In the Menlo Park, Calif., offices of Meta, discussions probably have already begun to consider what will happen Jan. 7, 2023, when former president Donald Trump’s ban from Facebook for encouraging the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is set to potentially expire. Judging by how large social media companies have responded lately to the aftermath of the 2020 election and the looming 2022 election in which Republicans may take back control of Congress, there’s ample reason to worry Meta will restore the former president’s ability to post on Facebook — allowing him to continue to spread the false and dangerous claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Social media networks and other online platforms such as Google’s YouTube and Spotify can, instead, step up their support for reasonable measures to assure both vibrant political debate and protection of American election integrity and legitimacy. That would include keeping Trump off Facebook.
The communications and technology revolution over the past few decades that brought us a proliferation of cable channels, on-demand video and extensive social media has created new threats to the integrity of elections. Never before this new era of “cheap speech” have political candidates and others had the ability to communicate false and inflammatory claims of election manipulation directly and repeatedly to voters to influence their views about the legitimacy and fairness of elections. For example, in...
Russian military command has been lying for the fifth month in a row about battlefield “successes,” claiming that Russian forces are advancing west of Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region. However, this...