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Comment by freshfunk | Hacker News Reader

Whether you align or don't align with these politics, I find it generally distasteful when private chats are leaked. There's clearly some expectations of privacy (using Signal with expiring messages) and someone leaking this really destroys trust and open communication. It causes people to not engage in open dialog and to move to even smaller and smaller circles. This ends up stifling open and honest debate and results in more narrow, provincial views of the world.

And for what? For clicks? To tell on someone? To smear someone? What "good" was accomplished from this leak and this article? Some advertiser dollars were made -- probably a trivial amount compared to the value of honest debate among the most powerful in tech.

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It's not unreasonable to say that the more outsized influence you have over others, the less privacy you can expect to preserve against them (or the harder you have to work to maintain it), both ethically and practically.

There's pretty wide intolerance for leaking everyday discussion by everyday people, but some people are in a position where their actions can very greatly impact others and some of their relationships and discussions have bearing on that. You can't be surprised if the potentially-impacted seek to seize transparency even where it's not handed to them.

> I find it generally distasteful when private chats are leaked.

The best private chats are those with a few vetted members who understand the consequences of a leak. However, this doesn't fully protect the chat because the leaker, especially if he or she is a skilled liar, could remain anonymous indefinitely.

A common thread among leaks is that people post salacious content under their real names (or pseudonyms that are easily traced) under the guise they are sharing in a "safe space." Nothing is safe from a serial screenshotter.

> And for what? For clicks? To tell on someone? To smear someone?

To stop them from doing what they are trying to do. The goals they are working towards are malign & repugnant and this makes them my adversaries. I'm not interested in a fair fight with a neosegregationist billionaires' coup. They certainly aren't going to give me a sporting chance.

For what it's worth, nothing was leaked in this article except for the existence of these chats. There are no screenshots, and very few concrete details other than some information about membership timelines.

This article contains genuine reporting about the right-wing influencers working to shift the opinions of the richest people in the USA. That seems like a large amount of good to me.

Nah, screw these people. Right wing billionaires actively courting and trying to influence their peers in business and media? This is the smoke-filled room as a group chat with disappearing messages. What good was done here? Well, hopefully, people realize that Marc Andreessen is neglecting his responsibilities to post all day and David Sacks whines when people challenge him. I want to know who's hanging out with Chris Rufo and Tucker Carlson, or introducing oped columnists to Curtis Yarvin, and I want it to be abundantly clear that they suck.

I say leak every. single. one. Whatever it is they wanted to stay private, let it hang off their names for the rest of recorded history.

It’s the only facsimile of holding powerful people accountable we have left.

To give an unrelated example, there's currently a huge drama explosion in the vtuber world due to Person X trying to strongarm an artist into not working with Person Y, while X and Y being ostensibly best friends with each other in public.

People do not like being lied to, and they especially do not like someone lying to them while concretely making their life worse.

> compared to the value of honest debate among the most powerful in tech

Yet again this seems to be using "honest" as code for "racism".

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