From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Free Expression with Jerry Baker.

Welcome to Free Expression with me, Jerry Baker from the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

Delighted you're joining us. If you're not already a subscriber, please do subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

This week, Twitter, cryptocurrency, Facebook and more. It's been a turbulent year for the tech

sector. Stock prices of the Silicon Valley giants like Facebook Parent Meta, along with Amazon and Google,

are down by between a third and two-thirds this year, with business conditions deteriorating.

They're making deep job cuts for the first time in their young history, And they continue to face questions about their outsized role in the modern American

economy, with demands from many sides for tougher regulation. Then there's cryptocurrency.

The spectacular collapse of FTX, a major crypto trading platform last month, and the prosecution

of its former CEO Sam Bankman Fre-Fried, on fraud charges,

have prompted concerns about the health and future of the whole business of digital currency.

Is it all just a decentralized Ponzi scheme? Some think it is. Or is it actually a valid

alternative to central bank-controlled money? And then, of course, there's Twitter. Acquired by

Elon Musk in October, the company that's one of the most influential platforms in the world for

the dissemination of news, information and commentary, has been the focus of extraordinary attention

ever since. Musk has been steadily releasing details of how the platform handled, censored,

and sometimes outright blocked

content and individuals before he acquired it. The Twitter files, as they're called, have revealed

troubling details about the company's approach to so-called misinformation, which often in the

past seems to encompass largely conservative views, and the latest revelations have shown

a close relationship with government law enforcement.

Meanwhile, Musk himself has sparked outrage among the major media by himself banning some users for what he calls violations.

...