Of course the huge power of big digital platforms to limit and amplify speech is a worry. I have previously researched how the CCP both censors and uses WeChat, Weibo...and uses them for surveillance.

Then ask @mariaressa about how Facebook has been used to inject misinformation into the heart of Philippines politics, most of all by Duterte's staff and acolytes

If we want to say there is a difference between the CCP blocking social media accounts and Twitter etc doing so, then we have to be able to articulate what that difference is. Google and Twitter have (belatedly) done that well today.

The line is not the giving of offence, but incitement to violence. The content being spread on Parler was awful. Don't want to amplify, but calls to lynch and shoot specific individuals, calls for gun violence. Much more. Terrorism, on any definition.

I do not advocate banning Parler, but rather that other digital platforms should require it to urgently implement moderation policies if it wants their cooperation. That is what has happened. And of course the other digital platforms need to do better at this too.

If Parler has a properly implemented moderation policy that prohibits advocacy of violence and spread of dangerous disinformation, then it should be allowed to operate.

Moving forward and once this emergency is behind us ALL digital platforms will have to fully accept the responsibilities that are an inevitable part of freedom.

They have ALL been reluctant to accept that they are a kind of publisher, and that they have to accept the responsibilities that go with that, if they wish to enjoy the freedoms.

This week may have finally ended that denial of responsibility. But the standards must be clear and transparently implemented. If the platforms can't do that, then government will have to implement the same kind of regulation that applies to traditional broadcasting.