A belief still clings stubbornly to the calloused underbelly of debate that social media is somehow unrelated to the real world and shouldn’t be measured by real world standards.

That’s patent nonsense. Social media starts riots, brings down governments, destroys reputations, and can lead to love, death, marriage or murder. Social media is as real as any flesh and blood body.

Yet we police social media differently. The standards by which Elon Musk’s despotic X platform operates are completely different to the standards by which this newspaper operates. Musk isn’t held accountable for what he publishes; yet editors and newspaper publishers face civil, and even criminal action, for decisions they make. I know from personal experience the limits of free speech set upon journalists. During long-running investigations for The Herald into the activities of British security forces in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, severe restrictions were placed on me and this newspaper by the Ministry of Defence in terms of what we could and couldn’t publish.

Read more by Neil Mackay

As I write, I’m looking at a cutting from December 3, 2000 headed "MoD mounts legal bid to gag Sunday Herald". The piece explains how we’d been investigating crimes committed by British army intelligence officers when the MoD began the process of interdicting the paper.

Two months later, on February 11, 2001, another headline reads "MoD farce as Sunday Herald gagged". The piece reports how government solicitors threatened us with interdict if we continued our investigations. We were unable to publish the intended investigation. Indeed, to this day, I’m prevented from reporting anything related to that........

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