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god_from_celegans  6mo ago (text post)   Edited 6mo ago   2310 thread views

What did you learn from leaked documents?

We seek to understand the world, but it's made harder when part of it is hidden from us.

Leaked documents, represent a kind of ground truth, showing how the world really works. Telling us what's for sale, what the real agendas are, how powerful spies are, and how coordinated governments are. They are almost the opposite to conspiracy theories, as they present observations that can prune conspiracy theories.

But there are too many documents to read, so let's compare notes. What surprised you and caused you to update your view of the world?

Feel free to give a low effort reply, it's better than nothing.

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I learned that I don't learn much from leaked documents.

I've never read a leaked document and went like "woah, I had absolutely no fucking idea this could be happening!". More of "woah I can't believe people needed a document to finally believe they were upto this".

Agree, I don’t think I’ve ever been surprised by this kind of thing. It’s like the infamous Snowden thing where every movie, talk show, article, casual conversation about the patriot act in the years 2004-2013 involved the tacit or explicit acceptance that “yeah they’re totally spying on everything we say and do online” and then we were all supposed to be shocked when Snowden revealed it. Like, no shit, isn’t that what everyone’s been talking about for years?

I actually found myself surprised by the Twitter files simply because while I knew that something like that was happening I actually had no idea of the scale and extent of the government's involvement. It was also legitimately surprising to me how much pushback came from Twitter itself, when I expected them to simply give in and fold right away.

Plus it filled in some of the details of "how" which was nice

I wasn't surprised by it, but I think that there's a significant difference between on the one hand, the mass surveillance being a popular but shadowy theory that smells a bit crackpot-adjacent to many people, and on the other hand, it being an undeniable fact that is openly discussed in mainstream sources.

Almost like they were preparing consent to it through the media.

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