I assume every reader of the Guardian will cheer the news of a $965m (£860m) fine imposed on Alex Jones, the rightwing American conspiracist. A Connecticut court fined him for disseminating the cruel lie that the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting was staged with actors by the anti-gun lobby. Justice is now done. Up to a point.
One of the most unfortunate pieces I ever wrote was to greet the internet in the 1990s as of benefit only to lawyers and pornographers. Wired magazine called me Neanderthal of the Year. I admit that among millions of other beneficiaries, I should also have added political maniacs. But the guilty parties uniquely let off scot-free by the Jones jury were the agents of his mendacity, the gold diggers of social media.
There have always been Alex Joneses spreading poison from the world’s soap boxes and pavements. As a boy I used to listen to them at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park. We would turn away with a grimace from their rubbish, while a couple of police stood by in case of trouble. Their lies never made it into newspapers or on to the airwaves. Free speech went only as far as the human voice could carry. Beyond that, “news” was mediated behind a wall of editors, censors and regulators, to keep it from gullible and dangerous ears.
That wall has crashed. Jones, like QAnon, Donald Trump and others, can navigate fake news sites and social media to reach millions. For years, the latter refused to admit responsibility for their content, Facebook asserting that it was a “platform” not a “publisher”. Free speech was what it said on the tin. The global village was open to all, ordered anonymously by the democracy – or perhaps anarchy – of the web.
A quarter century has rendered us wiser and less gung ho. Of course the internet has brought myriad gains and enjoyments. The main social media outlets have accepted a modicum of responsibility to monitor content. Increasingly frantic attempts are made to keep up with a deluge of often biased and mendacious material, but almost invariably, by the time it is taken down it re-emerges elsewhere. Jones has been banned by Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, but he can still reach audiences on his own website. He says he will appeal forever. He is unrepentant, while his multitudinous backers will pay. Justice is meaningless without enforcement or prevention.
I see nothing in sight that is likely to stop people like Jones in their tracks. Lawyers and some victims may have the rule of law on their side, but that does not curb the climate deniers, anti-vaxxers, trolls and QAnon followers or the appalling and anonymous abuse that now greets the expression online of any liberal – I might say reasonable – point of view. It is a far cry from the decorum of Speakers’ Corner.
Optimists say that the resulting outbreak of political polarisation and hysteria in most western democracies will somehow correct itself. Freedom of speech will evoke the requisite antibodies and virtue will triumph. I doubt it. As Jones has shown, lies can indeed travel the world while truth is still getting on its boots.
Historians of the news media can chart a progress from early censorship by the church and crown to state licensing and legal regulation. This control was initially employed to enforce conformity, but over the past century it has also sought to sustain diversity and suppress blatant falsity. Editorship was a moral undertaking. At least in Britain, broadcast news was expected to be non-partisan. Laws of libel and privacy followed. These were weaker in America, where free speech is guarded by the constitution and digital giants use it to retain market share. Justice can avenge lies – but not prevent them.
No one seriously believes free speech is an absolute right. The British government is now making desperate attempts to define such concepts as “causing offence” and “legal but harmful”. More ruthless efforts at control are emerging from authoritarian regimes in Russia, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia. The EU, too, is pondering regulation. But this realm of government is patently in its infancy.
The freedom of speech which to John Milton was “above all liberties” is not that simple today. As the philosopher of the web Jamie Susskind has written, social media platforms must urgently revise ideas of harmfulness. “Forms of speech that were mildly problematic in the past now have the potential to be mortally dangerous.” Parents are learning with agony that a teenager with an iPad can easily be driven to fatal self-harm or suicide. Likewise, an ex-president with a fantasy can lead followers towards a coup in the capital of world democracy.
Susskind and others regard it as indefensible that the digital industry should regulate itself. There is “a clear tension between the logic of capitalist innovation and the public good”. To Susskind, that tension can be resolved only by government. But if freedom is to be protected and treasured, this means the US and Europe acting in concert. Regulation must burrow down into the global media platforms, “to bring out the best and curtail the worst”. People like Jones cannot be left to return to his ranch and sow mayhem unchecked.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
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