A community to discuss European (geo)politics
they are working really hard to weasel their way into total mass surveillance where literally everything you do online is known to the government.
very handy to stamp out dissent if you crimialize free speech and then also force everyone to be deanonymized
they really hate that citizens can just criticize them freely
The backhanded way this was last minute added to an unrelated legislation shows that they know what they're doing is both against popular will, and is an evil decision.
In 2023 I was thinking how stupid puritan the Texan politician were. The EU commission and parliament had different ideas.
Turns out the incumbents in EU are very scared as politicians from outside the traditional political families are getting popular votes. And instead of looking into to mirror as to why that is happening, they blame "the internet" and go authoritarian.
Thus joining in the creation of the machinery for mass surveillance and supression.
Currently, only the EU council can still stop this from becoming law. It already passed commission (it's their amendment) and parliament.
The fact that it's happening globally tells me there's more behind this. As you said, only a few short years ago this would seem unthinkable, yet here we are...