this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2025
721 points (97.6% liked)

Bluesky

1920 readers
1 users here now

People skeeting stuff.

Bluesky Social is a microblogging social platform being developed in conjunction with the decentralized AT Protocol. Previously invite-only, the flagship Beta app went public in February 2024. All are welcome!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
top 38 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] D1re_W0lf@piefed.world 148 points 2 months ago (7 children)

Actually there’s dozens of really good free / open source apps that can do that. Let’s face it, forgetting to flatten the edited version is not a technical problem. It’s a laziness one.

[–] core@leminal.space 111 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Or its malicious compliance

[–] Landless2029@lemmy.world 26 points 2 months ago (1 children)

One of the few communities I miss on reddit...

[–] Burninator05@lemmy.world 18 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Its still there but is a shadow of what it used to be. Lots of AI karma farming submissions.

[–] JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca 17 points 2 months ago

It turned into a suspended disbelief creative writing exercise sub long before bots were it's main problem. It was "I hate my Boss/Partner NoSleep"

[–] lauha@lemmy.world 24 points 2 months ago (1 children)

More likely ignorance or incompetence instead of laziness

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

is sleep deprivation ignorance, incompetence or laziness?

[–] Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 months ago

More so on management's end, but yes.

[–] lauha@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago
[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yeah I'm not sure, but haven't spent any time really looking through them. I've seen some images that were clearly scanned and the size reduced so you couldnt read words in the image you'd think they would have scanned the redacted files as well to the same PDF dump or whatever, which had they done would have flattened them. To me it seems more of a we "properly" redacted and covered up files for some people, and we didn't care as much about others. Whether or not they were trying to allow for those people to be "accidentally" found is a possibility, but who knows

[–] jagermo@feddit.org 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, but you need to onboard those and run them through IT due dilligence. That is annoying in the best companies - i would not want to procure a new Software tool in a gouvernement setting.

[–] Eat_Your_Paisley@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago

It’s unpleasant to get any software approved in the government

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 2 months ago

Could be sabotage

[–] Restaldt@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

You mean screenshot and paint right?

Maybe someone intentionally poorly censored it. This problem is so easy to avoid.

[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 months ago

A lot of open source applications can't be used by government agencies because the pedigree of the software can't be verified, so you can't be sure foreign entities didn't add any code.

But really there's a million ways to do this - even whatever application they used would have been fine if they simply printed out the redacted files and rescanned them.

[–] I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 62 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I really don't think these things are as connected as you want them to be.

[–] underisk@lemmy.ml 35 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah it’s far more likely they were just incompetent. If I needed to redact a document I sure as hell wouldn’t be using acrobat to do it.

And frankly as much as I hate Elon and think DOGE was a farce, I’m not going to lament Adobe getting less government money

[–] PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

DOGE only existed to benefit Elon and his companies while also allowing for cover ups of any crimes he committed or his companies did by ending active outgoing investigations that were happening via gov’t agencies.

[–] deltapi@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

It seems it was little more than an excuse for Elon to go after the FAA, FCC, FTC, and EPA.

*Give SpaceX/Muskrat what it wants or your department will be gutted. *

[–] TimboSlice@discuss.online 27 points 2 months ago (1 children)

His face is so annoying to look at

[–] W3dd1e@lemmy.zip 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] Karjalan@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

It's annoying because it's frustratingly unpunched

[–] cyberwitch@reddthat.com 13 points 2 months ago

Fake news. Adobe would never tell you if you're paying for an "idle" account.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

What's insanely stupid about all of this is there's no way that doge knew that those accounts were inactive. Their definition of inactive will have been, it hasn't been used in 31 days. Since that's an easy metric to pull up.

But so what? There are licenced applications that I use at work that are only used once every two to three months. There js stuff that I only need in January, February and March because it's related to mitigating problems caused by poor weather conditions, outside of those months the weather is usually pretty mild.

So I guarantee that they caused a wave of IT support tickets a couple of weeks later from people that now needed to use the applications and had found that they had been there removed, without anyone talking to the relevant parties.

[–] FalschgeldFurkan@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Does anyone know if there's any open-source Linux software that does redactions just like Acrobat?

Edit: Thanks a lot for your suggestions! Will check them out later 🙂

[–] Slashme@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

https://github.com/digidigital/CoverUP

https://coverup.digidigital.de/

German made - cross-platform, and renders the new PDFs as images, not text, to make sure that you can't read the redacted bits afterwards.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 5 points 2 months ago

renders the new PDFs as images, not text, to make sure that you can't read the redacted bits afterwards.

Wow what an advanced feature. Actually redacting things.

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 4 points 2 months ago

Not open source, but I use the free demo version of PDF-xchange for the most common editing tools. Highlight and draw boxes and comment etc.

It doesn't actually matter what you use to edit it. The key to locking it down is simply to print to pdf as image instead of saving as pdf. I use the "Microsoft print to pdf printer" to do this. It's in the printing dialogue.

The document is now a fixed picture. This will obviously also ruin the search feature.

[–] some_guy 4 points 2 months ago

Yeah, it’s called a print driver. You print the docs, redact to hell, and rescan them. That’s what they did during Trump 1. But there were actual competent people then. Now, only dumbass sycophants.

[–] biotin7@sopuli.xyz 9 points 2 months ago

Why are govts using Adobe or anything made by the private sector is beyond me.

[–] MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 8 points 2 months ago

Jesus. I've administrated a bunch of Adobe accounts in various ways and it's not always straight forward to tell what licenses are in use and by whom. These pencil necked fucktards thought they somehow knew better than the government IT guys, what's in use and what isn't....

Incredible.

In any case, I'm glad their eating their own chow. They made this bed and now hopefully, they're about to get fucked in it.

I somehow doubt it, but I can dream Harold.

[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 5 points 2 months ago

First thing to be thankful of proprietary software for?

[–] melfie@lemy.lol 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

If DOGE really wanted to do something, they should have stopped all payments to Adobe and their ilk for anything with a suitable open source alternative. As it stands, everything they “saved” and more is going towards the record 1 trillion Pentagon budget that will never be audited. Guess they told Trump not to fuck with their blood money or the sniper won’t miss next time.

[–] ashughes@feddit.uk 4 points 2 months ago

Your skyview.social link returns “invalid url” for me.

[–] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

Pedophiles can't redact pdf files?

[–] LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

Tbf, I feel like this ain't why the government failed at redactions, but the the thought of it being true is very amusing.

[–] zebidiah@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 months ago

I thought Leon was good at computer....