Be afraid, very afraid!-----The Inevitable Coronavirus Censorship Crisis is Here - Reporting by Matt Taibbi

The Inevitable Coronavirus Censorship Crisis is Here - Reporting by Matt Taibbi:

• As the Covid-19 crisis progresses, censorship programs advance, amid calls for China-style control of the Internet

"Earlier this week, Atlantic magazine – fast becoming the favored media outlet for self-styled intellectual elites of the Aspen Institute type – ran an in-depth article of the problems free speech pose to American society in the coronavirus era.
The headline:

Internet Speech Will Never Go Back to Normal

"In the debate over freedom versus control of the global network, China was largely correct, and the U.S. was wrong."

...They went on to list all the reasons that, given that we’re already on an “inexorable” path to censorship, a Chinese-style system of speech control may not be such a bad thing. 

In fact, they argued, a benefit of the coronavirus was that it was waking us up to “how technical wizardry, data centralization, and private-public collaboration can do enormous public good.”

Perhaps, they posited, Americans could be moved to reconsider their “understanding” of the First and Fourth Amendments, as “the harms from digital speech” continue to grow, and “the social costs of a relatively open Internet multiply.”

This interesting take on the First Amendment was the latest in a line of “Let’s rethink that whole democracy thing” pieces that began sprouting up in earnest four years ago..."
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