How OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identity surveillance machine

Re:How OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identi... by vmfunc on Wednesday February 18, 2026 @05:51AM (#47059663)

author here. currently in touch with persona's CEO as mentioned on twitter, part 2 and 3 coming soon. i understand the criticism on the design of the site but it has no place here on hackernews. the content is what matters. i designed my website to be an experience rather than sanitized white on black minimalist slop, whether you like it or not is completely fair, then just use reading mode in your browser.

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Re:How OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identi... by user2722 on Wednesday February 18, 2026 @09:13AM (#47061115)

I liked it.

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Re:How OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identi... by chneu on Wednesday February 18, 2026 @09:28AM (#47061281)

I enjoyed the website.

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Re:How OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identi... by iamnothere on Wednesday February 18, 2026 @11:42AM (#47062944)

It’s a good design, props for doing something different and interesting.

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Re:How OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identi... by mainmailman on Wednesday February 18, 2026 @05:32PM (#47067340)

I loved it, I’ve never seen something like it

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Re:How OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identi... by vmfunc on Friday February 20, 2026 @09:24AM (#47088400)

thank you!! this website was made loooong ago before gpt3 was even a thing lol (saying this because people thought it was vibecoded lol), the design of it brings me joy and i wouldn't change it for anything

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Re:How OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identi... by righthand on Wednesday February 18, 2026 @11:21PM (#47069891)

I love your site design, but please consider that people may not take your content seriously because it is so expressive. It is cool looking but hard to concentrate on the actual content. This is distracting from the point you are making and makes it harder to circulate this to non-tech peoples.

An experience yes but one that is noisy to the information you’re trying to expose.

Deflecting criticism of the noisiness because you want to focus on the content is just creating another distraction to discuss instead of the content. The cat, the music, the lowercase text, low contrast color scheme all create a layer of “is this serious?”

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Re:How OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identi... by vmfunc on Friday February 20, 2026 @09:22AM (#47088387)

i agree but this is why journalists and the media pick up on this - i'm doing the technical writeup, other reputable sources do the normie stuff

also while yes i agree that it could raise questions about "is this serious?" to be honest i believe my track record in the field is enough to outweigh the design of my site. i designed this website when i was a teenager, many years ago, to express my vibe and soul, and i would much rather it stay that way even if it makes it seem less serious

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Re:How OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identi... by righthand on Friday February 20, 2026 @12:47PM (#47091246)

Perhaps you would consider compiling into a less expressive format when you complete it. I’d love to dig into it but the context switching distractions as well as the difficulty curve of the material and style are high. So it is bookmarked but deprioritized.

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Re:How OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identi... by kelvinjps10 on Tuesday February 24, 2026 @11:09AM (#47138848)

Your writing and content I'd say that's of more quality that most journalists

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