[emptybits]

Regardless of the official point of Stasi collaborators, what they did was contribute to millions of government surveillance files on fellow citizens. The similarity to a social network of public surveillance is the unpaid, unvetted, untrained manner, of collection with questionable motivation, be it social or political or simply anger.

Interestingly, the contributors may also be profiling themselves as able to and willing to surveil fellow citizens, should the opportunity arise.

[throwaway85825]

The stasi had millions of files and no technical way to search them efficiently.

Random unpaid members of the public posting the most outrageous behavior they see is not a surveillance state. The chance that any one incident will be recorded is low.