I disagree. When they use a megaphone they don't know who the people are, as they are telling them to disperse. Now they have exact lists of who participated. Every person's name is in that list. They can target them individually one by one, home by home, if the revolution fails to overthrow the government, now.
Also, when you build authoritarian systems, they are going to be used by authoritarians, sooner or later. It's like saying it's ok to have a censorship infrastructure, like the Great Firewall, as long as it's not owned by the people with "batons in their hands", sort of speak.
Yeah, except that once you have a system that is an authoritarian's dream, it seems pretty damn hard to stop people like that from abusing it. And ultimately, you can only stop them with revolutions - violent revolutions, in most cases. I'd rather people wouldn't have to go that far to not be oppressed by their government.
When they use a megaphone they don't know who the people are
Of course they do. Communists had been kicking people out of universities, withholding passports from protesters, and organizing mass internments back in the 80s and before.
They'd take pictures and ask around the opposition circles. Or arrest a few people and make them give up the rest. Not to mention willing, paid, or coerced informers planted in the invigilated organizations. And you can bet many people working for security forces in Ukraine today remember those times and techniques well.
There have been authoritarian regimes as far back as written history goes. We here like the tech angle, but let's not attach too much weight to it. It's a great story, I upvoted, but technology is not crucial.
That something is possible does not detract from the weight of making it orders of magnitude easier. Noting participants and tracking them down later has always worked ... but tech verging on applying those actions classic actions automatically and instantly is very significant. Used to be it could take days/weeks/months to "get" some of the participants; now we're not far (if not already there) from correlating cellphone tracking, face recognition, etc to automatically freeze their funds (credit/debit included), suspend driver's licenses, issue arrest or "person of interest" warrants, and otherwise disrupt & hinder the bulk of participants before they even leave the protest site ... maybe not outright arrest & prosecution, but pushing back hard with little/no human involvement.
Communists had been kicking people out of universities, withholding passports from protesters, and organizing mass internments back in the 80s and before.
The same as their counterparts in Capitalist Democratic America of the same time period.
The technology and the ideological bent are both irrelevant I'd say. With the exception that technology has just made the process a whole lot easier and has greater potential for abuse. All the old things are true, but now there are new, faster, more advanced methods to use!
Also, when you build authoritarian systems, they are going to be used by authoritarians, sooner or later. It's like saying it's ok to have a censorship infrastructure, like the Great Firewall, as long as it's not owned by the people with "batons in their hands", sort of speak.
Yeah, except that once you have a system that is an authoritarian's dream, it seems pretty damn hard to stop people like that from abusing it. And ultimately, you can only stop them with revolutions - violent revolutions, in most cases. I'd rather people wouldn't have to go that far to not be oppressed by their government.