America is overdue to unfriend Mark Zuckerberg

Like Stalinist censors, Facebook and its counterparts in the cyberspace aristocracy think it is in their purview to decide what is true and, if you will, “fit to print.” Over the past year, Facebook was quick to censor accounts that broached the possibility of COVID-19 originating in a Chinese lab, perhaps because this meme was embraced by Trump and his cronies. But now that “official” science accepts the lab charges’ potential validity, and with Trump out of office, they have decided to change their minds. The logic of backing “official” or accepted opinion may appeal to some progressives, particularly those with a sufficiently Bolshevik view of dissent, but it violates traditional liberal notions of free speech, debate, and ideological diversity. The idea that the economic elite should reflect the government line potentially poses a more lethal long-term threat to civil discourse than Trump’s attacks on the media as “enemies of the people.” Both mind-sets would have appealed to Stalin or the digital police currently working for Xi Jinping. The good news is there is growing opposition to Zuckerberg’s power and that of his fellow oligarchs, even within Silicon Valley, and in both parties here, with the most rabid opposition coming from conservatives who have seen how easily, and glibly, the tech giants can silence them.