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.
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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.