[Linkpost] “Where’s all the blackmail?” by KatjaGrace

This is a link post. It is interesting how little blackmail I see, that I know is blackmail. A lot of people probably do some things they would be embarrassed by if they were made public at some degree of detail and explicitness, and it probably isn’t that hard to get evidence of these, and quite a few people seem to be amoral . Also, in order to properly embarrass someone, I imagine you would make your information relatively public, so that for instance I—Katja—should hear about some fraction of cases. Yet I very rarely receive information I know to be public for the purpose of embarrassing someone. I’m not sure I remember it ever happening. Why not? If I imagine being morally inclined toward blackmailing someone, one salient reason to avoid it is that my wrongdoing is extremely obvious and in-the-face of the recipient, so they seem likely to react destructively, for instance by telling everyone that I’m a dirty blackmailer. It's like stealing from right in front of someone's face. Another possibility is that there is a lot of blackmail, but it mostly remains private because the blackmailers mostly get the price right to have their threats heeded. [...] --- First published: November 5th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bJtBvxMcbDSNdzveA/where-s-all-the-blackmail Linkpost URL: https://worldspiritsockpuppet.substack.com/p/wheres-all-the-blackmail --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.