Governments must regulate the algorithms of social media companies to prevent harmful speech from going viral, says MIT economist and Nobel Prize winner Daron Acemoglu. The problem, he told Bloomberg, are “algorithmic feeds that essentially amplified the most incendiary material, the one that gets views because it’s extreme, that angers the other side and motivates your side to become even more vocal.”
But what Acemoglu is proposing is a direct violation of the First Amendment, which declares clearly that the government must not take any action that limits free speech. Demanding that social media companies manipulate their algorithms, which are simply the step-by-step instructions that social media companies use to deliver content users are interested in, is blatant censorship.