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oliwarner 4 days ago

That isn't how this came to be.

Small-c conservatism, think-of-the-children Think Tanks™ have long been a part of British politics and we go barely a week between legitimate studies and idle thought pieces where we introspect modern parenting and despair.

Like it or not, kids have access to the internet in a way that wasn't true 20, 25 years ago. Parents of teens are just realising the horrors of targeted online bullying, diet clubs, porn sharing (Snapchat and worse) and the many other small things that can just destroy kids before they've had a chance.

"But Oli," I hear you say... Yes. Parents should do better but criminalising parenting methods is hard and expensive and leaves you with a bunch of state-orphaned kids. So if we are to assume parents gonna parent, systems like this look tempting to people who don't understand the Internet.

I'm not defending the law, I just don't think this one has its roots in surveillance. It's a shitty reaction to a shitty situation.