So, uh, I know we’ve been keeping track of neural mining references. There’s a pretty intense one in the Zhupao article. Under, uh, Mass Brainjacking. 
For posterity:
Zhupao has been accused of enforcing a mass brainjacking campaign to cover up its illegal neural mining operation. [11] This was first discovered in November 2040 by Miguel Borges, who noticed that people who were part of the G6 pilot programmes gradually started dismissing news reports about the neural mining, including close friends who had previously voiced strong oppositions.
When Cariappa publicly recanted his statements about having discovered Zhupao’s neural mining operation, Borges suspected that he was being brainjacked. He shared his suspicion with Amankwah-Crouse, who helped him conduct a series of interviews and surveys. Amankwah-Crouse eventually concluded that the brainjacking was tested on Cariappa before being deployed on a wider scale.
In December 2040, Borges published a report in which he accused Zhupao of creating a “self-censoring memory hole” by abusing G6 colloids for the purposes of enhanced disinformation. In the report, Borges alleges that Zhupao is using a form of selective memory recoding designed to weaken any mental connections related to neural mining, making people attach less and less significance to it over time. [12] Follow-up investigations have determined that this recoding process intervenes during sleep, when the memories of the previous day are being encoded by the brain.
I’m…pretty horrified and freaked out. What the hell. Especially in light of the CMD “diagnosis”. I’m not sure how it all keeps getting more invasive and creepy but it does. Going to go watch some Finally Awake streams and try to gather myself.
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There’s a new citation that seems relevant on the Blankout article, too:
- Fourie, B. (September 2049). “Are we experiencing blankouts in our sleep without knowing it?” Academic Journal of Oneirology.
The allegations that Adira has the ability to brainjack people is back on the blankout article, too. That’s seeming more and more like projection and misdirection to me.
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Another thing to note :
On the Blankouts article, the following has been edited out
These concerns have been disputed by researchers, as colloid-enabled neurotechnology is not capable of forcing people into complex actions or removing memories, and there have been no witness reports of people doing anything illegal or out of character during blankouts.
Emphasis mine. Not sure if it’s been changed to support Adira-paranoïa or because colloids apparently can edit your memories and affect your behavior, but yeah.
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Good job catching this for posterity - the controversies section is gone from the Zhupao article. (Surprise, surprise.) Here are the deleted citations, courtesy of my handy local cache:
- Daems, A; Sajjadi, E; Ariyawansa, P. (November 2040). “Gathering your thoughts: a new frontier of extractive capitalism.” World News Wire.
- Borges, M. (December 2040). “Zhupao is abusing colloids to make you forget they’re mining your thoughts.” Ethercon.
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Your comment sent me digging through my article cache to look at the edit history of that part of the Blankout article.
The concerns about blankouts being a new kind of brainjacking and the possible link to Adira were added on the 5th; on the 6th, Zhupao’s neural mining operation was added as a possible cause before being stealth-edited out. Then on the 7th was the (IMO, fishy and stilted) edit about the concerns being disputed by researchers etc.
It could be that the neural mining reference brought the article to the attention of another editor, and that’s what led to the “brainjacking? what, no, that’s impossible!” edit on the 7th.
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Well, this is sure. Something. Horrific at least, that’s for sure.
Any chance that the whole neural mining and brainjacking thing is itself misinformation? Like, an intentional misdirect to create conspiracy theories that are bigger and scarier than anything real to soak up attention? So that people are asking, “is Zhupao literally mind controlling everyone”, instead of, “is Zhupao downplaying the health risks of neural colloids for financial gain”, or something to that effect.
Cause if not, well, this is pretty bleak.
I guess once you’re able to design video games that exist entirely in people’s dreams, or alter the perceptions of an entire population (a la South Korea), there’s pretty much no limit on what you can do.