The simultaneous purge of Alex Jones from major platforms has exposed, yet again, the frightening power Big Tech has over our conversations and our lives. Jones is a crank, but this isn’t about him. If they can ban him, they can ban anyone (and more quietly, they do). Of course, they retain the right to. And so long as information and technology remains in centralized hands, we can expect more of the same.

These moves don’t happen in a vacuum. This latest kerfuffle comes amidst growing pressure from government officials expected to take over US Congress in a few months. In this light, it’s plausibly a pre-emptive move to placate those who are itching to regulate these platforms in the name of combating fake news and hate speech. This portends a possible future where public and private entities work in tandem to punish unsavories as self-appointed arbiters for truth for us all. It’s a prospect worth noting, especially as sitting Senators claim the future of democracy will depend on a much wider censorship campaign.

Any free and democratic society hinges on the freedom of information, not its restraint. We need exposure to a full range of ideas, including outrageous ones that can be challenged and corrected. Gatekeepers of any sort means anything can be suppressed, filtered, or distorted. Don’t like what someone has to say? Respond with something stronger. Bad ideas are beaten by better ideas, not by trying to shut them down.

The problem with regulating “hate” and even “lies” is that their subjective meanings hinge entirely on the privileged few who get to define them. It’s ripe for abuse and misapplication. Our new ministers of truth don’t even equally enforce their own terms. “Hate speech” gets thrown around like a ball on a kid’s playground — arbitrary in its meaning, but firm in its intent: to delegitimize and silence unwelcome opinions.

In Europe, they’ve carved out definitions that amount to actual crimes. A few recent examples: In Spain, rappers were jailed for “insulting the king” in a rap video. In the UK in the last year, over 3,000 people were arrested for “grossly offensive” posts on social media. In Germany, even competing lawmaker’s have been no-platformed across social media after criticizing government policies — in compliance with new German law that threatens firms with a €50 million fine if they’re too slow to squash the offending material. This is business as usual on an ostensibly free continent where laws limiting speech have mushroomed, to say nothing of huge swaths of the world where sadly any semblance of free expression remains a dream.

On the other hand, we embrace the standards of free speech as interpreted over centuries by the U.S. Supreme Court. For us, “legitimate” speech comes with no asterisks; it just is. Everyone loses when what is acceptable is increasingly confined. Grading speech only opens the door for centralized powers to further determine what we can say and think. Tech monarchs and wannabe Robespierres (in the form of online mobs) are both determined to send anyone who offends them to the guillotine. We stand athwart this culture that slavishly whips transgressors into compliance over thought crimes.

All of this illustrates why the flow of information needs to be out of the hands of anyone. We need to move away from a system that enables behemoths to single-handedly control the debate and decide our fates. Whatever voice or freedom they bequeath us today, could be gone tomorrow.

Governments, corporations, and society at large are failing to honor the spirit of free speech and free minds. We need platforms that will. We need innovation and better choices so we can become guarantors of our own freedom. Mainframe is on the front lines forging the new web3 internet to beat censorship in all its ugly flavors. The spirit of liberty runs thru our veins and informs everything we’re building.

On our platform, the new Spotify, the new Facebook, the new Youtube will come free of ban hammers. Dapps live on our end-to-end encrypted, p2p network as long as people use them, regardless of whether any tech giant, government, or even Mainframe want them to.

Mainframe means an end to censorship by decree. An end to mob rule and thought police. An end to demonetizations, account suspensions, shadow bans, and no-platforming. An end to being subject to the whims of Silicon Valley tyrants.

On Mainframe, you own and control your data. You decide how you communicate and what you share. It’s a place where no central power can arrest your thoughts and ideas. Our network will be as the internet was intended to be — for everyone.