[ExI] Does anybody still think a US dictatorship is impossible?

[Bill Hibbard]

This thread is in reference to Trump's Executive Order:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/28/politics/read-social-media-executive-order/index.html

There is the immediate issue of whether social media
companies violate their status as platforms rather than
publishers when they censor or modify individuals' speech
and whether the president has the power to decide that.

On a broader level, this is the war of neo-liberal corporate
elites to regain the control over information that they lost
when the Internet gave people a channel for widely diseminating
their speech outside of big newspapers, TV, and radio.

In my 2003 column in Computer Graphics I described the
Internet as bringing "a new practical freedom of speech":
https://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/g/roads.html

The recent debate about whether Internet corporations
should control speech was the motive for me to write this:
https://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/g/human_freedom.html

Just yesterday I added a link from my article to this
excellent discussion about the danger of political speech
being controlled by a "Technocratic Oligarchy":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaPsI-4hV5Y

Hopefully people can detach their emotions about Trump from
this issue.