Elaine Ou, Columnist

Internet Consolidation Opened the Door to Censorship

Titans like Facebook, Google and Apple defeat the purpose of a decentralized web.

April 11, 2019 at 12:00 AM UTC

Elaine Ou is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. She is a blockchain engineer at Global Financial Access in San Francisco. Previously she was a lecturer in the electrical and information engineering department at the University of Sydney.

It once was true that “the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” — It once was true that “the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”
Photographer: Billy H.C. Kwok/Bloomberg

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The British government released proposals this week to hold online and social media platforms responsible for harmful content. A few decades ago, we might have scoffed at anyone who even thought they could regulate what people say on the internet. No longer.

Today, the centralization of platforms and service providers makes enforcement surprisingly easy. It’s just a matter of picking which layer of the tech stack to hold accountable.