This is really globally coordinated, isn't it? I'm just not sure why now and not previously. Is it just that Twitter went over the toxicity threshold that everyone noticed?
Ideologies are cultivated young.
(a) Social media operators choose to do nothing at all against coordinated influencing operations, unless the influencing goes against the interests of very specific countries and groups.
(b) US government most likely has unfettered access to social media data. As if this isn't bad enough, they will probably give them out to Palantir for "data integration" and under uncertain terms.
Social media is seen as a driver for people having opinions deemed a threat to the status quo. Western governments have been fighting a long battle to use these tools to control domestic influence and at times have probably thought they were winning, but recently things seem to be turn a bit.
"Think of the children" is obviously the oldest and most pathetic trick in their playbook. We know it's a bald faced lie because data and studies on social media harms on children has been coming out for well over a decade by now, and not a finger was lifted for years. So we know that is not the reason, and we know they are lying about the reason. Therefore we know the real reason is seen as unpopular with the electorate. And curbing foreign (including US government) influence and access to data is not unpopular anywhere.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187603412... [2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
They will end up banning sites allowing purely anonymous comments. (This might include HN.) This is the consequence of the ambition that is already clearly anounced by the opposition leader Magdalena Andersson of the social democrats.
These anonymous comments are incidentally their current worst enemy. The are really good at amplifying stories that the 3 (three!) national news publishers (government/public service, Bonnier News, Schibsted) decide to ignore or deamplify for ideoleogical reasons.
And some of us think it doesn't go far enough. I would set limit to 18. Would solve lot more issues. Like make adult content fully allowable by default as everyone can automatically be considered to be an adult then.
Shock at how many people believe Palestinians are human got the ball rolling, but now its prepping for the fallout of the release of more and more Epstein files.
Of course it could just be law makers seeing one country do it and then going "wait, you can do that and people will go along with it???". I'm not sure if that's any better than a global conspiracy though.