Leaked data reveals Israeli govt campaign to remove pro-Palestine posts on Meta

I like to think we are in a better place than russia for instance with all its propaganda and jailed journalists, but then i see these kind of article come over and over....

Most of the people in the 'free world' goes on mainstream media, like facebook to get their news. These companies are enticed to 'suck up' to the government because at the end they are business, they need to be in good term with ruling class.

you end up with most media complying with the official story pushed by government and friends, and most people believing that because no one has the time to fact check everything.

One could argue that the difference with russia is that someone can actually look for real information, but even in russia people have access to vpn to bypass the censorship.

Another difference would be that you are allowed to express your opinion, whereas in russia you would be put to jail, that's true but only in a very limited way. Since everyone goes on mainstream media and they enforce the government narrative, you can't speak there. you are merely allowed to speak out in your little corner out of reach to anyone, and even then since most people believe the government propaganda, your arguments won't be heard at all.

The more i think about it, the less difference i see.

You’re not arrested for posting this, so that is a pretty big difference to Russia (and other authoritarian nations like China and Turkey), no?

https://rsf.org/en/country/russia

You do realize that this is where things are going, right? Have you not heard of the arrests and recent deportations of student protestors?

I don’t understand why we keep forgetting that authoritarianism is a slippery slope.

You have a point with democratic backsliding - but then your rights hinge on the impartiality of the judicial system (as a whole, and eventually, not necessarily individual decisions evidently). It’s pretty obvious that the legal systems even in flawed democracies is still vastly better than in those autocracies.

Checks and balances are a crucial feature of American democracy.

It's almost as though the framers of the Constitution foresaw the possibility of the two elected branches of government (executive and legislative) being monopolized by the same group, at some point.

And that the very flexibility of regular, open, direct elections also required a check to protect the fundamental rights of all people in the country.