This reminds of when Angela Merkel and other European leaders criticized American big tech companies that all deplatformed Donald Trump (https://www.forbes.com/

This reminds of when Angela Merkel and other European leaders criticized American big tech companies that all deplatformed Donald Trump (https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/01/11/problematic-and-perplexing-european-leaders-side-with-trump-over-twitter-ban/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/01/11/problemat...). Apart from the vague reasons Twitter gave for their ban like Trump not attending Biden’s inauguration (https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...), it was a move that highlighted that tech companies are indeed as powerful as governments and must be treated as such, with regulation. For international leaders it highlighted the risks to their own nations due to foreign interference. Although in the US we often think of foreign interference as only something done by other countries like Russia, the reality is that Twitter or other companies modifying information flow across societies is explicitly foreign interference. Finally, it’s also worth considering big tech’s censorship/moderation as equivalent to campaign contributions made in kind. Banning one party and not another or altering the exposure of some perspective is political campaigning. Actions taken to censor politicians or political views should be subject to election funding controls and laws. All this is to say that despite all my grievances with the Bolsonaro government, I think this particular move to ensure online freedom of speech is justified. Large monopolist technology companies with government-scale power and unregulated privately owned public town squares are fundamentally incompatible with a liberal society.