Are the big online content providers – Google, Facebook, Netflix and the like – eroding free speech to make doing business internationally easier?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Remember – while free markets will trend toward free speech, the Silicon Valley giants are not free markets; they are to their various corners of the ‘net at best industrious but regulation-made Germans or Swedes, and at worst – Facebook and Twitter – Red Chinese in hoodies and sneakers instead of Mao jackets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
They are bureaucracies – and bureaucracies crave uniformity. The kind of uniformity that only partnership and acuiescence with Big Government can give them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kevin Wiliamson:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It took a remarkably short time for the ethic of the Internet to devolve from \u201cInformation wants to be free!\u201d to \u201cFollow the rules blindly!\u201d The danger is the California-emissions dynamic, i.e. the tendency of the most demanding and restrictive standard among a group of competing standards to become the de facto universal standard in that it allows a single consistent mode of production. In the United States, 16 states follow California\u2019s auto-emissons standards rather than the national standard, which has made the California standard the effective national standard for many manufacturers. In a similar way, it will be tempting \u2014 it already is tempting \u2014 to make China the worldwide arbiter of free-speech standards for global technology companies and other international carriers. If you think that a commitment to \u201cartistic freedom\u201d is going to prevent that, go to the movies: The remake of\u00a0Red Dawn\u00a0<\/em>originally was about a Chinese invasion of the United States; after protests from Beijing, it became the story of a ludicrous North Korean invasion. The\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0submits to censorship abroad<\/a>.<\/p>
<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nRead the whole thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because we’ve all got to demand better. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Are the big online content providers – Google, Facebook, Netflix and the like – eroding free speech to make doing business internationally easier? Remember – while free markets will trend toward free speech, the Silicon Valley giants are not free markets; they are to their various corners of the ‘net at best industrious but regulation-made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[289],"class_list":["post-69637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberal-tyranny","tag-kevin-williamson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69638,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69637\/revisions\/69638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}