The websites of all the largest internet companies now expressly commit themselves to honoring “community standards” in public discourse.1 These standards, as the companies articulate and interpret them, well exceed the demands of law, they acknowledge. Their websites exhort those posting there to respect prevailing norms of basic civility, snappily illustrated at times, and to report their violation to web administrators. This commitment to policing community standards prompts these businesses to regularly remove postings deemed to breach social mores against hate speech, graphic violence, advocacy of terrorism, and even demeaning and aggressive expletives. In appreciation of this commitment, the Home Affairs Committee of the UK House of Commons in April 2017 formally declared, “We welcome the fact that YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter all have clear community standards that go beyond the requirements of the law.”2 With these words, the lawmakers of a leading Western democracy openly acknowledge their considerable dependence, for the effective governance of the peoples they represent, on nonstate entities for this role in sustaining and refining social mores deemed essential to an acceptable public order. In fact, the legislators express their gratitude.