The speech police are coming for social media

IN RECENT DAYS Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor and Donald Trump’s chief rival for the Republican nomination, chose to announce his bid for the White House via Twitter. The live audio event, hosted by the social network’s owner, Elon Musk, descended into farce as Twitter’s servers struggled to cope with the few hundred thousand listeners who had tuned in. When he could be heard, Mr DeSantis said he had decided to announce on the platform because, unlike the “legacy media”, Twitter is a “beacon of free speech”.