Same thing has been happening for a long time in America. Politicians are typically risk adverse and the real world has complicated problems so they make up a 'virtual' problem to 'fix', or to turn into a new political football.
Politics has become its own end: politicians have job security, and nothing changes except for the worse because constituents keep falling for the same tired shit.
It's peaking again in the USA though and it's immigrants. They have replaced the "Commie" (when it last peaked in the 50s) as an imagined threat that lies around every corner that seems to appeal to a certain large minority in the USA that needs something to blame for everything other than their own inaction and choice to not adapt.
I don't know if that's really it. In the US, sure, there was a direct line of communication between all the large social media companies and the federal government. It was used to censor what was deemed "conspiracy theories" around covid and election interference. That could be seen as protecting politicians.
But in the UK, what I read about is cases where it offended someone, like the case of a an autistic teenage girl who was arrested after she made a comment to a police officer, reportedly saying the officer looked like her "lesbian nana." Obviously this doesn't threaten government control or politicians, so it doesn't exactly fit the same mold.
https://mleverything.substack.com/p/what-would-government-ce...
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/15nddel/autisti...
This is demagogy 101: invent or exagerate a problem, and offer yourself as the only true solution. It's a recipe as old as bread, nothing particularly US centric.