One big difference between government snooping in china and Facebook and google having tons of potentially compromising data is that in the US and EU and other

One big difference between government snooping in china and Facebook and google having tons of potentially compromising data is that in the US and EU and other countries, you have some level of protection from harmful misuse of that data in the form of regulations, lawsuits, and public goodwill. Not saying that either of those are perfect but they are real protections. Regulations are slow and won't necessarily protect the first people who are harmed (see subprime crisis) but they can make it much harder to do similar things in the future Lawsuits don't always work and are heavily weighted against consumers but do provide some protection Public goodwill is huge. If lots of people got really hurt from a Facebook or google data compromise, id bet people stop using them. Seems crazy now but there are alternatives and Facebook is not essential. All these companies (and many other non tech ones, like banks for example) are strongly incentivized to not harm the public in a large way because the execs would lose their jobs and careers These protections are FAR from perfect and shouldn't prevent you from losing sleep, but imagine living in a country where the government is incentivized to not protect its citizens through regulation or enforce standard legal protections More chilling is the potential social acceptance of such snooping in the name of social harmony, trust in government etc. if people no longer believe such censorship or oppression is bad, you have a real problem Edit: The NSA is an analogous threat in the US, but to my knowledge that info isn't used to secure the reputations and positions of government leaders. Also there is a huge public backlash against them, not sure if the same exists in china