/2 The paper is a response to a 1995 paper by @VolokhC predicting what the coming "cheap speech" era would mean for American democracy
/1 I've written a new essay: "Cheap Speech and What It Has Done (to American Democracy)" on fake news and much more https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3017598 …
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/3 Eugene Volokh was optimistic that "cheap speech" via the Internet (and then social media) would solve media scarcity problems and
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/4 give voters more choices of what to see, watch, hear. He knew it would hurt newspaper classified ads but didn't see how devastating
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/5 Internet/social media have done tremendously great things in terms of access to diverse sources of information and viewpoints
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/6 But it has a dark side for democracy too as it has seriously hurt mediating institutions of (especially local) news, political parties
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/7 in place of media scarcity, we now have media firehose which has diluted trusted sources of information and led to the rise of fake news
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/8 The demise of local newspapers sets the stage for an increase in corruption among state and local officials.
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Rather than democratizing politics,cheap speech appears to be hastening the irrelevancy of parties by facilitating the ability of demagogues
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/10 Social media also can both increase intolerance and overcome collective action problems, both allowing for peaceful protest ...
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/11 but also supercharging polarization and raising the dangers of violence in the United States.
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/12 SCOTUS libertarian 1st A doctrine did not cause democracy problems from cheap speech, but it may stand in the way of needed reforms
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/13 It may facilitate foreign money in elections, lack of disclosure, more false speech
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/14 Solution is not to allow government to ban fake news, surely a cure worse than disease
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/15 But laws that might require disclosures/info from Facebook, Google may be in order
End of conversation
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Haven't finished reading it yet, but so far a thought-provoking paper with worrisome implications, thanks.
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Yes: "best strategy is to remain vigilant," and don't assume "freedoms & democracy this country has enjoyed will continue uninterrupted."
End of conversation
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