The European bureaucrats are discussing the opportunity of regulating the issue of fake news. There is a lot of debate surrounding this issue and the big problem is always the same: find a balance between regulation and freedom of expression.
The hamletic question here is: why is internet marvelous? Because it's - at least in its theoretical conception - FREE, free from charges and ideally from regulation, i.e. control. I think that this simple idea is at the core of the problem. Whenever I pay for internet subscription, or even if I don't and I use public wi-fi, internet gives me access to an endless quantity of contents. I can watch a video for free, I can open and run a blog without paying any fee, I can read an article for free, I can do a trillion of things without never pull out a single penny from my wallet.
Bottom line, there are no direct costs to do many things in internet and, as a matter of fact, free is - almost always - cool.
But free doesn't mean only not paying, free means also no control. We all know that freedom is not lack of rules. In the field of internet the absence of control on the contents has always been a key factor that differentiated internet in respect to other tools of communication/information/interaction. A complete freedom of expressing ideas without any form of control.
Who would fine a friend for lying about the outcome of a date or a job interview? The answer is obvious: nobody. But apparently this not that obvious to the eyes of the people that are thinking to regulate fake news. Freedom of expression it's not only the freedom of express the ideas in which we believe, it's also freedom to express whatever we feel/want to express in a given moment, even a lie. Why someone should be legally prevented from lying?
Obviously the intent of regulating fake news it's not evil in itself, I want to be very clear on this point, but I believe that this is the classical case in which the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The damages created by fake news are dangerous and scaring (even if it'd be interesting to have more details about why and how), but the outcomes of a regulation on fake news might be even more scaring of fake news itself.
I think that it's genuinely wrong to apply to internet the same regulation applied to traditional media. It's the classic mistake of regulators and policy-makers: apply old schemes to new (if we really want to consider internet new) phenomenons. An article in a blog it's not an article on a reputable newspaper. If a post on a blog arguing that the hearth is flat starts to be shared and re-posted by millions of people, this should not be controlled or prevented. If I want to write a post about something that it's not true, I should be entitled to do so. The opposite of fake is true, and the legal obligation of truth it's something that scares me way more than a fake news about how strawberries can help you to become smarter.
Internet has to remain free in the meaning described above, and the traditional media can re-gain vitality by damming the allegedly negative outcomes of the complete freedom of expression which "regulates" internet, by proposing more thorough insights. For instance newspapers could contest fake news with data driven analysis, facts and figures.
The problem is not in the fake news in itself, but rather in the cultural tools that internet users have (or should have) to detect fake news. The goal of a sensible policy should be to promote digital culture and not to censure news allegedly not true. I don't see how censorship could be beneficial to any extent.
The promotion of a data driven culture, a fact based approach, not only would eradicate at the basis the problem of fake news, but it would also affect in a positive fashion all the level of citizens' decision making (let's only think about elections).
Michelangelo Casini
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