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>To anyone who thinks that regulating social media is some sort of prelude to a totalitarian state

Ha-ha-ha. Writing from Russia.

No, seriously, it started with completely reasonable law mandating that internet providers block pages encouraging suicide or providing information on ways to do it.

And remember, Orwell was British.

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I remember when Russia passed those first "anti-extremist" laws making it illegal to target "identifiable social groups" with "hate speech".

Then we found out that police is an "identifiable social group", and so are the MPs...

Well, I remember that case[0], the guy had written that there are no good cops and was calling for burning policemen alive on the city square in a crematorium "like in Auschwitz" and got one year of suspended sentence for that. I can't say that I disagree with the court, but that's the problem.

[0] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Дело_Терентьева

To add how the spiral works, those "anti-extremist" laws included the first amendment to the Internet blocking one.

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