kettling or policeman's ball

The Russian Times is covering an international law enforcement convention in Philadelphia, where one of the distrurbing trends emerging is increase partnership between social-media utilities and police departments with the express and open-ended goal of hindering the right to assembly through the ability to censor content and upstarts deemed to be of a criminal or at least of a (potentially) peace-disrupting nature. While such collaborative efforts could reduce the ability for organised criminal syndicates to use the internet as a platform, like cyber highwaymen whose threat is greatly conflated and peddlers of hate that use these forums, this sort of alliance, already taking place in fits and starts, would do more to quell protests and promote the status quo, ignorance and misinformation. Of course, it does not stop with stopping rallies but I suppose such selectivity would necessarily extend to any unflattering portrayal or revelation regarding the giants of industry, in terms of health, safety and equity. Patently, it would become more and more difficult for organisers to mobilise support for movements and to distribute information that has not received the stamp-of-approval from the competent-authorities.