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This refusal to use people’s names comes across as childish and distracts from your intended point.
by rogerrogerr 8mo ago
This refusal to use people’s names comes across as childish and distracts from your intended point.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- amingilani 8mo agoTo me it feels pragmatic. I find it more concerning that mass surveillance has come to the point where someone can’t safely express their frankly-not-that-controversial opinions without obfuscating the subject’s name.
- rogerrogerr 8mo agoSo you think that the state has massive surveillance systems (definitely) that it is willing to use maliciously (maybe), but in the age of LLMs is fooled by swapping some letters around? Seems like the threat model is unlikely to line up with reality.
- distortionfield 8mo agoIt’s not a “maybe”. This administration was collecting lists of people who spoke negatively about ICE from social media like a week ago. you really think they’re going to send them gift baskets or something?
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- john_strinlai 8mo agothe point rogerrogerr is making is that a government is not going to be tripped up by "teter piel", just like you werent.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- nozzlegear 8mo agoSOTA LLMs couldn't even correctly answer whether a person should drive a car to the car wash or walk there themselves just a week ago, so it's plausible the government's tech might be tripped up here. Costs nothing to try it, at least!
- john_strinlai 8mo agothis isnt particularly against you, knowing your comment is mostly in jest, but: not everything needs to be, or should be, thought about in an "llm-first" way. a simple regex will surface all of the "obfuscated" comments, which can then be sent to some intern analyst to read.
- nozzlegear 8mo agoNo worries, I didn't take it that way. I lean anti- llm-first myself. I was actually going to make joke about levenshtein distance but figured since we're on HN, I'd lean into the LLM zeitgeist that everyone can't stop talking about here =P
- rurp 8mo agoYou think Teter Piel is going to fool Palantir spyware?
- Freedom2 8mo ago> This administration was collecting lists of people who spoke negatively about ICE from social media like a week ago. Source for this? This goes against many values of the US, so I'm surprised to see this statement thrown out so nonchalantly.
- distortionfield 8mo agoYup, absolutely I do. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-social-media.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-s...
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- amingilani 8mo agoI didn’t say it was state sponsored mass surveillance, nor did I say the method of obfuscation was good. Just that it’s a pragmatic approach (no matter how flawed in practice) and concerning that it needs to be done.
- edgyquant 8mo agoIt hasn’t come to that though, you can freely express that persons point with no repercussions outside of maybe not getting a check one day from the person you hate
- nozzlegear 8mo agoBeyond just the concept of thought crime, one of the themes in Orwell's 1984 was that the government could arbitrarily decide that a thing you've done could be punished at any time. You didn't need to break a law to be punished by Big Brother, you just had to be a thorn in its side. In our world, the government/Palantir/ICE collecting the identities of people who criticize them is the kind of infrastructure that makes that arbitrary punishment from 1984 possible.
- convolvatron 8mo agoits important to point out that its not about being a thorn in the government's side. you just have to not submit fully. in fact, even if everyone did submit completely, a fair number of people would still need to be rounded up and tortured just to keep the fear alive.
- mikestorrent 8mo agoI'm happy to name Peter Thiel in a comment here. What's he going to do, come and drip forehead sweat at me?
- ibejoeb 8mo agoAnd it diminishes search accuracy. You can publish a reasonable criticism, but if people don't see it, you're not changing minds.
- gib444 8mo agoIt's a useful deterrent against defenders (actual or bots) coming and drowning people out
- trinsic2 8mo agoThat is a good idea. Yeah I often wonder if people that actually are not apart of this community just troll by searches.
- gib444 8mo agoI'm sure there are whole companies that do that kind of "reputation management". Modern tech savvy PR firms etc I personally experienced it when criticising (turns out quite rightly) the HS2 rail project. The difference in replies on Reddit whether I wrote HS2 or eg |-|S2 or H/S/2 was stark