Silicon Valley judges are imposing a death sentence on free speech. Here’s why they must be stopped

It gets better still. Unleashed from constitutional guarantees of free speech, FATGA may kick anything off the menu they consider “obscene, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable,” as the 1996 Act has it. Wonderful, this law allows us to have it both ways. The state cannot force us to police the Net to evade profit-denting penalties, nor stop us from doing it ourselves. We decide what is proper and pleasing or what defies “community standards”. So, out with the noxious stuff. And: heads I win, tails you lose.

With unbridled power comes temptation and imposition, in this case privatized censorship that would have put Metternich or the 20th cen Stasi to shame. These enforcers of correct thinking had to break seals or steam open envelopes to unearth enemies of the state. Today’s gatekeepers just let their algorithms prowl the Net, sifting through trillions of data voluntarily handed over by us – the profiteers of borderless knowledge. We pay…