Rick Stengel: ‘The First Amendment Doesn’t Protect False Speech About a Virus’

EXCERPT:

STENGEL: “I think it’s a much easier call, as you suggest. Political speech is complicated. The First Amendment protects it. The First Amendment doesn’t protect false speech about a virus or false speech that endangers the health of your users. And by the way, Facebook and Twitter have been taking things down, but they need to be even more vigilant about it and Google needs to be even more vigilant about what they prioritize in their search results. They need to prioritize factual information in their search results rather than emotional and inflammatory conspiracy theories that get people’s eyes. Part of the problem, as some people have noted, is that while the Russians and the Chinese now and others are good at creating emotional speech that people will follow, the CDC is not good at that. The World Health Organization is not good at that.”