A few days after Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack on Israel, Thierry Breton, the European Commission’s most imperious official, sent a letter to Elon Musk, owner of X, the social-media service formerly known as Twitter. “We have indications,” Breton announced, “that your platform is being used to disseminate illegal content.” By “illegal content,” he meant speech that the government deemed false.
“To our technocrats’ dismay, [America] isn’t Europe, where the state can dictate allowable speech.” Those words, from columnist David Harsanyi, appear late in law professor Jeff Kosseff’s instructive new book, Liar in a Crowded Theater: Freedom of Speech in a World of Misinformation. Kosseff makes a convincing case for America’s (until now) hands-off approach.
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