The Plain View
Almost exactly two years ago, Mark Zuckerberg took to the podium at Georgetown University and made a public plea for free expression. His vast public relations apparatus flagged the speech in advance, signaling that Facebook’s cofounder, CEO, and all-powerful czar would be speaking earnestly on an issue of importance. Delivered from the belly of the federal beast—in that same city where we just saw a whistleblower challenge Facebook to its core—he sketched out how his beleaguered company would prevail in its struggles to maintain comity while giving voice to billions—many of whom were liars, propagandists, or just plain creeps.
Zuckerberg posited himself as a modern Tom Paine, a free speech crusader. The country, and maybe the world, was at a crossroads, he warned. “We can continue to stand for free expression, understanding its messiness but believing that the long journey towards greater progress requires confronting ideas that challenge us,” he said. “Or we can decide the cost is simply too great. I’m here today because I believe we must continue to stand for free expression.”
At one time, I would have stood firmly in Zuckerberg’s corner. I saw myself as a free-speech absolutist, which is not a shocking stance for a journalist. Of course, I adored the First Amendment, which banned the government from stifling people’s views, with rare exceptions like calls for violence. But I also believed that through the process of unfettered expression, we would sift our way to the truth. Judge Louis Brandeis said it most famously, in a 1927 opinion: “It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears … the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” I’m still up with that. But while I’m still in that more-speech-solves-bad-speech corner, I’m not standing as firmly these days—and not just because of social media.
Certainly, Zuckerberg isn’t the best spokesperson for this issue, and Brandeis didn’t anticipate social media when he wrote that a hundred years ago. Does anyone think that Facebook provides an intellectual scrum that ultimately results in truth? More likely, because of algorithms that optimize for engagement and reward those that generate anger or outrage, it is the opposite: Those who once accepted the benign wisdom about things like vaccine efficacy or the outcome of a fair election are drawn into a maelstrom of ignorance. Or healthy teenage girls are lured into eating disorders.
Even so, I don’t assign Facebook as the key force refuting Brandeis’ optimism. We had conspiracy theories and hate talk well before Facebook and Twitter. Our history is infested with megalomaniacs, tinpot saviors, and rabble-rousing radio demagogues, all peddling ersatz narratives that animated hate and lies. The internet was supposed to embody the “more-speech-solves-bad-
But we forgot that gatekeepers could be guardrails. Traditionally, on many issues, institutions and leaders on both sides of the political divide were united in supporting a point of view that conformed to some sort of decency and truth. (The glaring exception, of course, came when our conventional wisdom was bigotry—a shameful example of what happens when a guardrail itself is evil.) Their presence could assure a nation to proceed, for instance, on a scary project to vaccinate a generation of children against polio, despite rumblings from the cave-dwelling population.
Those days seem to be gone. Even though gatekeepers have lost traction, we still have leaders. But too many seem to have abandoned their moral responsibilities. The very concept of truth and reason is often disputed by many elected officials and network television commentators. We hear rhetoric from them that’s as bad as the most objectionable posts in a Facebook News Feed. We see laws from them that are just as objectionable. (I am trying not to be partisan, but truth forces me to say that we’re talking about the right wing here.) Social media just makes all this worse.
Zuckerberg himself has come to realize that his expansive view of free speech was, well, too expansive. For much of Facebook’s history, Holocaust deniers were free to post away. Zuckerberg even bragged about this in a 2018 podcast, citing it as an example of the way people can sort out for themselves whether the indisputable extermination of 8 million people actually happened. But in October 2020, one year after his Georgetown speech, Zuckerberg said his thinking had “evolved,” and he banned Holocaust denial on the platform. Facebook has also decided that “more speech” won’t convince Covid conspiracists of the value of masks and vaccines, so it now tries to suppress misinformation on those subjects.
During the three years I worked on a book about Facebook, a period where the company was under incredible pressure and scrutiny, I had a lot of conversations with their communications people. Though, ultimately, they bleed blue—at least until they skedaddle to other companies—they are a thoughtful bunch. Sometimes they’d ask me my opinions about the speech issue. Facebook isn’t to blame for the dark side of human nature, I’d concede. But, I told them, they’re responsible for what goes on the platform they built: It may not be your fault, but it’s your problem, I’d say. Facebook made dangerous speech its problem by working so hard, and proceeding so recklessly, to provide 3 billion people with digital bullhorns. Sadly, it has dealt with that problem poorly, favoring growth over its ability to moderate harmful speech. As a result, much of the toxicity and untruth on Facebook is now the company’s fault.
But that doesn’t mean we should ignore what I see as an even more alarming danger: The collapse of reason and the abdication of responsibility by a significant part of the establishment.
Yes, Mark Zuckerberg needs to fix Facebook. But it will take all of us to douse the sweeping conflagration that threatens truth. I’m happy to be free to say that, and I welcome opposing views, however wrong they may be.
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Guest Author: Steven Levy
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