Democracies Echo Authoritarian Speech Tactics

Democratic governments are increasingly adopting the same regulatory and legal instruments (platform liabilities, expansive content rules, and enforcement partnerships) that authoritarian regimes use to control online discourse. The result is a convergence where technology both expands individuals' expressive capacity and provides new levers for governments to curtail it. — If democracies normalize authoritarian speech tools, it could erode constitutional norms and make censorship politically acceptable worldwide.