CSAM scanning in chat apps would echo communist surveillance | Hacker News Reader

CSAM scanning in chat apps would echo communist surveillance

9to5mac.com

11 pointselectic10 comments

My main takeaway from the article is how even Apple, who had recently attempted to push a similar CSAM scanning on their products before eventually canceling the project, also wants no part in this. It tells a lot about how bad that legislation is.

It would also echo capitalist surveillance.

That's because it's surveillance.

I love when people start using “isms” as scare tactics but pick the wrong one(s). True communist states wouldn’t necessarily thrive on a lack of privacy, but totalitarian and capitalist systems have and would.

Totalitarian, dictatorship, monarchies, autocratic, intolerant. Those are the words you are looking for. The economic system doesn't at all imply a political system.

You can argue whether communism necessarily would lead to surveillance, but there is no argument that it generally has in the past.

> You can argue whether communism necessarily would lead to surveillance, but there is no argument that it generally has in the past.

What ideology has had a significant number of states claim to adhere to it in the modern age and not seen many of those states adopt intrusive widespread surveillance?

Seems to me that blaming one particular ideology for a near-universal feature of modern states is not helpful.

Please study the history of communism before making these broad generalisations

> True communist states

True Scotsmen

> ...wouldn’t necessarily thrive on a lack of privacy

Apart from the (eternal) "true communism has never been tried" yarn [1] it is actually true that a total lack of privacy is the only way in which something resembling communism can work. The closest thing to communism - and that is saying a lot because it is not actually communism but does fit the "to each according to their needs, by each according to their abilities" motto - is the family. Depending on where you are this can be anything from the nuclear family to the extended family but central to this is that everyone knows everyone and nobody can really hide their assets and (lack of) contributions from the others. That is what makes it work, the fact that leeching of the rest of the family is easily noticed and dealt with. The fact that this becomes impossible when the community becomes too large is also one of the (many) reasons why it does not work at a larger scale. This is doubly true for the Marxist-Leninist variety of communism which intentionally creates an upper class of "party members" who get to lead the rest of the plebs towards utopia. These "party members" unfailingly end up creating a two-class society where all animals are equal but some are more equal than the others. This two-class society means the ideal of "true communism", that being the classless society, will never be reached since the upper class (i.e. "party elite") depends on the continuation of the "struggle" for their continued existence as an upper class.

[1] yes it has and it has always led to the same disastrous results as it will again once the next Chavez or Maduro or whomever gets to play that game again

To the downvoters: please don't just press that down-arrow in an attempt to get different opinions greyed out, especially not in a discussion on censorship. If you disagree with my opinion on communism being an ideology doomed to fail when it is implemented in practice just come with your arguments instead of pressing that button. I understand you run the risk of having your arguments shot down but that should be seen as a learning opportunity instead of a bruise to your ego or identity.

Never stake your identity to a political ideology as that is a sure-fire way to become a 'useful idiot' (to paraphrase Lenin).

> True communist states wouldn’t necessarily thrive on a lack of privacy, but totalitarian and capitalist systems have and would.

Reference to “communist states” refers to real (as “existing in the real world”, not “adhering to real communist ideology”) states that have claimed Communism as the end-goal of their ideology (all of which have embraced a totalitarian state-capitalist praxis for all or most of their existence.)

It is true that the surveillance is more related to the totalitarian, state capitalist praxis than either the claimed Communist ideology or any other actual ideology the praxis may have sought to realize.

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