Mark Zuckerberg Calls for Government Regulation of Political Speech on Facebook

[EasyAce]

He's got his reasons, but they all suck. And will accelerate Facebook's decline as a destination in cyberspace.
By Nick Gillespie
http://reason.com/blog/2019/04/05/mark-zuckerberg-calls-for-government-reg

With apologies to Camus, the internet died today. Or maybe yesterday. Or last week, or last year.

The important thing is that Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, is explicitly calling for government regulation of specifically political speech on his platform and beyond. In his quest to limit expression on social media, Zuckerberg is joined not only by progressive Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) but conservative Republicans such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who are calling for the equivalent of a Fairness Doctrine for Twitter and similar services.

For those of us who believe in freedom of expression, this is a revolting development. The internet, once championed as an unprecedented engine for free speech of all sorts, is slowly but surely being locked down like a state-owned TV station in Venezuela.

Last week, Zuckerberg took to the pages of The Washington Post to declare, "I believe we need a more active role for governments and regulators" on his platform and other forms of social media to prevent unspecified social harms. That op-ed echoed thoughts he aired a year ago, shortly before giving congressional testimony in which he said he welcomed regulation and would even help lawmakers write it . . .

. . . Zuckerberg's enthusiasm for having the government step in right about now is understandable. Since at least the 2016 election, it's a rare week that doesn't bring a new story about some privacy breach or major scandal involving Facebook . . . Zuckerberg is ultimately being shortsighted, especially when he claims that Facebook and other social media platforms are actually functioning as "the digital equivalent of the town square" . . . The far-better solution is for platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to help users develop stronger media-literacy skills so that we can all more easily spot rotten information and develop critical reading skills while also providing more-robust tools to block material we don't want to see . . .