The websites of all the largest internet companies now expressly commit
themselves to honoring “community standards” in public discourse.1
These
standards, as the companies articulate and interpret them, well exceed
the demands of law, they acknowledge. Their websites exhort those
posting there
to respect
prevailing norms of basic civility, snappily illustrated
at times, and to report their violation to web administrators. This
commitment to policing community standards prompts these
businesses
to regularly remove postings deemed to breach social mores against hate
speech, graphic violence,
advocacy of terrorism, and even demeaning and
aggressive expletives.
In appreciation of this commitment, the Home Affairs Committee of
the UK House of Commons in April 2017 formally declared, “We welcome
the fact that YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter all have clear community
standards that go beyond the requirements of the law.”2 With these
words, the lawmakers of a leading Western democracy openly acknowledge
their considerable dependence, for the effective governance of the
peoples
they represent, on nonstate entities for this role in sustaining and
refining social mores deemed essential to an acceptable public order. In
fact, the legislators express their gratitude.