[curun1r]

You're assuming that we're talking about a government surveillance setup where information is intended to be private. But the article's discussion still applies when the subject matter is canceling people on social networks.

In fact it seems even more apropos of the dual identity of both subject and narc that the article discusses. Traditional government surveillance makes most of us solely subjects with little role in the enforcement process. But in a world where mob justice applies social sanctions, we're all simultaneously judges and candidates to become defendants, able to be condemned by our own words. Encryption is irrelevant when those words are intended for public consumption.

Black Mirror did an episode on what it would look like if your social reputation were reified into concrete societal privileges. That kind of ad absurdum exploration makes the surveillance state of social networks much easier to recognize.