As a response to http://pastebin.com/tC3zbYhy with regards to YourAnonNews.

"Following delays, people like @JoePie91 (who released his own statement today) have made some erroneous accusations at me. These included, but were not limited to, charges that I was partying it up in Vegas while at Defcon after I embezzled money. He had no problem making these allegations and attempting to destroy my reputation, despite the fact that he'd clearly fabricated the entire story for the purpose of self-promotion. I entered and left DefCon essentially penniless -- thanks to @5hm00p for provided me with FBI donuts every morning and @Bipalicious for giving me couch to crash on. Anyway, I'd like people to keep @Joepie91's obvious lack of character in mind while hoisting his banner around tomorrow."

Ah, right. I'm sure that with this paragraph of text, you're refering to the things I supposedly said and did while I was supposedly at Defcon (https://twitter.com/dellcam/status/366038721767809025 and following thread).

Only one little problem: I wasn't actually at Defcon. In fact, while Defcon was going on in the US, I was at OHM2013 giving a lightning talk on being raided (https://program.ohm2013.org/event/460.html), and therefore *couldn't* have been at Defcon (not that I would be able to afford the plane ticket anyway).

Perhaps you should have verified the identity of the guy you were talking to.


"The first is that there seems to be some sort of anti-money sentiment going around. Get over it. Things cost money. You're reading this on a computer and I'm assuming you didn't steal it."

And that justifies grabbing money from every possible place how, exactly? There's a very big difference between "we need to cover the costs" and "we're going to set up an LLC and tell t-shirts and place advertisements". *Especially* when the initial funding was 26 times (!) the target amount, there's absolutely no reason to do things like this.


"With the amount of traffic they expect to receive, which is based on how much out-bound traffic they currently generate from Twitter, they require a dedicated server."

This is complete and total bullshit. I don't really have any other words for it; it's simply complete non-sense.


"Following constant threats of DDoS attacks, they also require expert DDoS protection."

Oh yes, because that has been different for AnonNews or any of the other Anon-related sites out there - oh wait, it wasn't.


"In order for YAN to maintain a website it's going to be expensive."

No, it's not.


"And the notion that you can pay a programmer $300-$400 to design a website, [...] is absurd."

Have a look:
* https://www.freelancer.com/projects/PHP-Wordpress/Dating-site-WordPress-repost.html
* https://www.freelancer.com/contest/Create-a-Wordpress-Template-for-Garage-Door-Guys-responsive-website-33687.html
* https://www.freelancer.com/projects/Wordpress-CSS/Design-WordPress-plus-little-bit.html (this one is in NZD)


"or that the traffic on JoePie's $10 a month website compares to the traffic YAN will generate, is absurd."

I believe I've already shown that it does. Or would you like to correct the numbers Emmi provided, and say that the YourAnonNews site is going to receive over 60-90 million frontpage hits a month, which is roughly what AnonNews can now deal with on the aforementioned 512MB RAM VPS since I started using memcache?


"Emmi's pastebin also mentioned possibly establishing an LLC to handle the money. This is just one recommendation made by a legal counsel. Establishing a non-profit, I believe, carries with it some restrictions in regards to activity and YAN is particularly aggressive towards politicians. I've been on the board of a non-profit, but I know very little about business so I have to defer that issue to someone else with expertise."

So if the intentions are all kosher, why is all not explained publicly? Why is there just a random mention of an LLC in an update post without any clarification? I'd love to see the reasoning behind setting up an LLC, and run it by a few people to see if it's bullshit or not.


"When I first began working on YAN's website, the owners were very clear about one point: they wanted to use the website to generate revenue"

Oh, awesome. Now if only the rest of the Anons also knew this!


"and then give it to a variety of organizations with legitimate causes, such as legal support for jail activists like Weev and NoKXL demonstrators that are being arrested on a daily basis."

Ah, great, the old corporate donate-to-charity trick. Make yourself charitable by donating (part of) your earnings to some kind of charity or cause. Never mind that people could have donated directly to that cause, because this way you get a bit of 'goodwill' (read: marketing and reputation) out of it, and maybe you even get to keep part of the money for yourself!


"These funds would be generated by ads,"

Disgusting.


"along with additional revenue from a YAN store that would likely continue to sell shirts, coffee mugs, and things of that nature. One idea was a Free Anons shirt and 100% of the profits would go directly to that organization."

So why aren't you letting people donate directly, or even let FreeAnons sell a shirt themselves - given that Jackal and Emmi are clearly not financially responsible people? Why does it have to go through YourAnonNews? Unless...


"Especially when it comes from people that previously had access to that Twitter account but lost their privilege after abusing it."

Ah, and there we go again. So, would you all like to know what really happened?

YourAnonNews used to be run by two people - Jackal and another person that shall remain unnamed - let's call him Bob. Both Jackal and Bob had the password to the account and logged into it directly. They didn't use GroupTweet or anything like it.

At some point, Bob magically couldn't log in anymore, after some tensions between Jackal and Bob had already risen over the neutrality of YAN. Bob had not been contacted about this beforehand. I cannot recall it with 100% certainty, but as far as I am aware, Bob regained access at some later point.

In the meantime, I had been criticizing YAN semi-publicly over the fact that it was so centrally controlled. As a response, the (leaked) pad was set up, a 'team' was assembled, and GroupTweet was used to let people tweet on YAN from their own account, by sending a DM to the YAN account. This would evidently only work if they were on the access list, and the YAN account was following them.

I was part of this initial 'team'. Something went wrong (bug-wise), and while I was on the access list, the YAN account was not following me and therefore I could not use it after all. I notified Jackal of this, and he fixed it. A few weeks later, it broke again, and YAN somehow unfollowed me despite still being on the access list.

At this point, I had become disgruntled with how YAN was still not improving and still strongly biased (just with more people exhibiting that same bias) and generally did not agree with the model of YAN, and indicated to Jackal that he didn't need to fix it, as I had no intention of using the account and would rather step out of it. Jackal acknowledged this.

It's very easy to invent a context around loss of access... especially when you're trying to discredit someone that is casting criticism, by trying to harm their personal reputation (hi @dellcam!). The only problem is that there was never any "abuse" of the YAN account by me, and it certainly wasn't the reason for me not having access.

- joepie91