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Ah, yes, "national security", that bastion of nationalism. Which some consider evil all by itself.

But not me so much - I like that there is competition for control, that if this nation becomes too repressive, you could bolt to another.

This is perhaps something new under the sun, in that FB and some others, may as well be "nations" with no place to bolt to from there - that's bad.

That all these services and their recommendations strongly tend to create echo chambers and promote angry division is certainly bad, however, and I will in no way defend them.

I will, however, point out that the "national security" services have their bread buttered in a particular way themselves, and even acknowledge that they lie for a living! So while they are indeed "persuasive" in their ability to bring force - legal or otherwise - to the table, I don't see that as an improvment.

I see it as yet another grab for power - they are just as evil wanting to shut down competitors in control of the narrative as the outfits they want to shut down.

In other words, why limit this idea of "too much power in one place" to a few big companies? They are bad - we can all agree on that. Are they the worst? Would the suggested replacement, even less transparent or bound by law (it's all a secret) - be better?

Why not rein them all in? The more recent hoaxes perpetuated on us have had involvement by ALL of the big companies, but were backed by these same unaccountable government entities that now want control over the companies...Doesn't anyone else see the problem here?

National security has long since been redefined as that which promotes the status quo - things that hurt the various gov bureaucracies "hurt the national security" even when it's damned obvious that those gov entities needed a spanking by having their own crimes revealed. Yet the whistleblowers revealing their crimes "hurt national security". They didn't hurt mine, and I'm part of my nation. They hurt some of the bad actors who claim THEY ARE the nation. Nope, they're just supposed to be servants of it.