this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2025
695 points (99.6% liked)

Microblog Memes

9943 readers
2204 users here now

A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.

Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.

Rules:

  1. Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
  2. Be nice.
  3. No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
  4. Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.

Related communities:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Bosht@lemmy.world 26 points 17 hours ago

Guys. This is called resistance. These people are govt employees. We go through literally yearly training on maintaining classified documents. This wasn't gross incompetence, it was fucking intentional. They knew they could do it because they knew leadership was too fucking stupid to check it properly. Believe it or not the govt is largely run by people, just like you and I. We are doing what we can where we can.

[–] _Nico198X_@europe.pub 20 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

we're all so blessed that autocracy is so stupid

[–] IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world 3 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

How the hell can they not have learned from the countless times this has happened before?

[–] matlag@sh.itjust.works 5 points 18 hours ago

They work only with the best. Musk fired the other ones.

[–] buddascrayon@lemmy.world 38 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

This is going to look obvious in hindsight but perhaps people should have kept this to themselves until every single Epstein file had been released. Because now the DOJ is just going to do their best to fix the problem.

Not that that saying much these guys are the fucking keystone cops.

[–] qaz@lemmy.world 8 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

I think there were probably several people that found this before that didn't say anything for this reason.

I posted it on here because once it's trending on TikTok and Bsky that ship has sailed

[–] buddascrayon@lemmy.world 4 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, I wasn't specifically referring to you. I just meant that people in general who've discovered this exploit maybe should have collectively kept it to themselves.

[–] SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 18 hours ago

If only. This is why I always laugh at the conspiracy theories that involve more than like 10 people, like all the scientists fabricating global warming. Humans are terrible at keeping secrets.

[–] ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online 5 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

And if you watch the original keystone cops they will look damn competent compared to these guys.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 8 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

We needed to be quiet about this until they released all the tranches so that they're all readable but nooo someone had to go and tweet about it.

[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 7 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Malicious compliance on the part of some DOJ intern maybe?

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Cruel@programming.dev 6 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Happens all the time in the legal field. I once got a document in discovery that inverted the proper redactions. It was a roster of identifying information, all unredacted except for the actual relevant person in the case — that was redacted. 🤣

Redacting with black boxes over text is more common of a mistake than that.

[–] Jerkface@piefed.social 113 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I choose to believe that the people who did this aren't idiots, but heroes.

[–] axx@slrpnk.net 5 points 21 hours ago

Yeah, that much is obvious.

[–] 01189998819991197253 79 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I really hope this is malicious compliance and not incompetence...

could be elaborated planted evidence

I thought this was just gonna be made up, but it's true!!!

Go to this document and look for the text "Defendants Kahn and Indyke controlled and directed the activities of the other entities and personal bank accounts of Epstein" so you can get to the part with redactions.

Copy the redactions with Ctrl + C. Paste the redactions into either Notepad or another text editor that doesn't support advanced formatting like highlights.

Before:
image

After: (in notepad)
image

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 4 points 21 hours ago

There's a tool called pdftotext...

[–] Danitos@reddthat.com 86 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I wonder if this was intentional? Maybe the FBI agent assigned to this file knew the whole censor thing was a huge fiasco and simply did this.

[–] UnrepententProcrastinator@lemmy.ca 5 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

I always operate by the "never assume malice where incompetence is sufficient" rule

[–] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 4 points 21 hours ago

Feigned ignorance for the resistance/people. Neither malice nor incompetence.

[–] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 66 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Deep down, I sincerely hope that it's malicious compliance in favor of getting the truth out.

That said, I absolutely will cop to dangerous blood-levels of copium here. Living in a kakistocracy so completely top-to-bottom incompetent as to do this by accident, is a level of peril that I'm not equipped to handle right now.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] axx@slrpnk.net 3 points 21 hours ago

It's pretty clear to me this was intentional.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 4 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

I mean, are there tech literate MAGAts who would read the Epstein files to test their convictions?

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 132 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not all of them are like this. At least one isn't.

[–] Zwiebel@feddit.org 53 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 62 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Yeah...

I should have gotten all the files when they first came out. Is there an archive somewhere? All I've looked at is the one file that was changed to black out trump sucking the nipples of an underage person. That one had the text data replaced with a "-" for each block.

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 45 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Whaaaaaaa? I've never heard of this.

one file that was changed to black out trump sucking the nipples of an underage person.

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 105 points 1 day ago (6 children)
[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 56 points 1 day ago

Thanks, but I'm sorry I asked:

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] DScratch@sh.itjust.works 105 points 1 day ago (3 children)

This has happened before. Back when I used to browse the armpit of the internet there were classified military docs that had the same technique used.

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 72 points 1 day ago

I called it. Last week I said this :

I'm hoping for the old “it looks black until you select the text in the PDF” snafu.

[–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 26 points 1 day ago (7 children)

I find it funny that it took a few days for this to come out. That's the very first thing I try if I see a big black box censoring something in a PDF or webpage is highlight to see if there's text under there (practice from reading SCP Wiki and various forums with fun formatting options). Heck I randomly highlight as I read enough I'd probably even find that it was incorrectly redacted without even trying

[–] CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

The first set (with nothing but blacked out pages) was properly redacted and in-fact contained no text data whatsoever. I think this is from the more recent files including the ones that were accidentally uploaded and pulled an hour later.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 37 points 1 day ago (11 children)

reddit is the armpit. 4chan is the unwashed taint.

load more comments (11 replies)
[–] doesit@sh.itjust.works 66 points 1 day ago (1 children)

teacher here. I blacked out words in a text for some test. kid held it up to the light. could read every word. was a pdf made in word.

[–] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 34 points 1 day ago

Lots of people on social media hide sensitive information with 90% opacity highlighter.

[–] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 34 points 1 day ago

Shame this fuck-up only happened in some of the pages.

[–] dangling_cat@piefed.blahaj.zone 47 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Also, I wonder if you can use brute force for a lot of name reductions. You know, have a list of highly suspicious names, set the same font and size of the surrounding text, and try to see if it fits in the black box.

[–] sirico@feddit.uk 30 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Yes yes you can let's spin up the old ml machine and a copy of python3 just like our grandfather's did

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 24 points 1 day ago

There is nothing trumps admin can't fuck up. Its actually impressive.

[–] Delusions@lemmy.dbzer0.com 41 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There's several pages that are just completely black that it's like they drew a big black square with paint or they just copy pasted the same page probably

[–] PP_BOY_@lemmy.world 47 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

they drew a big black square with paint

I have insider knowledge that that's exactly how this image was made. [OC] please share it because I think the format is funny and would love to see it catch on

[–] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago

THEY DID IT AGAIN

load more comments
view more: next ›