I think it's very good of the management at Twitter that they have a policy of not censoring democratic leaders. I'm hopeful that there won't ever be a tipping

I think it's very good of the management at Twitter that they have a policy of not censoring democratic leaders. I'm hopeful that there won't ever be a tipping point on the basis that it's probably a financially good decision as well as a politically fair one. There's no need for a thought experiment though. We know exactly what the world is like without the likes of Twitter and Facebook. What it looks like is a world where most information is very heavily filtered by a very small, self-selecting group. And through channels that were, usually, heavily editorialised and explicitly biased. I think it's too early to say whether they are a net force for good or not. My gut feeling is that they will push democracies to be much more direct than representative. I happen to think that this is likely to be a really bad thing but I don't know that for a fact.