Tratheans is a common name to refer to several sects, each of these sects have a common belief that all information should be public, and that privacy should not exist. In many sects this includes the information about individuals such as health records, chat logs, browsing history, recordings and other “private” information.
Philosophy
While there are various sects most of them subscribe to the belief that information being fully public has 4 main benefits:
- Blackmail becomes functionally impossible
- All interactions are “honest”
- Accountability can be proactive instead of reactive
- Many forms of crime become logistically difficult or impossible; Many types or trafficking, or data crimes (fraud, slander, distribution/consumption of illegal activities) become incredibly difficult, if not outright impossible for most people to engage in
They believe that all forms of propaganda are inherently immoral. Going so far as to have certain sects to ban consumption of advertising, fiction, and other art that could be propagandistic in nature, or used as propaganda.
Differences in Sects
There are many unaccounted for sects of Tratheans, however there are several popular ones:
- Originalists: Believe that all people should be subject to having all of their information public, and that violating laws to make information public is acceptable
- Principlists: Believe that all information being public is freeing, but that it is the choice of the individual to free themselves of their shame, and not something to be forced
- Political Tratheanism: The belief that all members of government, and the government itself should be forced to have all information public, but everyday citizens shouldn’t be forced
- Pragmatic Tratheanism: By default we should make information publicly available until there is a reason not to
Contentious Beliefs
Many of the Trathean beliefs (and actions) are highly contentious. Different sects reject some of these beliefs, however there are many that hold all of the below beliefs:
- Compromising photos should be freely available
- Information that would directly lead to the harm of others should be public (addresses of people in witness protection, proof of cheating, etc.)
- Media depicting illegal acts should be public (executions, murders, beastiality, child porn, rape footage etc.)
- All court documents should be public, and unredacted/deanonymized
- Unfinished and in-progress works should be available (partially filmed films, unfinished research, and it’s results so far, police reports, etc.)
- Entertainment media should be fully available to anyone, and should be redistributable by anyone
- Intellectual property protections should be banned
Contentious Activism
There have been many situations that Trathean sects have been involved in, that are considered contentious forms of activism, including:
- Releasing a hacked list of 373 protected witnesses for various crimes
- This lead to the death of 38 individuals in protective custody, including key witness in 15 since dismissed cases
- Creation of “topic tube” sites that post unedited videos of people including
- failVODS; a site dedicated to videos of people tripping, falling, or failing to achieve a task in some way. With over 300 Million users daily, it is one of the most popular websites.
- failVODS has had many lawsuits brought against it for
- Failure to comply with takedown notices for sensitive data such as credit card numbers, national ID numbers
- Failure to comply with takedown notices of slander for faked videos
- A national case in Shekland against them for logging people’s locations on visit, and keeping a public repository of the data of anyone who visits available on Findrr
- A secondary lawsuit was brought forth of a man who was attacked by an ex partner as a result of scraping his information from the failVODS data repository
- failVODS has had many lawsuits brought against it for
- BackAtHer; A site dedicated to posting videos of people cheating on their partners. The site is banned in most nations, and many of the admins have been arrested in various places for violations of laws relating to distribution of revenge porn, indecent imagery, and child porn
- Findrr; A site dedicated to allowing people to post contact information about people, including phone numbers, addresses, national identification numbers, and even real-time coordinates.
- The site has had many legal issues with people suing for reckless endangerment, among other charges
- There have been reports of bots being used by official law enforcement agencies to track suspects using the information available on the site
- 3 of the sites developers were captured and executed on broadcast by a high up member of the Purist Aeytr after information about his daughter was leaked on the site
- WatchEmReap; A site dedicated to videos and live broadcasts of people dying. The site is banned in many nations.
- The site is considered by some to be a front for law enforcement as it has been used by many agencies to bring cases against people
- Much of the sites data also feeds into Findrr, allowing users to be tracked in near real time
- failVODS; a site dedicated to videos of people tripping, falling, or failing to achieve a task in some way. With over 300 Million users daily, it is one of the most popular websites.
Critiques
People have pointed out that some of their beliefs are contradictory to the main 4 advantages they claim. For example the belief that media depicting illegal acts should be public is contradictory to the claim that the creation and distribution of the media is logistically impossible.
Relation to Zarathem
A group who believe in the “extreme freedom of information”. They idolize Tratheaous, the god of information in Zarathem. Tratheaous went as far as to steal information from others to satiate his thirst for knowledge, and Tratheans also believe this is justified. In it’s modern iteration the group in general believes that privacy is not a real concept, and try to push this as far as possible. Any form of information that is gated should be open to everyone.
The Archive
As believers in the importance of free information, Tratheans are big supporters of The Archive. They believe it is an essential service, and a beacon of what other organizations should be. They often hold fundraisers, and volunteer for events run by The Archive.
As a part of this relationship, there are groups of Tratheans who call themselves scrapers. They work to organize information into formats that are more useable, and searchable. Par of this work includes those that read archival documents on people, and put together dossiers for the archive. At one point it seems like The Archive (Machine) helped Tratheans stop a plot by a terrorist group that would have involved bombing an archive node. The bombers address and information was included in a Trathean scrapers files for the day