Chilling free speech

David Harsanyi writes in the Federalist,

...It’s difficult, it seems, for some people to embrace neutral principles nowadays. But if you genuinely believe that Donald Trump’s distasteful tweets are attacks on the foundations of free expression, how can you not be alarmed by a pair of powerful elected officials demanding social media companies hand over information about their users? What would they say if the president had sent a letter to Google insisting they give the executive branch an “in-depth forensic examination” of his political opponent’s searches?

...Yet, if Feinstein and Schiff had their way, Twitter and Facebook would have moved to quash the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag for what turned out to be apparently solely partisan reasons. Sounds like a power that can be abused. Even if the two had been genuinely troubled by Russian hashtags — yes, suspend your disbelief — the source of fake news is not always easily discernible. Sometimes it comes to you from an anonymous Russian bot, and sometimes it’s retweeted by a prominent journalist.

Democrats have manufactured panic over amateurish Russian propaganda to not only claim that Vlad Putin was “meddling” in the election, but also to argue that interference had the power to turn the election to Trump. With this risible idea in hand, they have created paranoia about social media interactions and rationalized infringements on expression.

Not long before demanding forensic investigations into hashtags, Feinstein was demanding Twitter, Facebook, and Google more tightly restrict its content, threatening, “Do something about it — or we will.” Democrats have attempted to control interactions through Fairness Doctrines or the IRS, and now the Russia scare. Part of living in a free country is dealing with messy, ugly misinformation.

Lots of people in the United States seem pretty impressed by how they do things in Europe. In Britain, Prime Minister Theresa May is launching “a rapid response unit” run by the state to “battle the proliferation of ‘fake news’ online.” A “National Security Communications Unit” will be tasked to combat misinformation — as if it has either the power or ability to do so. In France, President Emmanuel Macron is working on a plan to combat “fake news,” which includes the power to “emergency block” websites during elections. What could possibly go wrong?

Me? I’d rather we live with Russian troll bots feeding us nonsense than authoritarian senators dictating how we consume news. I mean, has anyone yet produced a single voter who lost his or her free will during the 2016 election because he had a Twitter interaction with an employee of a St. Petersburg troll farm? Or do voters tend to seek out the stories that back their own worldviews?

If your argument is that Americans are uninformed and easily misled, I’m with you. Just look at all the people who believe that a $46,000 buy on Facebook by the Russians was enough to destroy the pillars of our democracy. But if you want to live in a free and vibrant nation, you have to live with the externalities of that freedom.

Read more here.