Yascha Mounk Substack

Yascha Mounk: We’ve had a lot of debates over the last years about misinformation. I feel really torn on the subject because on the one hand, I recognize that misinformation is a real problem. If you go on social media, there are false statements, doctored videos, conspiracy theories, just crazy stuff that gets a lot of attention, and that really informs how people think about the world and about politics. Clearly, that’s a problem.

At the same time, I have this concern that a lot of the time when we talk about misinformation, first, we might get wrong what is true and what is false. During the pandemic, for example, some ideas were labeled as misinformation that later turned out to be plausible or perhaps true. Secondly, this whole discourse about misinformation can really be an excuse for censorship. It can be an excuse to say, we in power are going to tell you what’s right and what’s wrong, and we’re just going to censor anybody who disagrees with us. What is your approach to this field? Because you take the problem very seriously, but I think you share my suspicion that censorship is not the way to respond.