... and the West slipping into borderline crypto-authoritarianism itself with mass-surveillance and so on - encroaching on citizens' rights while excusing themselves with being the good guys, and only protecting the population against the usual suspects of bad actors.
Bollocks. "The West" is not one place, and the "crpyto-authoritarianism" is a lame attempt to generalize. There is no comparison between Russia / China and Western Europe or the US.
Make no mistake, I think that facebook and social media have chilling effects on discourse and are, on the whole, very negative, but I can still get on any forum and call my national leader a clown (aka Xi = Winnie the Poo) and not risk going to jail.
Comments
... and the West slipping into borderline crypto-authoritarianism itself with mass-surveillance and so on - encroaching on citizens' rights while excusing themselves with being the good guys, and only protecting the population against the usual suspects of bad actors.
Bollocks. "The West" is not one place, and the "crpyto-authoritarianism" is a lame attempt to generalize. There is no comparison between Russia / China and Western Europe or the US.
Make no mistake, I think that facebook and social media have chilling effects on discourse and are, on the whole, very negative, but I can still get on any forum and call my national leader a clown (aka Xi = Winnie the Poo) and not risk going to jail.
Whataboutism. Mass-surveillance (including bulk collection of metadata) is an authoritarian move, which more and more western countries are guilty of.
I'm not making a comparison – I'm simply arguing against something.