At this stage I'd settle for echelon era surveillance and consider it a win...
Ad tech/tiktok has proven its possible to deduce what people are think at scale from subtle signals, now sifting info at scale is possible thanks to LLMs and a large portion of everyone's online history is likely to become vulnerable to store now decrypt later attacks. Get rid of cash, force identity verification for every online service, sprinkle some flock cameras on top and you've got a complete surveillance state. Oh and of course you need some goons to scare people into compliance & later in some self-censorship for good measure. We could call the group "Frozen water".
...and we're basically already there on all of it except perhaps the "decrypt later" on https (and even that has rumours).
Genuinely don't think this is stoppable anymore.
No need to decrypt https, the other end of your connection does that and hands the info over to governments
Yay cloudflare!
how not? All of this is "soft" control, if tomorrow 75% of the people in any country decided "this can't keep on going on", all relevant public buildings would be occupied everywhere and the relevant government imprisoned promptly.
On a more positive note, the fact that this doesn't happen indicates things aren't that bad right now. No amount of KYC or age verification can stop large amounts of angry people who want one thing.
People sometimes bring up China - which isn't relevant because people still remember being extremely poor, thus being grateful to the Party - or one of those dictatorships as counterexamples for this, but see the Arab Spring (food got more expensive -> revolutions), Nepal recently... etc.
>if tomorrow 75% of the people in any country decided
No kings protests was a very respectable effort....peaked at 2.3%.
Even the current administration inept as it is is basically home free on this one. Senate neutered, Courts sidelined, Treasury subjugated, loyalist in charge of military, JAG core silenced, secondary personal goons squad established and lavishly funded, Social media captured, Stats department dismantled, Cult of personality created, common enemy created (immigrants), distractions for the masses arranged (culture wars, UFC on whitehouse lawn), truth undermined (prez spouting nonstop lies & AI), oligarch class established, surveillance normalized, norm of kiss the ring & pay tribute established.
Dunno about you but to me that looks like US democracy is so cooked the kitchen smoke alarm has gone off & everyone was too busy doomscrolling to notice.
Hope I'm wrong but that list looks pretty fuckin comprehensive to me. Hell they even somehow managed to throw in a roman salute...
>On a more positive note
Yeah sorry...above isn't exactly that
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_2026_No_Kings_protests#T...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3.5%25_rule
no kings only 2/3 of the way there
Can't say I entirely buy it in this case, but interesting rule of thumb anyway. It sure didn't feel like regime change was imminent if it were a little bigger.
Marching on a street holding placards with permission from the police is a very different thing than an angry mob marching into the town hall searching for officials.
Think more like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Nepalese_Gen_Z_protests
The thing about most US protests is that they are almost entirely performative by now. Marching with a sign simply doesn't do anything.
Actual serious protests would involve stuff like massive strikes, for example, and other disruptions that actually hurt.