The Cost of Being Influential
The more influential we become, the more we observe attacks on us (on yours truly, the spouse, other family members, friends and so on).
But conversely, and maybe interestingly, the more effort is put to silence us, the more influential we become.
One might call this 'the Wikileaks effect'.
See, society is generally not all that stupid. It knows that always in the entire history of human civilisation (even in the age of villages and hunter-gatherers), there were efforts to muzzle 'inconvenient' voices, usually those who speak for the weak and against the powerful (all too eager to misuse power).
We covered a similar conundrum in relation to privacy: High-Level Criminals Associate Privacy With Crime Because They Want Privacy Only for Themselves (Control But No Accountability)
In 2025 we no longer "burn witches". Well, depends where anyway...
Not only Saudi Arabia is deeply misogynistic and attacks women. This phenomenon is international, but it's typically more closeted, with occasional utterances like "quiet, piggy" (when asking about grown men like the US President supporting/facilitating - maybe even indulging in - the trafficking of underage women).
In Saudi Arabia, they beat up, imprison and sometimes execute bloggers for pointing out what almost everybody knows but is afraid to say.
The only reason the House of Saud does PR charades and pretends to "reform" is pressure from such bloggers, who help expose the brutality of the regime. In turn, those bloggers and their wives (e.g. Ensaf Haidar, wife of Raif Badawi) receive even more exposure. Then, the message of the blogger (Badawi) receives even more international readership. The same is true for Hanan Elatr, widow of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
“My message is that his sacrifice of his life was not for his own benefit, but to help those who are behind bars in Saudi Arabia,” she said. “My husband, at the last minute, was crying out for [political prisoner] Essam al-Zamil, and others in jail.”
As we said an hour ago in relation to IBM, trying to keep information (about IBM) away from people's reach/sight is costly. It results in critics (of IBM) receiving even more exposure. The same is true for EPO.
The "tech world" and its monopoly enforcer (patent system) are sleepwalking into autocracy. █