Politicians absolutely were doing this 20-30 years ago. Plenty of folks here are old enough to remember debates on Slashdot around the Communications Decency Act, Child Online Protection Act, Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, Children's Internet Protection Act, et al.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act

▲

SV_BubbleTime 10 hours ago | parent [-]

It’s annoying how effective “for the children” is. That peiole really just turn off their brains for that.

	▲	Nifty3929 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Nobody is doing it just "for the children" - that's just a fig-leaf justification for doing what many people want anyway: surveillance, tracking, and censorship (of other people, of course - just the bad ones doing/saying bad things). IOW - People aren't turning off their brains about "for the children" - they just want it anyway and don't think any further than that.