site banner

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 21, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

4
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I really don’t think the NSA’s tech (certainly in 2013, long before modern AI) was capable of effectively trawling trillions of Facebook messages or emails that raised flags.

It might have been possible, they might even have been doing it! But it's so much easier if all the terrorists just start using Telegram or Signal or .onion nonsense and rather than look through every FB message, you just look through the tiny number of encrypted messages.

Honestly I’d be curious how much illegal activity was conducted through in game chat for PC games. I’d imagine that would be incredibly difficult to monitor, especially older games. Seems like a pretty sneaky way of getting messages through.

Have you seen Four Lions? https://youtube.com/watch?v=xR5rKr-p6lc

I remember seeing a bunch of weird Grand Theft Auto images on imgur years ago that were supposedly Russian number station posts.