I grew up pre-commercial Internet in a computer age, with FIDONet, dial-up BBSes and whatnot. Message forums. Teenagers. Boys. Weirdos. Anonymity. I learned this: people have a mean streak that spills out, it's often teenage insecurity and anger. It was extremely common, borderline the norm for teenage boys who were spending their days in front of a computer screen instead of (in the U.S.) playing high school sport and doing the Proper Stuff.<p>I never had any political memes, but I was angry just the same. I want to say that there's something that is psychologically so commonplace in this development that it is borderline possibly genetic. Either that or our societies are a bit broken that teenagers are so angry.<p>Either way - the desire to censor and control, the calls for which appear to be coming from a mix of politicians and academics, I find "problematic" (an ironic technical term I've heard the academics use).<p>No one seems to have studied history: WHO decides what ideas need to be policed, monitored and such. Today it's someone you agree with, tomorrow it might be someone you don't.<p>I have a problem with people who call themselves ethicists who use studies to come up with correlations between ideas and behaviors, and then propose to tell us what laws or controls we need for a more just society. I call these people secular priests at best, and authoritarians at worst.