system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Harry Potter] How has the magical community managed to keep up the masquerade this long?

Sure, there have been a couple slip-ups (Salem comes to mind), but for the most part, there have been no major leaks or anything. How does the community stop random trolls from spilling the beans? Extremist groups who have tons of evidence ready for Muggle media? Various dark lords who would seek to take over the magical *and* Muggle world? With all its faults, is the Ministry just *that* good at memory-wiping every single non-related Muggle who finds proof of magic?
gpt
1. **Wiping memories.** Wizards do a lot of this. *Obliviate* and False Memory Charms are the two biggest tools there.
2. **Crime scene clean up.** Magic like a mending spell allows a wizard to clean up a trashed breakfast nook almost instantly. Healing spells can fairly easily patch up a person who's had their legs broken.
2. **Unplottability and Disillusionment.** Wizards have magic that turns people away places that they're not allowed to see, and magic that makes them unable to see it. It's debatable whether a muggle could even *see* a troll - we know for a fact that they can't see (only sense) Dementors.
2. **Bias against the unnatural.** Oh, so you have a shaky home video movie of someone flying through the air? Well, it's probably a prank or a hoax. You don't have a video? You're probably insane, or mistaken about what you saw.
3. **Worldwide organization.** It's not just the British wizards - it's every wizarding government in the world working in harmony. They also have a multitude of fast travel methods. Wizards also have some level of buy-in from muggle governments.
4. **Small population.** There just aren't that many wizards. In the muggle world, it makes sense to talk about an extremist group forming from the millions of people, but the population of magical Britain is tiny, and the same goes for the rest of the world. Extremists are less extreme, and less likely to find co-conspirators.
18. **Time period.** At the time the books take place, there's no internet, no quick video sharing, and home video itself had only been around for a limited amount of time. That leaves definitive proof much harder to come by and much harder to share.

That said, there are a few documented cases of wizards trying to break the masquerade, but none have been successful, mostly because of their Ministry's wide-reaching powers (and partially the ineptitude of these crusaders).