Is surveillance risk chilling your online speech?

Is surveillance risk chilling your online speech?21 points by Webstir 44 minutes ago | hide | past | favorite | 18 commentsGiven the expansion of the fed/state/local/corporate surveillance net, do you find yourself expressing yourself less freely on the internet than you did five years ago? help

Mostly with how easy it has become in a corporate setting.Before they had an easy access to the data but the barrier was their capacity to go through it. Nowadays any middle manager with data access and an OpenAI subscription can potentially get a sentiment and summary of your public (or even private with some saas plans) conversations.I’m more careful with my words than I ever was. I think as I've gotten older, the fear of expressing myself has increasingly turned into a sense of duty to do it anyway. The more people feel pressured into silence, the more important it seems not to be. Hmm, probably a little. I am a fairly public person but I wouldn't want to be one of the characters in So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson. It's nice to see that Sacco got her job back eventually, but that grade of internet mob cancellation goes after some random person and then that's the end of it. Sometimes it works out like in the Brendan Eich case but other times it doesn't.From the government, a little, but I think as a non-American in the US I was always a bit careful on that front. Better not to get in any trouble you know. Absolutely XXXXXXX XX XXXXX XXXX because I XXX XX XXXXXXX XX XX XXXXXX even if the state XXXX XXX XXXXXXXXX XXX XX XXXXX XXXXXXXX.(This joke would be funnier if HN allowed unicode Full Block characters) I've always used a pseudonym. I have never felt free to speak my mind on the internet under my own name, the cancel mobs scared me away long before the state did In general, no. But I'd never make anything but anonymous throwaway posts here because this is the one place that doesn't let me delete my posts. (I know you can make manual requests, but if it's not self-service I can't rely on it.)

Absolutely. People have already gotten in trouble with US immigration just for posting negative opinions on social media, or simply speech that the government doesn't like (see all the recent pro-Palestine protestors whose visas were cancelled). The state department/homeland/etc. can choose or not choose to let people in based on just about any criteria they want. If they find out I said something critical of the government, I could either be denied entry, or kicked out, and both have already been happening to people in the last year and a half.Even if what they're doing isn't legal, that doesn't stop them from potentially ruining your life in the process, maybe even getting away with it. The internet was also heavily surveilled 5 years ago, not much different from how it is today.Are you referring to anything in particular? A few years ago, you would've been banned for questioning the results of the U.S. election. And this was when "progressives" were in charge.If anything, you're more free to "express yourself" now. You're free to express most things except the things they really don't like.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSPM-7Quote from the NSPM-7: > There are common recurrent motivations and indicia uniting this pattern of violent and terroristic activities under the umbrella of self-described “anti-fascism.” These movements portray foundational American principles (e.g., support for law enforcement and border control) as “fascist” to justify and encourage acts of violent revolution. This “anti-fascist” lie has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties. Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality. As described in the Order of September 22, 2025 (Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization) i feel the same way it was never the surveillance but the political mob from the left censoring and gatekeeping words to describe objects or a person.now that trump is president and X is a thing, i do feel much more free to express myself without worries