> "I can't find proof of this, therefore it must be happening" is very popular message board logic.

It's also not what they said, at all. If anything, you could say they argued it might be happening because it's more effective.

From seeing the things people and companies do openly, from marketing to politics, I see no reason to believe that moral qualms is what would keep them from doing more. And while I don't know about MITM attacks, that seems like something that would be done on an individual basis; as for astroturfing and "troll armies", the logic is rather "if it makes sense, works, is cheap, has been reported on multiple times, then yeah, it's probably happening", at least for me, can't speak for the other poster.

And is anyone honestly debating that

> there are many much more subtle and effective ways to stifle free speech and human rights than a big firewall

is true? Because refuting a straw man is not the same thing.

And here too I'm sure I could find reading material if required, I'm sure. From the candid beginnings of marketing and public relations to all sorts of musings, short stories and probably even Star Trek episodes about how a prison you can see, one you know you're in, is much less insidious and effective than one where you think you're free, where you never try the door or don't even realize there is one. I remember a short story in my 8th grade textbook or something that was about a prison without walls. You can say and do what you want, sure, and you think you came up with what you want all by yourself, too, it's just you didn't. That's the general idea.

Walls, like murder, are just very crude tools, they are not the zenith of oppression and exploitation. If you see huge concentrations of power, skepticism is always warranted. How could there be smoke without fire? It doesn't prove anything, sure, and even if I could prove that "there has to be a fire", then that doesn't make any wild fantasies about the nature of it correct. But still, to muse about causes one can't prove (yet) seems a lot less foolish than to for example say "oh look, a huge blob of smiling friendly power, it just has to be everything it says on the tin". I'd rather be wrong about something I investigated for the right reasons, than guess right by sheer dumb luck.

But personally I prefer to think of useful ways that would also nip some fires in the bud anyway. I don't need to know if we are being manipulated, I know critical thought is required and I know group think can be dangerous even when not manipulated, which it is so readily. So why not catch one real and one potential bird with one stone that is obligatory? I don't know how much of a problem global warming is, but I know that renewable energies are a good idea regardless, at "worst" we simply get to use fossil fuels for more plastic and fertilizer rather than burning them. I don't know how many people the planet can sustain, but I know something that needs to grow to not collapse cannot work on a finite planet, and that we need to rethink that at least until we get out of the solar system and split up into a gazillion humanities that will do whatever. I don't need to know if someone is trying to guess my password, I simply generate a long random one anyway. And so on.

Likewise, I don't know if there will ever be the kind of oppressive societies here and where you are that were the norm throughout history and are still plentiful in the world, and I can't prove the exact levels of fuckery we are under right now, much less my idle suspicion that the West might fall get phased out in favour of the Chinese model -- but I still strive to be the best and most free I can be. Certain things should not be a response to pressure from the outside, they should be growing anyway. If there is nothing on the outside trying to opppress, everybody is happy. If there is, it gets to pop, and everybody who matters is happy. Win/win?