Fear Mark Zuckerberg’s illiberal impulses

As a practical matter, Facebook’s cooperation with continental regulators suggests the eventual standard governing speech restrictions on tech platforms will reflect more-restrictive European practice rather than more-liberal American practice, for much the same reason that California’s relatively stringent automotive emissions standards act as an effectively national standard: Corporations generally prefer standardization and homogenization where they are economical.

We should be clear about regulatory standardization and homogenization would mean: Official censorship by governments abroad, proxy censorship by business interests at home, and doublespeak on all sides.

Such censorship is said to be justified as streitbare Demokratie—“militant democracy.” This is the German constitutional principle under which certain kinds of political communication are censored and certain political parties and organizations are prohibited. The theory is that liberal democracies must sometimes act in illiberal and antidemocratic ways to counter political tendencies that constitute threats to the liberal democratic order.