On hate speech, social media companies are enthusiastically liking, retweeting, and faving national governments. In December, the German government announced that they had secured the co-operation of Facebook, Google and Twitter in removing “hate speech” from their platforms. A wave of censorship followed. Why have web firms been persuaded to give up their original free-speech ideals? Governments haven’t passed any laws requiring Silicon Valley to march to their drum. So why are Facebook, Twitter and Google doing so anyway? The mad progressivism of their Bay Area CEOs probably has something to do with it. But there’s another reason: Governments have become increasingly adept at intimidating companies without using the law. In 2011, liberal scholar and Net Neutrality activist Tim Wu published an essay entitled “Agency Threats,” discussing how best to regulate companies. In his essay, Wu argued that passing legislation was not, in fact, the most efficient way to pressure web firms (he would soon be proven right during the SOPA and PIPA protests, in which web firms mobilised their vast userbase to cripple a major congressional attempt at web copyright reform.) Instead, Wu advocated “Rule by Threat” to force companies to capitulate to the government. Wu’s study suggested that regulatory