> Or is it literally just the actual elected officials getting power hungry?

For some maybe yes.

But in many cases they don't understand technology, they often end up with very incomplete and wrong partial understandings by extrapolating from things they do understand, but which do also have very different dynamics.

Also while they often insist on their broken understanding they are not stupid and do realize that there is a lot they don't understand. That frightens them.

Then there are real problems around child abuse/porn in the internet. But they are hard to solve without doing much more damage in other ways. But because they don't understand the dynamics of the internet they don't realize that. Like in the world they understad requiring a thing which allows people to publish things to (skimingly) check the things published isn't hard or a problem (as it's something like a printed book or newspaper, few publisher, many consumer). But if you try to apply this to modern internet platforms it all falls apart. But they don't see it for them e.g. a dating app is nothing more then a fancy "locking for people" section in a small regional newspaper or something like that.

So in my opinion it's less because of power hunger then more because of arrogance and incompetence.

And without question there are exceptions.