Thread by @RosenzweigP

Four years ago, when the US gave up its contractual control of the DNS system, I thought it was unwise. My reasoning was simple -- I thought that the US govt had stood as a bulwark against authoritarian influence on the network since it was created and that continued US /1

influence as a protector of network freedom would be a net benefit to the world. Critical to that assessment was my belief that no USG would ever support an effort to severely restrain freedom of expression on the network. There were exceptions to this general rule /2

of course, like the dot xxx fiasco, but as a general proposition I thought it was well-supported.

I was wrong. Today the USG actually moved to control the content that US citizens can put on their phones, purporting to ban WeChat and TikTok. Besides being utterly /3

ineffective, this ban gives the lie to the premise of the US as protector of network liberty. It mirrors, in many relevant respects, the shutdown of internet access in Belarus or the control of content in China. Indeed, by the logic of the USG's actions, every other /4

nation of the world would be justified in banning FB, Twitter, and MSFT Bing, for much the same reason -- that they are subject to governmental control by their "home" nation.

In the fight against authoritarians, we have become them. We now are that which we oppose.

My apologies to those @ICANN whose opinion I disagreed with, for my poor predictive ability. In my defense I can only say that nobody would have predicted Donald Trump.