It's sad: everyone claims to be in favor of "democracy" --- yet when a tiny number of unaccountable, anonymous, biased people inside big tech companies place li

It's sad: everyone claims to be in favor of "democracy" --- yet when a tiny number of unaccountable, anonymous, biased people inside big tech companies place limits on what the whole world can say, people cheer. When you support the kind of arbitrary governance, you're cheering for authoritarianism, cheering for oppression, and ultimately cheering for a kind of tech feudalism. Don't give me this "it's a private company" line: unaccountable individuals at corporations can deny you transportation, speech, and financial services --- they can ruin your life merely because they dislike you. Yes, tech companies can't take away your freedom. They can't put you in jail. But they can effectively exile you from civilization. Should private individuals have that power? I get it. Some people are just fundamentally uncomfortable with democracy: public consensus is a messy way to govern a society. Besides: Twitter and other tech companies are, right now, making the decisions that you think are right. But what you're essentially doing is opting into a VC-funded startup that offers you cool stuff at an unsustainably low price. When the VCs demand a profit, that company will raise its prices, and you, locked in, will be forced to pay, forever. Power works the same way: give up control to individuals now and you might like the immediate results, but you'll change your mind when those individuals start doing things you dislike, and when they do, you'll have no recourse. Throughout history, we find that people who vote dictators into power regret it later. Let's not repeat that old mistake.