"Three major events have shaken up the social-media world in the past two weeks."

"First, French authorities detained Pavel Durov, the iconoclastic billionaire behind the online platform Telegram. Then, a judge suspended the microblogging service X in Brazil. Soon after, a federal appeals court in Pennsylvania ruled that the mother of a 10-year-old child who died copying a TikTok self-asphyxiation video can sue the service, circumventing a blanket legal immunity the company has long claimed. While each of these events took place in a different country with its own laws, together they demonstrate a sudden shift in the balance of power between governments and technology companies.... Finding the right balance between user safety and free expression will not be easy. It will require investing in existing institutions like the Federal Trade Commission to strengthen their capacity to check digital authoritarianism, anti-competitive behavior and anti-consumer business models or features, and building new ones that lay out bright lines for transparency and accountability online...."

Writes Alexander B. Howard, the founder of Civic Texts, in "Has the Tide Turned for TikTok, Telegram and X?" (NYT).