sagonar
I think you must look at the way the rest of the world was during the same time to get a honest picture of the "totalitarian state" of USA.
Hand pick some historic situation and then comparing versus a "Perfect World" (and since USA was not as good as this Perfect world.. then it must totalitarian/evil/..) This is not an honest way to frame the argument
One could perhaps call this a "communication problem", but I'd like to think most people would call it lying
A less extreme person arguing in good faith probably has many other things in his/her life to worry about, like children/parents/work/neighbours etc.
While bad faith actors often have much less distractions, and can more easily afford to just keep the point going. I think a bad faith actor will relative easy force out more moderate/normal people out of the forum or conversation thread. Why keep going, if you got a family and work and .. to take cary about, and arguing in good faith will be hard to get anywhere good ?
I think this give a much bigger loudspeaker to people with more extrem views, and help shut up people with more moderate positions. I suspect the the setup of social media and the tools they use, and the tools within forums influence this.
Engagement is probably increased if such extreme versus moderate is argued, and I think the more extreme position win is likely increasing income for social media.
Able to commit locally, examine changes work with them and then push is a something you might not need or require if you think about version system like SVN.
But if you have learned Git or Mercurial or some other distributed system you would never go back to svn.
The version control system Mercurial had description about these problems on the homepage, "behind the scense", which was good reading.
I am not sure if GIT is the best solution, but at least a "pure snapshot" is okey, but where a diff storage must in practise include some snapshot logic as well.
I think companies are way too power full right now, and the ability to shift position, sometimes they are a platform and sometimes a publisher. Companies should not be allowed to "shift" depending on how asks the question. I think a normal human would be forced to answer (in court), if they said different answer to different people. But these companies get away with it.
Much of the conditions that has helped shape the current situation might shaping new efforts as well..
Support and client questions etc will probably be avoid as much as possible. Example do NOT explain why a BAN was issued, give as little chance to appeal as possible, and avoid all discussions about why something was done. Just say that they broke a rule, do not mention what rules or where in the text / video the "crime" was committed.
Appeal process is very expensive, and if a company gave reason for example when they did a BAN that would sometime cause the banned person to appeal. If they stated why, a person in USA could appeal using the common justice system and perhaps claim in-justice, or lying (I guess a person might have a chance if the company did not apply its rule consistently, or if they could prove a lie)
If they can avoid to given any reason for it, there is no way they will keep any rules well defined, it gives them much more power if the rules could be flexed a bit.
I think the "common justice system" with defender, accuser and judge would be much better. A court also has to keep record of decisions and reasons. But I think no company would do that, it would limit their control/power and probably be expensive as well.
I still think the companies have a bit too much power, and in a way wonder if they could be forced to solve "justice" better than now.
Regarding need to download ssh, the same has been true about telnet since (at least) windows 7. (Telnet is NOT included by default in windows 7)
Warnings about server key change, is something i feel happens very rarely with a workaround described in the error message. I feel this is a very minor issue
The other ssh added complexity is optional stuff. and is something i feel made ssh better than telnet, example: You can forward X11 connection between unix machine using ssh.(Sure you use telnet and xhost/ DISPLAY et.c )
SSH-keys are also a optional feature, that are not forced on the user, but can simplify remote login.
Sure there are more complexity inside ssh and the protocol, but the simplest use of ssh is about as simple as telnet.