There are reasons to dislike Facebook. They’re not what Mike Lee says they are.

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and it has always been. The tension of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread in our political and cultural life, fueled by the false notion that democracy means ‘my ignorance is as good as your knowledge’.

All this freedom of expression, the free press, the freedom to peacefully combine Americans’ issues for over 200 years – and many British, French and Greeks long before that – won’t work unless there are people listening and reading. and observe taking some responsibility.

These Facebook algorithms won’t do all your thoughts for you.

Every advance in communication technology, from clay tablets to tablet computers, has brought the possibility of democratization of information. Almost every person has a chance to know almost everything that any person knows and therefore have better information to make better decisions. Both deliberate censorship and pooling useful information held within the guild has become more difficult than ever.

However, the right to speak does not bring the right to be believed. Or having your message carried across platforms or someone else’s pipelines.

Just because the government cannot arrest or punish you for being wrong or unpopular does not mean that the state should pave the way for anyone who did it – as I once learned from a young correspondent friend, I just discovered it has since become a supporter of a very important university – a lying stool sack

First, no matter how big these clothes are, they don’t have a monopoly over the flow of information and – yet – they are not the government. If you think Mark Zuckerberg is too restrictive or unstable, you can take your eyes elsewhere.

(This does not mean that internet operations should not be investigated, punished, or even fragmented to fraud about the personal data they collect, or to make it impossible for those who do not buy ads on their platform to reach customers. They should.)

Even more important is the real possibility that the blocked messages and banned people that Lee saw as “conservative” were not ideas or speakers to be accepted by Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan.

If that were what Lee meant by “conservative”, William F. Buckley would at least have the kindness to be shocked and horrified.

“The claim of anti-conservative hostility by social media companies is itself a form of disinformation,” says the NYU report, “a lie for which there is no reliable evidence to support it.”

If only it was that easy.

The flow of information sometimes needs to free itself of backed up trash. Not through government action, but through the market for ideas – and wages.

George pyle, The idea editor for The Salt Lake Tribune limits social media consumption to the accounts of the NASA spacecraft. @NASAPersevere.