They did well early on, but new cases are now reaching up to 200,000 a day and the rate of daily cases is sharply increasing.
The country has exceeded Brazil for total cases, and while the US is still number one at 31 million, India is at 14 million cases and may overtake the US in the coming months.
This is not good, and will such a large viral reservoir encourage further variants to arise?
I foresee two paths; one is that India manages to wrestle this into some sort of (mostly) manageable situation - a possibility that seems unlikely given that at time of writing only 1% of the population has been fully inoculated and it is accepted that 70% is needed if herd immunity is to be achieved.
The other is that India becomes a truly awful spectacle and one that the world has to take note of and cannot turn its back on.
Regardless, the developing situation in India is something to keep an eye on in the coming months.
Recently Redbubble (RB) began suspending what appears to be a large number of user accounts from across the globe. Thankfully, my account remains unaffected (knock on wood), but I delayed uploading for a week in fear I'd be zapped.
Users were baffled, many cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced so to speak.
Some estimates put it at 20% of users, although these guesses were hardly scientific. But whatever the numbers, it was clear that something big was going on.
And Redbubble didn't say a word.
Until on Feb 3, 2021, when they issued the following tweet;
Recently, we identified an error that inadvertently suspended several user accounts. We apologize for the frustration this has caused, and are currently investigating the issue and working towards a swift solution. Thank you for your patience while we look into this matter.
You have to wonder if they were having a bit of a giggle when they used the phrase; 'several user accounts'. Twitter, Facebook, no doubt their own email channels, have been clogged with account re-instatement requests and complaints. There's no way they could mistake it for 'several accounts' unless they are somehow wondrously oblivious.
But here's the thing; likely it wasn't an 'error', at least not in the way of a 'glitch', but a deliberate purge in which the 'error' was that it involved a good amount of collateral damage.
To expand; my guess is that there was a huge influx of new users over the last year, particularly as people looked for other ways to supplement their incomes and pass the time productively while in lockdown.
But with that came a surge in spam, copyright violations and general bad behavior that would have placed a greater burden on RB to effectively police. So instead they took the nuclear option.
Each user is given a 'dynamically matched, tokenized customer identifier' that can '...reliably recognize the same returning user across multiple devices, email addresses, physical addresses and account names.'
Furthermore, each ID is assigned a threat score which amongst other things, is aggregated from user activity across the net - not just what they do on Redbubble.
Immediate big red flags for Threatmetrix, are VPN usage (and presumably not just on the RB site), and 'high-risk' geo-locations.
So too bad if you're in a location deemed 'high-risk' as you're on thin ice to begin with.
This explains the higher volume of non-western usernames popping up complaining their accounts have gone bye-bye. Let's just say it's definitely an advantage to be in the good old 'respectable' First World club. Too bad if you're in the Third World (is this a form of racism? I'll let the reader decide).
So my guess is that they lowered the bar at which Threatmetrix flags accounts as high-risk and suspended any who couldn't limbo. And it did the job, but it also caught up a lot of valid users as well.
It also explains why RB continues to be infested with copyright infringing work. The ban was focused on 'risk', not existing copyrighted material - at least not directly.
So I suspect RB will quietly process the account reinstatement requests and 'move on' - which at time of writing is what they seem to be doing.
Until the next time.
Perhaps this highlights an aspect of this brave new world of online entrepreneurship not much examined; the insecurity. The fact that whoever holds your account (and revenue stream), can cancel it with a single on-screen message and, if you're lucky, an email. Of course it could be argued that you can lose your job at the mall as well. But there are generally more protections in play for 'real world' workers - protections you can mostly thank unions for.
So if you're an enterprising journalist looking for a breakout story, this might be something for you? It covers a lot of topical points regards the net, online entrepreneurship and public interest is sure to be through the roof - of that you can be sure.
I'm currently trying my luck on the much trodden path that ascends Mount Amazon Merch Doom. It is a long and arduous way, strewn with the bodies of those who've given up or been struck dead by DMCA rockfalls, even as they quested.
But I'm currently tier 25, which means I'm above the cloud locked lower region of tier 10. Downside is I can only have 25 designs for sale.
According to the rules, if I can make 25 sales in total, then I may be ascended (by God King Bezos), to the next tier and can then sell more designs at a time. Which is very exciting.
In the meantime you can help - and I would very much appreciate it - by checking out this cool tee. It seems to have struck a chord with people (particularly Americans for some reason). If it strikes a chord with you, please buy it.
The Ballad of Toad Lindsey (Graham)
Whichever way the political wind blows, there Toad Lindsey must go. Whatever he said on Tuesday, by Wednesday he no longer knows.
