Consider though why social media as we know it is so awful, a purveyor of vice and rage, online bullying and sexual predation, and, yes, disinformation. Much of the explanation is surely that Section 230, in relieving the platforms from responsibility, shifted that responsibility to… no one. ...

From every corner today, we hear complaints that our privacy is being taken away, and our traditional rights thereto lost to a networked society. The opposite is closer to the truth. We suffer from an excess of privacy. Whole new rights of privacy are asserted for activity never considered private before. Entirely novel are rights to privacy in public places.

Never in history have retail purchases, for instance, been anonymous. Customers shopped in public places: the clerk, the other customers waiting to be served, and no doubt your nosy neighbors all knew you had been shopping and often what you bought.

The plain brown wrapper was always a cover for vice.