Big Tech bias starts first and foremost with the companies themselves. Company leaders work with the left and openly support leftist causes — from abortion to politics. The companies establish content policies that restrict speech and ads that go against the leftist groupthink of Silicon Valley. Most such companies draw upon heavily liberal workforces to enforce those policies.

Policies — from laws to regulations to treaties — are still decided by government and policy makers. These include presidents, legislators and bureaucrats. The most influential can set the agenda for tech policy for the next decade, just as Section 230 helped create much of the modern internet — back in 1996.

Big Tech censorship doesn’t just happen in politics. It is a feature of the cultural battlefield that dominates much of American life. Key elements of that fight include everything from abortion to guns to faith. Those are areas with a wide range of opinions just in the U.S. But global attitudes can also influence the tech companies on issues like these.

One of the powerful tools deployed by Big Tech to squelch free speech is the relatively new idea of fact-checkers. In theory, these organizations target misstatements of fact. In practice, fact-checkers have become narrative police — targeting conservative content far more than liberal. Even when the facts are correct, fact-checkers do their best to undermine content they simply don’t like.

The internet and social media were made possible by government regulation. Now, the reach of social media companies crosses into pretty much every field of endeavor from finance and speech to news and entertainment. These policies, regulations and laws will determine the future of the internet for users in the U.S. and around the world.