Cass R. Sunstein - #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media

Copyright 2017 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press,

41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,

6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR

press.princeton.edu

All Rights Reserved

Jacket design by Amanda Weiss

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sunstein, Cass R., author.

Title: #Republic : divided democracy in the age
of social media / Cass R. Sunstein.

Other titles: Hashtag republic

Description: Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2017. | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016038668 | ISBN 9780691175515 (hardback)

Subjects: LCSH: Information societyPolitical aspects. | Internet
Political aspects. | Social mediaPolitical aspects. | Polarization
(Social sciences) | Political participationTechnological innovations.
| Democracy. | Political culture. | BISAC: POLITICAL SCIENCE /
Political Ideologies / Democracy. | POLITICAL SCIENCE /
Political Freedom & Security / General. | POLITICAL SCIENCE /
Censorship. | POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / General.

Classification: LCC HM851 .S869 2017 | DDC 303.48/33dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016038668

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Adobe Text Pro and Gotham

Printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

I think, when the people have chosen a representative, it is his duty to meet others from the different parts of the Union, and consult, and agree with them on such acts as are for the general benefit of the whole community.

ROGER SHERMAN, 1789

It is hardly possible to overrate the value, in the present low state of human improvement, of placing human beings in contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar.... Such communication has always been, and is peculiarly in the present age, one of the primary sources of progress.

JOHN STUART MILL, 1848

Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide usthe spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative Americathere is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian Americatheres the United States of America.

BARACK OBAMA, 2004

If you could look through thousands of stories every day and choose the 10 that were most important to you, which would they be? The answer should be your News Feed. It is subjective, personal, and uniqueand defines the spirit of what we hope to achieve.

FACEBOOK, 2016

CONTENTS

PREFACE

In a well-functioning democracy, people do not live in echo chambers or information cocoons. They see and hear a wide range of topics and ideas. They do so even if they did not, and would not, choose to see and hear those topics and those ideas in advance. These claims raise serious questions about online behavior and uses of social media, and the astonishing growth in the power to chooseto screen in and screen out.

Louis Brandeis, one of Americas greatest Supreme Court justices, insisted that the biggest threat to freedom is an inert people. To avoid inertness, a democratic public must certainly be free from censorship. But the system of free expression must do far more than avoid censorship; it must ensure that people are exposed to competing perspectives. The idea of free speech has an affirmative side. It imposes constraints on what government may do, but it requires a certain kind of culture as wellone of curiosity, openness, and humility.

Members of a democratic public will not do well if they are unable to appreciate the views of their fellow citizens, if they believe fake news, or if they see one another as enemies or adversaries in some kind of war. Learned Hand, a lower court judge from many decades ago, put his finger on the point when he said that the spirit of liberty is that spirit which is not too sure that it is right.

The English language has two enduring accounts of democratic dystopia. George Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four, with its omnipresent, choice-denying Big Brother, is the most familiar vision of democracys defeat. Orwells novel depicts a triumph of authoritarianism, symbolized by the boot in the face, and reflected in Adolf Hitlers Germany, Joseph Stalins Soviet Union, and Mao Tse-tungs China. His is a tale of the triumph of fascism or communism. Many authoritarians are censors, and they silence those who disagree with them. To them, the Internet can be a great threat, and they are nervous about social media, which they also attempt to censor (except when it suits their purposes).

A much subtler and equally chilling vision is Aldous Huxleys Brave New World, with its pacified, choice-happy, formally free citizenry. Huxleys world lacks the most obvious authoritarians. People are controlled with pleasure, not with prisons and guns. In a sense, people are allowed to do exactly what they wantbut the

With the help of its constitution, the United States has not come close to Nineteen Eighty-Four, and it has managed to avoid anything like Brave New World. True, there have been authoritarian actions (such as the internment of Japanese Americans on the West Coast during World War II), and pleasure seeking plays a major role in American culture. But for the United States at least, neither Orwell nor Huxley can be said to be prescient. Their novels are instructive political nightmares, not depictions of a past or future reality.

What both authors missed is another kind of dystopia, produced by the power to create ones very own echo chamber: the power of personalization, or gated communities, which can diminish individual freedom and endanger self-government itself. For all its horrors, Brave New World was a community of sorts, unified by shared activities and concerns. What is coming, and my concern in this book, is quite different.

For a preview, consider the words of John Stuart Mill, speaking of the value of international trade:

It is hardly possible to overrate the value, in the present low state of human improvement, of placing human beings in contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar.... Such communication has always

It is now childs play to compare notions and customs; learning is instantaneous. For people all over the planet, that is good news. Actually it is great news. For that reason, we might be celebrating what Mill rightly identifies as a primary source of progress. In some ways, a celebration is very much in order, and a book could easily be written about it.

That is not this book. My goal here is instead to explore contemporary obstacles to achieving what Mill deemed indispensableand to see what might be done to remove them.