Alongside talk from the UK Labour government about intervening on VPNs, I'm getting uneasy vibes about this move, especially since Microsoft is one of the most government-friendly corporations in the big tech arena.
The surveillance state is growing more sinister every day (especially in the UK), but the efforts are somewhat thwarted by the existence of VPNs.
Once they find a way to undermine VPNs, the UK govt will have literal CCP-level control over our access to information and communication.
CCP-level control over access to information is not actually very tight, technologically nor ideologically, but it does enable a form of rule-by-law which is far more useful.
The problem is that the social media companies have not been dealing with abusive posts of various sources. Governments can't take action against the bad posters are they are from another Government (and in some cases are employed by that government to cause trouble). Thus Governments have to take actions which they can control, unfortunately these actions will affect more than the bad abusers.
You assume your premise. No the government actually doesn't 'have to' take action about mean things on the internet. The UK has such an obsession with regulating what is, essentially, politeness.
While I don't particularly care for the UK's approach to these things, I can't help but be shocked at how many governments seem to all of a sudden have dreamed up the same idea. Independently, I'm sure.
I suppose the US is the unique one really, when it comes to a history of protecting certain types of speech. They've never really regulated (what I would call) politeness between people in any form.
The UK, and I assume much of Europe, criminalizes truly petty levels of speech. For example, it's illegal to insult someone and cause them 'alarm' or 'distress' in the street.
Thus the non-technical populace see rudeness on the internet as the result of some kind of wild west situation that the government needs to control, to bring it in line with the rest of the public realm.
This should be made a problem for the social media companies (which it largely has, hence all the age verification fiasco), not absolutely everyone on the internet.
The surveillance state is growing more sinister every day (especially in the UK), but the efforts are somewhat thwarted by the existence of VPNs.
Once they find a way to undermine VPNs, the UK govt will have literal CCP-level control over our access to information and communication.