Misinformation is like fast food: All calories and not one thing that's good for you.
We have to start off with the fact that we are a very polarized society and our polarization began before the rise of cheap speech. It has to do with changes in American political alignments with the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in the 1960s. As well as us sorting into two political parties: One that represents opinions, but the other side represents facts.
Dahlia Lithwick: Can you describe how this consumption of what I’m forever going to call, “Cheeto Truth,” implicates voting behaviors. This is quite different from how alternative facts or misinformation affects our decisions about whether to get vaccinated, right? Your whole premise is that there are a million ways that bad facts, bad truths affect how we vote.The rise of cheap speech has had all kinds of implications.
Dahlia Lithwick: Do you want to talk for a little bit about some of your solutions? You have essentially disaggregated in the book, what the law can handle and what the law can’t handle. And part of the confounding problem here of course is the First Amendment. So can you give us a little bit of what you’re thinking of in terms of legal fixes with the caveat that the First Amendment precludes some fixes.