The Threat of Free Speech, Yesterday and Today

History can shine light even in the unlikeliest of places. What may appear to be the most modern and contemporary of problems may turn out to be a mere echo of the past. Fake news, disinformation, and social media may seem to pose strikingly new challenges for free speech—but despite the novelty of today’s innovative forms of online communication, the issues are very far from new. Three hundred years ago, in the early eighteenth century, one of the greatest writers of English was worrying away at the implications of legal and technological change for what were then the emergent values of free speech. That writer was Jonathan Swift.