[rpdillon]

It's not really about outsmarting them. Authoritarian systems of control rely on centralization. If you create an ecosystem where end users have lots of agency, of course most of them will go the path of least resistance, but the few who are willing to put in the effort to resist still can. Google and Apple tightening their grip over their respective mobile ecosystems is a very potent lever for authoritarian governments to pull.

[IgorPartola]

They don’t rely on them. They successfully use them. In the Soviet Union every one horse village with unpaved roads had a commissar. No internet, no telegraph, no newspaper, no electricity but they held control just the same. Central control makes it convenient for them, but it isn’t the difference between them existing and not existing.

[rpdillon]

I admit ignorance of a lot of this but just going off of your comment wouldn't the commissar be the system of centralized control in this case?

[IgorPartola]

In a way. Basically yes any totalitarian regime will want to create a system where the people in charge have total control over everyone and everything. But my point is that Stalin was able to exert control over all parts of the Soviet Union without the internet, Facebook, WhatsApp, backdoored E2E messaging systems, email and email spying, parallel construction, etc.

The comment I was replying to is not wrong exactly but the better way to phrase that is that any unrelated but centralized system can and probably will be co-opted by a totalitarian regime and in the long run only helps the oppressor and not the oppressed.