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I don't know man, I think people disappove of voting fraud and sockpuppeting rather unilaterally.

> forcing digital id are a problem... unless our guys are in power.

Digital government ID based mandatory auth, properly implemented or not (read: anon via zk vs. tracking), does not "properly remediate" [0] this issue. You'd limit identity forgery to those who administrate identities in the first place.

[0] if that is even possible, which I find questionable



To simply "disapprove" of voting fraud and sockpuppeting isn't enough when people disagree if something counts as that.

I've encountered people who dispute that what happened on Jan 6 was an attempted self-coup.


I read their comment a bit differently; I interpreted what they wrote as a combination of a number of things:

- what you're saying: that people will happily distort the meaning of words and events given enough desperation and/or interest in doing so - i agree

- that people do this commonly with these two topics: i do not see that at all, not from this framing at least - i think if people asked themselves if they disapprove of these things, they'd generally say yes. i think people generally do genuinely believe they are against these.

- that people are doing this maliciously (~ this is exclusively or near exclusively interest driven rather than desperation): i just plain don't think so. i think those who suspect election fraud do by and large legitimately believe it happened or happens. same for your example.

And so what I was more pushing back on was #2 and #3. Like it's not that I don't think the phenomenon of semantic distortion isn't real, I just find focusing on it and framing things around it this way in this context is reductive and asinine, and it overplays it; it implies en-masse intentional malice without evidence. I could do this to their comment just as easily: I could start opining about how they're intentionally publishing divisive ragebait, when maybe they 100% just fully believe what they wrote and have just reached the (a?) boiling point after reading the above article and vented. I cannot actually know.

Long story short, yeah, people do be acting ill faith from time to time, but hyperfocusing on that doesn't make anyone's day better, nor does it help against it. It just plays right into it. That's the whole problem with it in the first place, it's anti-social. I'm pretty sure they could have picked a less instigating framing at least - your comment delivers the same idea but in a much less inflammatory manner, for example.




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