"The rhetoric coming from Big Tech ("we can't let people even think these bad ideas") is extremely similar to the rhetoric that came from the Catholic Church during the Reformation and subsequent Wars of Religion."

Not only is the rhetoric from Big Tech not at all similar to that of the Church, the comparison to Big Tech now and Printing Press then has no merit at all really.

The Church was suppressing arcane knowledge, and controlling their access to 'God' - so to speak.

The Internet is a new form of 'hyper commons' where a race war could flame up instantly if allowed.

Understand that the Internet has absolutely nothing to do with the 'truth'. The truth comes from examination, and the legitimacy of the examiners, purveyors of information. If that legitimacy does not exist, then the truth is just whatever everyone wants it to be.

The comparison is not 'The printing press' - it's the Rwandan genocide.

In Rwanda, the driving fuel was radio. Unfettered, angry people would urge, every day, to think of the 'other' (i.e. Tutsi v. Hutu) like 'dirty cockroaches'.

Without daily, constant mass propaganda of an entire nation mesmerized and inflamed by genocidal talk radio - there would have been no genocide.

The Rwandan war was mostly not a military incursion - it was militias vs. people. It was individuals, coming out of their homes with machetes, chopping up their neighbours.

Extremism is fuelled by a nudge in either direction - as a small, populist media example, we saw this as both CNN and MSNBC leaned harder left as Trump rhetoric rose.

I'm not political - but some of the Talking Heads on Fox have been aggressively and actively promoting voting conspiracy theories about voting issues that have been very publicly debunked and rejected by the courts - but the opinionists of course avoid that part, and just push the conspiracy without at all pointing out the facts have literally been proven false.

Millions of viewers accept the conspiracy as truth.

While the comments section on Fox has been surprisingly more enlightened that normal, with somewhat of a majority even calling them out as 'Fake News' - a sizeable majority of responders are adamant the election was stolen.

At OAN and Breitbart, the comments section is vicious about the 'clear fact' that the election was stolen by Biden, and there's talk of violence.

There was quite a lot of violence in the streets during the BLM unrest, we are not in a happy situation, there are a lot of guns in America.

If for example 'some group with guns' ended up killing 'someone from some other group' - things would get out of hand fast.

If FB, and Twitter, Google and the Press did not manage information - I think it would devolve into regional, balkan like violence, like a quasi civil war very quickly.

While it's really hard sometimes to fathom how information should be controlled - the night of the election, when Donald Trump came out and claimed the election was rigged without any evidence, literally trying to overthrow the Republic on the basis of his ego ... using threats of having his, often armed supporters 'not stand down' (!!!) it became crystal clear how important information control is.

The issue contend with is how we go about it. We need transparency, regulation, independence, proportionality etc..

So Google, FB, Twitter - the 'huge' entities, need to set guidelines and probably have some way of ensuring they are enforced consistently and not selectively. The rules for what constitutes 'organizing violence' need to be clear etc..

We have to find a new way through this problem.