The Death of Truth

we distrust to the point that it becomes dangerous to be a judge, a Capitol Police officer, a doctor, a librarian, a poll worker, or someone installing 5G equipment—our civil society cannot function. The winners then will be those who try to rule by force rather than consent.

A common argument for not regulating speech is that “good” speech will defeat “bad” speech. But that will not happen if the fight is fixed to give the “bad” speech so much more voice.

That growing alienation is a key point. This is not just about “bad” people. It is about how the death of truth, and, therefore trust, has caused so many “normal” people to be derailed into acting badly by predators or by people who have themselves been deluded. And it’s about the new tools that technology has given them to spread distrust.

The platforms’ business model is dependent on the volume and velocity of the inflammatory content being offered. It is not a side issue. It is the driving metric. The more engaging the content, the more eyeballs. The more eyeballs, the more advertising revenue.

This is the problem beneath other problems because if we can’t agree on what’s true, then we can’t navigate out of any of our problems.”

As a result, the news and information ecosystem that is so important to a functioning democracy and civil society has suffered a double whammy. First, as we have seen, the social media platforms’ recommendation engines have promoted misinformation and disinformation. Second, we have now seen how programmatic advertising has provided financial suppo

What we did not understand was that misinformation and disinformation was their business and that they had no intention of using us or anyone else to curb it. A low reliability score next to an article posted on one of the platforms from that website would be an impediment to exactly the sharing and enhanced engagement that the platforms wanted.

In retrospect we should not be surprised that an industry excluded from basic liability and told it would not be held accountable grew up to be irresponsible and unaccountable.

The story of Section 230 in the United States—and around the world, as other countries followed America’s lead in giving free rein to these American companies—is stunningly simple. Technology platforms had been given the freedom to sell the first consumer product ever that was absolutely immune from age-old common-law or modern regulatory oversight