This is the editor’s letter in the current issue of The Week magazine.
Nearly a century ago, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote that the best remedy for "falsehood and fallacies" was not the "enforced silence" of censorship, but "more speech." That foundational defense of free speech was based on an optimistic assumption that has served us well: In the marketplace of ideas, good thinking and truth will eventually triumph over bad thinking and lies. Can we be so confident of that today? Social media has deeply disrupted public discourse, eroding and bypassing filters and turning every crank into a publisher with the potential for vast reach. On Facebook and Twitter, every day brings a new tsunami of hyperpartisan argument, tribal resentment, propaganda of all flavors, death threats, conspiracy theories, and some charming baby pictures and wonderful writing and thinking. The wonderful stuff — Brandeis' "more speech" — isn't necessarily triumphing over "falsehoods and fallacies." That's why Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg now faces fraught decisions about policing his massive, privately owned platform.
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