I don’t think they want it. Numbers aren’t in their favor. We aren’t remotely close to Russian or Chinese levels of generational suppression.
But they likely don’t know they don’t want it. They assume they will get absolute power one way or the other because China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, etc have absolute power in their state.
I doubt the Tiananmen Square massacre would have been nearly as effective with the speed at which information flows nowadays. Sure - major corporate media can suppress as much as it can, but millions of people were able to turn out for protests quickly, and think of how fast we all found out about the arrest of two judges.
Against any totalitarian government, the most effective weapon is information, followed closely by communication. I am willing to bet that there isn’t code sitting on our phones waiting for the government to just shut it all down.
I don’t think they want it. Numbers aren’t in their favor. We aren’t remotely close to Russian or Chinese levels of generational suppression.
But they likely don’t know they don’t want it. They assume they will get absolute power one way or the other because China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, etc have absolute power in their state.
I doubt the Tiananmen Square massacre would have been nearly as effective with the speed at which information flows nowadays. Sure - major corporate media can suppress as much as it can, but millions of people were able to turn out for protests quickly, and think of how fast we all found out about the arrest of two judges.
Against any totalitarian government, the most effective weapon is information, followed closely by communication. I am willing to bet that there isn’t code sitting on our phones waiting for the government to just shut it all down.
This means we should encourage more and more people to join Lemmy, Bluesky etc., install Linux and donate to Wikipedia.
When Musk first mentioned something along the lines of Wikipedia=bad my annual donation turned monthly.
The government can absolutely shut down the internet and telecommunications. They can also send propaganda straight to your phone that you can’t stop.