Social media posts inciting hate and division have “real world consequences” and there is a responsibility to regulate content, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, insisted on Friday, following Meta’s decision to end its fact-checking programme in the United States.
And we should have laws protecting that. Ideas:
Why would we pretend that? They’re a business and they exist to make money, and it turns out it’s profitable to impact elections.
I think this is a symptom rather than the problem. The root is that elections are largely determined by the candidate with the most funding and media exposure, not the candidate with the most attractive ideas. There are a lot of ways to address that, and giving government power (and platforms justification) to silence critics ain’t it.
To solve the problem of election interference, we need to get money out of politics. That’s hard, but it’ll be a lot more effective than regulating something as nebulous and abusable as “hate speech.” I say we ban all advertising for candidates and issues within 6 months of an election and force candidates to rely on debates (which would be fact checked; each candidate would select a group). We should also have public funding for debates, where the top 5 candidates who are registered in enough states to win are allowed to debate.
Depending on your definition of “fix,” you’ll probably just give ammunition to the next opposition administration. Be very careful about this.