There is now a growing consensus that American democracy needs to be saved by Mark Zuckerberg. People from Sen. Elizabeth Warren to Aaron Sorkin are demanding that Facebook stop running obviously false political advertising. So, let me pose a question: Would everyone be as comfortable if the person deciding what constitutes real news vs. fake news were not Zuckerberg but Rupert Murdoch?
It’s not a fantasy. In 2005, News Corp. bought MySpace, then the leading social network on the planet. Had things worked out differently, it would be Murdoch or a band of Fox News experts who would be determining what counts as legitimate political speech. Still comfortable?