#technoauthoritarianism — Public Fediverse posts

„The chill of AI-powered mass surveillance will suffocate the very foundations of healthy democratic societies. But we can still choose a different path.“ – Bruce Schneier

https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2026/07/ai-surveillance-is-being-supercharged-and-it-will-chill-social-progress.html

#AI #AISurveillance #DigitalRights #CivilLiberties #HumanRights #TechnoAuthoritarianism

"Where Trump’s first administration was defined by a generally symbiotic but tenuous relationship with #BigTech, the second would be, from the jump, a rancid union of #SiliconValley ideology and fascist impulse. [...]

"In many ways, the shameless about-face comes as the culmination of the #tech world’s open embrace of self-advancing cynicism in recent years."

https://thebaffler.com/latest/e-pluribus-uh-oh-kim
#USpol #AI #SiliconValleyRight #technoauthoritarianism #techFutures

The Long Arc of #Fascism Teach-in | Panel 2: Fascism as Capitalist Counter Revolution

"[T]he second panel turned to the present, mapping how fascism re-emerges as a reactionary force defending #racialCapitalism and elite rule against emancipatory movements."

w/ Brenna Bhandar, Avery Everhart, Gastón Gordillo, Alberto Toscano

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCK1yNFv5bE
#LateFascism #FarRight #NewRight #Palantir #BigTech #tech #SiliconValleyRight #technoauthoritarianism #politicalTheory

"The Accelerated Construction of Techno-Authoritarian Infrastructure"

This is the first in a series of articles examining BigTech’s threats to democratic society and exploring pathways forward.

https://freeknowledge.eu/accelerated-construction-techno-authoritarian-infra

#ExtremeRight #BigTech #GAFAM #DigitalCoup #TechnoAuthoritarianism #Collapse #Resistance

"Ring founder Jamie Siminoff is back at the helm of the surveillance doorbell company, and with him is the surveillance-first-privacy-last approach that made Ring one of the most maligned tech devices. Not only is the company reintroducing new versions of old features which would allow police to request footage directly from Ring users, it is also introducing a new feature that would allow police to request live-stream access to people’s home security devices.

This is a bad, bad step for Ring and the broader public.

Ring is rolling back many of the reforms it’s made in the last few years by easing police access to footage from millions of homes in the United States. This is a grave threat to civil liberties in the United States. After all, police have used Ring footage to spy on protestors, and obtained footage without a warrant or consent of the user. It is easy to imagine that law enforcement officials will use their renewed access to Ring information to find people who have had abortions or track down people for immigration enforcement."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/amazon-ring-cashes-techno-authoritarianism-and-mass-surveillance

#USA #Amazon #Ring #TechnoAuthoritarianism #MassSurveillance #Privacy #PoliceState

More on the "do something" front (I'm referring here to /3):

Marcy Wheeler notes how town-hall meetings have Republican legislators back on their heels now, and demonstrate that we can, indeed, do something to push back. She says,

"This kind of politics is not sufficient to reverse the fascist trend in America, but it is an irreplaceable part of any effort to try."

#Musk #Trump #broligarchy #SiliconValley #technoauthoritarianism #surveillance #fascism
/4

https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/02/23/no-kings-around-the-partisan-bend-on-doge-sic-and-ukraine/

"This week represents a hinge of history. Everything has changed. America and Russia are now allies. Ukraine has been thrown to the dogs. Europe’s security hangs in the balance. On the one hand, there’s nothing any of us can do. On the other, we have to do something."

On the "do something" front, see Cadwalladr's valuable suggestions from Nov. 2017, republished here — and listen to her podcast.

#Musk #Trump #broligarchy #SiliconValley #technoauthoritarianism #surveillance #fascism
/3

"This is technoauthoritarianism. It’s tyranny + surveillance tools. It’s the merger of Silicon Valley companies with state power. It’s the ‘broligarchy’, a concept I coined in July last year though I’ve been contemplating it for a lot longer."

#Musk #Trump #broligarchy #SiliconValley #technoauthoritarianism #surveillance #fascism
/2

@cy

Honestly, I think the time for stopping creeping #technoauthoritarianism was back in the late 1990s.

The Internet Manifesto, #cypherpunk , #encryption were efforts to stop it...

...I personally have taken the East German attitude to ubiquitous #surveillance. "I know they are watching, they know I know they are watching"

"It is true that Silicon Valley is home to a horde of reactionaries that pine for a modernity free of liberalism, as well as gripped by a delusion that society would be best served under their dominion. But why? If we are going to offer a theory such as techno-authoritarianism, we have to have some theory about why there is such a break. LaFrance offers us a tautology: these individuals accelerating the pace of our innovation and the triumph of digital technologies owe it to ideas that prioritize accelerating our innovation and the triumph of digital technologies.

The sad truth is this: Silicon Valley and its reactionaries are chickens coming home to roost. Silicon Valley is not some Promethean flame we smuggled from Olympos. Technology is not some primordial force corrupted by libertarian nerds with too much money. It's of the real world, it's material, it's influenced by the forces of history as much as anything else. Those forces come out of choosing to prioritize technology that helps us undertake surveillance for commerce, advertising, imperial adventure, speculation, and political suppression. The existential threat posed by today's tech capitalist overlords will get much worse. The funny ideas they have about their divine right to rule, their suspicion of competition and democracy, and other people who do not look like them—well, that's how we got here in the first place."

https://thetechbubble.substack.com/p/ai-slavery-surveillance-and-capitalism

#AI #Capitalism #Surveillance #SurveillanceCapitalism #TechnoFeudalism #SocialControl #Automation #TechnoAuthoritarianism #Slavery