Not designed: emerged. Our notions of free speech emerged in a world where publishing was under British law a licensed industry, and the operation of an illegal printing press was a crime which could be punished, where there were parts of the New World where the only legal printing the press could be used for was for the Bible and where there were other parts of the New World where the British Crown retained the rights to the King James Edition of the Bible and it was illegal to print in America.

With the First Amendment we revoked Congress’ power as a lawmaking body to govern publishing. The market hasn’t failed, but other people are reading and believing things that you or I don’t agree with, but the difference is that you basically want to make them stop doing that, which I guess includes me as I am disagreeing with you here.

Don’t forget that all elected positions are Offices of Power and to seek an election is to seek to acquire power. I am more than happy to keep the flow of information outside the grasp of the types of people who seek to acquire an elected Office and the power vested in it, even at the risk that other people are wrong and take wrong actions with wrong information.

I am not sure we disagree, as I proposed no solution.

I certainly wouldn't trust or give politicians the ability to censor what they don't like.

As I said, this is a hard problem. No individual should be censored. But, as with most things, scale is a problem in of itself. There is a significant scale difference when I, as an individual, say whatever I want, vs when CNN or FOX (or pick whatever large scaled publisher you want) broadcasts falsehoods to everyone for their profit. There is significant profit in anger, fear, sowing divisions, artificial controversy; but this comes at a large detriment to us as a society.

> I am not sure we disagree, as I proposed no solution.

That’s embarrassing. I actually did overstate the disagreement upon re-reading your prior comment. My apologies.

> There is a significant scale difference when I, as an individual, say whatever I want, vs when CNN or FOX (or pick whatever large scaled publisher you want) broadcasts falsehoods to everyone for their profit.

Even CNN and Fox can be held in check for literally lying, but by the people they’re lying about, and in turn they operate in a space where they report on a more powerful entity than themselves when they lie or subvert the truth. The American government is also a player in the information space, and its chief officials are not always telling the truth, or disclosing the full truth. So what we have is a wash in which information competes with information, and we don’t always have good, accurate or useful information where we need it or desire it. I still wouldn’t call this a market failure, people profit and lose off of good or bad information all the time; it’s when we allow ourselves to become tools for moneyed or empowered interests who use those programs and writings to induce action that we experience a very real human or political failure.

The purpose of the news industry is to inform, but it has always and will forever be at the behest of people with an interest in informing in a manner they prioritize in competition with other people with differing interests, and it is itself for-profit industry whether or not the profits are expressed on the P&L of a given corporation.