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An open letter to @timoreilly about ggAutoBlocker and block lists

Dear Tim O'Reilly



I'm a long time developer and purchaser of O'Reilly books. I love what your books have done for the industry and for new and experienced developers everywhere.



Yesterday, I found out that a speaker was miss-representing a talk at your OSCON show. I sent information and polite protest tweets to the @OSCON account on Twitter.



A few hours later, I discovered that @OSCON's social media manager, @joshsimmons, unilaterally decided to activate a Twitter blocker called ggAutoBlocker at behest of the speaker - the speaker's own product.



Regardless of O'Reilly's opinion on my protest, activating this coarse tool has blocked over 10,000 Twitter accounts from @OSCON. The vast majority of these people have never interacted with @OSCON and many are developers. This poorly implemented tool has, in the past, blocked Kentucky Fried Chicken and even President Obama. Many other innocent people are on this list due to its extremely poor implementation.



I feel that activating this tool on the OSCON Twitter account severely affects thousands of developers who have effectively been ostracized from OSCON, while having done absolutely nothing to warrant it.



Please ask @joshsimmons to remove the blocker. He's free to block me if he wishes, but its wrong to excommunicate 10,000 people and developers who have done nothing.



Sincerely,



Mark Kern



@Grummz

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