There’s a fundamental incongruency between being pro ‘free speech’ and operating a global social network for civil public discussion. Twitter is struggling with it. Facebook is struggling with it, too. And it can’t be solved by a little more transparency or by hoping average citizens will do the right thing.

The principle of free speech on which the United States was founded was not conceived with our modern interconnectedness in mind, nor has it scaled to adapt to it. The idea was that anyone could say what they believed, and not be imprisoned for it. Not that everyone anywhere had to listen to it.