> Bulk data collection and massive privacy invasions weren't a problem, that's what I'm saying. That's quite debatable, from Stasi methods to NSA trying to col

> Bulk data collection and massive privacy invasions weren't a problem, that's what I'm saying. That's quite debatable, from Stasi methods to NSA trying to collect bulk phone calls, there've been plenty of examples for bulk data collections and massive privacy invasions predating social media and the Internet. 20 years ago nobody cared much what information you shared about yourself on the www, as it wasn't monetized, barely anything was as many users back then had been hoping for something like a "post-privacy society" to emerge. The problems started when companies wanted to commercialize the www, que ad-revenue economy and massive aggregation of personal information on-top of that. Creating a situation where monolithic companies and governments suddenly have a very similar goal: Categorizing and collecting "people" in every imaginable way. Facebook is pretty much building a database of all the people of the world, governments have struggled to build something like that, on a national scale, for far longer and regularly failed. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised about shady backroom deals along the lines of "We let you get away with breaking this immensely complex legal framework if you give us access to your database of phone numbers/selfies/whatever" actually being a thing.