Always thought it was weird that they would scoff at their “social credit score” system. Emphasis on “social”. As if that was the fucked up part.
Stop using their services. Call a taxi.
We weren’t jokingly saying the Chinese are living under it, though.
Capitalists are constantly telling on themselves.
This isn’t a capitalism problem. It’s an authoritarianism problem. The only thing about this that relates to capitalism is that it’s a private company setting up the cameras instead of the state doing it.
Kill the authoritarians. Only way.
Capitalism is pretty inherently authoritarian. The boss calls the shots.
That’s a gross over simplification that ignores the influence of the insurance industry shifting the baseline of public surveillance and crony capitalism that infects our municipalities.
Capitalists have been trying to build the panopticon since the first factories.
Yes, that’s how it’s implemented under capitalism.
States further into their authoritarianism don’t need to bother with middle men and cutouts and shit.
They just put up the cameras.
“Decentralize the mass surveillance!” cries the anarcho-libertarian. “Big Government is monopolizing all the cameras! We should let the market decide who gets spied on!”
Authoritarianism means very little, it’s such a broad term that doesn’t localise the origin of repression. Instead of considering the root of the problem here, which is capitalism/private property, you look at a feature or a phenomenon.
This is absolutely a capitalism problem. It’s what happens when you let corporations do whatever without consequences as long as they can afford the bribes and in turn get contacts on taxpayer money.
True, but I could also see an authoritarian “communist” government doing all the same surveillance bullshit.
So, while it’s a capitalism problem this time, I don’t think it’s a capitalism-exclusive problem. It really is, at its root, an authoritarianism problem. This time, you’ve got capitalist authoritarianism, but next time maybe a different flavor.
China already has this sort of system completely built out.
That’s how they get away with it too. Worst constitutional loophole ever.
The same thing is happening/has already happened in China, the government there can find you and black bag you anywhere at any time. Ask Naomi Wu.
Russia basically is this already.
Europe is also trying to go there with the repeated attempts to pass chat control and age restrictions on internet access.
In the US, capitalism is the tool the authoritarians are using to accomplish their goals, and it is absolutely enabling the spread of the surveillance state. Capitalism itself is not the motivation for the surveillance state, it’s just being used by the authoritarians. If we’re going to put a stop to this kind of behavior, we have to get the targets right. Flock and the other companies like them are a symptom of the larger problem.
Ask Naomi Wu.
To my knowledge, Naomi Wu was never “black bagged”. She’s still selling stuff on cybernightmarket. She’s just done posting politics.
But to compare the grief Wu got (and, from what I read forever ago, it was as much other terminally online types screaming at her as any state intervention) with Leqaa Kordia or Mahmoud Khalil both of whom absolutely were “black bagged” in the literal sense? Wu was not indefinitely detained in a prison camp or threatened with torture unless she “voluntarily self-deported”, at least as far as I could find.
Russia basically is this already.
Russia is so much more, as they’ve weaponized their prison population into military conscripts.
Really not looking forward to the day I’m arrested by an ICE agent who is, himself, wearing a bomb collar.
Capitalism itself is not the motivation for the surveillance state
The surveillance state is a vital tool of private industry when executives fear a proletariat insurrection. It is a necessary precondition to prevent insurrection.
Every flock employee should still be communally murdered like the end of ‘sympathy for lady vengeance’ though.
Hilarious to see all my fellow autists arguing over semantics in the comments. 🤦
China was the testbed. All of them are doing the same thing
As the future becomes less certain and less secure due to climate change and capitalist overextension, basically every major government is looking for ways to efficiently control their populace through technology. Arguably the countries with the strongest totalitarian tools would be the most suited to weather that long-term catastrophe.
Can’t riot about access to food if everyone who so much as says an idle word in their own home is put on a “reeducation” pathway.
Palestine is the testing grounds for surveillance, drones, weaponry, and testing how public opinion will be around a crisis & genocide. Now they’re planning to test it upon their own citizens once they finish moving/genociding immigrants.
China has been proposing its surveillance model to other countries through their new silk roads (or whatever the name is)
Not a China fan, but at least I can travel to China without getting arrested.
That’s only true if you only do and say things online that China approves of.
China has secret police, and has for decades.
ICE is Trump’s attempt at creating a secret police.
ICE? You seem to be forgetting at least the NSA.
Didn’t forget them, they’re not sending masked thugs to vanish people from the street.
The NSA is a spy org, but not full of Trump loyalists.
Trump is focusing on ICE, because it is full of specifically Trump loyalists.
ICE are just brownshirts, you’re thinking of the CIA and FBI.
Nope. Proud Boys are the brown shirts. Non-governmental paramilitary fighters.
FBI was an actual law enforcement organization, but has been gutted.
The CIA isn’t a boogie man inside the US. They’ve fucked up enough times that very few people respect them. Also they don’t really do domestic spying.
No, the NSA is the one who does domestic spying.
And finally ICE, an agency that is 100% filled with diehard Trump supporters. They’re already abducting innocent people off the street and vanishing them. Masked thugs working for the state vanishing people without warrants is sort of the basic definition of secret police.
We’re following China’s lead in the adapting-to-social-scale game
Ah yes the old X>Y argument when in reality X<Y but is moving towards it. It’s so effective at driving voter apathy.
