Alex Jones lawsuit must be coupled with social media reform | Opinion
What happened with Sandy Hook conspiracy poured salt into the most devastating wound a parent could receive. But it is a byproduct of how we allow the internet to operate.
When users on these websites make baseless, incendiary and defamatory claims in the way Jones did — describing the murder of children as a government plot and saying families faked their own children’s deaths — it can create echo chambers in comment sections or topical pages that suck in casual scrollers. Algorithms often facilitate and even boost this material. For their role in this, social media giants enjoy near total immunity from any liability.
As a society, we cannot continue to allow people to pose vile falsehoods online without repercussions for the platforms that permit those lies to fester and spread. Free speech protections do not shield American citizens or most American companies from accountability for libel and defamation. But these protections do shield social media.
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