[blakesterz]

BUT if Russia (or just pick any foreign govt agency that is capable of this, pick your favorite enemy foreign or domestic) can do this to a HUGE number of people, this makes us all less private/safe/secure. I actually don't know what the best word is to use. Using these apps certainly impacts our privacy in ways we don't fully understand. It probably makes use less safe/secure as well? Also is ways we can't always know. These things don't impact a person very often, but when we're talking millions of people, the impact could be pretty huge.

[thaumasiotes]

> BUT if Russia (or just pick any foreign govt agency that is capable of this, pick your favorite enemy foreign or domestic) can do this to a HUGE number of people, this makes us all less private/safe/secure.

How?

It doesn't. Russia doesn't care what a huge number of people are doing; trying to keep track of them would do nothing but waste their time and resources. They want to target a few specific people.

[blakesterz]

Good question!

I can't say I have a good answer. I guess I'm thinking it's a numbers game? I don't know really what an agency could do, but it certainly makes whatever they're up to much worse.

[thaumasiotes]

> I don't know really what an agency could do, but it certainly makes whatever they're up to much worse.

Being flooded with information generally doesn't help you. You can ignore it, in which case it isn't helping by definition, or you can try to do something with it, in which case it's generally actively making you worse off.

You know how people complain about not knowing what to think when a product has 30 reviews online? Imagine you're supposed to read fifty million reviews, and then use them to form an educated opinion on the product.