One nice thing about democracy is that—at least in theory—we don’t need permission to speak freely and privately. We don’t have to prove that our speech meets the government’s criteria, online or offline. We don’t have to “earn” our rights to free speech or privacy. Times have changed. Today, some U.S. senators have come to the view that speech in the online world is an exceptional case, in which website owners need to “earn it”—whether they intend to carefully moderate user content, or let users speak freely. In 2020, two Senators introduced a bill that would limit speech and security online, titled the EARN IT Act, which is also an acronym that stands for “Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies.”