I can't believe I have to say this, but pro-consumer regulation is not the same thing as fascism, and pretending otherwise is not a good-faith argument.
I regularly see comments equating those two things whenever the EU introduces a new piece of regulation that protects consumers. Most recently in comments about a cnbc article with the following title:
EU to crack down on TikTok, Instagram's 'addictive design' targeting kids
This specific piece of regulation is supposed to focus on infinite-scrolling, autoplay and the algorithmically controlled content-pipeline that can push consumers deep into harmful content rabbit-holes.
I don't want to spend too much time on the specifics of this, because it doesn't matter for my argument but I'll say this: It is well known by now that social media companies are aware of the harmful and addictive nature of the design of their platforms. It is an established fact that social media companies deliberately choose not to do something about this, because it is profitable. Instead they spend money on lobbying politicians to prevent government intervention.
A fantastically written deep dive on this is Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams, which is well worth a read.
So these problems are real and the EU is trying to do something about it. This is not a disguised attempt at introducing mass-surveillance or whatever.
Steel-Manning the comparison
Before we dismiss the fascism comparison outright by proclaiming it to be ridiculous and stupid (which it is), let's try to figure out why people make it.
Defining fascism is quite complicated. So complicated in fact that there's not just a Wikipedia article about fascism, but also a completely separate article about the various Definitions of Fascism.
A common factor in almost all of those definitions is that fascistic political systems exercise a lot of control over the economy and almost all other aspects of life.
So the most literal interpretation of the argument is that by introducing any amount of government control over the economy, the political system becomes literally indistinguishable from a fascist one. That is obviously laughable, but words have meaning and if that is not the intended argument then different words should have been chosen.
A more generous interpretation is that introducing legislature that gives the government additional control over economic activities is extremely dangerous, because strong control over economic activities is one of the primary axis of control that fascistic systems exercise to stay in control.
This is true in the limit. If you introduce regulation after regulation after regulation, eventually the government exercises control over almost all facets of life, which does mirror one aspect of fascist systems.
Reducing this line of thought to mean that any regulation is such a strong overreach that it mirrors that aspect of fascism is still absurd though.
Why it's bad-faith
I've established that it's an absurd argument, but it could be that some people genuinely believe it. I would strongly disagree with that, but at least it's an honest position.
However if you actually ask these people what they mean by their statement, you get completely different answers that can mostly be categorised into two different viewpoints:
I don't want a nanny state. Why do I need to suffer, just because other people don't have self-control and/or can't make good decisions.
and
Whatever happened to personal responsibilities and/or good parenting. People should be able to ruin their lives.
Notice how those things have nothing to do with fascism whatsoever? When asking people what they mean by their regulation = fascism statements, they retreat to much weaker, more reasonable, easier to defend positions.
This is a classic example of the Motte-and-bailey fallacy:
The motte-and-bailey fallacy (named after the motte-and-bailey castle) is a form of argument and an informal fallacy where an arguer conflates two positions that share similarities: one modest and easy to defend (the "motte") and one much more controversial and harder to defend (the "bailey"). The arguer advances the controversial position, but when challenged, insists that only the more modest position is being advanced. Upon retreating to the motte, the arguer may claim that the bailey has not been refuted (because the critic refused to attack the motte) or that the critic is unreasonable (by equating an attack on the bailey with an attack on the motte).
Using this style of argument allows people to gain social-status with their in-group by saying extreme things that their in-group likes, without losing social status with the general public because they can point to the much more reasonable positions and pretend that's what they actually believe.
Using the motte-and-bailey style of argument is bad-faith arguing.
Don't fall for it.