Comment by jll29
What Snowden did was heroic. What was shameful was the world's underwhelming reaction. Where were all these images in the media of protest marches like against the Vietnam war?
Someone once said "Religion is opium for the people." - today, give people a mobile device and some doom-scrolling social media celebrity nonsense app, and they wouldn't noticed if their own children didn't come home from school.
Looking back I think allowing more centralized control to various forms of media to private parties did much worse overall than government surveillance on the long run.
For me the problem was not surveillance, the problem is addiction focused app building (+ the monopoly), and that never seem to be a secret. Only now there are some attempts to do something (like Australia and France banning children - which am not sure is feasible or efficient but at least is more than zero).