“Two centuries ago, rulers sought to convince subjects that they should embrace the notion of “enlightened despotism,” living without rights under the beneficent watch of overlords. Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II summed up the idea with the maxim “everything for the people, nothing by the people.”

“Today, we seem to be living in an age of enlightened corporate despotism, where social media and technology companies watch over what we read and what we discuss to protect us from ourselves.

Once considered unAmerican and authoritarian, censorship has become a rallying cry from the left. Indeed, a new poll shows roughly half of the public supports not just corporate censorship but government censorship of anything deemed “misinformation.”

Calling for companies to protect us from ourselves is the ultimate in enlightened despotism.

Once free speech is defined as harmful or violent, the algorithms can take it from there. At the urging of our leaders companies like Amazon can censor “everything for the people, nothing by the people.”

We can then live under the enlightened despotism of governing algorithms that protect us from our dangerous curiosities.

https://jonathanturley.org/2021/09/29/enlightened-algorithms-democrats-call-for-increased-corporate-controls-to-protect-citizens-from-their-own-dangerous-curiosities/