alt Hacker News> What I find ridiculous is to strongly believe that politicians are somehow all the same person, and therefore either all corrupt, or all fascists, or all...
That's a distraction from the point that I actually made. One can try to paint politicians as saints all they want, and it still won't change the fact that the entire population is digitally surveilled 24/7 and what we do on our own computing devices are increasingly decided for us rather than by us. This flies in the face of liberal democratic values, and not okay. Some things simply aren't up for debate.
> Do you realise that when you say "they must be corrupt, because they don't share my opinion, and my opinion is absolutely the best", and you are not the only one saying that, then either everybody saying it should share your opinion or at least some of you are wrong, right?
In short, you're accusing of me of criticism. It's boilerplate fallacious logic that makes any criticism against anything sound illegitimate.
> it still won't change the fact that the entire population is digitally surveilled 24/7
I agree that we are, I disagree that we are because all politicians are corrupt. Surveillance capitalism is the result of the private companies that built it, who could because they became so big, because of the lack of antitrust and stuff like the DCMA (and the equivalent that the US forced every other country to adopt).
Did all politicians collude in order to get there? I don't think so. The fact is that many people thought it was great to have powerful US companies taking over the world.
> It's boilerplate fallacious logic that makes any criticism against anything sound illegitimate.
I don't think so. You are saying "they must be corrupt, otherwise they would agree with me". I say that it sometimes happens, in all good faith, that other people don't agree with you. They may have different opinions, or they may be uninformed, incompetent, or simply wrong. There are many, many reasons to disagree that are not corruption.
You gave Snowden as an example: most politicians were not aware of what the NSA was doing. I think only the President (and maybe someone else) did, outside of the NSA.
People who say "the politicians want X" don't understand how politics works. Especially in the EU, where they are elected by the people of 27 very different countries.