It's worth noting, though, that Henry II was reviled for that remark. It may have replaced a reign-ending crime with a political outrage, but Henry was still ba

It's worth noting, though, that Henry II was reviled for that remark. It may have replaced a reign-ending crime with a political outrage, but Henry was still barred from mass and otherwise held responsible for a predictable result. The modern breakthrough seems to be ability to act without any direct action. Indirect communications mean that a speaker doesn't need any connection to the person whose action they're compelling, and mass communications mean that the threshold of explicitness drops from "reasonable person understands" to "someone is crazy enough to take this literally". Math-washing and automated systems make it possible to take a decision you can't explain and apply it to an unknown set of people. The result is everything from Wells Fargo fraud to legal systems that bill suspects for their own wrongful searches. It's not a new thing, and that's worth remembering, but we seem to have gotten vastly better at it in the last few decades.