I wrote this to Pavel Durov, and maybe it will help bring some more clarity to the freedom vs security debate:<p>Listen, as a fellow social platform developer and someone who has to seriously consider these issues, I have a suggestion. Why don&#x27;t you consider terrorism as an epidemiological model, using your network to spread a certain undesirable virus&#x2F;meme (whose symptoms include violence). Then you can borrow from known bio literature about battling viruses:<p>Markers (based on previous samples<p>Antibodies (preventing recipients from getting infectious messages)<p>Obstacles (making difficulty of spreading organically harder)<p>And work to promote herd immunity. You can add this to the system without any government or yourself being aware of the contents of the messages. Have the computer system be like an organization that maintains herd immunity in its population, while at the same time (being electronic) having zero interest in reporting people and message content to others.<p>One of the first things you&#x27;ll notice is mass media (one to many transmission taken to the extreme) is the biggest risk to herd immunity. Free speech like every other right may have limits... speech to 100 people may be totally unenmbered but speech to 1,000,000 comes with responsibility, or else it&#x27;s just a freerider on a system. YOU Pavel have a responsibility since your code is your (meta-)&quot;speech&quot; once such a large audience engages with your product!<p>Stop shutting down ISIS channels. It&#x27;s GOOD that they use your software. Look at the incident of Craigslist shutting down its prostitution section -- people just moved elsewhere. Instead, think about whether &quot;right to free speech&quot; and &quot;right to privacy&quot; must be absolute or whether there is justification to BALANCE them against public welfare at ANY point on the continuum. Perhaps if the system can detect with good confidence some violent speech, it is better to LET IT HAPPEN and alert the operators so they can refer it to the authorities. Either way, Pavel, as long as the developers are few they have the power and can be bullied by governments. So use this power to set the lead: build VIRUS DETECTION not BANNING into the system, and only drop privacy in the case of some imminent danger. Make the networks have an immune system. But do not simply make people move somewhere else.