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> "Everyone else is doing it."

Around the world, there are many "smart" people making autonomous weapons systems, "anti-fraud systems" that are really psychometric profiles, trading systems that front-run their customers, fraudulent advertising and fraudulent ad metrics, etc. It's pretty standard.

Believe whatever it takes to help you sleep at night. No one can persuade you otherwise.

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Well, I think you're missing the point. It's used by PR people to keep an eye out for news stories before they go viral, for spokespeople to read about themselves, and for market researchers to look smart by identifying trend pieces.

None of this software is smart enough to enable the sort of surveillance and oppression you are implying from your other examples. It's really 101-level stuff.

> Believe whatever it takes to help you sleep at night. No one can persuade you otherwise.

I don't even understand what this means. It's a searchable index of news, with some text analytics that you can get for dirt cheap from google or amazon.

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