Over in the land of the free. Are the police not trawling through Facebook imagery and chat messages to arrest the “insurrectionists”? Is the spying ok when it’s sponsored by Facebook?

Well, I don't disagree with you. We're becoming more like China every day. Social scoring, speech codes, nonpersons, government-inspired mob violence.

I can't help but feel this isn't related to political idealism... There is some kind of "well we can... so why not?" and implementing it, and the second/third order effects of doing it are sometimes hard to envision. Like "lets build a chat system (and store it all in a centralised location)" doesn't feel as nefarious as like a Manhattan Project, but ramifications are quite dramatic.

Oh, is today Whataboutism day?

The racism/double standard (which is what it is) hurled at china for things that everyone is doing, but it's some how bad in china, then excusing pointing this out as "whataboutism" is pretty disgusting.