Yes, that’s accurate and can be found in the video I posted.
The the best way to predict is to look at what happens in other autocratically governed nations. And independent pollsters still operate in Russia.
Autocrats need to know what their public is thinking. So every newspaper and television station will be all-MAGA, all the time, before the last legitimate polling companies are closed.
Some pollsters in Russia have a pro-regime bias. Maybe most. Just not all.
China also allows some independent polling, although they have less of a polling tradition than Russia:
What do those cabinet people care if they perjure themselves or not? As long as the words they string together please trump, they can care less about national security.
First, a brief public service announcement.
If you use Venmo, go into it right now and make sure your accounts are set to private.
I use Venmo. There is a woman I worked with on a construction project about 8 years ago, before I retired and we exchanged a few e-mails at that time. I have never done a financial transaction with her
Now, every time she uses Venmo I see some of the transaction details, who she paid (or who paid her) and the description of the transaction, not the dollar amount though.
And there are a couple of other people in my e-mail contacts whose financial transactions are visible.
It’s actually sort of fun to see the transaction description list
Bagel!
Bills $500 Jamaica
Cupcake for mom
Massage
Me Chris and Rae
Don’t provide your friends with this vicarious entertainment, make your account private
Apparently, there are people in the Trump
administration that didn’t do this, and Wired magazine found their transaction history. My apologies if this is paywalled, it doesn’t look like they have a gift link option.
I just heard someone refer to Hesgeth’s role in this as whiskeyleaks and I had to repeat it.
One of the late night hosts noted this, and said he was appalled that Waltz is still in the “Dude, you owe me $14 for tacos” phase of life.
Not to mention the “paying for 
” phase of life.
I don’t get the ‘paying for eggplant’ joke.
The eggplant emoji is slang for penis. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that emoji used any other way.
But don’t take those messages too literally. There are plenty of people who label most of their Venmo transactions, “hookers and blow” just to entertain their friends.
Der Speigel, a German news source, reports that info about personal accounts of top US defence officials can be found online, in hacked data dumps and also general online sources.
Modern version of “for services rendered” on paper checks.
Why was Stephen Miller on this group chat?
Because he’s the one in the Oval Office with the power to decide who lives and who dies. I wish I was kidding.
This isn’t directed at you, but why do people use Venmo? I remember a few years ago when someone (Madison Hawthorne, I think) got busted for sending underage girls money via Venmo…because everyone can see it.
I get that we’re in an age of social media and everyone wants to share everything, but I can’t see the appeal of sharing how much and to whom you’re sending money, I’d wager the recipients feel the same way.
Also, I understand that you can make these transactions private, but clearly a lot of people don’t.
Why do people use Venmo? Because it’s an exceptionally easy way to pay your friends now that cash isn’t the standard. I use it a few times every week, and some people use it daily.
Why do people share their transactions? I can think of no reason except they forgot to change their privacy settings.
Transactions default to the most strict privacy setting. So if Bob’s transactions are public and mine are private, no one can see it when Bob pays me.
People use Venmo because a lot of people only accept Venmo for payments.
Most of those people probably didn’t realize Venmo transactions are public by default. I certainly didn’t, until 5 minutes ago. I’ll go fix that right away.
Is it easier than, say, paypal?
Which is it? Also, this seems to be a good example of the confusion surrounding it.
Wiki has a section on Venmo’s privacy issues:
A 2018 study analyzed over 200 million public transactions and found that Venmo “reveals a massive amount of private details about users’ lives by default”
the FTC had accused Venmo of “misleading” users about the privacy settings changes required to make transactions completely private
A May 2021 investigation by BuzzFeed News reportedly managed to find the Venmo account of United States president Joe Biden after “less than 10 minutes of looking for it”
In 2022, Dr. Rajat Tandon and Dr. Jelena Mirkovic from the University of Southern California, along with their research collaborators, showcased that 2 in 5 Venmo users publicly reveal sensitive information.
But I guess my question was less about the privacy concerns and more about why you’d want to broadcast that information in the first place, at least for the people doing it voluntarily.
I wouldn’t use Venmo for the same reason I wouldn’t use a bank that posted everyone’s transactions on the internet.
I guess, more than anything, I’m surprised the business model does as well as it does. I’m not surprised that some people want this feature, I’m surprised that so many people do.
Yes. As long as the other person has Venmo, you just put in their phone #.
Same. I went in and found mine were public as well. Good thing is the only thing I’ve used it for is to pay for dog nail trimming. No hookers and blow in mine. I’m also baffled why anyone would want their financial transactions public. I didn’t know this was a thing till today.