So content removal is nothing new to Google, and it works hard and throws a lot of people at managing takedown requests. But, even considering that context -- or, perhaps, especially considering that context -- Google's decision to block access to the "Innocence of Muslims" video is unprecedented. Even by Google's own assessment, the video is "clearly within our guidelines" -- meaning it is not hate speech and did not otherwise violate the website's terms of service. (An update from a YouTube spokesperson by email late today added that the video additionally had been blocked in India and Indonesia, where it was, in fact, in violation of local law.)

Why did Google make such an extraordinary decision? Perhaps it felt somehow culpable for the deaths or feared that if the video spread further, more would come; perhaps -- as the Los Angeles Times thinly suggested -- it felt pressured to do so by Obama administration officials. Google, for it's part, won't say, and we are left guessing. (I have twice criticized Google's Transparency Report for, ironically, not being very transparent on this key question of how Google makes decisions regarding what content to remove.)

There are reasons both practical and abstract to be concerned about Google's decision here. The first is the head-scratcher: Did Google really think that blocking access to the video would quell the outrage? The video has been discussed on Egyptian television, and of course will continue to be available online on non-Google sites. It wouldn't be so hard for one person to mask his or her IP address, access and screen capture the video, and then upload and share it through any number of means. Once something like this is out of the bottle, blocking it on YouTube does not put it back in. (To complicate matters, although early reports pointed to the video, it seems that the attacks in Libya were long-planned and had other provocations entirely.) The protests have since spread to many other cities including Khartoum, Tunis, Chennai. Is YouTube going to spread its ban in lockstep?

It would be one thing if blocking the video somehow restored calm in these parts, but without such benefits to consider, why pursue the ban? At best it does nothing; at worst it provokes an even more dramatic backlash. Google has put a lot at stake in this move: its reputation as a defender of free expression, its perceived independence from the wishes of the U.S. government, its ability to weather similar storms in the future. As Kevin Bankston, director of the free expression project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told The New York Times, blocking the video "sends the message that if you violently object to speech you disagree with, you can get it censored."

Free expression is not pretty. People like to gussy it up as though it were the white knight of those who speak truth to power, as some sort of superpower for activists and journalists around the world. That is the dream, the First Amendment we inscribe on the facades of our museums and drape above the daises of awards dinners. But freedom of speech, in its deepest sense, is the foundation of our centuries-old experiment with self-governance. It is about whether society can take ideas, process them, and somehow build something out of them. That can be a very ugly and even dangerous process, something you commit to only because you have unwavering faith in humans to work it all out in the end, or because you believe that the alternative -- any alternative -- is worse.