Alittle knowledge, per Alexander Pope’s Essay on Criticism, is a dangerous thing. In Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation, New Yorker staffer Andrew Marantz demonstrates how a little principle can be an even more dangerous thing.
“Having spent the past few years embedding as a reporter with the trolls and bigots and propagandists who are experts at converting fanatical memes into national policy, I no longer have any doubt that the brutality that germinates on the internet can leap into the world of flesh and blood,” Marantz recently wrote in the New York Times. “The question is where this leaves us. Noxious speech is causing tangible harm. Yet this fact implies a question so uncomfortable that many of us go to great lengths to avoid asking it. Namely, what should we — the government, private companies, or individual citizens — be doing about it?” Answering “nothing” and continuing to be averse to censorship won’t do, Marantz spends his book implying.
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