It does make sense, because if you were developing a bad or evil system then you would obviously want to obfuscate that as much as possible. The first thing you'd do, clearly, is proclaim that the purpose of the system is something good.

This is a common fallacy or I guess maybe shoddy reasoning I see often. Because someone or something either does not announce their intentions or says their intentions are good, then the thing they are using must also be good. Or, we must assume it is good until they announce they're going to use it for not-good purposes.

Like with Flock. There's a lot of people who think the simple defense that Flock thinks it is used to fight crime means it's good. Or DOGE. The simple defense that the people behind DOGE say it's to prevent fraud means it's good.

But what people say and what actually happens are two different things, and the what actually happens part is 1000x more important. Anyone can say anything, and obviously bad actors will lie. That's just a given. So you can't use the stated purpose of something as a defense for that something. You just can't, it makes no sense.

I never said the stated purpose is a defense. The purpose is the purpose not the outcome. Just because you can’t know the true intent of every actor involved does not mean you’re justified in assuming the purpose is what it does. That is lazy broken epistemology.

I agree what a system does is what is important, so why dilute that fact with assumptions of intent and glib moralizing thought terminating cliches?

Will say every benefactor of people not thinking that way. The rest of us, on the other hand, look at the objective results and realize if you want them to change, you have to change the system.

Well duh. “A system will do what it does” is true, but that should not be conflated with its intent or purpose or design which require understanding of human intent. And humans produce unintended results all the time.