This is the endgame. The perfect citizen will not be capable of thinking the undesired thoughts.

Who says AI alignment / brain washing is impossible?! We are doing a pretty good jobs with humans.

To be fair, he's expressing himself poorly. Because, yes, "If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so."

He wants to say something more like "Conduct yourself in a way where if everyone read your messages they won't realize what a fucking miserable, intolerant asshole you are".

And let's be completely fair here. Tucker Carlson wasn't fired for holding any of the opinions that he holds. He wasn't fired for voicing those opinions. He wasn't even fired because people knew he had those opinions. He wasn't even fired because there was now evidence of all of that.

He was fired because it looks like doing something. And he made it really fucking easy for them to do it. He was a huge asshole in private messages and he could be sacrificed easily.

It's a similar thing that happened to Jon Gruden a few years back. While investigating Dan Snyder for several things, some emails Jon Gruden wrote during his time at ESPN saying some pretty stupidly racist stuff got "leaked". Then the conversation shifted from Snyder's trafficking of Washington's cheerleaders to Gruden's racism. Gruden resigned as coach of the Las Vegas Raiders as a result of all the hoopla.

All of those emails were sent to someone. They knew about it. Plenty of people worked with and for Gruden. They knew who he was. What kind of language he employs. Mike Tomlin, Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan, and others all knew who the man was. The league knew. ESPN, knew. Not a single thing that got leaked was a surprise to anyone with any input or influence on Gruden's career. He was fired simply to distract from the Washington issue. However, like Carlson, he made it really easy for them to do so by being a miserable asshole.

I don't send a single work email or work message that I would have to defend in the court of public opinion. Even when I step outside the bounds of purely work related issues, I don't express negative opinions about groups of people based on characteristics they have no choice over. The worst you could hit me with would be that I'm not as funny as I try to be. You won't find me being a miserable asshole when* our organization's emails becomes a matter of public record.

*I say when because I work for an organization where this is a very real possibility.

This is ridiculous. There are so many things you can do that are ethical and illegal. Or ethical and legal and would still piss a lot of people off. Or, how about just wanting to rant off the record with friends?

This idea the default should be "act like you're being watched" is harmful, both to the individual and to society.

So next time someone takes offense at something, ask them are they really offended, or synthetically offended?

see https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu for context.

As George Orwell said in his 1984 "Big Brother is watching you".

Yet, that is oftentimes the reality. You _are_ being watched (online).

There are plenty of things that were uncontroversial a decade ago that would now incite a twitter mob.

There is no man on earth who has ever been able to do that.

Do you have any other impossible suggestions?

Many people also say "What would Jesus do?"

No one can live like Christians believe Jesus did, but it's a guide. No one can be perfectly honest and moral 100% in their lives. It's a principle.

I think the point of the OP comment is "the first lesson Tucker should get out of the ordeal is not being a racist fascist, rather than cover your tracks when you're a racist fascist."

I also think it's valuable for people to know just how revealing text messages can be, and so if you have any valid concern about being targeted by the state, clearing your communications history is wise.

There are plenty of other examples for why this is a bad excuse to not secure communication.

"But it was for my mother in law," you will say.

And they will reply: "We'll cancel her insurance as well."

Who's to say whether or not what is today a perfectly innocent message might be socially ostracizing or even criminal hate speech in 5 years?

This concept may be put to the test once platforms like Discord leak all their data. It will eventually happen. Discord save everything forever and messages are only marked as deleted. They may even do voice-to-text transcriptions in the background as that is also easy to save forever. This probably also applies to Zoom and Slack, if not now then eventually. Slack had very weak controls for 3rd party integrations in that any employee could add random-integration but hopefully that has changed. I am curious how everything will play out.