I’m not a subscriber to the theory that Twitter and Facebook caused the many international citizen uprisings we’ve seen so far this year. Enabled some part of them, possibly, but caused, no. Hyper-inflating food prices are much more likely the cause. But I do think Twitter is responsible for another kind of revolution and one that’s much closer to home for Westerners, especially if you live in England.

For some years now in that country, celebrities have been able to get super-injunctions granted against the traditional media. A super-injunction not only bars a newspaper or TV station from talking about some aspect of the celebrity’s life (often but not always a sexual indiscretion), but also from talking about the fact that they’ve been barred. An editor can’t even say: “Footballer A has taken out an injunction against us.” Anything other than silence is met with fearsome fines and imprisonment. There are good arguments for and against this form of censorship, but it’s censorship – the government telling the media what it can and cannot publish – and it’s been made almost completely irrelevant by Twitter.