Yeah this is one conspiracy I believe. There's this narrative at the moment that the UK is some dystopian hellhole where you'll get arrested for basically anything you post online. It's very pervasive to the point that fairly normal American people I follow online have repeated such things.

Now, the UK has plenty of problems, I do not deny that. But the situation is nothing like it is presented online.

My thinking is that this is meant to make people in the US feel that the rising authoritarianism isn't so bad in relative terms "well the UK is far worse!".