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The same thing is happening in the UK. In fact, the only complaint the opposition Labour Party (which will certainly win the next election) had about the “Online Safety Bill” was that the government didn’t consider banning VPNs which could be used to get around the content restrictions.
The problem is that the majority of voters are over 40 and don’t care for or want internet freedoms. They don’t like that other people have them. The majority of the public has always been in favor of content restrictions for the same reason they’re in favor of the police and the same reason they were in favor of the death penalty for 50 years after it was ended.
It’s important to understand the brief age of social liberalism that happened between 1965 and the 2000s as an aberration brought about by a small bohemian elite class that went into politics and essentially implemented unpopular policies above the will of the public.
None of this is to suggest that some ridiculous authleft censorship law is in any way a good thing. But time and time again, polls show a huge majority of the public backs heavy-handed online censorship.
The only thing that changed is that the state started getting scared of an open internet, and so allowed the natural hostility toward liberalism as expressed by common people a little fresh air to support this new effort. Of course, reinstating the death penalty and ending mass immigration will never happen, but the plebs can have a little censorship to stop “online bullying” now that it aligns with government policy to control the internet.
Obviously policy is elite driven not public driven. And the public's attitutes have changed in relation to the influence of the elites and censorship laws. The British electorate is pretty liberal and rising authoritarianism has been done by social liberals in the name of social liberalism. Including by people who were liberals as part of conservative party and pushed things to a liberal direction on all sorts of issues that are part of social liberal agenda. Like gay marriage, hate speech laws, affirmative action type of policies, including in political party leadership like torries. And such attitutes didn't just come yesterday as mana from the heaven, but have a root and a history.
This idea that one can separate liberalism with authoritarianism we have seen is definitely distorting history. Especially when you do it in favor of a tribe of social liberals as the champions of freedom. It's people like Tony Blair, Cameron, continuing on trajectory of previous people who pushed attitutes and even hate speech laws in a certain direction who were key protagonists in bringing things in current direction. Prior to them, the new left and in Britain Fabian types always had their influence and being wolf in sheep clothing selves. Something extreme. They just couldn't push their more extreme policies through immediately. Or some of the elites were less extreme but had attitudes willing to compromise and allow more extreme of the liberal faction get their agenda through. Including allowing the influence of particular lobbies and activists to expand.
The reality is that authoritarian social liberalism is a very real ideology, and more representative of what social liberals, and therefore the liberal tribe and elites have been historically and especially even more so now than any association of them with freedom. And a part of what is taken to be part of social liberalism package includes the protected groups idea. To an extend, authoritarianism for cultural progressivism has been an aspect of even the USSR, especially before Stalin.
Maximalist freedom seekers are also not going to be satisfied by the age prior to social liberalism of course. When this tribe dismantled the conservative order, they weren't doing it to erect a free society, but to erect their order. At such, any advantages of "freedom tm" relating to dismantling restrictions of the old order, were always going to be temporary.
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I don't think it is about age like that.
Many <30 year olds, also many under 40, are comfortable and happy with the idea of censoring people who say anything they don't like. That is the online experience they grew up into. They expect that any forum with "free speech" is unpleasant, nasty, brutal, without any pretense of civilized community norms, and that the overall experience will make them angry. They expect that any good, nice public discussion place has effective mod team, that the spammers and obvious trolls are removed, and preferably is not public in the first place. And when you have got into habit of banning and censoring trolls, it is just so convenient to remove people of wrong political opinions or speaking in the wrong emotional register or who otherwise make for an unpleasant experience. Every form of communication they have lived and breathed has been like this, and when it is not, they will complain.
(The perception is not helped by the fact that after the meek and agreeable people have adapted to the perceived consensus, only the disagreeable odd ones out remain to rebel against it. After all, you need a pretty weird personality to be willing to tolerate the social censure or be oblivious of it until the banhammer hits. And today the disagreeable rebel scoundrels seldom have the wit, elegance or strong moral character.)
I hazard a guess the proportionally largest number of classical "I disagree with what you say, I respect / defend until death your right to say it" free speech idealist is to be found among those who remember the time before internet or got the early internet of 00's and its optimism never left them. Today, it is 2024. Those people are old and rare. Stress on the word 'rare'.
The first part was is that the youngsters like censorship. The second part, anti-censorship was never too popular in the first place. Turns out, among their own generation, principled free speech idealists were in the minority. Vast majority of people in every generation nod along. Free speech and free press used to be part of the package of approved ideas. Today it is much more contentious.
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...when the nominal aim thereof is protecting minors from online threats, that is. It's important to add that qualifier. With that in mind, I kind of wonder what those over-40 voters imagine how such threat prevention is actually supposed to work. Do they realize, for example, that such a system, if implemented unironically, would also protect minors that aren't a bit sympathetic to them?
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The reason the public is in favor of the death penalty 50 years after it's ended is that the public is in favor of the death penalty but anti-death-penalty laws are pushed through by activists that don't represent the public.
The situation in the UK makes more sense if you think of the "abolition" of the death penalty as an unpopular privatization. Non-state actors still have rules, such as "snitches get stitches", and a willingness to get very stabby if you cause them too much trouble.
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Isn't that basically what the post you are responding to said already?
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