I’d seen the research, yeah.

The desperation I mean is because a good chunk of social engineering and control is done by gaslighting while suppressing opposing opinions, but with the internet, opinions and information propagate far more easily.

As tackling freedom of speech and access to information online is an uphill battle, even in the current, semi-centralized model, another front would be to label dissidents, but even that is losing strength. So the next strategy seems to be to monitor who posts, to persecute individuals to use as example.

When France, not quite an example of democracy from what I can gather, some years back in some judicial battle wanted to consider Linux a potential tool for crimes, since the guy being sued was using it for privacy, a precedent was forming.

But though as bad as the overall situation may seem immediately, I still think it’s damage control. People are speaking, and faster than what individual countries can control with their old tools, so they’re having to double-down in their efforts. But a positive on doubling-down, the more they do, the more obvious their methods are, and because of that, the easier it is to find ways to push back, requiring people to organize, something that these countries also used means to scare people into not doing, see protests in Canada, Brazil and US turned into years-long judicial battles meant to bleed the protestors dry while scaring people watching from a safe distance.