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

America's arrested rather a large number of people in recent weeks—university students, mostly—for expressing viewpoints on the I/P conflict. The current Administration is claiming, and no one's yet stopped them, that First Amendment rights don't apply to non-citizens such as international students.

- "You’re not arrested for posting this"

For what it's worth, it's widely reported that ICE is trawling social media to find targets (targeted for their speech/viewpoints). HN itself is one of their known targets.

It doesn't matter if they're citizens or not if the government is skipping court thus not being required to prove it either way. Then when they oopsie you to another country they have to at least try to pretend to get you back but the courts need to show "deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs".

Which is a long way of saying the executive can blackhole anyone it wants to a foreign country and no one is going to do anything because god forbid we step on the executive's role to give up people in our country to other countries.

>Which is a long way of saying the executive can blackhole anyone it wants

Do you have examples of the executive doing this to citizens or are you being hypothetical here?

Countries generally grant far fewer rights to non-citizens. Have you considered how allowing non-citizens to spread discontent within a country could be abused?