Comment by max_
8 days ago
This hostility towards privacy all over the world signals that there is a co-ordinated change happening in the world.
Unfortunately we still don't know what it is or what its goals are.
8 days ago
This hostility towards privacy all over the world signals that there is a co-ordinated change happening in the world.
Unfortunately we still don't know what it is or what its goals are.
There's no single mastermind. This current wave of authoritarianism around the world is a consequence of not designing the Internet with democratic principles in mind. Online content discovery and moderation mechanisms are centralized and authoritarian in nature. And since most communication nowadays happens on the Internet on large platforms with millions of users (this is especially true after smartphones and social media were invented), the structure of human society in the real world is mirroring the Internet.
This can be solved, though. We have to move moderation and ranking mechanisms to the client-side, especially for search engines and social media. Each person should be able to decide what they post and see, but not what anyone else posts or sees.
Specifically, we don't know the goals. Generally, we know it's about control and fear of losing power.
It's a stolen quote but rings true:
Those with power fear one thing above all else; losing said power.
That doesn't quite explain it. The internet has happily been a niche wild west for a long time that has threatened very little power. Besides generally "most people know how evil all rich people have to be to get where they are now"
I don't think most people know that.
As another aspect we're seeing governments and the system elites craving for more power and control than ever.
I know it's borderline conspiracy theorist but I fear that the COVID-19 lockdowns with the surveillance systems and control gained during them gave the elites worldwide a taste for new levels of power and control.
All in the name of doing it for our own good of course. But ultimately its for more power. What terrors man won't inflict on others for "their own good".
I don't think it's coordinated. The animosity and competition between companies and governments couldn't possibly get them to agree on anything of this scale.
Rather, Occam's razor suggests that their interests simply align against individual privacy.
Company executives are plutomaniacs, and companies can't access and exploit your data if you want to keep it private. Politicians are megalomaniacs, highly insecure and defensive of their position, and governments can't monitor your thoughts and activities if you want to keep them private; they take comfort in knowing that you are a good and subservient citizen.
Many decades ago people in governments and companies understood that they can accomplish their goals much easier if they cooperate, which is why lobbying is a legal multi-billion-dollar industry, why we see CEOs in politics, and so on. The world of 1984 is a reality; it's just that our leash is long enough and the carrot enticing enough for us to care about it.
Personally I’ve grown hostile to the concept of anonymous speech but I readily admit that I can’t imagine a way to deanonymize without also losing privacy as most people describe it.
Anonymous posters like what looks like a troll bot that the GrapheneOS account is arguing with have flooded the zone with so much noise its fracturing society imo
Governments can easily hire actual people to argue online. We're hurt the most by surveillance, because we can't hire agents, butlers or newspaper editors (who are the original real-world privacy protection).
Yeah well there is definitely something going on, a coordinated effort to condemn GrapheneOS with faint praise (and outright scare-mongering). Here I have posted a video url I'd downloaded and watched a few days ago. It's TTS slop narration, but it makes an attempt to characterize GrapheneOS as a 'double-edged sword', because, you know, criminals. Just like the hatchet job from France.
'GrapheneOS Update 2025 Privacy Savior or Hacker’s Paradise'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCgi6bJy-qo
I get all my utube from the bash-prompt (and never have to deal with algorithm or see who is who and what else is there), so I don't know who posted this video to YouTube, but maybe there's more?
This could be a case study in an amateur low-grade half-ass influence operation.
On the other hand, it could simply be a grudge, a coordinated personal attack on the lead dev.
There are a slew of other videos by YouTube personalities who, at various times, seem to be disparaging the guy, including a very upset Grossman (right-to-repair guy).
Or hey, maybe it's just coincidence. C'est la vie!
Authoritarianism is doing well all over; it doesn't have to be deliberately coordinated, so much as people being basically the same everywhere, and the world sharing some serious problems. What works in one country works in almost any other.
On the one hand this its true that monkey see means monkey can do.. On the other, all the nationalists started meeting up with each other internationally and in public because hypocritical cynicism is apparently so hot now that you can be a xenophobe who worships foreigners as long as they are more impressive xenophobes.
Don't fall into this reductionist thinking, there is no secret cabal behind it. It's not even coordinated.
This wave of authoritarianism is simply the result of well-funded right-wing populists taking advantage of an economically tough situation for the masses, after decades of neoliberalist austerity and deregulation. They're using fear and hate to further the goals of their wealthy patrons: deregulating the economy further. Mass surveillance comes for free with these people, it's purely a consequence of focusing the entire public discourse on perceived crime levels and fear of foreigners.
The two articles attacking GrapheneOS come from right-wing rags: Le Figaro and Le Parisien, who make their bread and butter painting a bleak picture of the country, when crime levels are at an all-times low. QED
the well-funded part suggests a coordinated cabal
If a loose collection of powerful individuals using their wealth and influence to support a certain group of politicians and ideas sounds like a cabal to you, then yes. For all practical purposes, you needn't dig deeper than "wealthy people funding pro-business politicians, using right-wing populism as a tool".
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It's palantir.
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