Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister

> What does the "Health Secretary" have to do with tech regulation?

He was being interviewed on a general politics show

>> Mr Hancock, a former culture secretary, told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show

It's usual on these shows for the interviewer to treat the the politician as a representative of the wider government and to ask general questions as well as those about the politician's own area of responsibility.

Nietzsche predicted the current course of events:

"Step by step, private companies incorporate state businesses; even the most stubborn vestige of the old work of governing (for example, that activity which is supposed to secure private parties against other private parties) will ultimately be taken care of by private contractors..."

One the one hand, I laugh at the fools in government who make such pronouncements. The big social platforms are *Private Companies*, NOT public utilities. They can do whatever they want.

On the other hand, these platforms have amplified voices that would otherwise not even attain local coverage. Being coldly objective, they also make it possible for State Actors to punch way, way above their weight in an information warfare perspective (see Russia).

It's also very important to remember that social media and modern 24 hour WWF-style "Journalism" WOULD NOT EXIST without near constant levels of conflict content to drive engagement. So there are entire very large business domains where there is existential threat were there to be regulation of content.

Net-net, the best possible outcome of all of this would be the demise of platforms like FB, Twitter, FoxNews, CNN, BBC, et. al as they really only serve to rapidly diminish the IQ's of the electorate/culture.... Of course that won't happen because culturally we are beyond weak and have long since surrendered our future to a small group of people with the wealth to supersede most if not all Government controls (including the UK of course, I mean do you really think Boris Johnson has the stones for doing anything other than running his pie-hole like Trump has for the last 4 years??).

I totally agree with this. But I believe we can only find something better by changing democracy's rules in an incremental manner.

That would be a terrible idea.

In times gone by, that would have prevented people spreading information about the world being a sphere and orbiting the sun. The flat earthers and proponents of the earth being the centre of the universe would have suppressed Copernicus' and Kepler's discoveries of heliocentrism and elliptical orbits.

New ideas displace old ideas all the time, and that displacement can only occur if there is both a rational evidence-based reason for displacing it and there is the opportunity to do so. To suppress an idea is to remove opportunity for discussion and to entrench the established viewpoint irrespective of its merits. It's the very antithesis of modern liberal thought.

Suppression of ideas also conversely prevents the objective discussion of bad ideas and dismissing them. Too much conversation in the present days is not grounded in objectivity, and this lets bad ideas fester. Open and fair minded discussion is a basic requirement for living in a free society.

There is a disturbing tendency to wish to suppress discussion of "sensitive" or "controversial" topics in recent years. That is a path which will lead to tyranny. Because it boils down to other people telling us what we are and are not allowed to say, think and do. This would not be a fair or free society.