Of course, the principle at the heart of this debate is the freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, more specifically the Freedom of the Press. The mainstream news media didn’t testify at the hearings but perhaps they should. Media publications are subject to recourse by citizens and other legal entities should they commit libel against them. Not so for the social media titans. In the early days of the internet, Section 230 gave them a hall pass. So, any blubbering idiot or blogger (including yours truly) can publish their thoughts on a variety of platforms without editorial review. And, so, misdirection, misinformation or outright lies abound.
Calls for Twitter and Facebook to reign in the insanity have resulted from complaints from both sides of the aisle. I think their claims have merit, but I can’t say I’ve heard of an appropriate remedy. Once you start down that path, where do you draw the line? Doesn’t the New York Times report the news from a position of bias? Doesn’t FOX News?
Flying below the radar is the second most visited site on the Internet: Wikipedia.com. The site includes over 55 million articles, comparable to its for-profit competitor Encyclopedia Britannica. In my youth, Britannica was the gold standard. To this day, its articles are written by paid experts and vetted by other paid experts. Yet, in a study performed by the research journal Nature, its accuracy was judged little better than Wikipedia. In its study, they found only eight serious errors – four in each encyclopedia.
How remarkable that a self-regulated marketplace of ideas has achieved such status. There is no editorial board vetting what’s posted; no advertising to sully its objectivity; and no barrage of lawsuits challenging its accuracy. Yet, the editor of a Gannett published daily once told me Wikipedia is not authorized as a source for reporters.
So, what does all of this portend for the moguls of social media. Other than an annual ass-whipping in front of a Congressional committee, will we see platforms reined in or, as some Democrats have suggested, regulated like a utility? Will they be edited like any other news organization? Perhaps they should adopt practices similar to Wikipedia, crowd-sourcing new information before publishing it. Or they could create an artificial intelligence that bounces new information off an online encyclopedia of “facts.”
Alternatively, they could partner with global news organizations like CNN, Associated Press and the New York Times. It would be simple for them to block the posting of any source other those approved by a board appointed by them. There’s a risk of course that they would publish extremist views whether from Newsmax or The Rolling Stone. Or that they might block those views. In those cases, would they be recasting themselves as news media? Would people still post pictures of cats and their grandchildren? Who knows?
Whatever “solution” is deemed appropriate, it must come from the platforms themselves. Once we allow government to decide what we should and shouldn’t see, we have undermined the very freedoms on which our nation was founded, upon which we have come to rely. As one pundit said when considering government restrictions: “We’re adults. We will only advance if we deny the proscriptions of our ‘betters.’ We hired them to protect our freedoms – not to remove them.”
WHO WILL LEAD?
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