>It's so organic and grass roots

It is though. This is one of the few surveillance issues actually driven by grassroots organisations like (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Shout) in particular when it comes to adult content who have been at this globally for well over a decade.

There's no shadowy cabal trying to age-restrict porn or social media, this is more like a modern day Carrie Nation. Puritanism always comes from the bottom up

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stephen_g 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Collective Shout are a tiny fringe group, they have had a massively outsized impact because of some extremely effective and clever lobbying but few people here in Australia where they are based know about them (they're definitely not a household name by any stretch of the imagination).

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Ferret7446 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Oh hey, that's the group that got payment processors to ban lots of legal content off of many platforms including Steam, all the while denying everything when the public outrage turned against them. Nothing speaks grassroots more than hiding when everyone hates what you're doing.

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oncallthrow 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Sorry, which grass roots group exactly campaigned for this? Which party’s manifesto was it on?

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slowmovintarget 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

"Never let a good crisis go to waste."

The "think of the children!" argument has long been used by people in government to give themselves more power. In this case there's been a global effort to shut down unapproved speech. The government gains the power to censor and arrest for "bad speech" but it also gets to decide how the labels for the same are applied. There have been panel discussions and speeches on this at the WEF, and discussions of tactics for selling or pushing through this kind of legislation for at least a decade.

That's how we got that video of John Kerry lamenting the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.

So under the aegis of "think of the children!" (which may or may not have come from "grass roots" organizations) you get a committee with the power to decide what speech is badthink or wrongthink, label it as such, and hand out arrest warrants for it.

Disagree with policy: that's "hate" or "misinformation" or "inflammatory."

Voice a moral opinion: that's "hate" or "bigotry" or "intolerance."

Express doubt over a leader's actions: that's "misinformation" or "inflammatory."

Fascinating that they're more worried about VPN use than about shutting down rape gangs.

	▲	niggertopia a day ago \| parent [-]
		[dead]

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Barrin92 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

In Britain in particular? The NSPCC, Molly Rose Foundation, IWF among a bunch of others. 70% of Brits are supportive of the online safety act[1], it's been supported by Conservatives, Labour and the SNP.

There's simply no data in favor of the argument that this is a minority position or even some kind of conspiracy. Child safety is (not very surprisingly) usually a voter driven concern. You think banning people from social media is an idea coming from big tech and shadowy three letter agencies? What kind of sense does that make

[1] https://yougov.co.uk/technology/articles/52693-how-have-brit...

	▲	qcnguy 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		YouGov panel always returns huge numbers for any 'safety' question that doesn't match data collected from other sources. It's a panel poll, the people being polled are weird and unrepresentative.
	▲	YurgenJurgensen 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Of course a poll that asks a leading question can get 70% in favour. It’s not a conspiracy by TLAs (the people they’re interested in won’t be fazed by these paper-thin measures) or big tech (this hurts their bottom line). It’s legacy media, who have lost a lot of ground to the Internet, and stand to lose nothing by making it worse, and coincidentally also have a captive audience of voters who wouldn’t know one end of a USB cable from another who simply don’t understand any of the downsides.