There is a difference between what people know because it is pushed out to them vs. what someone can deduce by careful research and logic.
Something like Wikileaks/Snowden got the "they're spying on everyone!" part into the public consciousness. The Twitter files is pushing out some slightly different nuances around what the current practice is. Plus the political implications.
People are annoyingly evidence based. There seems to be confusion about whether dictionary-definition fascism is a bad thing and it is important to collect and keep repeating evidence of what is happening as governments agents get involved in running media (or other) companies.
> There is a difference between what people know because it is pushed out to them vs. what someone can deduce by careful research and logic.
Indeed. It's the difference between public knowledge and common knowledge. Matters which are public knowledge may not be common knowledge, if they've been swept under the rug or generally forgotten.
Are you implying zero information has been revealed?
We knew the US intelligence services had tweaked the elections of other countries. We didn't know US intelligence services had tweaked the last election in the US.
Given how close elections are in US, it's not hard to imagine US intelligence services made a difference.
The Snowden leaks were about the government secretly spying on people. These leaks include many topics, but a common theme is the government secretly pressuring companies to censor/punish users for saying anything that they did not approve of. And that approval was erratic, frequently targeting one of the first casualties of authoritarianism - humor. The leaks also tie in with this thread since as the the FBI also "requested" location tracking information on people as well, of course with no warrants or any sort of due process or oversight whatsoever. I look forward to one day reading the 'FBI files' to see how that information was then completely responsibly used.
Another revelation comes from your question itself. If you rely on mainstream media outlets to inform you, you'd either have no idea these 'leaks' exist, or a distorted view of what they contained. The NYTimes ran no less than 4 articles on 8 journalists being temporarily suspended on Twitter, promoting international regulations, laws, and even sanctions over it. But the entirety of these leaks, and the massive amount of content and information contained within? Well that's just not newsworthy contrasted against 8 journalists not being able to post on Twitter!
The media's independence and integrity has decline substantially since Snowden, with seemingly no bottom in sight.
People learning about this for the first time. Snowden/wikileaks weren't even the first ones to share this. It's been well known for decades. It's not a secret. It's well known and well established in many industries.
And why does this happen? Because money. Every single tech darling plays along. Chances are, unless you knew for a fact you weren't participating in this, you were at some level.
Prior to Snowden those people were derided as part of the paranoid tinfoil hat crowd. The only thing known was some vague discussion of Carnivore and Tempest.
