Comment by ActorNightly

We do.

In the past, pre public availability of internet chat rooms, people used to be a lot more reserved, and speech had a consequence of public accountability.

Now, anyone can be anonymous, post anything that comes to mind without any real repercussion. People love to criticize laws like UK has against hate speech online, citing lack of freedom, but most people that got punished with that law will be seen in public saying the same shit.

There are 2 options to fix this. First, is no internet anonymity. Second is surveillance. The latter option is preferable, because it de-anonymizes you only to the government entities, not everyone.

The famous argument is "don't give the government power that you don't want the political opposition to have" is silly. As been proven so clearly, if the political opposition takes power, they will just do what they want ignoring the law anyways. Its much better to create systems in place that allow current sane governments to implement guardrails to prevent nefarious ideas from taking hold in the first place, and silencing the people that would have been ostasized in public in the pre internet days anyways.