Online Talk is Cheap

Taken from: Trust Psychology - Nautilus Nov/Dec 2017

“Totalitarian societies know the power of common knowledge very well. When the Institute for Quantitative Social Science reveres-engineered the Internet censorship practiced by the Chinese government, they found that the government cared less about insults and criticisms than one might expect. 

What it censored aggressively were social media posts making plans to meet in person. Online talk is cheap; but face-to-face people can build common knowledge.”

                                                                                            Stuart Firestein