Some folks had to be taught on how folder structures work because they grew up with the appliance we called a "phone" as opposed to a real computer that also happened to be known as a "phone".
I’m sorry, but “this text is black on black background; the actual letters are still there” isn’t “black magic” unless someone is being deliberately obtuse.
State magicians have a whole range of different ways to make something seem like it's levitating, or to apparently get a signed playing card inside a fruit that they get someone in the audience to cut open to reveal.
To a magician, these things are cute, not mysterious.
To the general public… a significant percentage have problems with paged results and scroll bars. Including my dad, who developed military IFF simulation software before he retired, and then spent several years of retirement using Google before realising it gave more than three results at a time.
Would he, with experience working with the military, have made this soecific mistake about redaction? Perhaps, perhaps not, but the level of ignorance was well within his range. (I'm not better, it's just my ignorance is e.g. setting fire to resistors).
*Our* "common sense" isn't universal.
There are undoubtedly some people who would be fooled by this, but you don’t have to be technical in order to not be one of them.
That's *literally* what "redaction" is.
These people are bad at magic, were told to do magic, fooled only themselves and other people who are also bad at magic.
I’m guessing to you, it is also black magic.