In February of last year, UK Prime Minister David Cameron praised social media at a speech in Kuwait amidst the events of the Arab Spring, calling online connections “a powerful tool in the hands of citizens, not a means of repression.”

Later that year, as riots fueled by discontent over taxes and racial issues broke out in London, Cameron’s sentiments toward these tools changed — he announced that he was considering blocking communication on sites like Facebook and Twitter that were alleged to have aided rioters. Though he never followed through, Cameron’s hypocrisy was widely noted, as was a new censorship hypocrisy in which oppressive measures could somehow be justified in democratic nations, but were ridiculed in non-democratic ones.