There was a time when the foremost thinkers of our country declared that freedom of speech was to be an unalienable right that could not be mitigated or silenced no matter the circumstances. These men lived in a time when speech consisted of careful public deliberation between well educated people who took careful consideration to thoroughly understand all aspects of each nuanced issue and argued either in person, in a well rehearsed and/or careful speech, or through painstaking writing that was carefully crafted on parchment with pen and ink and sent on a slow and winding journey to hopefully be delivered to its intended recipient. However, we now stand at a time when words and ideas can be passed instantly from one person to the next, reaching previously unreachable audiences, influencing previously uninterested people, and not always allowing the proper time, location, or means to create meaningful solutions to the problems at hand. Industrialization has brought us a new reality and set of circumstances, and we must alter our mode of thinking to fit our new environment. The new age of social media we are living in has created a new environment with previously unforeseen circumstances, therefore, necessitating a reevaluation of the value that total, unmitigated free social inquiry provides when contrasted with its consequences.
Recently, the country has seen an onslaught of fake news on social media sites. It seems as though every Facebook friend’s mother is constantly sharing a news story so blatantly false, one cannot believe any person was ever incompetent enough to fall for its lies. The spread of these news stories proves that that fake news can be an effective means for changing people’s minds, influencing political trends, and creating social movements. People are easily swayed by the eye catching aesthetics of fake news media that play to the ignorance of the general citizenry and threaten our democracy.
There exists an enduring idea that if each individual is given the power to contribute his ideas and people deliberate about those ideas, the best ideas, the ideas that will serve the most people in the greatest way, will surface, and we will be better for it. Unfortunately, this is not true. No longer can individuals achieve omnicompetence as they maybe once could as there is not enough time in the day to full comprehend all of the multifaceted and quickly changing issues facing our world every day. For this reason, we must work together as a society to combine our knowledge and education in hopes of achieving a communal omnicompetence. We must carefully and deliberately choose the best ideas to consider and use the most educated minds to help us to determine the solution that most aptly fits within our society in its present state.
We are living in a new world of instant messaging, constant communication, and the high-speed transmission of news, yet we are continuing to live as if public discussion is conducted through oratory in a public square. As the times change, we must adapt our means of communication in order to best serve our democracy. In order to effectively plan for our greatest democracy, we cannot allow this spread of fake news to continue. The expulsion of fake news must be deliberately planned in order to stop its deleterious effects. While fake news arguably serves individual liberty, as it allows each person to do exactly as he wishes, it deprives people of the opportunity for development of individual capacity and free intellectual inquiry because it halts individuals on their quest for knowledge and journey towards self-improvement by being constantly bombarded with false information which he is forced to discern. Social media can be a place for free social inquiry, but it must be regulated to serve the public interest rather than the private interest.