The Internet Is Splintering

Each country has its own car safety regulations and tax codes. But should every country also decide its own bounds for appropriate online expression? We probably don’t want internet companies deciding on the freedoms of billions of people, but we may not want governments to have unquestioned authority, either. Regulating online expression in any single country — let alone in the world — is a messy set of trade offs with no easy solutions. Let us lay out some of the issues:

• The “splinternet” is here
• Internet powers still have to make judgment calls
• The splinternet fear is often presented as a binary choice between one global Facebook or Google, or 200 versions. But there are ideas floating around to set a global baseline of online expression, and a process for adjudicating disputes.