This controversy over the political advertisements

newsworthy; and that politicians have already been fact-checked (Fung). This controversy over
the political advertisements exposed a deeper and more fundamental problem that dates back to
the birth of the internet: the Telecommunications Act of 1996 gives social media platforms the
license to host untruthful information under the name of freedom of speech as long as they do
not endorse the content. This could range from simple misinformation, to bots, to fully-synthetic
deep-fakes as discussed in Rothman’s essay. Printed media like newspapers and journals build
relationships with their readers based on reputation. They establish this reputation by carefully
checking information before publishing it. On social media however, there are no editors to fact
check every post, which allows all kinds of content to spread at an unbelievable pace without
control.
Glenn Altschuler, a Dean at Cornell University, addresses Mark Zuckerberg’s response to
the recent controversy of social media drawing criticism over its role in the spread of
misinformation. In his article “Combating Fake News on Social Media Will Take a Village,” he
notes that Zuckerberg went on to discuss how tech companies—including his own—can pose a
threat to freedom of expression once they begin fact-checking and taking down posts that are
apparently untrue, and returned to a familiar argument: that “independent bodies should be
responsible for developing rules and norms surrounding content” (2). Altschuler progresses to
explore the fine line between infringing on freedom of speech and rightfully censoring
misinformation. Although he acknowledges that social media platforms cannot be held at the
same standards of correctness as traditional media outlets, Altschuler argues that social media
companies, too, should actively partake in facilitating and taking down synthetic contents since

Yang 5
the decline of public trust in media would also significantly hurt the value of social media
platforms by reducing their credibility.
In the process of establishing possible solutions, while Rothman strongly substantiates his
argument by providing ample evidence from credible and respected sources and building on on
the claims made by other professionals in the field, he falls short in developing his call to action.
He is extremely cautious to formulate and develop an opinion of his own, even until the end of
the essay; he leaves the writing open-ended, rather than attempting to suggest a solution. In
contrast to Rothman, Altschuler focuses on exploring feasible options to tackle the conundrum in
a considerably large section of his essay. He argues that the social media companies should
invest in technology that “combines meta-data with text and language patterns” to identify fake
news and reduce financial incentives for those who profit from disinformation, ultimately
improving online accountability (2). He also suggests an approach that has been proven to be
effective by The Guardian , a traditional daily newspaper company. The creation of a
crowdsourced website would invite the users, or readers in particular, of social media to assess
the information for themselves, flagging misinformation to be taken down. In addition,