Disinformation: Are We the Problem?
Are we even mature enough for free speech?
The Bar for Limiting Speech is Set Very High
I have put off writing about whether disinformation and misinformation should be regulated, because the topic seems inordinately complex. I’ve finally decided, though, to tackle the issue, and it’s every bit as complicated as I thought. The first amendment of the United States Constitution seems very clear on the question of whether speech is protected:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
SCOTUS and Free Speech
The amendment does not specify any exceptions to the free speech clause, and in the 20th and 21st centuries the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of free speech multiple times:
In Stromberg v. California (1931), the court ruled that non-verbal expression is protected
In Talley v. California (1960) anonymous speech was protected
United States v. Obrien (1968) set the bar high for determining if the government had good reason to limit "expressive conduct"
In Watts v. United States (1969) the court determined that threatening speech must constitute an identifiable threat
Cohen v. California (1971) protected most (but not all) profane speech
In National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie (1977), justices ruled that hate speech is protected speech
These rulings were before the age of the internet. Free speech on the internet was protected by Reno v. ACLU (1997), and United States v. Alvarez protected many forms of lying, saying that the government had to use "the narrowest means possible" to protect its interests.
So, Why is There A Problem?
In the 21st century, the internet potentially reaches over 5 billion people worldwide. Information, whether true, intentionally false or misleading, or simply factually wrong can reach an unprecedented number of people in nearly real time. And, those same people have access to seemingly unlimited knowledge, more so than at any other time in human history.
Bad Ideas Spread Like Viruses
This limitless access to information has presented conundrums that either didn't exist in the past or at least the bad ideas took time to disseminate, allowing more time to challenge bad ideas and refute false claims. Now, anything posted online can spread virally and maybe be acted upon by nefarious agents long before anyone can post a refutation. In a previous article on Substack called Poisoning the Well: Self Censorship in the Digital Age, I gave an example from the COVID-19 pandemic:
It should be kept in mind that anyone can claim anything on Social Media, usually with no consequences. For example, a 2020 story circulating on social media falsely claimed that the CDC had issued a report that said most people infected with COVID-19 "always" wore masks. The claim resulted from a misinterpretation of published CDC information and was amplified by major public figures, including Donald Trump, who repeated it during a town hall meeting.
Stories like this, along with vaccine disinformation, false claims about treatments and cures, and conspiracies about government coverups led people to forgo masks and vaccines, and potential harm themselves by trying dubious "cures" and delaying medical care. Add to this troll farms in Russia and China attempting to influence elections in the U.S. and confusing American citizens with disinformation campaigns on social media, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Is the First Amendment Out of Date?
All of this would seem to make the first amendment seem like an anachronism. If free speech in the internet age is being misused and abused so egregiously, why wouldn't we regulate it? Wouldn't cracking down on the spread of disinformation make sense? A lot of people think it would. In a study in 2023, Kozyreva, et al. looked at peoples' responses to potentially harmful social media misinformation about subjects like climate-change and holocaust denial and found that the majority of people favored removing posts if they posed a risk to some segment of society (Democrats generally favored it more than Republicans, who were more likely to vote not to penalize accounts).
The idea that disinformation should be suppressed led to a push to moderate content on social media. For example, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, claims that the Biden administration pressured Meta to censor COVID-related content if it didn't fit the administration narrative. Later, the administration added additional pressure to censor Donald Trump's wild claims which arguably led to the January 6th riot. This desire to control the message may have been rooted in a historical misconception about the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1930's.
Censorship Didn't Stop the Nazis
Comparisons have been made between the rise of the far-right in the Republican party and the rise of the Nazis. The thinking is that if only Germany had limited the ability of the Nazis to spread their hate-filled messages, the Third Reich would never have been established. Unfortunately, that claim isn't borne out by history. On thefire.org, Greg Lukianoff and Nadine Strossen make the argument that Wiemar Germany already had laws banning hate speech, but they did nothing to stop the Nazis, and may have actually enabled them:
Far from being an impediment to the spread of National Socialist ideology, Hitler and the Nazis used the attempts to suppress their speech as public relations coups. The party waved the ban like a bloody shirt to claim they were being targeted for exposing the international conspiracy to suppress “true” Germans.
The attempts at censorship (obviously) didn't work in the U.S. either. And, as soon as Trump was elected, Meta began to roll back its policies on Facebook content moderation. That, combined with Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, ostensibly as a backlash to Twitter's supposed censoring of conservative voices, gave the Trump administration nearly free reign to spread their own narrative.
The Republicans Make Their Case
This month, the Republican-led congress held hearings on what they have termed "The Censorship-Industrial Complex." The claim is that the Biden administration, in a quest for power, created an alliance between government, tech giants, the media, academia, and think tanks to censor information. According to The Alliance Defending Freedom, a right-wing think tank:
Much like the "military-industrial complex” that US President Dwight Eisenhower warned about in 1961—an influential alliance between government and defence contractors—the “censorship industrial complex” suggests a similar coalition, this time with the intent to control public discourse. Eisenhower warned that when government and industry become too connected, they end up putting corporate or political interests above the public.
Michael Shellenberger, a controversial journalist and founder of Environmental Progress, an organization that presents alternate information about climate change, as well as a prolific writer about free speech and homelessness (and who claims to have inside information about UFO's), gave a 68-page testimony before The House Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. In his testimony, he lists subjects that he believes were targets of disinformation by the Censorship-Industrial Complex, including the COVID lab-leak theory, climate change, the Hunter Biden laptop conspiracy, and the Russian election-interference conspiracy.
The Part They Got Right
The Problem is, no one really agrees on whether the "Censorship-Industrial Complex" actually exists or is just another conspiracy theory itself. Where the Republicans score a point, though, is in comparisons between campaigns to combat disinformation and similar efforts in Putin's Russia.
When the Russian invasion of Ukraine became bogged down and more and more Russian men and boys were being sent to the front lines as cannon fodder, Putin had to go into damage control mode, criminalizing any "disinformation" or criticism aimed at the Russian military or the war effort. This provides an object lesson in how the attempt to censor information can become a tool of authoritarian regimes (The Republican claim to victory may ring a little hollow- see Censorship Part 1.1: JD Vance in Munich).
What is the Root of the Problem?
Taking into consideration the language of the first amendment, SCOTUS rulings on free speech, and the dangers posed by authoritarian governments using "disinformation" as an excuse for censorship, I think the weight of the argument is against suppressing disinformation and "content moderation" on the internet. Where I may deviate from the typical arguments for or against censorship is on the question of the root cause of the problem.
We Are The Problem
In my opinion, the problem is us as a people and as a nation. When it comes down to it:
Many people do not critically evaluate what they read or hear, or the sources of the information they receive
Most people seek simple answers to problems that are complex, such as climate change
People spread information without making any attempt to determine the veracity of it
Many people exist inside echo chambers and seek confirmation bias
We appear to have gone from electing an administration whose philosophy was that we needed to be protected from bad ideas and bad information for our own good (and theirs) to electing an administration that regularly disseminates bad ideas! Republican voters (and some Democrats, too) actively embraced the most absurd ideas, and voted accordingly.
Stupid Ideas
None of this should be that surprising. Eight percent of the population of the United States, over 26 million people, believe that airplane contrails contain chemicals used to control the population. That the idea is patently idiotic and easily debunked doesn't change their minds. Many people believed that the mysterious Q was giving them messages on a chat forum about the rise of Donald Trump and the impending destruction of his enemies. Some even believed that cannibal, child-sex-trafficking government officials were operating out of a New York pizza restaurant. Recently, TikTok influencers convinced a large number of people that the government was releasing toxic fog throughout the nation.
We have elected people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who openly believed QAnon conspiracies (until she didn't). We elected a president who nominated conspiracy theorists to positions of authority and who regularly spreads falsehoods, limits press access to the White House for petty reasons, and helps enable dictators. How can we, as a population, hope to deal with the big questions when we run like lemmings to the most inane ideas? How could we possibly even recognize when we actually are being manipulated if we can't even agree that aliens aren't secretly running the government?
Conclusion
In one of the articles referenced above, I advocate for the avoidance of accidental self-censorship. I discuss how important it is to understand how media agendas and the social media wasteland combine with our own biases and cause us to poison the well; we reject sources that don't fit our internal narrative. We become trapped in echo chambers where we never have to hear anything that challenges our preconceived notions of reality. This makes us victims of a form of censorship we impose on ourselves, and it makes us susceptible to conspiracy theories and easy targets for manipulation.
There are real threats to free speech. Foreign entities run disinformation campaigns to sway public opinion. Our political parties are run by huge dark-money machines that want to control everything we see and think all for the sake of getting votes and consolidating power. Both the foreign troll farms and the political advocacy groups know that we are easy targets. All they have to do is put the bad ideas out there and let us run with them. So, to me, the question isn't whether we should regulate free speech, the question is, are we mature enough to deserve free speech?
Sources
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment
https://www.freedomforum.org/freedom-of-speech-court-cases/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9963596/
https://adfinternational.org/commentary/what-is-censorship-industrial-complex