> State censorship is not the only kind of censorship. Private-sector repression of speech and thought, particularly in the internet era, can be as dangerous an

> State censorship is not the only kind of censorship. Private-sector repression of speech and thought, particularly in the internet era, can be as dangerous and consequential. Imagine, for instance, if these two Silicon Valley giants united with Google to declare: henceforth we will ban all content that is critical of President Trump and/or the Republican Party, but will actively promote criticisms of Joe Biden and the Democrats. > Would anyone encounter difficultly understanding why such a decree would constitute dangerous corporate censorship? Would Democrats respond to such a policy by simply shrugging it off on the radical libertarian ground that private corporations have the right to do whatever they want? To ask that question is to answer it. I would! I don't know why The Intercept thinks Democrats are undoubtedly hypocrites. Facebook, Twitter, and Google are more than welcome, as private corporations, to legally make that decision. If they want to do it, I will not try to use the government to compel them to do otherwise. However, if they do it, they will lose a sizable fraction of their user base and their employees, all of whom are also welcome, as private individuals, to legally make that decision. I certainly will not try to use the government to compel the employees to stay. The market will respond. Is there a reason that The Intercept thinks that heavy-handed government regulation is required to solve something the market can quite clearly solve? (I do think that breaking up these companies on monopoly grounds is perfectly reasonable, and that is the market-believing, American solution to this problem - not regulating the incumbents and keeping them incumbent. They do talk about this, and I agree with that portion of the article. And then they go off into repeating the Republican talking points about finding things in Section 230 that are literally not there in Section 230.)