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Comment by rahuldottech | Hacker News Reader

> Governments in a number of countries have been increasing online surveillance and cracking down on content and behavior that indicates dissent, the report says.

This is a really sad state of affairs. Because of whatever reasons (monetary, fear of dissent and terrorism, etc.) we've seen governments implement more and more laws and policies that take away the "freedom" that we're supposed to have in a democracy.

People seem to forget that democracies are supposed to be for the people. Not for corporations. Not for those in power. Not for the wealthy.

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More and more "the people" want corporations to do the policing. Everyone cheers when someone controversial is booted from Twitter, but suddenly it'ss a problem when the NBA and Blizzard censored people, albeit for less defensible reasons.

I've never seen anyone's banning get cheered. On the contrary, I see the locked account person get cheers and welcomes back when they return, elevated as a hero, comradery strengthened, usually on a different account, abandoning the old, meaning a good percentage of twitter's accounts are stagnant.

Yes, because not all speech is the same and we needn’t treat it as such. There’s a difference between someone getting kicked out of a bar for antagonizing other patrons vs. because the owner doesn’t like their shoes.

“democracies are supposed to be for the people”

I notice this tends to get forgotten quite a bit. When you listen to a lot of public discussion you get the impression that only a few people and organizations really count and the rest of people have to adapt to them.

It’s not just governments, it is corporations also. Look at Google and their rampant censorship of disagreeable content on YouTube. Material support of the Chinese apparatus. Everything trickles down and spreads around.

> People seem to forget that democracies are supposed to be for the people. Not for corporations. Not for those in power. Not for the wealthy.

That's what we are told. But if you look at actual history of democracy and how it came about ( ancient greek or american democracy ), you know that simply isn't true.

The ancient greek democracy was created by the slave owning master class to protect and preserve their property and rights. In the US, our democracy was created by the wealthy white landowners to protect their property and rights.

The two quintessential democracies in the world were created by the wealthy for the wealthy, not by the people for the people. But it's great advertising.

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