Source: Washington Post
by Megan McArdle
“When I started writing on the internet, more than 20 years ago, my fellow bloggers and I assumed it was a free and open place where anything could happen. ‘The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it,’ we used to tell each other, a little giddy. Well into the social media era, Twitter executives proudly proclaimed that their company belonged to ‘the free speech wing of the free speech party.’ But as the World Wide Web entered its third decade, the internet’s scale and reach empowered some very bad actors, from trolls to white nationalists to child pornographers and drug cartels. A clamor arose to crack down on all this dangerous chatter — which brings us to Pavel Durov. … We should not be asking whether anyone wants to help criminals (no!) but whether it’s worth sacrificing our own liberties to make it easier for the government to stop them.” (08/29/24)