In the US, every major company you can think of that makes its living from the Internet will fall on the side of the regime. Not just media companies, the money movers, purchasing and payment processors, geo-location, hosting, thousands of services, and basically the entire infrastructure underneath everything.
If push comes to shove, first every platform will be used to heavily propagandize, mis-inform, and sow division. (More so than now).
Then it will be used to track, spy, and honey-pot. (More so than now).
Then they’ll simply shut it off.
The era of an anonymous kid sitting in a basement and arguing the merits of some sweaty anarchist manifesto with his friends online is over.
The tool we thought was going to make us ungovernable via free communication will be used against us.
The dream of bringing the species together globally, a meeting of a million minds, to help and understand each other and advance a peaceful utopia is not going to ever happen.
Submitting a vote on an onion forum will start with a simple keystroke and end with a Palentir missile strike on your house.
The best we could hope for will be to seize the physical stations to prevent their use by others, basically nullifying its existence.
What do you mean “will be”?
We’re already there.
Gestapo agents go door to door
Police patrol the schools
Your every movement is recorded and tracked
Your devices and your wifi can and are used to record your surroundings and identify people with a degree of accuracy that would give kaczynski an aneurism.
Your every keystroke and page view is stored, monitored and indexed by companies under the guise of ‘legitimate interest’
Any comments that are deemed negative about technology, ‘AI’ and the actions of the state are monitored and catalogued
‘AI’ systems are already being used to target people with drone strikes
…And yet we all stand here talking as if these things are from some sci fi dystopian future
Yeah, the bear trap has already sprung. The people haven’t realized it because they haven’t tried to pull their leg free yet.
I honestly didn’t mean to doom post so early in the day. It started as a pithy one-liner and snowballed the more I thought about it.
It’s really not looking good, is it.
Apologies for ‘yes, and’-ing your thoughts into worse ones, but at least you’re not the only one noticing these things