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This is my "shitlist", or list of things you shouldn't like (- I like some of these things but probably shouldn't). This is a list of public figures and brands, nothing personal. If you're on this list you're probably famous enough to not have to care.
I would like to mention that the omission of a brand or figure on this list does not make them good. For instance, Donald Trump is not yet well-covered on this list because of the sheer quantity of terrible things he's done. "Good brands", in my experience, are just brands about which less is known. I am also a human and therefore biased.
Any company that currently employs me will not appear on this list, and if I am employed by a company, they'll be removed.
You're welcome to suggest additions to this list via a pull request on this website's git repository, information about this can be found on the site index. Or just email me.
There are parts of this list that contain commentary of my own (rather than contextualization), those parts are gray and have the CSS class "opinion" - in uBlock Origin the rule to remove these bits is ##.opinion.
Finally, I'm human and I make mistakes curating this list. Removed entries listed with explanations as to why they were removed.
I do this to jog my own memory, not to make money. Please redirect any donations to The Internet Archive. Without their Wayback Machine this list would be impossible to compile.
(other shitlists and shitlist-adjacent content)
Google AMP Can Go To Hell (Polemic Digital) (Archive link)
Google contractors reportedly targeted homeless people for Pixel 4 facial recognition (The Verge; Hollister, Sean) (Archive link)
Google's Play Store is giving an age-rating finger to Fleksy, a Gboard rival (TechCrunch; Lomas, Natasha) (Archive link)
Less than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click (SparkToro; Fishkin, Rand) (Archive link)
Alphabet CEO: Plan to target EU commissioner was not "sanctioned" by me (Ars Technica; Espinosa, Javier) (Archive link)
Google, Facebook Agreed to Team Up Against Possible Antitrust Action, Draft Lawsuit Says (The Wall Street Journal; Tracy, Ryan; McKinnon, John D.) (Archive link)
Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges (The Verge; Schiffer, Zoe) (Archive link)
Google says it’s the cleanest cloud, also reveals deal with Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company for new cloud region (The Register; Sharwood, Simon) (Archive link)
What's not mentioned in this headline is that these two statements came in the same announcement. Also, the mentioned oil company is acting as a sponsor to a reseller; Google isn't really selling to the company itself.
I have resigned from the Google AMP Advisory Committee (Eden, Terence) (Archive link)
New lawsuit: Why do Android phones mysteriously exchange 260MB a month with Google via cellular data when they're not even in use? (The Register; Claburn, Thomas) (Archive link)
'YouTube recommendations are toxic,' says dev who worked on the algorithm (The Next Web; Maack, Már Másson) (Archive link)
The Google Cemetery (WPKube) (Archive link)
Amazon Fire TV Update Bricks Hacked Devices (Hackaday; Osgood, Rick) (Archive link)
Once Again, GDPR Is A Potential Privacy Nightmare: Amazon Sends 1,700 Voice Recordings To The Wrong User In GDPR Request (Techdirt; Masnick, Mike) (Archive link)
Amazon: Cops Can Get Recordings From Ring, Keep Them Forever, And Share Them With Whoever They Want (Techdirt; Cushing, Tim) (Archive link)
Amazon Told Police It Has Partnered With 200 Law Enforcement Agencies (Vice; Haskins, Caroline) (Archive link)
Follow the money (Free Thought Blogs; Myers, PZ) (Archive link)
See also:
Follow the money's source How Money Flows From Amazon to Racist Troll Haven 8chan (Archive link).
Amazon Argues Users Don't Actually Own Purchased Prime Video Content (The Hollywood Reporter; Cullins, Ashley) (Archive link)
Amazon Reportedly Has Pinkerton Agents Surveil Workers Who Try To Form Unions (NPR) (Archive link)
NSA Chief Who Oversaw Sweeping Domestic Phone Surveillance Joins Amazon Board As Director (ZeroHedge; Pseudonymous ("Durden, Tyler")) (Archive link)
See: Alphabet, Inc.
See: Alphabet, Inc.
iOS, The Future Of macOS, Freedom, Security And Privacy In An Increasingly Hostile Global Environment (GitHub; Anonymous) (Archive link)
Apple apps on macOS Big Sur bypass firewall and VPN connections (Apple Terminal; Sami)
Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained (Reuters; Menn, Joseph)
Developer ID certificate revocation (Johnson, Jeff)
Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look (Jannone, Jacopo)
Falling out of Love with Apple, Part 1 (Herbert, Zach)
Falling out of Love with Apple, Part 1.5 (Herbert, Zach)
Falling out of Love with Apple, Part 2 (Herbert, Zach)
Falling out of Love with Apple, Part 3 (Herbert, Zach)
"On Big Sur, trustd is in Apple's 'ContentFilterExclusionList' ....meaning firewalls can't block it!" (Twitter; Wardle, Patrick)
Your Computer Isn't Yours (Paul, Jeffrey)
Autism Speaks to Washington - A Call for Action (Autism Speaks; Wright, Suzanne) (Original link)
This article is notable because it seems to be very ableist, especially for an association apparently made to advocate for neurodivergent peoples.
Co-Opting the Movement: Autism Speaks, John Elder Robison, and Complicity in Oppression (Autistic Hoya; Brown, Lydia X.Z.) (Archive link)
Why Autism Speaks Doesn't Speak For Me (Forbes; Willingham, Emily) (Archive link)
4 Simple Reasons I Don’t Support Autism Speaks (Autistic Mama; Kaylene) (Archive link)
The Ableist History of Autism Speaks (In the Loop about Neurodiversity; Crosman, Cassandra) (Archive link)
Bounding Into Comics - Media Bias Fact Check (Media Bias Fact Check)
How to Know You’re Not Insane (And how a Cards Against Humanity Staff Writer was fired.) (Medium; Carter, Nicolas) (Archive link)
CDPR's game Cyberpunk 2077 was pretty trans-phobic but it seems to me that a lot of outlets wrote about it just to have a story on a page and not to actually deliver information. Lots of these articles are full of fluff but their critiques are still interesting.
Cyberpunk's transphobic tweet is part of a much larger issue with game marketing (Polygon; Antonelli, William)
Cyberpunk 2077 is dad rock, not new wave (Polygon; Petit, Carolyn)
It sucks that Cyberpunk 2077's edgelord marketing worked so well (Polygon; Henley, Stacey)
Sony Pulls Cyberpunk 2077 From PlayStation Store After Public Outcry (Bloomberg; Savov, Vlad; Schreier, Jason)
"Words Like Violence": Cyberpunk 2077's Voice Options Are A Trans Nightmare Made Virtual (TheGamer; Blondeau, Bella)
"Our CEO, Brad Rukstales' participated in the recent Washington DC protests...He has been places on leave of absense while we assess further." (Twitter; @Cogensia) (Archive link)
Cogensia's CEO was part of a protest against a free election and the company did not immediately fire him.
Comcast to impose home internet data cap of 1.2TB in more than a dozen US states next year (The Verge; Lyons, Kim) (Archive link)
See: Facebook
Let's Reverse Engineer Discord (Medium; Wells, David) (Archive link)
Star Wars Novelists Seek Years of Missing Royalty Payments From Disney (The Wall Street Journal; Schwartzel, Erich) (Archive link)
Facebook Overreacts: Decides All Of The Pirate Bay Is Illegal (Techdirt; Masnick, Mike) (Archive link)
Facebook Apparently Won't Let Users Talk About Facebook's Lawsuit With Power.com (Techdirt; Masnick, Mike) (Archive link)
Facebook Blocking Stories About Richard O'Dwyer's Fight Against Extradition To The US (Techdirt; Masnick, Mike) (Archive link)
Facebook Has Added You As An Informant (OWNI.eu; Vatteble, Maxime) (Original link)
Inside Facebook's Outsourced Anti-Porn and Gore Brigade, Where 'Camel Toes' are More Offensive Than 'Crushed Heads' (Gawker; Chen, Adrian) (Original link)
Facebook Censored and Deleted March Against Monsanto Event (March Against Monsanto; Derricks, Kelly) (Original link)
Facebook censors political satire after complaint from JobCentre Plus (Pride's Purge; Pride, Tom) (Archive link)
Facebook's real name policy is a drag, and not just for the performers it outs (The Guardian; Zimmerman, Jess) (Archive link)
Facebook Page Goes Dark, Angering Russia Dissidents (The New York Times; Roth, Andrew; Herszenhorn, David) (Archive link) (Onion link)
What Happens to #Ferguson Affects Ferguson (Medium; Tufekci, Zeynep) (Archive link)
When Facebook's "Real Name" Policies Can Kill (Weinstein, Lauren)
Why Does Facebook Keep Suggesting You Friend Your Tinder Matches? (Vice; Paul, Kari) (Archive link)
Women, LGBT least safe on Facebook, despite 'real name' policy (Engadget; Blue, Violet) (Archive link)
Facebook is chipping away at privacy - and my profile has been exposed (The Guardian; Hern, Alex) (Archive link)
Facebook is using your phone's location to suggest new friends - which could be a privacy disaster (Splinter; Hill, Kashmir) (Archive link)
Facebook temporarily blocks Black Lives Matter activist after he posts racist email (The Guardian; Levin, Sam) (Archive link)
How does Facebook suggest potential friends? Not location data - not now (The Guardian; Hunt, Elle) (Archive link)
Identity crisis for Koko the Clown (Latrobe Valley Express; Darroch, Sam) (Archive link)
On Facebook, French Antiracists Fall Victim to Censorship (La Quadrature du Net) (Archive link)
Publisher's Facebook page deleted after posting criticism of Turkish government (The Guardian; Hern, Alex) (Archive link)
As Facebook blocks the names of trans users and drag queens, this burlesque performer is fighting back (The Guardian; Levin, Sam) (Archive link)
Facebook Says It Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the U.S. and Israeli Governments (The Intercept; Greenwald, Glenn) (Archive link)
Pulitzer prize winner blocked from Facebook after series of 'corruption facts' posts (Times of Malta; Borg, Jacob) (Archive link)
Facebook accused of censorship after hundreds of US political pages purged (The Guardian; Tynan, Dan) (Archive link)
Facebook removed post by ex-manager who said site 'failed' black people (The Guardiam; Levin, Sam) (Archive link)
Instagram submits to Russia censor's demands (BBC) (Archive link)
Facebook's Ad Algorithm Is a Race and Gender Stereotyping Machine, New Study Suggests (The Intercept; Biddle, Sam) (Archive link)
Facebook allowed violent posts by man charged with Ilhan Omar death threat (The Guardian; Swaine, Jon) (Archive link)
Facebook is secretly using your iPhone's camera as you scroll your feed (The Next Web; Mihov, Dimitar) (Archive link)
Facebook's recent logo drama is a problem on multiple levels (Fast Company; Wilson, Mark) (Archive link)
Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras (Bloomberg; Burnson, Robert) (Archive link)
Facebook declines to take action against Trump statements (The Guardian; Wong, Julia) (Archive link)
Facebook Says It's Standing Up Against Apple For Small Businesses. Some Of Its Employees Don't Believe It. (BuzzFeed News; Silverman, Craig; Mac, Ryan) (Archive link)
Facebook Pitched New Tool Allowing Employers to Suppress Words Like "Unionize" in Workplace Chat Product (The Intercept; Fang, Lee) (Archive link)
Facebook is quietly pressuring its independent fact-checkers to change their rulings (Fast Company; Pasternack, Alex) (Archive link)
Google, Facebook Agreed to Team Up Against Possible Antitrust Action, Draft Lawsuit Says (The Wall Street Journal; Tracy, Ryan; McKinnon, John D.) (Archive link)
I now have an Oculus Paperweight (Reddit; u/mud_juggler) (Archive link)
Instagram shuts down Iranian accounts after Soleimani's death (Coda; Cockerell, Isobel) (Archive link)
"I have also...received an automated block..." (Hacker News discussion of "I now have an Oculus Paperweight"; dessant) (Archive link)
"I've just discovered that a Facebook employee reimplemented the app...and published it using the same name...so I can no longer publish my app without renaming the project." (Hacker News; dessant) (Archive link)
Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook won't remove anti-vaccine posts despite Covid concerns (The Guardian; Helmore, Edward) (Archive link)
Gaggle Knows Everything About Teens And Kids In School (BuzzFeed News; Haskins, Caroline) (Archive link)
Goodwill's Charity Racket: CEOs Earn Top-Dollar, Workers Paid Less Than Minimum Wage (The Huffington Post; Hrabe, John)
Protesters to Urge Boycott, Demand Fair Wages (National Federation of the Blind; Danielson, Chris) (Original link)
See: Alphabet, Inc.
"California nurse tests positive for coronavirus one week after receiving vaccine: report" (Twitter; @thehill) (Archive link)
The Nurse in the article (archive link) tested positive one week after they received the Pfizer vaccine. The article only halfway through mentions that the vaccine starts to become effective ten to fourteen days after administration. This is an inexcusably misleading headline about a vaccine designed to fight a pandemic that has killed more than three hundred thousand people in America, the country in which The Hill is centralized, alone.
It should be noted that this sole tweet does not indicate a pattern of behavior.
See: Apple Computer
See: Apple Computer
Lush admits donating thousands to anti-trans pressure group Woman's Place UK (PinkNews; Duffy, Nick) (Archive link)
Trans teen dies by suicide after being 'humiliated' for wearing a skirt to school (PinkNews; Kelleher, Patrick) (Archive link)
See: Apple Computer
"Esoteric metrics...built into MS 365" (Twitter; Christl, Wolfie) (Archive link)
Microsoft's Creepy New 'Productivity Score' Gamifies Workplace Surveillance (Gizmodo; Stanley, Alyse) (Archive link)
At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks (The Wall Street Journal; Ramachandran, Shalini; Flint, Joe) (Archive link)
4 Shady Facts Netflix Doesn't Want Viewers To Know (Cracked; Wears, Adam)
See: Watkins, Jim
See: Facebook
An Alternate AltaVista Search Engine History Lesson For Internet Nerds (Tedium; Smith, Ernie)
A College Student Behind A Massively Popular Paint-Mixing TikTok Page Was Fired From Sherwin-Williams (BuzzFeed News; Chen, Tanya) (Archive link)
Letter from Texas Instruments About [Texas Instruments signing key controversy - Wikipedia] (Wikipedia; Texas Instruments Incorporated (Allegedly))
Re: Texas Instruments' Claim of a 17 U.S.C. Section 1201 violation by Brandon Wilson at www.brandonw.net (Electronic Frontier Foundation; Granick, Jennifer) (Archive link)
TI Removes ASM/C Programming from TI-83 Premium CE (Cemetech; KermMartian) (Archive link)
Secret Code in Color Printers Lets Government Track You (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
Campus Staff Took Advantage of Weaknesses in Admissions Processes to Inappropriately Admit 64 Students as Favors to Donors, Family, and Friends (Auditor of the State of California)
U.S. sues Walmart saying pharmacies fueled opioid crisis, retailer rejects allegations (Reuters; Shepardson, David; Hosenball, Mark)
Yelp is Screwing Over Restaurants By Quietly Replacing Their Phone Numbers (Vice; Jeffries, Adrianne) (Archive link)
"[Apple] has pushed a silent update to all Macs removing a ...web server installed by Zoom" (Twitter; Wardle, Patrick) (Archive link)
Zoom Zero Day: 4+ Million Webcams & maybe an RCE? Just get them to visit your website! (Medium; Leitschuh, Johnathan) (Archive link)
FBI Warns of Teleconferencing and Online Classroom Hijacking During COVID-19 Pandemic (Federal Bureau of Investigation Boston; Setera, Kristen)
Foreign intelligence operatives are reportedly using online platforms and video-conferencing apps like Zoom to spy on Americans (Business Insider; Sheth, Sonam)
Google Told Its Workers That They Can't Use Zoom On Their Laptops Anymore (BuzzFeed News; Dixit, Pranav)
The 'S' in Zoom, Stands for Security (Objective-See; Wardle, Patrick)
Two more macOS Zoom flaws surface, as lawsuit & government probe loom (AppleInsider; Peterson, Mike)
US Senate tells members not to use Zoom (Ars Technica; Stacey, Kiran; Murphy, Hannah)
Zoom admits some calls were routed through China by mistake (TechCrunch; Whittaker, Zach)
Zoom for iOS shares data with Facebook even if users don't have an account (AppleInsider; Peterson, Mike)
Zoom lied to users about end-to-end encryption for years, FTC says (Ars Technica; Brodkin, Jon)
Zoom macOS install 'shady,' plus video chats aren't end-to-end encrypted (AppleInsider; Gallagher, William)
Zoom Meetings Aren't End-to-End Encrypted, Despite Misleading Marketing (The Intercept; Lee, Micah; Yael, Grauer)
Zoom updates macOS installer to remove malware-like exploits (AppleInsider; Neely, Amber)
Azealia Banks doubles down on homophobia and bids 'adieu' to gay fans after foul-mouthed PrEP rant (PinkNews; Wakefield, Lily)
Azealia Banks suspended from Twitter after graphic transphobic rant against gender affirmation surgery (PinkNews; Wakefield, Lily)
Biden Tells Elite Donors He Doesn't Want to 'Demonize' the Rich (Bloomberg; Epstein, Jennifer)
'Lock the S.O.B.s Up': Joe Biden and the Era of Mass Incarceration (The New York Times; Stolberg, Sheryl Gay; Herndon, Astead W.) (Archive link)
Nevada County woman says Joe Biden inappropriately touched her while working in his U.S. Senate office (The Union; Riquelmy, Alan) (Archive link)
Biden's gun control plan is terrible for working class firearm owners (The Washington Post; Kelly, Kim) (Archive link)
The complete truth about Joe Biden's LGBT record (OUTspoken) (Archive link)
The Complete Truth is from a possibly untruthful source.
Examining Tara Reade's Sexual Assault Allegation Against Joe Biden (The New York Times; Lerer, Lisa; Ember, Sydney) (Archive link)
On The Record: A Former Biden Staffer's Sexual Assault Allegation (NPR; Khalid, Asma) (Archive link)
"I know we all grew up with the excitement of snow days, but this year is different." (Twitter; de Blasio, Bill)
User Clip: Hillary Clinton on Gay Marriage in 2004 (C-SPAN; User-created clip)
Hillary Clinton Says We Must Be 'Sensitive' to Transphobia (Out; Lang, Nico)
Crowds jam civil union debate (Honolulu Star-Bulletin Hawaii News; Antone, Rod)
Tulsi Gabbard's 'Evolution' On LGBTQ Rights Isn't Convincing (The Huffington Post; Signorile, Michelangelo)
Tulsi Gabbard introduces bill that ties Title IX protections for female athletes to 'biological sex' (USA Today; Cummings, William)
Unpacking Kamala Harris's Record on Trans and Sex Work Issues (them.; Sanders, Wren)
Fox News' Laura Ingraham Denies COVID Surge, Says Families Should Gather for Christmas (Newsweek; Colarossi, Natalie)
Laura Ingraham: COVID is "less lethal than the flu" (Media Matters for America)
Laura Ingraham: 'We're gonna stop wearing masks when we stop taking our shoes off at TSA' (The Washington Examiner; Miller, Andrew Mark)
Art Fight! The Pinkest Pink Versus the Blackest Black (Wired; Rogers, Adam) (Archive link)
Why everybody's mad at Anish Kapoor (The Architect's Newspaper; Challa, Janaki)
Commercial Felony Streaming Act Passes Senate Judiciary Committee: Website Owners May Face Harsher Punishments (The Huffington Post; Smith, Catharine)
Georgia's Kelly Loeffler and her husband have donated to Republican and Democratic candidates (Fox Business; De Lea, Brittany) (Archive link)
A Georgia Republican Senator Donated Her Salary To Anti-LGBTQ And Anti-Abortion Organizations (BuzzFeed News; O'Connor, Emma) (Archive link)
Dream co-owner Kelly Loeffler critical of WNBA's Black Lives Matter initiative (ESPN) (Archive link)
Sen. Kelly Loeffler sold at least $18 million more in stocks before the coronavirus crash than previously reported (Vox; Burns, Katelyn) (Archive link)
Sen. Loeffler introduces bill seeking to bar transgender girls from girls' sports (11alive; Raymond, Jonathan)
Did Abraham Lincoln Order the Execution of 38 Dakota Fighters? (Snopes; MacGuill, Dan)
Survivor's Michael Skupin Sentenced to Prison on Child Pornography Charges (People; Helling, Steve) (Archive link)
Disclaimer: I am a fan of much of Stallman's work.
Remove Richard Stallman (Medium; G., Selam) (Archive link)
Remove Richard Stallman: Appendix A (Medium; G., Selam) (Archive link)
Remove Richard Stallman and its appendix have had bits of them debunked but Stallman's conduct is well-known within the open source community. He's a bit of a missing stair. To his credit, he's changed for the better over the years, but that does not undo the damage he's done.
Ad Check: Is Thom Tillis Really Bad For Women? (WFMY; Briscoe, Benjamin)
In North Carolina, Thom Tillis is the Last Holdout Against Gay Marriage (The New York Times; Firestone, David) (Archive link)
"Motorcycle Vagina" Bill One Year Later (Chapelboro.com; Northam, Ran)
NC Speaker Tillis vows to fight same-sex marriage ruling (WSOC)
Republican Senate candidates say they would not back net neutrality (WRAL; Binker, Mark)
Republican Senators Have Introduced a Bill That Would End Net Neutrality Forever (Vice; Gustin, Sam)
Tillis may have benefited from Facebook data breach (WRAL; Leslie, Laura)
Tillis and NC Republicans paid $345,000 to the data firm that's now banned from Facebook (Raleigh News & Observer; Murphy, Brian; Bonner, Lynn)
How the local N.C. delegation to Congress voted recently (greensboro.com)
Internet Archive Defends Massive Online 'Emergency Library' (Bloomberg Law; Jahner, Kyle)
Tillis Pushes Prison Time for Online Streamers After Pre-Election Hollywood Cash Blitz (The American Prospect; Shaw, Donald)
The Trump Administration's Air Strikes in Somalia Are On the Rise Again - and Civilians Are Paying the Price (Time; Turse, Nick)
Trump's air strikes in Afghanistan dramatically increased civilian deaths: Report (Middle East Eye; Farooq, Umar)
alexander wang is a sexual predator: a thread (Twitter; @shitmodelmgmt) (Archive link)
A lot of the accounts in this thread are anonymous and many more are unproven but the quantity of allegations and their consistency is itself telling.
QAnon Is Supposed to Be All About Protecting Kids. Its Primary Enabler Appears to Have Hosted Child Porn Domains. (Mother Jones; Vicens, A.J.; Breland, Ali)
The New York Times:
New York Times Suffers Redaction Failure, Exposes Name Of NSA Agent And Targeted Network In Uploaded PDF (Techdirt; Cushing, Tim)
Upon review it's uncertain whose mistake this redaction failure was. Citing this article on its own as a reason to dislike the New York times was wrong.
Title (Platform/publisher; name of author) (Archive link if website is down, paywalled, or SNS)