I encourage everyone to set aside personal feelings around January 6 for a moment and once again look at the amount of power an angry government can bring to bear on a protest movement retroactively, using the permanent record created by social media surveillance as a weapon.https://twitter.com/_MAArgentino/status/1431319316956385283 …
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The lesson we learn over and over from tech is that it won't always be the good guys doing it to the bad guys, so it's worth looking at these processes structurally and thinking about what it implies for people whose goals we share and motives we admire
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The tension is between the ephemeral and mass nature of a large protest event, and the ability for governments to analyze such protests forensically without a time constraint, identifying every participant individually. There is no more safety in numbers or in spontaneity
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Replying to @Pinboard
i remember in 2004 there was very little safety in numbers or spontaneity at Iraq protests and there was no social media then; here, people proactively chose to broadcast their actions on several of those apps quite consciously so "surveillance" seems a bit exaggerated?
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I mean surveillance in a more neutral way here, as the existence of an indelible digital record, much of which is voluntary and public. I'm happy to use a different word if you can suggest a good one.
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