Comment by Xeoncross
1 day ago
> draconian oversight and censorship
This is just human nature. Any place where humans live in close proximity for hundreds of years suffers the same fate until a revolution or power restructure resets the counter through the removal of the previous structures vestiges.
Thanks to technology, it just keeps getting easier. Less time to put restrictive measures in place and a tighter feedback loop. Oh joy.
I think you may have got it backwards? Technology seems to be greatly facilitating fascist control rather than weakening them...
I think you hit the nail on the head.
The original problem with The Panopticon was that it was 1 person in the center observing X amount of people. And at best, was a probabilistic 'am I being watched right now? ' with the answer of very low probability. For complete surveillance, you'd need a surveiller per watched.
Enter technology.
Now the surveillance isn't a person, but a set of computer programs. And, optimizing and analyzing the limited data flow out of a user is doable.
And you then have computational spies everywhere. Most of them are limited to specific usecases. However the more data is shared, the tighter fascist control can be maintained. Then it just comes to 'detected event' and 'summon the secret police'.
Not only that, a fascist state can identify people who are 'politically undesirable', then go back through the mountain of data held by private companies (facebook, google, chatbots, etc), trawl it to automatically create a dossier of kompromat, and apply pressure, repress voter turnout, etc.
Isn't China already doing something like this?
1 reply →
this is on point. I tell this people since years. "if you share more data they have easyer acces to controll you"
Perhaps my last sarcastic line was a bit obtuse. Technology is certainly making it easier to enact control and with a tighter feedback loop.
Rabbit trail, it's interesting how the modern western evil is now branded as "fascist control" as opposed to the other forms common throughout history. I wonder if it's related to calling everyone "toxic". It seems culture is moving towards more vague definitions of evil/wrong instead of pin-pointing the actual faults. Perhaps this is an important part of "newspeak" that we're suffering from.
And this is a cycle people have known about for forever.
> The tree of liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
We're sorely behind schedule on that one.
Also technology has made psychological neutralization easier by various means including amusement, satisfying the hierarchy of needs in general, and of course scaling and expanding tyrannical surveillance and clandestine and targeted subversion of self-determination (see Alex Karp bragging about Palantir defusing the "rise of the far right" in Europe). And even this OP measure of banning the "Internet Archive Open Library" is in actuality a kind of outlawing of the modern from of the printing press, the control of information, consciousness, awareness, thought, and speech.
It is an anathema to the very foundation of America, especially in the year of the 250 year anniversary of the American Revolution. 250 years ago today, Americans were already killing British for the human right to free speech and freedom from this kind of aristocratic despotism of the hereditary ruling class.
> "[...]unprecedentedly broad site-blocking order that aims to restrict access to shadow libraries [...]. In addition to ISP blocks, the order also directs search engines, DNS resolvers, advertisers, domain name services, CDNs and hosting companies to take action."
Is that any different than the King's decree to smash the printing presses to disseminate information beyond the control and censorship of the aristocracy and treasonous merchants that enabled their web of control?
Its just leader caste nature, the fear of getting crushed by the momentum of ones "own" uncontrollable leadership running on a riff by situatuonal momentum. One can despair with a opera uniform and a detached steering wheel or run a "tight" ship, whipping the crew (who unlike groaning wood and ocean still obey) till moral improves.