

Thank you! That’s the difference between rhetorical freedom and substantive freedom.
What gets me is how people will look at China’s poverty alleviation (actual material liberation from hunger and desperation) and call that “authoritarianism”. Meanwhile, the US lets people die of treatable illnesses, go bankrupt from medical bills, and drown in student debt… and for some reason that’s perceived as natural.
And on wealth inequality, you’re right. The CPC doesn’t let billionaires write policy the way the Kochs, Bezos, or Musk do, which shouldn’t be acceptable anywhere in the world.

I don’t know if Ubuntu has fixed it, because trying to enforce their Snap store was intentional. But I can’t say for sure because there have been years that I don’t use it.
But yeah, for anyone using it, I’d recommend to just remove Snap entirely, since it’s totally unnecessary and goes against pretty much every Linux core concept.
Or just use something like Kubuntu or Linux Mint, that have Ubuntu under hood but are more community driven instead of relying on Canonical.