[YurgenJurgensen]

First it was “just extreme porn”, then “just porn”, then “anywhere that could potentially contain adult content”, then VPNs, now all social media, all in about a year. You’re claiming slippery slopes aren’t real while in the gift shop at Splash Mountain.

[throwaway290]

In Russia none of that slippery slope stuff happened. Just they murdered journalists and opposition, installed TPUs at every ISP and passed a law making any VPN related advice illegal. And people are fine with that apparently

In Thailand porn was straight up illegal for ages and everything else was sane and open... until new government decided to kill freedom of speech.

So slippery slope is illusion. If government is bad it don't need to try to be so complicated and gradual. It can't even think so far ahead, they will no longer be elected when that times comes.

As for social media banning for teens that's just common sense. Social media is fuming pile of garbage designed to make people feel miserable so that corporate overlords make $$$ https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58570353.amp

[YurgenJurgensen]

There’s a trivial way of fixing social media without mass surveillance or free speech restrictions: Just put a punitive tax on advertising revenue. People can say whatever they want, but the incentives behind social media disappear. This won’t be implemented because this was never about making society a better place.

And your examples only show that where there’s no safeguards, governments don’t need to be subtle, but in semi-functional democracies, they still need to at least pretend to be electable.

[tikitaviriki2]

No, it started with "protecting the children" around 2010, and followed the bit-by-bit step-by-step boiling the frog approach for years, until the grip on the internet (as well as offline publications) became strong enough to do you know what to you know whom.