[highwaylights]

It’s not that the UK government believes censoring porn is a vote winner so much as they really want to use “think of the kids” as a cudgel to widespread surveillance.

In other countries (not least the US) there’s an expectation of privacy which doesn’t really exist in the UK. It’s not seen as a right by any major party or particularly valued by the public at large (“nothing to hide nothing to fear” etc). The government still really wants E2E encryption banned here (as nonsensical as that is).

They don’t see any of this as a vote loser, as none of the alternative parties see it any differently.

Personally I’m kind of happy about this gating even if I disagree on principle, but they’ve already indicated that they have no line. They’ve been very open about seeing everything you say and do.

[rich_sasha]

Despite all this talk about privacy, US would appear to be leading the free world in surveillance and illiberalism right now. It is very reminiscent to me of the radical free speech of Twitter and Republicans, which in practice means censorship.

I'm not saying UK is great, but surely ahead of what the US is doing by a wide margin.

[highwaylights]

I sort of agree.

If you look at the UK through the MAGA lens you see that there’s a grain of truth in some of the comments about free speech.

Likewise terminology in the US is sometimes a little turned on its head - in the US “liberalism” means something completely different from actual liberalism (which would be closer to libertarianism).

Also “woke” has been used for so many things that its meaning has been warped from “don’t trust the system” to whatever the right dislikes on a given day, even though they’re ostensibly all about smaller government that stays out of your business.

Politics has always been very subversive but it’s more entangled than ever now.