Bans and blanket restrictions on social media, like the impending US TikTok ban or Australia’s recent age restrictions, are often presented as decisive solutions to complex problems. These measures promise to safeguard national security, protect user data, or shield vulnerable users from harm. Yet, they rarely achieve their intended goals. Instead, they create a paradox: rather than mitigating risks, such restrictions make platforms and user practices less governable. Users circumvent controls, oversight is fragmented, and transparency gives way to opacity—all while opportunities for meaningful governance are lost.
Really? They claim various things with a lot of certainty. But all they do is speculate… If it’s that obvious, why isn’t there any precedent or fact to back it up? I mean comparing it to the situation in a different country, about a different topic is quite a stretch. And to my knowledge, it’s not even in place yet. So how does that mean anything?!
I seriously doubt the average TikTok user even knows what a VPN is.
I seriously doubt the average TikTok user even knows what a VPN is.
Given the number of internet services that have been targeted for censorship or banning (Pornhub, anyone selling contraceptives across state lines, digital libraries like the Internet Archive) they’re going to be encouraged to learn.
Plenty of TikTok content creators have been working “How to get my content once the service has been banned” explainers into their feeds. And its not like this is a revolutionary new technology or one that’s difficult to implement on your machine.
I mean the VPN providers themselves (at least some) have been quite busy promoting their services. For years already. NordVPN ads run on TV, at times every other Youtube video was “sponsored by NordVPN”. So people should know about their existence.
But… It would be a massive surprise to me if the average user was going to change their habits. I’ve been telling people constantly not to give their flashlight app access to contacts, location and full administrator privileges. Told them to pay attention to their freedom and maybe not sell their soul to big tech if there’s nice and lovely mail providers which have a foot massage ready for you for $1 a month. Literally no-one cares. And they won’t listen. They’ll (maybe) listen to my lecture and straight out ask me “Yeah, but why don’t you just use WhatsApp and GMail?”
I see no way this is going to change, and they’ll somehow now suddenly pick up to fight for their freedom. I think that’s a niche for some few Linux nerds. I’d be very happy, though, if I was wrong and they did…
But… It would be a massive surprise to me if the average user was going to change their habits.
Visiting TikTok every time you’re bored isn’t a habit?
Literally no-one cares. And they won’t listen.
Some of this stuff is functionally non-negotiable, at least from a practical perspective. If your OS is harvesting your data, there’s only so much you can do without completely rooting the device. If the only way to access the internet is by signing up with a satanic ISP, you’re not simply going to go without and still function in a modern economy.
But this isn’t businesses doing “Treats with Strings Attached”. This is nanny state conservatives putting up relatively easily evaded barriers to said treats in order to tell their paleocon base that the problem of pornography in their state has been solved.
I see no way this is going to change
I see things changing day by day. Just not in the direction I’d prefer.
But there’s always a breaking point, there’s always a backlash, and these institutions only have a reach up to the scale of human labor they’re willing to commit tot he task
there’s only so much you can do without completely rooting the device
I mean you could just install Signal instead of WhatsApp. Takes literally the same effort.
I get your point. It’s valid. I still think it’s not going to happen. It’ll be either to complicated, or there will be other brain-rot content available someplace else. Or it’s going to be the boiling frog syndrome. One tiny freedom after another will dissapear. Maybe there’s still porn on xhamster available. Or you switch from TikTok to YT Shorts, because that’s less a hastle than buying and setting up a VPN. So it’s not that big a deal. And nobody will notice the subtle change. And one day it’ll just be a world without porn, free speech, but with total surveillance. I really believe we can get there without any uprising if we make the steps small enough and ease people into it.
Other precedent (mildly related and overly political): American citizens get totally ripped off with healthcare spendings. Get shot at in high-school. Yet, nothing ever gets done. People literally die. And there hasn’t been any uprising (yet). You can take away a lot of people’s freedom. (Same probably happens to other countries citizens with different things.)
We’ll see. As I said, I’m not overly enthusiastic. But it’s speculation and I might be wrong.
(And I agree, there has to be a breaking point somewhere. We’ve had uprisings before, revolutions, democratic change, civil rights movements… All of that exists.)
I mean you could just install Signal instead of WhatsApp
Signal isn’t secure unless all parties are using it. That’s before you get into the company’s own questionable relationship with the Open Technology Fund.
And one day it’ll just be a world without porn, free speech, but with total surveillance.
What’s the point of total surveillance if there’s nothing to blackmail?
I’d argue we’re getting about as close as we can to total surveillance, and now we’re dealing with gluts of information that are too big to parse in a timely manner.
But a lot of this isn’t the end of porn, it’s the criminalization of porn as a means of threatening prosecution of anyone with a digital device an a hard on.
Well, I don’t think total surveillance is necessarily about blackmailing or something as direct. It’s a broad way to assert and keep control. Control of everything. Force people to behave how you like, bend them to your will and to subjugate somebody.
You don’t really need to blackmail them… Spreading fear uncertainty and doubt will get you a long way. And why even bother with facts to blackmail someone? You could as well make something up. If you’re in total control, that’s enough to make someone’s life miserable.
We’re not there, yet.
But it’s been 10 years now since PRISM and Snowden. Even back then they were able to process a good chunk of the internet. The NSA has a massive datacenter somewhere in Utah, with god knows how many exabytes of storage. It’s probably not gotten better since then. And they don’t need to intercept every single packet from every device. Random sampling and collecting and processing as much stuff as they can, will do for a lot of use-cases. Some of the work gets done for them. If people use any of the big platforms and services that are “free”, they’ll just get a copy of the compiled personality profile for targeted advertising. And ultimately, every bit of knowledge, every fact they know (and process) makes them smarter and gets them ahead of the situation and in control. And naturally, that’ll be an insatiable thirst for information. Of course they always want more. More processing power etc. It won’t ever be enough (from their perspective.)
I think at this point it’s more some ominous danger, lurking at us. Maybe they just don’t like to reveal they’ve read and stored every single one of my e-mails. Maybe it’s better for them to just keep silent.
I’m postive they can’t collect everything. But it’ll still be a large-scale overcollection. Because no one stopped them since 2013. And I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I’m pretty sure encryption works. And there are means of private communication. But it’s really hard to avoid metadata. And using modern electronics. If you’re carrying a mobile phone, they’ll know your location 24/7. And that’s enough to invade privacy. And I -personally- know like 2 people who don’t carry a phone.
I also don’t think this is the end of porn. And I’d say it’s questionable if “they” are even opposed to it. That’s just the (too many) religious bigots. But they don’t wield enough power to enforce a prohibition on internet porn.
Edit: And I’m far more worried about more mundane and less conspiratory dynamics. Corporate greed ruining a lot of things. The attention economy and very unhealthy separation of society. Filter bubbles. The enshittification of the internet from all sides. That’s all way more prominent than what the NSA does. And has very bad and direct consequences… The gist of it it the same, though. You have to fight for your freedom. Or you’ll lose it.
Force people to behave how you like, bend them to your will and to subjugate somebody.
That doesn’t end with surveillance, though. You have to show your hand at some point, or people will (not unreasonably) assume they’re in your blind spot and can behave as they please. That’s why you might get those annoying “Hello this is your ISP, please stop violating the Millennium Copyright Act or we’ll disconnect you” emails if you’re not torrenting behind a VPN. Also why a random woman in Florida made headline news for saying “Deny. Delay. Depose.” to her insurance broker. Its not about real time universal surveillance so much as terrorizing people into thinking they’re a person of interest.
And ultimately, every bit of knowledge, every fact they know (and process) makes them smarter and gets them ahead of the situation and in control.
There are limits. A lot of this stuff is still just a game of percentages. You have a pool of 100M end users and you can whittle that down to 5M potential suspects. And then maybe you can get it to 100k people you seriously think are up to some shit. And then you get it all the way down to 5k people who are really truly dangerous, based on some mathematical heuristic. But then you have to do… what? Actually go peep in someone’s window or dig through their trash to see what’s up.
Meanwhile, you’re banking heavily on the other 99.995M people not flying off the handle when you weren’t actively looking.
Far easier to cultivate or outright manufacture radicals to target and do high profile arrests on. That’s why you’ll find police organizations like the FBI and the NYPD running honeypot websites and local groups, dangling bait and waiting for the radicals to come to them.
Edit: And I’m far more worried about more mundane and less conspiratory dynamics. Corporate greed ruining a lot of things. The attention economy and very unhealthy separation of society. Filter bubbles. The enshittification of the internet from all sides. That’s all way more prominent than what the NSA does.
Everything has its role. The NSA is, for the most part, outwardly facing. And a lot of its role is offensive rather than defense. But you do still occasionally see the knock-on effects downstream. The NSA trying to shut down Iranian nuclear energy with the Stuxnet Virus, for instance, blew back on the US in a big way. In the same way, Radio Free Asia doing anti-China agitprop all over the Pacific Rim gave us the Marcos and Duterte regimes in the Philippines and the chronic resurgence of the Park family and its allies in South Korea. That fuels religious radicalism and narco-trafficking in the region, which eventually comes back to the US in a big way.
Enshittification in pursuit of bigger and bigger profits is certainly its own problem. But it is only possible because smaller and less surveilled competitor media is either strangled in the cradle or bought out by the bigger fish. TikTok getting forced into sale to American investors, Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio prosecuted for insider trading after he refused to open up his telecom company to the NSA, Japanese car companies threatened with tariffs and sanctions unless they insourced their factories to the American Gulf Coast.
These systems work hand-in-glove. Enshittification is a consequence of the consolidation that state intervention allows. And state intervention is encouraged by big private interests seeking to weed out competition in exchange for more compliance with federal spying.
It also ensure those who don’t pay are tracked by default, which is a key component of not having privacy.
wtf is techpolicy dot press
Tech Policy Press is a 501©3 nonprofit organization incorporated in Texas as Protego Press, its earlier iteration. Its initial funding came primarily through contributions from its founders- Justin Hendrix and Bryan Jones- and small donations from individuals.
In 2022, Tech Policy Press received a grant from the Omidyar Network for a research project evaluating vulnerabilities in the design, engineering, and use of encrypted messaging applications.
In 2022, Tech Policy Press received a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
In 2022, Justin Hendrix was a Democracy Fellow at the Emerson Collective, which supported his effort to advance Tech Policy Press.
In 2023, Tech Policy Press received grants from Reset.tech.
In 2024, Tech Policy Press received grants from Reset.tech, the MacArthur Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, and a charitable donation from DuckDuckGo.
