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So your claim is that nobody can honestly believe that social media companies would show increased opposition to increasing government pressure, and that it's o

So your claim is that nobody can honestly believe that social media companies would show increased opposition to increasing government pressure, and that it's obvious that the companies are willing to follow the governments all the way to totalitarianism—in spite of the resistance and reticence the companies have already shown? You really think it's that unreasonable to view this as a shifting of the equilibrium rather than an unchecked runaway process?

endominus 5y ago
More or less, yes. I don't believe that these companies have actual principles to defend here; they act in self-preservation. If the government threatens to break up Google for spreading propaganda, it's going to stop spreading propaganda, however the government defines the category. PRISM wasn't that long ago. Gag orders exist. Do you think Fastmail is going to refuse to comply with the Assistance and Access Bill? To view this as a shifting equilibrium, I would need to see organizations arising as dedicated to opposing this process as there are those seeking to accelerate it. I don't believe they exist at the scale necessary to do so. Instead, I see a meme gaining ground that free speech itself is unnecessary or harmful - "freeze peach" at the mud-slinging lower end of the intellectual scale, and "the Paradox of Tolerance" at the higher end.