it depends on whether or not there's someone who sees it as a crusade (rare), sees it as a way to get political clout (very common) and/or is getting a lot of lobbying money (extremely common [1]). see, for eg, the anti-trans bills that are being passed

this is the same rhetorical and political strategy, that there are 'dangerous' people who will exploit your children so please vote for me, the person who cares the most about children and will go after the 'dangerous' people

[1] https://themarkup.org/privacy/2021/04/15/big-tech-is-pushing...

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frumplestlatz 2 days ago | parent [-]

What is the connection to “anti-trans bills”?

	▲	paimapi 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		they're both grounded in fearmongering that's led to cultural panics and utilize the rhetoric of 'protecting children' as the sell https://www.law.georgetown.edu/gender-journal/wp-content/upl... "Overwhelmingly, state legislators behind recent anti-trans legislation have argued that they were introducing these bills with the intent to protect children – whether that be “protecting children” from “profoundly unethical and morally wrong” medical practices" https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/eff-gov-pritzker-veto-... "Much of H.B. 5511 is modeled after controversial legislation passed in California (A.B. 1043) and New York’s Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act" there's also the rampant astroturfing https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/30/christian-hate... "The surge in funding to the ADF, which has been termed an “anti-LGBTQ hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, saw it record revenue of $104.5m in 2021, according to filings with the Internal Revenue Service." ADF's main funders being the Servant Foundation or a single billionaire family's pet foundation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_Foundation) and the National Christian Foundation which receives large donations from multiple extremely wealthy individuals like David Green, co-founder of Hobby Lobby (https://readsludge.com/2019/03/19/americas-biggest-christian...) this is very much like the funding of these 'privacy' acts by Meta, Alphabet, etc - lots of money directly into the hands of local legislators across multiple state legislatures with the ultimate goal of providing institutional power over individuals, one just has a slightly more Machiavellian economic logic foregrounding it but the strategy, tactics, and overall erosion of civil liberties make for very similar outcomes