@arstechnica Remember that the government politely asking is the same as coercion because the government can do all sorts of things that they have the power to do to get you to give in and do something they never had the constitutional authority to legally make you do in the first place, like censoring peoples social media posts or banning some types of video games from your app store. One of the few social media companies that consistently refuses to censor protected speech no matter who is asking is sadly gab, so the rest of alt tech should learn from their example and say no. The sooner you say no and defend your no the sooner people stop trying to walk all over you. Perhaps what needs to be done is a consortium of alt tech companies where alt tech companies pay dues to the consortium and the consortium defends their interests in court, donates to free software projects that they depend on, runs Tor exit nodes, signal proxies, a bitmask compatible VPN and other censorship bypassing technologies, to share technology between alt tech companies along with other forms of collective bargaining to advance the interests of their member because a rising tide lifts all boats.