Yeah, I can’t find an answer whether the “click” is behind some obfuscation, or if the “click every ad” is the obfuscation step itself by attempting to poison the data. The latter may work but yes, may actually increase tracking. Wish that answer wasn’t so hard to find on their site.

Genuinely confused - I never said or thought that we should placate anyone. Just advocating that we think through the methods we use when we communicate and the effect it will have.

Well, a single action is never going to de-program these people. You ask why any approach would make anything better or worse, but I noted why certain approaches make things worse. I don’t know how to affirmatively convince these people, but I’d say a necessary (even if not sufficient) condition to making things better is not making them worse.

I mean, this is psychology, not politics or logic. When someone is told not to do something they feel they have the right to do, they are more likely to do it. When someone is told they’re stupid when they have been trained to feel correct and logical, they are more likely to stand by that belief. If a figure that they have developed a vicarious, parasocial relationship with is validly criticized, they will denounce the critic as if it were an attack on the core of their being, rather than agree with the critique.

These right-wing beliefs are like psychological parasites, ticks. The only correct solutions are to remove it with surgical precision with a careful plan. Prodding it and squeezing it is what you instinctively want to do, but that just makes it dig in further.

The woman left the house before 13News arrived. She returned just after noon accompanied by a lawyer. The group of ten or so investigators left a few minutes later.

So the FBI were in there, the woman left and came back with a lawyer, and then almost immediately the FBI left. Boy, that doesn’t sound at all like they were conducting an illegal search.

“Whoops, we pushed to prod and have no backups. Sorrryyyy!”

I mean, when you collapse that logic you’re effectively saying random is the same thing as non-deterministic. But they’re different things, because even if an infinitesimally exact moment in time may “always” produce the same result, because the arrow of time only points in one direction, no such deterministic result can ever be replicated, and if the result cannot be replicated, then what is the difference from random?

Google Assistant: Let’s build a product around functionality.

Gemini: Let’s build functionality around a product.

Any guess which method works better?