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Amazingly, most people do seem to trust a simple screenshot of a conversation, even though it has been easy to fake those for 20+ years. A screenshot is consid
by londons_explore 3y ago
Amazingly, most people do seem to trust a simple screenshot of a conversation, even though it has been easy to fake those for 20+ years.
A screenshot is considered far more trustworthy by non-tech people than "I spoke to Fred and would you believe it, he told me X and Y were doing Z behind the bike sheds!!!"
- IshKebab 3y agoYeah because it takes significantly more effort to fake a screenshot than to just make stuff up. That's entirely logical.
- andrewstuart2 3y agoI wouldn't call a quick search for "fake text message" which returns dozens of generators significantly more effort. Harder to do on the spot, maybe, but the effort is negligible.
- 9question1 3y agoYou underestimate the laziness of most humans. To be clear, screenshots are still not trustworthy. But the "negligible" relatively more effort could matter in practice. Cryptography sometimes seem to rely on a stronger version this too. With enough computing power, you can brute force a lot. Some authentication seems just expensive enough that only a nation-state actor would have enough resources to break it, and then rests on the assumption that the small subset of people who could put in enough effort won't care enough to do anything worth being concerned about. This is also why, say, people lock their doors even if they have windows.
- londons_explore 3y agoI think a good chunk of non-tech people in my social circles would be appalled that such sites exist, and assume that running them would be illegal.
- BobaFloutist 3y agoI mean you can buy lockpicks online and learn how to open almost any lock on YouTube, but we still lock our doors.
- ceejayoz 3y agoIt really doesn't. https://imgur.com/RNwCHSa https://imgur.com/RNwCHSa
- abrichr 3y agohttps://ifaketextmessage.com/K7dQ/ https://ifaketextmessage.com/K7dQ/
- IshKebab 3y agoYeah but a) most people don't know that and b) that's still significantly more effort! We're comparing this to literally just saying something.
- ceejayoz 3y agoPerhaps we have differing definitions of “significant” and/or “effort”.
- duxup 3y agoI was following a local case where some inappropriate texts were sent. The evidence submitted with the legal case was a cell phone with the messages app open ... and it appeared to be photocopied. Then they scrolled up ... another photocopy, and on and on and on. Granted further investigation can be done, but it was amusing to see.
- vkou 3y agoA screenshot or a diary entry locks you into a snapshot of a single story. Someone saying something about what they talked about does not. You can say one thing today and another tomorrow. This is why the written word has magic that the spoken word does not. And the longer the append-only chain of written words goes, the more magic it has.
- DonHopkins 3y ago>"he told me X and Y were doing Z behind the bike sheds!!!" They were arguing about what color to paint them! How scandalous!!!