Is Expanding Surveillance Chilling Your Online Speech?
Is surveillance risk chilling your online speech?
With the growing reach of federal, state, local, and corporate surveillance networks, I am asking if you find yourself expressing yourself less freely online than you did five years ago. The internet remains heavily monitored, yet the question persists whether this constant observation is causing a noticeable shift in how openly we communicate our thoughts today compared to the past.
The internet was also heavily surveilled 5 years ago, not much different from how it is today.
- mbgerring
I started feeling that way around the time ICE illegally broke, entered and ransacked a low-income housing building in Chicago, terrorizing residents regardless of citizenship or immigration status. Once I realized that fear of reprisal was preventing me from expressing how I felt about it online, I resolved instead to get louder and more strident in my public speech than I had been in years.
- danielrmay
I think as I've gotten older, the fear of expressing myself has increasingly turned into a sense of duty to do it anyway. The more people feel pressured into silence, the more important it seems not to be.
- maxime_
Mostly with how easy it has become in a corporate setting.
Before they had an easy access to the data but the barrier was their capacity to go through it. Nowadays any middle manager with data access and an OpenAI subscription can potentially get a sentiment and summary of your public (or even private with some saas plans) conversations.
I’m more careful with my words than I ever was.