Can those of you writing off half of America as “ignorant “ or “anti -science “ please move those comments back to Reddit. And what conclusions did you draw when obvious left leaning apps were breached ? FB, LI , Washington Post , twitter (pre Elon) all had breaches . Does that mean left and right leaning Americans are all ignorant ?
I don’t take any offense , but I do have high standards for this forum and cringe comments make me less likely to hang out here
On a site called Hacker News, we need more analysis of one of the classic hacker skills, social engineering. Our first luminary hackers, and their first books, and our first movies, are about manipulating your average office worker or security guard. It doesn't work every time, but those people vote and hackers illuminated some early tools at automating the manipulation.
The turning point was smartphones. No, they don't clandestinely listen to the audio, or smuggle tower locations of unimportant people. But (all of our) behavior changes when we rely on an app and give up those other liberties because app. Some social engineering was required for mass adoption thereof, and most of us here are acquainted with the analytical means to concentrate delivering that. Half of our society has weaknesses that we euphemize as "gaming habits" or "addictive personalities". Maybe they know it; I'm not down here haughtily scoffing that they cannot know it.
China and Russia and North Korea don't show those weaknesses because those people are down in the mines. The powers learned social engineering within their closed societies, not in our open societies. They promote a nation and a people unified with one personality. The United States and similar freedom exponents have to contend with attracting the world's talent by explicitly tolerating any personality. At least for now
@dang can we improve the integrity filter I’ve been seeing a lot of these
None of the sites you mentioned are (or were) left-leaning unless you are saying anyone less politically correct than Fox News is leftie, but that’s missing the bigger reason why the MAGA connection matters: MAGA is at its heart conspiratorial, obsessed with the idea that the “elites” are against the common man. That war on expertise has been there from the beginning and it makes followers unusually vulnerable to scams because it normalizes this way of thinking that everyone’s opinion deserves equal weight. Sure, security experts say to use Signal but why should you trust them any more than the scientists who say the earth is warming or the economists who say that gold has drawbacks as the basis for an economic system?
The Sturmabteilung were lefties compared to the Schutzstaffel I guess.
Reddit comment++
Too kind
It would waste my breath to try to convince you that MAGA Americans actually are intelligent. My point is that all apps have breaches , and a great many of them are run by liberals (who love climate change and inflation, as you do ) , so what does any of this have to do with a tech forum
> It would waste my breath to try to convince you that MAGA Americans actually are intelligent
Definitely, because I never said they weren’t and certainly don’t believe that — I know too many smart conservatives for that. That’s a big part of the problem: smart people can put a lot of effort into constructing rationalizations so when they’re immersed in a culture where political correctness trumps objectivity they’ll construct elaborate narratives to support the ideologically useful outcome.
The relevance to security is that these people are more vulnerable because they can’t tell charlatans who appear to be on their side apart from people who actually know what they’re talking about. There are tons of right-leaning people in tech but as we saw with election fraud claims, the competent ones know it’s risky to contradict the narrative and stay quiet rather than being accused of being RINOs. It’s similar to how things like MLM scams spread in religious communities if you have experience with that, where things usually have to get pretty bad before someone is willing to criticize a friendly member of their congregation.
don't you see how this perspective is the same tribalism (all my leaders are benevolent, all of theirs are tyrants / grifters)?
For every example of Maga group think, I can think of an example of Obamaphile group think.
And if the contrarian / doubtful end of the spectrum ( all elites are nefarious) is bad, doesn't that imply that the gullible / trusting end of the spectrum (all elites & academics are benevolent) is also bad?
The roles are just a mirror of each other. You're just picking sides -- which is how things usually operate.
They are left leaning and run predominantly by left leaning staff and boards . FB and X have pivoted opportunistically to Trump , and still only slightly