This piece originally appeared in National Review.
The irony was palpable when Representative Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.) demanded that Representative Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, “take immediate action to investigate political censorship on social media platform X.” Nadler and other Democrats had begun to question the influence that large online platforms have on politics and public discourse. But when Republicans such as Jordan have raised similar questions about the potential for online censorship of conservatives, such as with the deplatforming of Parler or the banning of news stories about the Hunter Biden laptop, Democrats have pilloried them as conspiracy theorists.
Despite the irony, the bipartisan concern is welcome: Policymakers are right to be worried about the power of large tech companies. But trying to force political neutrality on social media platforms — as some Republicans have advocated — is the wrong solution. Putting government mandates and speech codes between platforms and users is an approach fraught with constitutional obstacles and unintended, adverse consequences. Policymakers should instead seek to decentralize control over the web and give the power over public discourse back to the people.
The early internet pioneers envisioned a democratic digital environment that upheld the values of liberty, localism, community, and personal agency. Digital activist John Perry Barlow famously called cyberspace “a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.” These pioneers wanted to build an internet where power was decentralized — where communities could voluntarily form and flourish.
