> Unless you have absolute faith that your government will never do something you have a moral objection to, you can never be sure that anything you are, believe or do will not be censored or land you in jail in the future.

Any solution that can convince the Germans, the most privacy obsessed sticklers on the whole planet, has my support by proxy. If they think it's safe enough, it most likely is. Almost no other country has seen the dark side of what you're saying here as much as Germany, first with the Nazis and then in East Germany.

> To the extent that political discourse is shaped by astroturfing

Both Brexit and the Trump election have been significantly impacted by this, and it's not even controversial to observe that.

> Outside interference in the form of legal bribes (lobbying) and sometimes less legal forms of corruption has orders of magnitude more sway over politics than whatever the public may effect in elections.

Perhaps, but that doesn't mean that we should not address the elephant in the room - the seriously degrading impact that social media has on our society.

> It's ridiculous to imply that there was any serious public debate on this.

There was no debate because almost no one in (for example) tech circles is even acknowledging the problem, let alone coming up with a solution. Give me a better solution and I would argue for that instead. The status quo is unacceptable.

https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-age-ver...