zlacker

>>tokai+(OP)
In the US, we have government programs like PRISM and unchecked oligopolies that surveil us and use that information to identify dissent, sell us ads, and alter our behavior. In the EU, there are these initiatives to surveil us in the name of safety.

Is there any regime out there who's not trying to mass-surveil their citizens for one reason or another?

>>Centig+jh
> Is there any regime out there who's not trying to mass-surveil their citizens for one reason or another?

Covid authoritarian policies were hugely successful and supported by mainstream people by and large. Not enough protests. Not enough dissent.

Now politicians know they can turn the power knob as high as they want and nothing will happen. Less and less dissent will be allowed, just like during covid.

If you fail to learn that and denounce those and reclaim the freedoms for all, you're going to just whine into a smaller and smaller room.

>>isaacr+vv
> Covid authoritarian policies were hugely successful and supported by mainstream people by and large.

They were temporary and saved lives. Keyword here is temporary.

Of course COVID denialists are angry at it but they won in the USA now so we'll be happy getting more deaths and disabilities now that they are removing our ability to vaccinate ourselves.

>>Krssst+511
Being temporary and being authoritarian are entirely orthogonal. In general I would imagine that cultures willing to accept temporary authoritarianism for the "right reasons" are more prone to falling to dictators.

>>fc417f+ua1
It's a silly hypothetical though - the argument that some emergency measures during an international pandemic emergency are authoritarianism would only make sense if we were all still subject to the measures (like stay at home orders).

The problem for your argument is that the temporary emergency measures turned out to actually be temporary. Authoritarian regimes use emergencies (often fake ones) to entrench long-term change, this was a real emergency that had a temporary response...

>>stephe+0f1
I don't think so? I'll state it again - temporary and authoritarian are orthogonal. Attempting to claim that the lack of permanence demonstrates that the measures weren't authoritarian thus my claim that the two concepts are orthogonal is incorrect is begging the question (at absolute minimum).

Naturally I never claimed that a dictator was attempting to take over. Merely posited that staunch resistance to such measures as a matter of principle is probably not a bad thing for society on the whole.