Last week, I learned that the State of Montana decided to ban TikTok. Now, after writing The Digital Realm, I am compelled to comment on the matter. It is obvious that it bears significant implications for the conceptualization of the National Intranet. Personally, I feel that this will no doubt set the precedent for the first steps toward an American National Intranet. The justifications for it were centered on the same arguments that I gave in the Treatise: Sovereignty and Privacy.
But I will admit that concerns about “Free Speech” did arise as arguments against the decision. In a Digital Realm where Information continues to be treated as a Commodity, “Free Speech” loses its original meaning as the Framers of the Constitution understood it. Today, I fear that the term is becoming equated with the power to condone warrantless “Mass Surveillance.” This is not a question of whether people have the right to speech, but the question of who has the power to control the information that said speech embodies within the Digital Realm. Who owns the means of production behind the flow of information? To whom is this power beholden to?
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The Fourth Estate 
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