really popular. Well, it wont take much for his server to get swamped and possibly knocked off line for what ever reason, maybe bandwidth limits on the cheapo set up.

I would argue (for now) that what is happening is not just fair, but responsible too.

A user uploading is no more than a manual version of what the server does.

<comment><USER13> Depends on your notion of responsible. One thing a webserver does nicely is control access. By copying somebody else's copyrighted work and republishing it, you've deprived them of control of their work. Some photographers may not mind that; some will mind quite a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article is from February 28th, and on February 29th Kirsten (the lawyer/photographer) wrote a follow up post to clarify her original post:

      To clarify something from my last post — I did NOT delete my Pinterest account.
      I merely deleted my inspiration boards that contained work pinned from around the web.
      And because many of you are asking, yes, I DO give consent for my work to be re-pinned if you are so inclined.
      I will be adding a "pin me" watermark to my work from now on.

[http://ddkportraits.com/2012/02/my-date-with-ben- silbermann-...](http://ddkportraits.com/2012/02/my-date-with-ben-silbermann- following-up-and-drying-my-tears/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't know Pinterest, but why doesn't it use the safe harbor provision of the DMCA, as, I believe, most user-uploaded content sites do? Do they think compliance with DMCA would be too costly for them? Are they a small/big company?

<comment><USER16> Also...if you run across a REALLY nasty lawyer...they may point out that the content is not ENTIRELY 'User Uploaded'.

It is 'Pin'ed...but TECHNICALLY, Pinterest is going out to get the content and putting it on their own servers. At least I thought that is how it worked. Does anyone know how pinterest is doing this? Is the content coming from the user, or a third party server that the user instructs Pinterest to reap from?

<comment><USER17> > _Is the content coming from the user, or a third party server that the user > instructs Pinterest to reap from?_ //

I actually joined up, on an old invite, in order to test this point. From a very quick look it seems that basically you can pin, repin or upload.

If you upload then you've clearly had a copy. If you pin then you see a copy of the image in your browser but served on the Pinterest site and Pinterest basically copy that image to their servers in order to present it (you've had a copy in your browser cache but I think all attempts to prosecute for that ran out of steam a decade ago). If you repin then you're looking at content that is already on the Pinterest servers and only appears from them, you can click through to find a source from whence Pinterest acquired the image.

To me this looks really bad for Pinterest. Pinterest make a local (ie on their servers) copy of an image that you pin. If you upload it then clearly you've both made copies. In some respects you direct which images they make copies of but they do the copying.

<comment><USER18> Surely the reason the browser cache argument fell down is it is a temporary cache to improve performance. How is a server side cache any different?

<comment><USER17> Browser cache is like keeping the shopping in your trolley as you go around the supermarket. "Server-side cache" is stealing the stuff from the Supermarket to sell in your own shop. If you decide to retain something from your browser cache, without acquiring a license, then you just shoplifted it.

[Before anyone says it I'm absolutely not equating copyright infringement and theft].

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As far as I understand pinning means copying from source to your own page with help of Pinterest. So if I take Flickr analogy, pinning would mean downloading a photo from user A, and uploading it to your own album.

So obviously you have to have copyright to pin something to your own page. The fact that pinning is much faster then "download/upload" is irrelevant to copyright discussion: you are still uploading stuff to your own page.

Is my understanding correct? So what is all these fuss?

</comment><comment><USER20> This panic over Pinterest is ridiculous. Why wouldn't photographers want their images shared with credit attributed to them? Isn't that the whole point, especially if they make them public in the first place?

<comment><USER21> It's a common fallacy amongst amateur photographers that professionals will be grateful for the exposure, as it will bring them more work. However, professionals themselves disagree:

[http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/news/Morel-Wins-Pre- Trial-1388....](http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/news/Morel-Wins-Pre- Trial-1388.shtml)

<comment><USER22> There is a big difference between using someone's photo without their permission in the work you are creating versus publicly bookmarking their photo.

And you can do either of those methods via deep-linking _or_ copying. Even if use A doesn't copy it's still wrong. But I don't think many people will argue that use B is wrong if it doesn't copy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I would say the act of "Pinning" an article of digital content is an act of comment. It is shorthand for "This is really interesting to me. Maybe you'll like it too?"

<comment><USER21> But Pinterest doesn't link to it - it retrieves a copy and makes it its own content.

<comment><USER17> > _I most certainly could not think of any way that I either owned those > photos or had a license, consent or release from the photographer who owned > them_ //

Strikes me that as long as you personally only "repin" content that Pinterest have already provided to you then your personal liability shouldn't come in to play.

Pinterest are providing a user-tagged image search service quite like Google's image search (in legal context at least) IMO. Where it differs really is that the user-tagging is explicit (though I assume that Google still have that tagging "game" in place) and that the images that Pinterest host are larger [full-sized?]. I see re-pinning as akin to providing a link to a Google Image search page; the service provider in both cases has initially made the image copy and the user has simply referenced that and added meta-data.

Now I do think things are a bit more fuzzy in the situation where the user causes the Pinterest service provider to acquire the image. But again it is the service provider that is retaining the copy of the creators work. Moreover if you just choose to "pin it" when you add rather than upload then you don't even locally store the images.

Where things get really interesting to me is if you use Pinterest (which I assume is a USA based service) to get content from another country. Pinterest should find that they're subject to the local laws but the user should only be subject (to my mind) to USA law and their own local laws. This could cause some major problems for Pinterest IMO.

In short, to my view it looks like the liability for any tortuous action WRT copyright lies with Pinterest and not the user excepting if the user uploads directly.

This is of course not legal advice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So a lawyer discovers _only after reading a random TOS_ that almost everything you do on the internet (social websites, email forwarding, bookmarks) is illegal? Aren't courses on copyright compulsory in US law schools?

It is discouraging to think that the average open source hacker knows more about copyright than any lawyer. This also explains why you are looked at as an alien when you talk about things like "Creative common" and why they are useful. If lawyers do not understand the perils of current copyright regime, how are we supposed to make others understand?

This kind article is a nice addition to "No copyright intended": <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3340224>

</comment><comment><USER24> This article reads like a pre-napster time machine that knows nothing of the last 10-15 years of digital copying/copyright.

I'm sure the Pinterest terms of use were simply holding the user and not the company responsible for any copyright violations. Did she really think that Pinterest has negotiated licensing for all photos on the Internet, or were willing to indemnify a user that isn't paying for a service?

<comment><USER25> Why are you so sure? Did you not read this:

 _You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold Cold Brew Labs, its officers, directors, employees and agents, harmless from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses, including, without limitation, reasonable legal and accounting fees, arising out of or in any way connected with (i) your access to or use of the Site, Application, Services or Site Content, (ii) your Member Content, or (iii) your violation of these Terms._

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> _Kirsten turned to federal copyright laws and found a section on fair use. Copyrighted work can only be used without permission when someone is criticizing it, commenting on it, reporting on it, teaching about it, or conducting research. Repinning doesn't fall under any of those categories._

1) Many people leave comments on pins, and group them under certain headings which could be considered commentary ("Favorite places," etc.)

2) Almost every software EULA has similarly scary language that places the burden of responsibility on the user.

3) Few photographers have the means to wage a legal campaign against alleged infringers.

4) Many photographers and publishers only use lo-res versions on websites

5) As others have pointed out, why would a photographer want to shut down someone who is helping to spread the word about their work?

<comment><USER27> Unfortunately, none of these reasons really holds up in my (non-professional, non-legal, non-advisory) opinion.

1) That commentary rule would hold up if someone posted entire movies and then left comments or groupings attached to them. I don't expect that to work for still pictures either.

2) That argument is null and void as a reason to continue using pinterest.

3) As long as they have sufficient funds to wage a war against _me_ , that's all that matters. I don't have many funds, and none to get into a copyright battle over my scrapbook. And if they're an agency, who knows their resource level?

4) This is your best bet; the principle is similar to the search engine vs. photographer case mentioned in the article. However, the low-res version is _still_ copyrighted by the photographer/agency. If pinterest created a lower- res version for pinterest, then this defence may work.

5) Why do some websites have 'terms and conditions' that forbid linking to them? Why do some people launch a bunch of crazy lawsuits seemingly as a hobby? All it takes is one self-absorbed or mistaken nutcase and your life becomes difficult. Sadly, 9 out of 10 nutcases are either self-absorbed or mistaken. The ratio gets even worse if, for example, the comments listed above say things like "OMG, what a talentless noob! This photograph is shit and the person that took it is a fucked-up idi0t!" And, by Gabe's Greater Internet Theory, this will happen somewhere.

I like pinterest and I love using the internet to discover new and exciting pictures. I've been following interesting picture soups, tumblrs and even Live Journals forever and I don't want pinterest to die. I don't see why this lawyer is so scared though; the DMCA should force the holder to contact pinterest at their abuse address and they should be able to remove the offending image directly, no? Isn't this whole thing a storm in a teacup and an over-reaction?

<comment><USER28> "That commentary rule would hold up if someone posted entire movies and then left comments or groupings attached to them. I don't expect that to work for still pictures either."

The fair use rules are completely different for movies, so it's not really analogous.

<comment><USER27> It's re-publishing the entire creative work by a for-profit corporation and its users. If it's not possible to infringe copyright by re-publishing the entire work in this way, then copyright means nothing.

<comment><USER22> On the one hand, yes in technical terms it is republishing. On the other hand, they could deep-link the photo.

The _intent_ is to cache the photo. Pinterest _could_ disable caching and still work.

But a standard hollywood movie is not already available online to be linked to. If you upload it you become primary hosting, not a caching layer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Everytime I see these Terms of Use I wonder, to what extent are they applicable? They can write whatever they want there, but what is enforceable? Example: "By registering to this website the user agrees to the obligation of coming everyday to mike's house and give him a foot massage"

<comment><USER30> Contract law is complicated and IANAL. In the end it's up to the judge to decide. There are numerous rules of thumb that apply to contracts, like it has to be mutally benefitial, must be a meeting of the minds, both parties must consent, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> We need some copyright reform. There are many many things that are illegal that shouldn't be.

</comment><comment><USER31> Potential solution: Take a photo of a photo and post that, then you own the posted image.

It's a principle that works with photographing celebrities- in that they don't own the copyright on your photo of them.

<comment><USER32> This is not a solution. For a short discussion on this idea: <http://photo.net/large-format-photography-forum/005ltZ>

<comment><USER31> Thanks for pointing that out. I wasn't aware of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> from the article:

Kirsten turned to federal copyright laws and found a section on fair use. Copyrighted work can only be used without permission when someone is criticizing it, _commenting on it_ , reporting on it, teaching about it, or conducting research. Repinning doesn't fall under any of those categories.

Couldn't it be argued that "pinning" something is an implicit endorsement, and constitutes 'commenting on' it? If that's not enough, couldn't they just add a comment and satisfy this? I am not a lawyer, please help?

</comment><comment><USER34> I very much doubt that a defense and indemnity clause, with no signature attached, would hold up in court to the point where a Pinterest user would actually pay to defend Pinterest.

With that said, the only real way to fight back against crazy EULAs is to stop using services that have them.

With _that_ said, pick your battles. I'm not a Pinterest user but this EULA wouldn't stop me.

</comment><comment><USER35> Solution: use a fake email address.

<comment><USER3> Counter: subpoeana Pinterest for the IP address(es) used to access its site using that email address, then subpoena the ISPs.

<comment><USER9> If they want to waste that much money to learn that I only use public wifi, more power to them.

<comment><USER36> Exactly. I wonder how many threatening letters the average Starbucks location receives per month?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tlaçolteotl Is Dead: Captain Bourke's Scatalogic Rites of All Nations (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://www.poopreport.com/Academic/Content/Gerling/gerling.html <comment><USER2> I see no mention of pig toilets.[0]

This is partly why pigs aren't kosher/halal.[1]

0) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_toilet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_toilet)

1) [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/people-ate-pork- mid...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/people-ate-pork-middle-east- until-1000-bcwhat-changed-180954614/)

<comment><USER3> Not only pigs but also plants eat shit and other decomposing matter (in the form of manure or "fertilizer"). So if pigs are unclean because of this, plants are too, and so are any animals that eat plants.

All of our drinking water comes from oceans, lakes, and rivers, where plenty of people and animals shit, pee, die, decompose, and release all sort of other bodily fluids in all the time as well. So, if one subscribes to the contagion heuristic[1], any person or animal that drinks water is unclean as well. Ironically, however, water is often used in purifying rituals and is somehow supposed to make on "clean" in the religious sense. Go figure.

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagion_heuristic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagion_heuristic)

<comment><USER4> Why do you think ancient people should have been equally concerned with pigs eating people poop, other animals eating herbivore poop, and unmeasurable quantities of poop, etc. in drinking water? Both of us know, and probably ancient Middle-Eastern people knew, that eating people poop and fertilizing plants with herbivore poop are not really comparable. Washing with homeopathically contaminated water probably _did_ make them cleaner physically, to say nothing of ceremonial cleanliness.

Maybe it isn't the "contagion heuristic", just an attempt at finding a reasonable threshold for the time. This comment seems to be mocking the dumbest possible interpretation of kosher/halal solely for the sake of sounding clever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The site is unusable on Android for me, because of an ad hijacking the page and redirecting me, spamming my phone's buzzer and popups, and trying to get me to download an APK to "clean my damaged phone". Ugh. At least it's usable if you disable JavaScript.</comment>