Perhaps in Will's ideal world most people would naturally gravitate toward dispassionate arbiters like himself to distinguish the free from the cheap, but the trends predicted by Volokh and confirmed by Will make such an arrangement increasingly unlikely. Sadly, Will doesn't seem to consider whether the sort of skepticism he expresses reflexively, his refusal to believe that authority can ever be objective, is a fundamental part of the problem. Deny that possibility, after all, and you enable all forms of skepticism indiscriminately, and you elevate distrust to a fundamental right. While that skepticism pretty much prevents any attempt at even the most innocuous regulation of social media through law, the sort of remedies for the consequences of an altered speech market that Volokh conceded might become necessary may have to evolve informally. You can see an unhealthy evolution already in the antifa movement's assumption of a prerogative to silence perceived fascists or their fellow-travelers, a development likely to be mirrored once the alt-right gets angry enough. There may, however, be some cases, particularly in the field of "fake news" that Will rightly deplores, where similarly informal remedies for the most obvious lies or self-evident slanders could have some educational effect. All that would be needed then would be for the state to look the other way for a moment. Sometimes the remedy for cheap speech might be a cheap shot -- but not a gunshot, of course. Feel free to dismiss this as an immodest or too-modest proposal. That, for good or ill, is your prerogative. All's fair in the endless race for the last word.
22 September 2017
Cheap Speech
George Will credits the coinage of "cheap speech" to the prescient law professor Eugene Volokh, who in the 1990s predicted the coarsening and increased polarization of public discourse as a consequence of the Internet. Volokh meant "cheap speech" literally; information technologies, and now social media, have dramatically reduced the cost of disseminating anyone's opinions. The term sounds oddly yet rightly pejorative relative to our cultural idea of "free speech." The problem with "cheap speech" seems to be that it's just too easy for everyone to inflict their opinions on others. The theoretical benefit of this democratization arguably has been outweighed by social media's tendency toward confirmation bias and ideological or partisan safe zones. As Will himself puts it, "Technologies that radically reduce intermediaries and other
barriers to entry into society’s conversation mean that ignorance,
incompetence, and intellectual sociopathy are no longer barriers." Volokh, reportedly a libertarian, worried about the consequences for public life, but also worried about over-hasty remedies. While warning against statist solutions, he wrote, “The law of speech is premised on certain (often unspoken)
assumptions about the way the speech market operates. If these
assumptions aren’t valid for new technologies, the law may have to
evolve to reflect the changes.” Will, who sees Volokh's direst predictions proven by both the rise of the Trump movement and the left's hysterical response, is even more opposed to regulating "cheap speech." The columnist has consistently opposed any measure designed to regulate political speech, and especially campaign-finance regulation, on the ground, repeated in his latest column, that "laws, written by incumbent legislators, inevitably will be infected with partisanship." Having seen no similar harm in the profligate speech of the wealthy, Will apparently prefers to endure the embarrassments of cheap speech in order to preserve the prerogatives of rich speech. He reassures himself that cheap speech does no great harm by claiming that the vast majority of Americans -- more than 95% -- "are not listening to excitable broadcasters making mountains of significance out of molehills of political effluvia." That estimate may be too conservative, but it's still fair of Will and others to ask whether anything can be done about cheap speech as a cultural phenomenon without endangering free speech as a political necessity.
Perhaps in Will's ideal world most people would naturally gravitate toward dispassionate arbiters like himself to distinguish the free from the cheap, but the trends predicted by Volokh and confirmed by Will make such an arrangement increasingly unlikely. Sadly, Will doesn't seem to consider whether the sort of skepticism he expresses reflexively, his refusal to believe that authority can ever be objective, is a fundamental part of the problem. Deny that possibility, after all, and you enable all forms of skepticism indiscriminately, and you elevate distrust to a fundamental right. While that skepticism pretty much prevents any attempt at even the most innocuous regulation of social media through law, the sort of remedies for the consequences of an altered speech market that Volokh conceded might become necessary may have to evolve informally. You can see an unhealthy evolution already in the antifa movement's assumption of a prerogative to silence perceived fascists or their fellow-travelers, a development likely to be mirrored once the alt-right gets angry enough. There may, however, be some cases, particularly in the field of "fake news" that Will rightly deplores, where similarly informal remedies for the most obvious lies or self-evident slanders could have some educational effect. All that would be needed then would be for the state to look the other way for a moment. Sometimes the remedy for cheap speech might be a cheap shot -- but not a gunshot, of course. Feel free to dismiss this as an immodest or too-modest proposal. That, for good or ill, is your prerogative. All's fair in the endless race for the last word.
Perhaps in Will's ideal world most people would naturally gravitate toward dispassionate arbiters like himself to distinguish the free from the cheap, but the trends predicted by Volokh and confirmed by Will make such an arrangement increasingly unlikely. Sadly, Will doesn't seem to consider whether the sort of skepticism he expresses reflexively, his refusal to believe that authority can ever be objective, is a fundamental part of the problem. Deny that possibility, after all, and you enable all forms of skepticism indiscriminately, and you elevate distrust to a fundamental right. While that skepticism pretty much prevents any attempt at even the most innocuous regulation of social media through law, the sort of remedies for the consequences of an altered speech market that Volokh conceded might become necessary may have to evolve informally. You can see an unhealthy evolution already in the antifa movement's assumption of a prerogative to silence perceived fascists or their fellow-travelers, a development likely to be mirrored once the alt-right gets angry enough. There may, however, be some cases, particularly in the field of "fake news" that Will rightly deplores, where similarly informal remedies for the most obvious lies or self-evident slanders could have some educational effect. All that would be needed then would be for the state to look the other way for a moment. Sometimes the remedy for cheap speech might be a cheap shot -- but not a gunshot, of course. Feel free to dismiss this as an immodest or too-modest proposal. That, for good or ill, is your prerogative. All's fair in the endless race for the last word.
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