radix

I don't remember who said it (so I'm likely butchering the phrase), but I've heard that any creative work exists in three forms: The mind of the author, the physical copy, and the mind of the audience.

For example, a book/story exists as the author intends, as the author writes, and as the reader interprets.

No one of the three is more "correct" than the other.

I mean its not even too late for this to happen starting like right now 2025, right?

No, it's not. The US, and increasingly the rest of the western world, is infected by a bunch of politicians who think '1984' is an instruction manual rather than a cautionary tale.

IT being used to weaponize surveillance against the people is happening right now.

Yep. "1" is 12:00am on 1-Jan-1900

Numbers less than zero just give a weird error. Between zero and less than one give a nonsense date-formatted non-date.

The "late, great" Hannibal Lector.

That's not an argument, that's somebody who only looked at the cover of the cliff notes on presidential terms but didn't read it.

Right, but he can't read, so it can still be his position.

One is a perfect foil to a fat fascist politician and the other is the same.

And of course, anything passed by the normal legislative processes can just as easily be repealed that way.

Lasting change is going to require constitutional amendment(s) to harden the democracy against bad actors.

Mentioning both Taiwan and Tiananmen in one post?

Straight to jail.

Is this a "what happens if we outlaw all News Organizations" situation, or a "What if the world evolved without News Organizations" scenario?

From there, the answer depends entirely on how you define "news" and "organization."

Nobody would define aunt Sharon gossiping about her neighbor's cat's digestive issues as being a "news organization." Almost everybody would define the New York Times, or CNN as one.

Between them lies a million shades of gray, and any distinction is going to be arbitrary.

In the "outlaw" scenario above, even the best attempts to define clear and unambiguous rules will just lead to gamesmanship and disappointment.

One of my good friends growing up has a brother who I knew pretty well.

The brother should be finishing up a lengthy prison sentence for a double homicide pretty soon, IIRC.

Nixon aides wanted a pro-administration network, and some of them were eventually instrumental in getting Fox News going, but it took over 20 years between Watergate and the launch of FNC.

The question is basically answered now, so I'll just drop this video here for some additional context about Microsoft's history of trying to build a file system that solves the problem, and the challenges they faced even in the early XP days:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5d5H92c4Mk

tl;dw: MS tried to understand the context of each file, not just the name. Once you add dozens of pieces of metadata to each of tens of thousands of files (even 20+ years ago), the whole system became too difficult for them to properly index and manage efficiently.