Shutting down social media to stop violence does not violate free speech

[Commentary] All uses of technology are not equally virtuous.

Enthusiasm for technology should not lead to a moral and political relativism that confuses crime with free speech and the British police with authoritarian governments. Permitting peaceful protests while stopping violence seems like a reasonable compromise. Preventing looting in England or violence in California is hardly the same as Arab despots holding onto power by targeting dissidents. It's a measure of how enamored digerati get with technology that they lose the ability to see such obvious differences. Techno-utopians would like to believe that digital technology is always a force for good, but technology can also accelerate evil. As Thomas Hobbes would say, without the enforcement of rules for ordered liberty, life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short," both in the real world and online.