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You reach a point where if nearly everyone is blackmail-able for the same thing, that it stops becoming effective. If everyone is cheating on their spouse, the

You reach a point where if nearly everyone is blackmail-able for the same thing, that it stops becoming effective. If everyone is cheating on their spouse, then who is anyone to judge?

kingkawn 7y ago
Yes, the diminishing returns of weaponized social pressure
gurkendoktor 7y ago
If the top 1% are rich enough to avoid being tracked by pleb porn sites, they can still use this against the most inconvenient actors of the 99%.
- pvaldes 7y ago
  If you are top 1%, you are probably rich enough to act in your own porn film
SkyBelow 7y ago
Does it? Maybe if it was used to blackmail everybody, but as long as people are given a chance to feel superior, no matter how hypocritical the opportunity, they will take it. Thus as long as the blackmail is only selectively applied to a few targets it will remain extremely effective. Also, there is the possibility of creating false data that is worse than the average blackmail material. For example, say you are a political dissident starting a new party that appears to be an actual threat to the incumbents. Oops, we leaked the data showing you had an uncanny knack for finding and repeatedly viewing the most illegal of material before our moderators manage to take it down. No matter how well you can defend against such a claim, your political future is now over.
edgarvaldes 7y ago
That's why you don't spend your ammunition on everyone, but only on people of high profile or interest.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
adventured 7y ago
> You reach a point where if nearly everyone is blackmail-able for the same thing, that it stops becoming effective. That's not true, because it requires a further massive step (that is unlikely to occur): all people must be similarly revealed to be doing the thing in question. You'd have to know that everyone is cheating on their spouse; everyone would have to have max knowledge / transparency. Until then, the ones that get revealed will get judged by those not yet revealed. In my observation, people tend to be very comfortable with being a hypocrite, right up to the point where they're burned by it. And further, if there's even a small detail that is different, the crowd will use that detail as the point of differentiation to say that they're not as bad as some other person. If you have 100 people all surfing the same porn, and only one of them gets publicly revealed for the behavior, most of the remaining 99 people - assuming individual separation - will pretend they're not doing the same thing. They'll ostracize or harshly judge the person that got revealed publicly, pretend they're not doing the same thing, and go on doing the same thing in private. This behavior seems to repeat essentially non-stop among people socially; you see it in the news, with politicians or celebrities, with scandals, in various group behavior, among friends & family, et al.
meristem 7y ago
You'd need to stop the act from being shameful. The number of people doing it does not _necessarily_ map to "less socially shameful"
philwelch 7y ago
There's still an information asymmetry that's powerful. If everyone knows that everyone is cheating on their spouse, it's ineffective. If the Stasi knows that everyone is cheating on their spouse, and isn't stupid enough to share quite all of that information with everyone, it's another story. And with porn it's so multifaceted. Everybody breaches some taboo or other, but they're all different taboos. Not to mention that every social taboo immediately gets sexualized. If the conspiracy theory was true though, they would have never let Tumblr go down. Tumblr was the mecca of weird, fringe, taboo porn. And they could even take down the people who made it.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  These days, cheating on your spouse with a porn star right after she gave birth to your child is considered presidential.

You reach a point where if nearly everyone is blackmail-able for the same thing, that it stops becoming effective. If everyone is cheating on their spouse, then who is anyone to judge?

kingkawn 7y ago

Yes, the diminishing returns of weaponized social pressure

gurkendoktor 7y ago

If the top 1% are rich enough to avoid being tracked by pleb porn sites, they can still use this against the most inconvenient actors of the 99%.

pvaldes 7y ago
If you are top 1%, you are probably rich enough to act in your own porn film

SkyBelow 7y ago

Does it? Maybe if it was used to blackmail everybody, but as long as people are given a chance to feel superior, no matter how hypocritical the opportunity, they will take it. Thus as long as the blackmail is only selectively applied to a few targets it will remain extremely effective. Also, there is the possibility of creating false data that is worse than the average blackmail material. For example, say you are a political dissident starting a new party that appears to be an actual threat to the incumbents. Oops, we leaked the data showing you had an uncanny knack for finding and repeatedly viewing the most illegal of material before our moderators manage to take it down. No matter how well you can defend against such a claim, your political future is now over.

edgarvaldes 7y ago

That's why you don't spend your ammunition on everyone, but only on people of high profile or interest.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

adventured 7y ago

> You reach a point where if nearly everyone is blackmail-able for the same thing, that it stops becoming effective. That's not true, because it requires a further massive step (that is unlikely to occur): all people must be similarly revealed to be doing the thing in question. You'd have to know that everyone is cheating on their spouse; everyone would have to have max knowledge / transparency. Until then, the ones that get revealed will get judged by those not yet revealed. In my observation, people tend to be very comfortable with being a hypocrite, right up to the point where they're burned by it. And further, if there's even a small detail that is different, the crowd will use that detail as the point of differentiation to say that they're not as bad as some other person. If you have 100 people all surfing the same porn, and only one of them gets publicly revealed for the behavior, most of the remaining 99 people - assuming individual separation - will pretend they're not doing the same thing. They'll ostracize or harshly judge the person that got revealed publicly, pretend they're not doing the same thing, and go on doing the same thing in private. This behavior seems to repeat essentially non-stop among people socially; you see it in the news, with politicians or celebrities, with scandals, in various group behavior, among friends & family, et al.

meristem 7y ago

You'd need to stop the act from being shameful. The number of people doing it does not _necessarily_ map to "less socially shameful"

philwelch 7y ago

There's still an information asymmetry that's powerful. If everyone knows that everyone is cheating on their spouse, it's ineffective. If the Stasi knows that everyone is cheating on their spouse, and isn't stupid enough to share quite all of that information with everyone, it's another story. And with porn it's so multifaceted. Everybody breaches some taboo or other, but they're all different taboos. Not to mention that every social taboo immediately gets sexualized. If the conspiracy theory was true though, they would have never let Tumblr go down. Tumblr was the mecca of weird, fringe, taboo porn. And they could even take down the people who made it.

DonHopkins 7y ago
These days, cheating on your spouse with a porn star right after she gave birth to your child is considered presidential.