X Marks the Line

Jim Chimirie
1 hour ago
3 min read

Jim Chimirie

January 9, 2026

How the Government Is Using Crime to Normalise Control

This is how power always moves. It finds something genuinely vile, wraps itself in moral certainty, and then reaches far beyond the crime itself and into control.

What is being generated using AI on X is foul: sexualised deep fakes, women stripped of consent, children dragged into digital filth. This material is illegal. It should be hunted down. The people creating it should be prosecuted. Platforms that knowingly host it should be forced to remove it fast or face serious penalties.

None of that is disputed. None of it is controversial. But the moment the response jumps from enforcement to prohibition, the purpose begins to shift. Because once the Labour government starts talking about banning a major communications platform, we are no longer dealing with crime. We are dealing with power. Not targeted enforcement. Not criminal accountability.

But the threat to shut down access to a space used by millions of Britons? That is a line, and crossing it changes the argument. The offence here is not committed by a platform as such. It is committed by users abusing a tool, in the same way they abuse image editors, open-source models, encrypted apps, and file-sharing services. To pretend that blocking a platform would end this behaviour is nonsense. It would merely push it elsewhere, while establishing a precedent the state will remember. That precedent is the real prize.

The Online Safety Act was sold as a shield against terrorism and child abuse. Now it is being raised as a club against a politically awkward platform whose owner refuses to submit to British regulatory culture. The language gives the game away. "All options on the table."

That is not the language of law. It is the language of pressure, of a state testing how far it can go when the public is suitably alarmed. Look closely at what is missing. There is little talk of arrests. Little talk of warrants. Little talk of pursuing the individuals generating and distributing this material. Instead, the focus falls on regulator muscle, on access restriction orders, on platform bans. It is easier to threaten infrastructure than to do the hard, unglamorous work of enforcement. Easier to punish a system than to pursue criminals.

That should worry anyone who understands how governments behave once such shortcuts are normalised. Yes, Musk is reckless. Yes, loosening guardrails on an AI system was irresponsible. But Musk is not the core issue here. He is the convenient antagonist, the man you point at so you don't have to explain why the government prefers sweeping control to precise justice.

Because once you accept that a regulator can block a platform not because it is criminally complicit, but because it has failed to meet an evolving standard of compliance, free communication stops being a right and becomes a licence – granted conditionally and withdrawn at will. And that licence will not be enforced evenly. We already know this.

The state struggles to police real-world grooming networks. It dithers over extremist incitement. It shrugs at open intimidation on Britain's streets. But when speech is involved – especially speech it dislikes – suddenly the tools are ready, the urgency is fierce, and the threats are maximal.

That asymmetry is not an accident. It's a choice. This is not about protecting children alone. If it were, the response would be narrower, tougher, and quieter. It would focus on criminals, not platforms. Warrants, not warnings. Courts, not press releases. Instead, we are being asked to accept something more dangerous: that the existence of evil content justifies giving the state the power to decide which platforms may exist at all.

That is how censorship is always introduced. Not in defence of bad ideas, but in response to the worst imaginable acts. And once the machinery is built, it never stays confined to its original purpose.

This is not decline by failure. It's control by consent.

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