Thursday, April 21st, 2022 Richard Hasen is a nationally recognized expert in election law and campaign finance regulation, and his new book is Cheap Speech: How Disinformation Poisons Our Politics and How to Cure It. We discuss the long-term dangers of cheap speech and ways to improve our information sphere in keeping with the First Amendment.

Cheap speech is lower-value speech that finds a way to rise to the top of social media, news outlets, and everyday conversation. This overabundance of misinformation and disinformation is easy and inexpensive to produce. While the problem of cheap speech is worldwide and ubiquitous, we discuss a uniquely American approach to solving it through the prism of the First Amendment. Potential solutions include disclosure laws about tweaking algorithms, privacy protections to prevent micro-targeting, antitrust regulations, and public pressure to demand high standards from media platforms.

 

Follow Rick Hasen on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/rickhasen

 

Follow Mila on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/milaatmos

 

Follow Future Hindsight on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/futurehindsightpod/

 

Want to be on Future Hindsight? Take our Listener Survey!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScOWRKPFgSkQGKyn4w2b8l9oMndRU9BlboRjqV3SEt7jSfVFQ/viewform 

 

Want to support the show and get it early?

https://patreon.com/futurehindsight 

 

Check out the Future Hindsight website!

www.futurehindsight.com

 

Sponsors

Go to Shopify.com/hopeful for a FREE fourteen-day trial and get full access to Shopify’s entire suite of features.

 

Credits:

Host: Mila Atmos

Guest: Rick Hasen

Executive Producer: Mila Atmos

Producers: Zack Travis and Sara Burningham