Professor David Sloss has authored a blog post on Opinio Juris (the leading blog dedicated to the informed discussion of international law) titled The Best Way to Regulate Disinformation, available at http://opiniojuris.org/2020/10/29/the-best-way-to-regulate-disinformation/. Professor Sloss identifies disinformation on social media as a significant threat to liberal democracies. He argues for a “separation of powers” solution to this threat that would allocate responsibilities among government, social media companies, and a publicly-funded, non-partisan, non-profit organization. Pursuant to Professor Sloss’s proposed regulatory scheme, the non-profit organization would have responsibility for discriminating between truth and falsehood, social media companies would have responsibility for warning persistent offenders, and the government would be empowered to temporarily ban persistent offenders from social media platforms. In his blog post, Professor Sloss anticipates and responds to several likely criticisms of his proposed reform grounded in practical, privacy, and libertarian concerns. He sums up his argument: “Unrestricted free speech on social media threatens to undermine the integrity of our democratic system, which is the foundation for robust protection of individual freedom. Therefore, ironically, we must adopt seemingly illiberal policies—namely, restrictions on free speech—to protect and promote the liberal commitment to individual freedom.”
