Comment by seba_dos1
It's not a hard technical concept to grasp that placing a stick-it onto some thing doesn't make the thing behind it disappear.
It's not a hard technical concept to grasp that placing a stick-it onto some thing doesn't make the thing behind it disappear.
No, it is not. But given the abysmal lack of technical knowledge of the "typical computer user" they don't see the redacted PDF's as "having black stick-it notes stuck on top of the text". They see the PDF as having had a "black marker pen" applied that has obliterated the text from view.
When someone then shows them how to copy/paste out the original text, because the PDF was simply black stick-it notes above the text, it appears to them as if that someone is a magical wizard of infinite intelligence.