Hyperreality

Fundamentally encryption is a tool, not unlike a gun or a knife. Encryption allows you to ensure your privacy. Whether and when a tool should be considered illegal simply because it facilitaties illegal acts, and whether privacy should be unlimited, depends on context. There's a balance to be made.

Country like Germany? They take privacy super seriously, almost certainly in large part due to historical reasons. Fun fact: this is why you'll also find far more blindspots on google streetview in Germany. Freedom of speech? Limited, for historical reasons. Privacy? Often far less impinged upon than the US, also for historical reasons.

So what's up with France, which this video is about? And the answer is relatively simple. France has had something like 40 islamist terrorist attacks since 2010. After 2015 a state of emergency was announced which lasted for two years. After that the state of emergency was formalised in law. If Macron hadn't taken these draconian measures, literal fascists (with ties to the Kremlin) might have won enough votes to form a government. France would have been ruled by the daughter of a holocaust denier and a Kremlin asset, right at the moment Russia invaded Ukraine (again).

So yeah, it sucks. But once you know the context, it's not that hard to understand the why.

A bit like how the UK is blanketed with cameras, and the UK's security services regularly spy on their own citizens. Also sucks, but the why is also understandable. A 30 year bombing campaign and almost civil war on British soil, followed by a spate of Islamist inspired terrorist attacks, tend to make a population more amenable to privacy violations.

What I don't get is this:

Previously, reddit admins could distance themselves from what the moderators were doing.

You know plausible deniability. "We allow our users to post stuff, users moderate themselves. Oopsiedoodle. We allowed users to post pictures of underage girls on reddit for years, time to fire the volunteer mod responsible."

Obviously, anyone who's been on reddit for a while, knows that's bullshit. Reddit's perfectly happy to profit off questionable and outright illegal content. But the admins had that excuse.

But now they're literally and openly forcing subreddits like /r/piracy to re-open.

This strikes me as legally questionable. They're not just tolerating or even condoning some of the more questionable content, they're now actively promoting it.

This is disgraceful!

How dare you use a bot to steal the content bots on reddit stole from insta/tiktok/twitter!

LOL

I'm surprised they're still allowing that.

I suspect they'll start auto-deleting comments which reference the competition sooner rather than later.

It's already increasingly obvious that they're deleting comments and using bots to change the narrative.

Reddit right now is like a car crash. It's hard to look away. However, there's a very good reason not to engage, the debate on reddit has become more artificial than most realise.

Reddit's inflated numbers by using bots and fake accounts since day 1. A quick google will result in articles where they admit as much. We all know reddit's had increasing amounts of bots, posting content and increasingly comments, but I don't think people realise how bad it's become.

It's not even that time that reddit's blog accidentally posted about Eglin Air Force base being one of the most reddit addicted cities. I think everyone knows (foreign) governments engage in influence operations online, and that this includes reddit. Even if it's just on an intellectual level, without truly realising that they've been semi-regularly interacting with bots while arguing on reddit. I also don't think anyone's naive enough to think that plenty of political content isn't artificially upvoted or promoted. Same thing goes for product placement.

But the recent shit storm just illustrates reddit the company is part of the problem. Recently, I've seen twenty different accounts post the same comment about not needing third party apps, and dusting off their laptop. I've attempted to compare the current situation to the previous blackout. You know, when reddit hired someone who defended paedophiles as an admin. Deleted comment. Try an alt. Deleted comment. Posted in subs without karma requirements in a fresh account. Auto-deleted.

When you're visiting reddit, you're no longer even watching a car crash. It's a simulacrum. An imitation of what's actually happening.

And it's been like this for a while. I've seen naive redditers engaging with bot comments under bot promoted content, posted by bots on more than one occassion.

Reddit has become worse than a hentai date simulator. I don't think anyone who plays those is particularly proud of it. But what to think of the lonely people who engage in reddit discussions with bots, and think they've had a genuine social interaction?

It's all very dystopian and sad.