Major US social media companies including Meta's Instagram and Facebook, and X, are blocking the accounts of Saudi dissidents at the request of the Saudi government.
The policy is debated in terms of structure, funding, and institutional design. What is not debated - and what will determine the policy’s success or failure - is the character of the people who will implement it. We are told that major American social media companies, including Meta and X, have blocked the accounts of Saudi dissidents at the request of the Saudi government. The public discourse rushes to assign blame to the authoritarian state, treating the technology firms as passive conduits or coerced victims. This is a convenient fiction. It allows us to ignore the more uncomfortable truth: that the moral formation of those who manage these digital town squares has been neglected in favor of technical competence and commercial expediency.
When we examine the character of the executives and policy teams at these firms, we find a profound deficiency in moral seriousness. They have built platforms that claim to be the modern agora, the marketplace of ideas where free speech is the highest virtue. Yet, when faced with the pressure of a foreign government, they retreat. They do not stand firm on principle; they do not engage in the difficult, unglamorous work of defending the vulnerable against the powerful. Instead, they comply. This reveals a formation that values risk mitigation over moral courage. It suggests that these leaders were not educated to understand that their power carries a duty to protect the weak, but rather to protect their own market share and legal standing. The character revealed here is one of convenience, not conviction.
We must ask the formation question: what education produced these people? In the schools and universities that feed into the technology sector, there is an abundance of instruction in code, in algorithmic efficiency, and in market dynamics. There is a scarcity of instruction in the habits of responsibility. These leaders are taught to optimize for engagement and growth, but they are rarely taught to weigh the moral cost of silencing a voice. They are trained to be engineers of systems, not stewards of public trust. The result is a class of managers who view human rights not as sacred duties, but as variables in a compliance checklist. When the Saudi government makes a request, it is treated as a regulatory hurdle to be cleared, not as a moral assault to be resisted. This is the fruit of an education that separates technical skill from moral character.
The practical test of any reform is whether it produces better people. If we were to regulate these companies more heavily, forcing them to adhere to strict free-speech mandates, would that change their character? I doubt it. Regulation without moral formation is a house built on sand. If the people inside the institution lack the habit of moral seriousness, they will find ways to circumvent the spirit of the law while adhering to its letter. They will become experts in legalistic evasion rather than champions of liberty. The structure may change, but the inhabitants remain the same: cautious, commercially driven, and morally timid. We cannot legislate virtue into existence. We can only create the conditions in which virtue is cultivated through education, habit, and sustained attention to the duties of power.
Consider the analogy of a lighthouse keeper. If the keeper is poorly formed, if he lacks the discipline to tend the flame regardless of the storm, no amount of regulation will keep the light burning. He will let the oil run low, or he will dim the light to save fuel, or he will turn it off if a powerful ship demands it. The problem is not the lighthouse; it is the keeper. The technology firms are the lighthouses of our age. They hold the light of public discourse. But the keepers have been trained to look at their ledgers, not at the horizon. They have been taught to serve the shareholders, not the sailors.
The stakes here are not merely political; they are moral. When these companies silence dissidents, they are not just removing content; they are demonstrating that their commitment to free speech is conditional. It is conditional on convenience, on safety, on the absence of pressure. This teaches a lesson to the public: that rights are fragile, that power is absolute, and that character is optional. This is a dangerous formation for a society. It produces citizens who expect to be protected by institutions rather than empowered by their own moral agency. It produces leaders who expect to be directed by laws rather than guided by conscience.
We must judge the fruits of this system. What kind of citizens does it produce? It produces people who are accustomed to having their voices managed by distant corporations. It produces leaders who are accustomed to yielding to pressure rather than standing for principle. This is not the formation we would choose. We need a return to moral education, not just for the poor, as I once advocated, but for the powerful. We need to teach those who hold the keys to the digital kingdom that their power is a trust, not a privilege. Until then, we can expect the same failures, dressed in new algorithms and new corporate slogans. The structure will change, but the character will remain, and the outcome will be the same.