I think you're highlighting an important distinction here, which is where the phenomena are taking place.
In the case of Musk's chip, he is talking about computationally operating across the actual human mind and its qualitative experience, via the physical brain structure, using digital input. So you see, there is a false equivalence being made that the human mind is like a computer, or at least strictly like a computer in terms of all of its phenomena (like musical experience).
The difference with internet platforms like message boards is that they are human expressions in external technologies - like extended cognition - you could say they are taking human thought and giving it a large virtual space to occupy, and part of that transition means thought must take a form, as text. Now, any expression of human thought must take a form. But the physical nature of speech is such that if you aren't physically recording it with a device, speech is 'on the air and off again, just like that'. But with extended cognition in virtual spaces, your expressions are being stored on servers, they take a form that can be parsed and manipulated by computer algorithm. You are metaphorically feeding thought into a global mind with higher-order functions for organizing it - making you, in essence, like one neuron in a global mind. Right now, that evolving global mind is looking for neurons that are not Self.
I, for one, believe that the internet has evolved to become a kind of universal 'cognitive field' for effecting the singular mind, or the hive mind. The difference in the case of our online speech is that, because of the form it takes, it becomes possible to monitor using algorithms that target keyword phrases. I think you're absolutely right when you say that there aren't the man hours to accomplish poring over everything anybody says online. But there does exist the power to consolidate people to certain spaces and to monitor those 'centers of activity' in terms of language. You don't need to parse every message; you just need a machine to point out interactions: what kinds of language are generating the most activity? In that way, a human analyst can understand the culture of that space, or what the 'mind' there is like.
You can also experiment yourself by participating in those spaces covertly, like dropping colored ink into a stream of water to study the current. You drop specific messages or content onto the internet (at nodes that you already recognize as originating a lot of activity), and you watch where the 'ink flows'. They'll find that certain conspiratorial or dissident messages will naturally find their way through the network to places like Poal, for example. This is how they discover Poal and other similar places. Once you know the nodes, you've already done an enormous amount of work.
I fully agree that so many of the individuals in the three-letter agencies are incompetent, or just lack a general insight into the burgeoning internet environment, but it's not so much the individuals we must worry about. It's the aggregate competency of the entire federal machine and its resources that we are up against.
The worry is truly how our internet expressions will be coupled with our real-world activities. Look at what happened to Gypsy. We are typically fine IF WE STAY ONLINE; which is precisely how they want it. The honeypot really exists for when we decide to do something real-world. The powers that be don't give a single fuck about what we say online, as long as we are inside of our little nests (like Poal). It's that if we ever decided to do something materially significant in the world, now they've got all of the ammunition they need to determine the outcome before you've ever even personally stated your name in front of the justice system. Control of perception is what's at stake, as we've seen with the Chauvin case recently. The outcome of that case had been decided well before the very first court date.
In other words, the structure of the internet itself, as a global mind, is causing us to quite naturally self-segregate into our respective modules. Likes together with likes. The purpose of all of this cultural instigation across party lines is to give mankind the stimulus it needs to truly segregate ourselves. Because they want to flush out those people who will refuse to let their individuality bleed into the coming singular mind. These individuals are literally preventing that global mind from forming, and so at this moment we are in no less than a psychological war for what humanity is going to be inside of an unprecedented and potentially infinite new cognitive space.
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