The heavy security apparatus isn’t a feature of socialism in and of itself, but a reflection of the fact that every Actually Existing Socialist state (and for that matter every state that tries to act in its own interest over that of Wall Street) exists under siege from the capitalist world.

Consider how the USSR was under constant attack from the West: the major powers invading soon after the Revolution > Nazi Germany > the Cold War (not to mention what the US has done to Vietnam and the DPRK).

Consider the brutal sanctions the US maintains.

Consider especially the many coups and color revolutions that the US in directly and indirectly responsible for - replacing independence minded governments with brutal dictators more amenable to US interests (Mosadeggh in Iran, Sukarno in Indonesia and Allende in Chile are some examples off the top of my head).

The reason every socialist state is ‘authoritarian’ is because the ones that weren’t were swiftly destroyed. In other words, the ‘heavy surveillance and censorship’, as you put it, is something necessitated by the current capitalist (imperialist) world order.

I suspect I wouldnt piss my time away on the internet because I’d be employed, instead of going on 5 years of being underemployed 🤣

The capital interests that keep humans at a distance from each other would go, that’s for sure. But some computer based communication will still be useful.

‘Excuse the ignorance’, no problem, we all start from the same cesspool of Capitalist propaganda, and I don’t have all the answers either, but I can put you on a much better information track if you want it. Your post is a bit ‘heavy’ on the propaganda side, so ‘What we are told’ is the key sentence here that I need to talk about.

Not sure where to start really, but here goes (excuse lack of details and sources for this long one): Firstly, ‘socialism’ is more a temporary mode of production towards full communism - a peoples community at nation-scale, no oppression by rich fascist fckers, no monetary hierarchy. Socialism or the end goal of Communism does not dictate, strengthen or even have a specific need for surveillance/censorship. In fact, the closer to Communism, the less the need for such things - unless the citizens are being attacked from the outside by the usual fascist fuckers. There certainly can be a lot of surveillance, but not to control people - to safeguard people. That is what you see in socialist/communist nations, and you feel safe, not surveilled by capitalist removed that want everything you got. Society are being discussed in these nations. There are no2little surveillance-capitalism that surveils only to harm you in a full communist society. I doubt that anyone are perfect, and mistakes absolutely have been made trying to get away from the Capitalist oppression and eternal wars, but they are just better for people than fascist (Capitalist controlled) nations. The whole point of socialism/communism is to create a society where ordinary people can prosper without fascist psychopath owners entering/controlling every part of your life - to suck you dry for THEIR benefit. Common ownership of resources/production is just one level of socialism - pro-social systems, Communism is the whole package, a society by the people, for the people.

I’ll just assume that you already know that US and their Western vassal nations are neither ‘democratic’, free’, have ‘free speech’ or any other silly dogmatic/marketing words. US elites colonises other nations through several attack vectors: Military projection/playing opponents against each other (They learned how by the UK), monetary pressure/favourable trade-‘agreements’ and buying of local corrupt elites and ‘power-positions’ (academia, media and ‘Epstein’ types etc) in society, ‘business schools’ as small propaganda centres that churn out hundred thousands capitalist/free market believers every year that fight vehemently for the Epstein class’ favourite economic system, but another strong one being control of information/propaganda. You have already noticed that while searching.

You can read about how they do these things in the Chinese paper called 'Colonization_of_the_Mind. There are oc many other documents, papers, books and documentaries etc that describes how it works, so its not a secret - just hidden/removed from the information sphere as you have already noticed (search engines, Wikipedia manipulation and you name it, they manipulate it). Oh, and NO western society are interested in ‘privacy’, but still supports systems that can go through socialist/communists firewalls. THAT is the whole reason for soc/com firewalls and their own social networks+censorship of US propaganda (T-square and Uyghur nonsense and so on), not that they are ‘hiding the truth’ for their citizens as US propaganda would claim. To understand this, you might need to follow what wars - and their purpose - US have been at for almost a hundred years. All socialist/communist nations, or just those that didn’t want US scum elite to own their nations (hello S.America) have been in a cold/warm war with US ALL this time. US elite never stops - no matter what they say in public. Most ‘enemies’ now agree that US are ‘agreement-incapable’ as they always make deals, but consequently break them when needed.

Let’s be honest: US are good at it !! No firewall = no information defense = US will colonise your nation. ANY nation that doesn’t have a ‘firewall’ with their own social networks SN etc WILL be colonised eventually. It can happen many ways, but for SN, US, through google/yt, facebook, X, (and even on federated sn) creates groups of local dissent based on lies/censorship of truths, and they trigger uprisings through coordination with other CIA attack-vectors. ALL color-revolutions was nothing but US showing their information-management powers. Pretty scary stuff tbh…

EU and other (Nato) current US vassal states did not know what hit them, and the last 30 years we have seen EU citizens go from having true Communist and Socialist parties and interests, to now only have propagandised neo-liberals/globalists - all just Capitalists. And we are almost at US low-levels where a good hearted Communist that only want the fascist shitters to stop extorting and manipulating peoples lives for their own benefit - the best for ordinary citizens - are called ‘Commies’ and ‘Tankies’ and almost spat on. Remarkable work by the US propaganda apparatus (biggest in human history) ! PRC, and DRPK fared much better although they have been attacked by US forever.

Ukraine on the other hand… (oh-oh, did you think that was a clear case of bad Russia? It’s not, sorry, but you can skip this section if you are too convinced/angry!) …Ukr did not have a firewall either, and didn’t have a chance. CIA with Victoria Nuland et al. as lead spent at least 5b$ to manipulate Ukrainian corrupt elite, history-books, create nationalists and everything above - all to become an angry proxy warrior against US’ enemy Russia. All of Maidan etc was just std CIA ops. It’s all documented, but US can create a deliberate echo-chamber - a lynch-mob - in the entire US vassal information sphere, that wont even look at information that goes against the official CIA induced narrative.

I better stop here, as I’m already way beyond what is ‘acceptable’ claims in the western echo-chamber, but I should add that ‘Trump’ does the exact same in foreign affairs as ALL his predecessors, so that means that US foreign policy - what I have loosely described above - continues unaffected by what side of the US oligarch uniparty - sorry, which ‘administration’ - have the presidency. They are the same, and not in charge of much really.

It doesn’t look so, but I have not written anything controversial here - at all. A few errors and missing angles oc, but nothing horribly wrong. If you want closer to ‘truth’, then look away from all pro-US outlets. Look for socialist/communist wiki’s as they are not manipulated, look for independent journalism that are not sponsored by the elite, look for those Scientists that dare to go against the narrative, look for anyone that does NOT repeat what US gov says is the truth, and never watch western ‘news’, follow for-profit SN’s and for profit media - ‘for profit’ beats real journalism every time. Finally, ask here and ask all the so-called ‘tankies’ for what they know - they are the most knowable geo-political followers I’ve ever met. Expect that ALL western information is colored by this crap narratives from the last many decades, and expect that everything is much much worse than what you are ready to accept. If you use AI, then make sure to ask for a system-critic perspective, or it will default to all the western propaganda also.

If you can break out of the US Oligarch echo-chamber, then we’ll see you on the other side…

Autocracy and surveillance are not requirements for socialism. Indeed FLOSS is basically communism for software of you think about it.

This community has a lot of China boosters who like to paint the country as some sort of idealised socialist utopia, but you’re right: it’s an autocratic surveillance state. As Free software is essentially incompatible with the demands of such a state, I wouldn’t say it’s compatible with China. That doesn’t mean it’s incompatible with socialism though.

First, I wouldn’t really say either of those are socialist or communist despite whatever they call themselves. If anything they’d be state capitalists or something. Neither of them (as far as I know or understand) have the people owning the means of production.

With that being said, in an actual socialist state, I think decentralised social media would thrive just fine. We’d see massive reforms in how traditional social media functions though, since those would go into the hands of the workers and inevitably be run different.