After taking the reigns of the global control system (aka human skynet), the controller decided masks would be the "ignition switch" that reveals exactly how much control can be exerted on the world.

Now why would that be? Masks humiliate, dehumanize, etc, but masks don't really control people in a literal sense. Rather, it's a way to identify areas of mass-compliance, so that those areas can be targeted for further measures, such as is currently being done with health passports (the next layer of control). Further depraved demands will later be imposed on the areas that accept the healthpasses, and so on, until basically they have vast armies of citizens that can be digitally ordered to do anything. At that point, they'll be made to wage war on the resistance.

It's better to resist now and fight for your area to have low compliance, so you don't get caught up in a heavily compliant area and suffer the worse fate of becoming what is essentially a remote-controlled shell of a human.