For example, I was in an AI chat at one point, and a guy wanted his friend to join who worked in an AI company. He didn't know how to get them to join, but we had been developing something similar to the company's work in one of the channels.

What he did was message prominently about nonexistent legal filings, patent, copyright complaints between the two works. His friend suddenly joined the chat. I presume because some surveillance or censorship system influenced things.

Appelbaum published a thesis depicting massive communication invasions in detail, and Zeynep keeps sharing huge data leaks here.

I've found various failures and successes around hijinx that can produce action in my life that can be otherwise different, such as spamlogs to do things I have learned to find very hard.

The various mysterious influences seem usually to conflict with each other, so some kind of strong change by those involved seems eventually inevitable.