For the past several years, lawmakers and bureaucrats around the country have been trying to solve a problem. They wanted to regulate the internet, and in particular, they wanted to censor content and undermine a variety of systems that allow for privacy and anonymity online—the systems, in other words, that allow for online individuals to conduct themselves freely and outside of the purview of politicians.
There was something like a bipartisan agreement on the necessity of these rules and regulations. Lawmakers and regulators test-drove a number of potential arguments for online speech rules, including political bias, political extremism, drug crime, or the fact some tech companies are just really big. But it turned out to be quite difficult to drum up support for wonky causes like antitrust reform or amending the internet liability law Section 230, and even harder to make the case that the sheer size of companies like Amazon was really the problem.
Their efforts tended to falter because they lacked a consensus justification. Those in power knew what they wanted to do. They just didn’t know why, or how.
But in statehouses and in Congress today, that problem appears to have been solved. Politicians looking to censor online content and more tightly regulate digital life have found their reason: child safety.
Hellbound and Down 