The Cure for Fake News Is Worse Than the Disease

[Commentary] Since the election, our fussing over “fake news” has ballooned into a full-blown moral panic. A moral panic is the term sociologists give what the rest of us call a mass freak-out, and they are often typified by media-boosted scare campaigns that identify the “social deviants” (drug users, prostitutes, juvenile delinquents, gamblers, criminals, etc.) who are violating the norms practiced by regular people. Unchecked moral panics tend to do more damage than the deviants themselves if authorities and leaders—“moral entrepreneurs,” to use the lingo—overreact to whatever harm those deviants might be causing.

Once established to crush fake news, the Facebook mechanism could be repurposed to crush other types of information that might cause moral panic. This cure for fake news is worse than the disease.