It's always been “think of the children” for three decades in IT, whether it was encryption, anonymity, or access to information. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

It's always been “think of the children” for three decades in IT, whether it was encryption, anonymity, or access to information. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp... Almost every government blocking system started for the sake of the children, then expanded for this or that reason. In some cases, it expanded before starting: notoriously, first sites blocked when Russian government censorship was introduced (to protect our kids from the dangers of the internet!) were well known media entities that had criticized Putin for a long time. The zest was that they were hurriedly blocked even before the relevant acts came into effect. Like, why keep the act after the deed is done? So now there is a government agency that has been blocking oh-so-edgy pictures of nooses on DeviantArt and similar content for years to pretend that they care about the children, and not execute censorship (and sell their extortion services to people who want to remove some information from the Web on the side). Whether that helped any kid is an open question.