I find it more concerning that mass surveillance has come to the point where someone can’t safely express their frankly-not-that-controversial opinions without obfuscating the subject’s name.
So you think that the state has massive surveillance systems (definitely) that it is willing to use maliciously (maybe), but in the age of LLMs is fooled by swapping some letters around? Seems like the threat model is unlikely to line up with reality.
It’s not a “maybe”. This administration was collecting lists of people who spoke negatively about ICE from social media like a week ago. you really think they’re going to send them gift baskets or something?
It hasn’t come to that though, you can freely express that persons point with no repercussions outside of maybe not getting a check one day from the person you hate
Beyond just the concept of thought crime, one of the themes in Orwell's 1984 was that the government could arbitrarily decide that a thing you've done could be punished at any time. You didn't need to break a law to be punished by Big Brother, you just had to be a thorn in its side. In our world, the government/Palantir/ICE collecting the identities of people who criticize them is the kind of infrastructure that makes that arbitrary punishment from 1984 possible.
I'm sure there are whole companies that do that kind of "reputation management". Modern tech savvy PR firms etc
I personally experienced it when criticising (turns out quite rightly) the HS2 rail project. The difference in replies on Reddit whether I wrote HS2 or eg |-|S2 or H/S/2 was stark
And it diminishes search accuracy. You can publish a reasonable criticism, but if people don't see it, you're not changing minds.
To me it feels pragmatic.
I find it more concerning that mass surveillance has come to the point where someone can’t safely express their frankly-not-that-controversial opinions without obfuscating the subject’s name.
So you think that the state has massive surveillance systems (definitely) that it is willing to use maliciously (maybe), but in the age of LLMs is fooled by swapping some letters around? Seems like the threat model is unlikely to line up with reality.
It’s not a “maybe”. This administration was collecting lists of people who spoke negatively about ICE from social media like a week ago. you really think they’re going to send them gift baskets or something?
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I didn’t say it was state sponsored mass surveillance, nor did I say the method of obfuscation was good.
Just that it’s a pragmatic approach (no matter how flawed in practice) and concerning that it needs to be done.
I'm happy to name Peter Thiel in a comment here. What's he going to do, come and drip forehead sweat at me?
It hasn’t come to that though, you can freely express that persons point with no repercussions outside of maybe not getting a check one day from the person you hate
Beyond just the concept of thought crime, one of the themes in Orwell's 1984 was that the government could arbitrarily decide that a thing you've done could be punished at any time. You didn't need to break a law to be punished by Big Brother, you just had to be a thorn in its side. In our world, the government/Palantir/ICE collecting the identities of people who criticize them is the kind of infrastructure that makes that arbitrary punishment from 1984 possible.
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It's a useful deterrent against defenders (actual or bots) coming and drowning people out
That is a good idea. Yeah I often wonder if people that actually are not apart of this community just troll by searches.
I'm sure there are whole companies that do that kind of "reputation management". Modern tech savvy PR firms etc
I personally experienced it when criticising (turns out quite rightly) the HS2 rail project. The difference in replies on Reddit whether I wrote HS2 or eg |-|S2 or H/S/2 was stark