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Comment by seydor | Hacker News Reader

That's misleading. The governments had nowhere near the control of information that modern technology allows them. Look at which governments are most enthusiastic to use social media against their own citizens, primary in the list are authoritarian, even small underdeveloped countries like Myanmar and azerbaijan.

https://about.fb.com/news/2020/10/removing-coordinated-inaut...

Technology has made it real easy

And it is really shameful that the EU seems to go along with this trend. GDPR basically gives free reign to government services on the internet (but it restricts everyone else). And it has avoided all discussion of the increased censorship because of the usual suspects (cchildren/terrorism)

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> Look at which governments are most enthusiastic…

> about.fb.com

You do realize American corporations routinely cover up (or even actively participate in) U.S. and allies’ intelligence operations? You’re not going to get an objective, or should I say authentic, view on which governments are most enthusiastic about almost anything from fb.com.

i know this is the case. A US corporation is completely dependent on the US state to even exist. Still, the US is infinitely more transparent than the countries mentioned. Such countries jail or murder journalists.

People in the west are rightfully sensitive to such matters. They have no idea how far worse it is in other corners of the internet. Sophie zhang has published many such cases, but the audience just doesn't seem so interested (presumably because they can't use it for domestic politics).

>"They have no idea how far worse it is in other corners of the internet."

a) We do have an idea

b) Why the fuck the fact that it is worse somewhere else would make me feel less concerned when my own Government does ugly things? I worry about my own backyard first.

> my own backyard first

And last. The US is a trade-based empire, it has to care about the rest of world

It mainly 'cares' that every country in the world has the same economic system as itself and if they don't, the US will indeed take care of that.

We jail journalists all the time, and beat them in the streets. Don't report on issues with the police or you're gonna get it.

Rates matter here. US cops shake people down via civically asset forfeiture, but they aren’t soliciting bribes when they show up to give you a traffic ticket.

I would say the former is a lot worse than the latter.

The latter does not preclude the former.

You beat me to it.

Of course a US corporation isn't going to list the US as a source of propaganda or a surveillance state.

Wikileaks has shown the US has a huge surveillance apparatus. I suspect the fb.com poster is either a spook, or extremely naive.

Your experience might be different, but that in no way makes what I said misleading. I have personally seen how a newspaper will misreport or tactically omit a piece of information to advance a government or powerful group's viewpoint, only to be outed on twitter. And I can only marvel at how we would have swallowed that as the whole truth just a few years ago!

> And I can only marvel at how we would have swallowed that as the whole truth just a few years ago!

I enjoyed my teen years through the 90s. Some people had 24hr TV news, but very few had the internet or newsgroups for news. At that time, I found it pretty easy to find and hold skeptical viewpoints.

The pace has changed since then. The detail comes much faster, and inflections change more rapidly.

It’s society, education, and exposure to alternative viewpoints that sows the seed of critical analysis. Technology just changes the rate it happens.

Really? I found that in the 90s people had stiflingly homogenous viewpoints. Most people were spoon-fed the same highly packaged narrative from the big 3 broadcasters.

Policing is much quicker now. Urbanization makes it easy to identify "dissidents" and shut down voices. Sure, manipulation always existed, but as technology evolves, it is becoming increasingly difficult to even hold your dissenting opinions private.

Yup. Just the other day on twitter - WaPo: 'Woman dies after four abortions in a year..', commentator added 'C'mon wapo, add the rest..."because her husband made her, because he wanted a boy".'

Yes.

This was anticipated and salivated over by the likes of Zbigniew K. Brzezinski.

https://www.amazon.com/Between-Two-Ages-Americas-Technetroni...

https://archive.org/details/B-001-003-798 (for the pdf)

You are delusional if you think that no part of trillion (!) dollars military spendings go to propaganda (btw, it is very effective--Orwell would be impressed).

pretty sure i did not say that

The greater part.

> GDPR basically gives free reign to government services on the internet

What do you mean though? Even the French interior ministry was condemned under GDPR rules last year. A few other high profile gouvernement services too.

It can be restricted by the government for various reasons.

Curiously we have seen very little discussion about what "is a necessary and proportionate measure in a democratic society to safeguard"

https://gdpr-info.eu/art-23-gdpr/

Also, GPDR's origin dates back to French CNIL, which goal was to reduce government's power on private data.

> GDPR basically gives free reign to government services on the internet (but it restricts everyone else)

This is such a laughable statement that’s dripping in American corporatism. You know full well the GDPRs main purpose is privacy protection and the main “everyone else” that is being restricted is the data glutton American tech companies.

I m an EU citizen and gdpr does not protect me from arbitrary police searches etc. It merely legitimizes them by giving a 'faux legal framework' around them

> and gdpr does not protect me from arbitrary police searches

It never needed to because criminal law already does that. You had protection from illegal search or seizure long long before the internet even became a thing.

The cat is already out of the bag. What GDPR is doing is just providing a counterweight to the siphoning power of American tech.

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