Is 4chan the perfect Pirate Bay poster child to justify wider UK site-blocking?

I genuinely do not understand where how the idea of building a total surveillance police state, where all speech is monitored, can even as much as seriously be considered by an allegedly pro-democracy, pro-human rights government, much less make it into law.

Also:

Step 1: Build mass surveillance to prevent the 'bad guys' from coming into political power (its ok, we're the good guys).

Step 2: Your political opponents capitalize on your genuinely horrific overreach, and legitimize themselves in the eyes of the public as fighting against tyranny (unfortunately for you they do have a point). They promise to dismantle the system if coming to power.

Step 3: They get elected.

Step 4: They don't dismantle the system, now the people you planned to use the system against are using it against you.

Sounds brilliant, lets do this.

Simple. The UK is not a pro democracy, pro human rights state.

It might be uncomfortable to admit this, but if your government is a police state that's pretty much mutually exclusive with being a pro human rights state.

Yeah this applies to nearly all of Europe IMO. Recent events show that the American Bill of Rights is definitely not a panacea, but at least there's some legal standing to push back against Orwellian measure like those put in place by the UK or the EU.

Given the current situation in the US, it's a huge cautionary tale for how not to do democracy. To non-ironically hold it up as an example at this point of time is truly amazing. No, the rest of us don't want current US style dictatorship in our countries.

While the EU certainly has its issues, its protection of democracy is still one of the best in the world. Democracy is something we need to keep working towards. There is not one simple set of rules that will keep it healthy, at least as far as recently history shows.

Could you describe with specific examples what qualifies the USA today as a "dictatorship"?

Executive orders to ban something explicitly deemed legal under the constitution by the supreme court? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/25/trump-flag-b...

A better example might be the treatment of whistleblowers?

Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning were both pursued aggressively during the Obama administration. Next, please. I can go all day

Obama also engaged in dictatorial policy... Just because two people have done it does not make it "not dictatorial".

Or, using logical constructs - "A therefore B" is not made invalid by "C therefore B".

But it's obvious when people say "dictatorship" or "fascism" today in the USA it is just a dog whistle for not liking Trump. Nobody called Obama a fascist for how Chelsea Manning was treated.

A few things are different.

1. Degrees / magnitude. How many cases of dictatorial behavior were there with Obama vs Trump? Every president signs executive orders, but trump signs a lot more of them.

2. Defiance to checks in power. The current administration seems uniquely defiant of both the legislative and the judicial branches, both in rhetoric and act.