What's the phrase... letting perfect be the enemy of good? We'll never be perfect. So by that logic we won't ever be able to criticise anyone, even if their record is considerably worse than our own.

> The US collects so much data about everyone, but people seem to find that ok. On the other hand, Russia collecting data is outrageous. This is such a weird thinking tbh.

The US government is accountable to US citizens. There are regular elections where they can vote out a government that acts against their wishes. They have no such power over Russia, an aggressive power currently waging war against a US ally. Equivalence is the weird thinking, IMO.

I don't think this applies. When it comes to privacy of its citizens, there is no 'good' in the anglosphere. In the US we have a constitutional amendment specifically about the government not snooping but it's effectively moot. There is no respect given at all to the privacy of citizens by government.

In any case, I'm not wanting to get political here, which doesn't make sense, but it's pretty new to me that Ukraine, or for that matter, any european eastern country is our "ally" (US/EU/UK) what we merely did the last 20 years is exploiting them to get what we need (e.g. precious metals, oil and stuff), just as we're doing with Africa.

I get your point about critics, but we condemn, accuse and create conflicts around things we do just the same as Russia. All this, is creating a huge mess and threat of very very severe escalation, that will probably impact Humanity in its entirety. So, in some sense, it's scary and outrageous to see that we (stupid) humans cannot get along.