> Is anyone else as stunned as I am by how many posters on tech websites have suddenly gone full anti-free-internet and embracing the police state?

I suspect it's because people of our generation (I'm assuming) grew up with similar experiences to ours and had kids, and want to protect them. To be fair it's worse now than when we were growing up; I can't imagine how awful it must be to grow up in the age of social media.