For a generation of liberal democratic leaders shaped by the verities of the 1990s, the prospect that new media and communications technologies would deliver their citizens to fascism and war has seemed, until recently, unthinkable.
Today, waves of racist violence facilitated by mass-scale misinformation have finally invited the beginnings of some response. The fate of the US, and the poisonous entente of corporate media monopoly and far-right leadership, has made the prospect of anti-democratic contagion now impossible to ignore. Measures to protect the young have taken shape with relative speed, with Australia extolling its pioneering (and unproven) initiatives on age-verification and social network restriction due to take effect on 10 December.
