Looking at a Shadowrun Future — By political parties delegating censorship powers to corporations

A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take from you everything you have. Gerald R. Ford There’s an old role-playing game called Shadowrun. It plays in a future in which corporations have more power than states. Yeah, there are other aspects in that future, but let’s focus on that aspect. Looking at the power of companies like Google, Apple, and (for now) Facebook, I think we’re heading in that direction. Even worse is how states are willing to give power to these companies, and we accept it. It’s not the state anymore who controls what we can and cannot say, it’s delegated to companies. In the US to bypass the first amendment, in Germany for a similar reason. Officially, censorship does not happen, unofficially, companies are pressured to remove vaguely defined content (so-called “hate speech”) or face high fines. At first, I thought it was a “clever” way for the political parties in power to enforce censorship. But I now see it more like government hand-outs. A clever way to draw people in. In case of delegated censorship, it’s not only censorship that is delegated, but also power. Companies are reinforced for censoring [...]