So how should powerful tech companies reason about matters that balance individual freedom and collective safety? We should start with the underlying legal standards, especially when a policy may involve government reporting or policing.
An individual has strong legal protections of privacy in their personal effects and in personal communication through the post. There are very different standards in publishing material, engaging in commerce, communicating with groups of unknown third parties, and so on.
People have strong expressive rights in a public commons, and less so on private property. We should be more honest about which online venues really are commons and which are company property in 2021. The answer can’t be that corporations reign over the whole internet.
These rights and principles were established in the Enlightenment era as protections against arbitrary government, back in a time when government was the most powerful force in peoples’ lives.
We should always look to these principles for guidance, as they’re a solid, proven, and lasting foundation for a free society - and abandon the temptation to improvise diktats over users’ lives online through the odd mix of populist, PR, and profit motives that currently prevail.
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