[CPLX]

I get the concept. But there's a pretty obvious difference between just sitting in my home and going to work and posting on a global media platform that is literally intended to reach every other living human as its core reason for existing.

The argument seems bizarre to me. A much better pre-technology analogy would be if I wrote lots of letters to the editor of a newspaper and people read them.

Maybe it would even be a little creepy if the government had an FBI agent in every small town that read letters to the editor and sent them to be filed by topic in Washington or something.

But it wouldn't be spying right?

[kelnos]

It doesn't really matter what label you put on it. The fact that you say it'd be a "little creepy" should start setting off alarm bells. Do we really want people with guns and the force of the state behind them doing creepy things to the populace, routinely?

[bjt2n3904]

Who cares whether it's "spying" or "surveillance"?

Here's the real issue, which this semantics argument is derailing. Several times, a shooting spree has occurred, and all the government agencies say, "Oh, yeah... We knew about them! Anyways, the mass shooter's community is very much under attack..."

Pretty hard to swallow when the federal agencies are spending time and resources holding a magnifying glass over political opponents (with a long, LONG track record of nonviolence).