When you hear them cry “freedom”, you know a culture war is brewing. And so it was last week that a bid to make tech companies address the harmful impacts of their products became a piece of political performance theatre.

The Coalition and One Nation tripped over each other to condemn the government’s long-awaited digital duty of care legislation. To Angus Taylor it is “a blank cheque for political censorship”; for Pauline Hanson it’s “Communist China”. For their fracturing base, it’s another reason to hate on the government.

Let’s be clear what the political right is really saying: that in the name of “freedom” we reject laws that would hold the most powerful companies on Earth accountable for their products.

At its heart is the confused and contradictory binary of safety and freedom; a false trade-off that has actively fuelled the very toxic online world these laws seek to purify. Un-muddling this is critical if we are to build an internet that actually works for people.

We can partly explain this political response as a self-interested attempt to protect the very algorithms that are driving the rise of the populist right. But there is also a legitimate debate to be had over the degree to which the state exercises its control over us all.

In the 25 years since 9/11, the powers the state has amassed over us have grown year on year until we have found ourselves living under a sophisticated surveillance apparatus created in the name of homeland security.

From building backdoors to monitor our phones and internet usage, to facial recognition cameras in public spaces, to sophisticated........

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