This fall, President Joe Biden’s Justice Department (following through on threats made by previous president Donald Trump) threatened antitrust action to break up the social networking company Facebook. The threat came at a curious time, as Facebook is facing growing competition and internal issues, and may be on the wane. On October 4, for instance, it sustained an unusually long blackout because of a configuration error.

A whistleblower and former employee named Frances Haugen leaked several Facebook internal documents to the media. She appeared before a Senate committee where moral-sounding politicians eagerly concurred on the ugliness of the former high-tech darling. Citing the leaked documents, the Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook had insufficiently controlled the speech of vaccination skeptics despite company president Mark Zuckerberg’s explicit instructions to do so.

Facebook looked like a big, uncontrollable organization. From the viewpoint of economics, this is an example of the principal–agent problem: what the corporate owners want is not necessarily what gets done by the agents at the bottom of the chain of command. The problems facing the company are made worse by its attempting to censor discussions among its users.

Censorship / Can we use the term “censor”? The Oxford English Dictionary describes a censor as “an official in some countries whose duty it is to inspect all books, journals, dramatic pieces, etc., before publication, to secure that they shall contain nothing immoral, heretical, or offensive to the government.” Secondary definitions extend the concept to “officious” or religious censorship or to some private activities or functions.

There is obviously a big difference between government censorship and private “censorship” of the sort that Facebook exercises on its own network and any individual or private group does on its own property. The difference is that a censoring government can fine, jail, or kill a non-compliant subject; a private “censor” cannot do that. For this reason, I will put scare quotes around “censor” and “censorship” when applied to Facebook or other private contexts.

It must be admitted that a lot of opinions propagandized by Facebook users, on the left and the right, are at best biased or confused and at worst crazy. But that is as much a part of social media nowadays as it is of public debate in general. Because the low cost of using social networks encourages uninformed opinions that sidestep private intermediaries (editors, publishers, and such), social media may be particularly dangerous, especially in this time of anti-Enlightenment irrationality. But we know from history that control of speech by governments presents even greater danger.

We also know from theory that free speech is a necessary condition for finding what is true and what is false. As John Stuart Mill argued in his 1859 book On Liberty, when free speech is repressed by censorship and the market for ideas is restrained, it is much more difficult to determine if an opinion is valid.

Zuckerberg, who had previously expressed opposition to Facebook becoming an arbiter of truth, now favors “censorship” on his network. Facebook (as well as Twitter) has banned Trump and a host of lesser figures and has been pushing back on claims it deems false or otherwise unacceptable. Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, wants Facebook to engage in even more of that.

There are good reasons to defend Facebook’s freedom to “censor” speech on its own property, even if we disagree with how it exercises that freedom. Without private property rights, there is no way to protect one’s life from the tyranny of the majority. Only because of private property can an individual stop propaganda at the door of his home. If owners of social media lose their property rights, who will next lose theirs? The dismissive answer that private property has been undermined in America for quite a long time—especially when we take into account that property rights were, by definition, denied to the slaves — won’t do: it only emphasizes the danger of letting the drift continue.

Like corporation, like whistleblower / There are also good reasons to criticize Facebook’s “censorship.” Zuckerberg and his managers claim to do good, but they are obviously confused about what “good” is. A large proportion of the company’s own customers do not agree with their supplier’s conception of the good. The more a social media organization expands — and Facebook’s clientele extends to about one-fourth of mankind — the more difficult it becomes to discriminate against the diversified opinions of its clients. This adds to management problems.

Interestingly, Facebook now largely agrees with Haugen’s goal of having the company control its customers’ speech. Reacting to her campaign, a Facebook spokesman said:

Every day our teams have to balance protecting the right of billions of people to express themselves openly with the need to keep our platform a safe and positive place. We continue to make significant improvements to tackle the spread of misinformation and harmful content.

This balancing act between different opinions — for that is what it amounts to — is precisely what Facebook cannot realistically do and should not try to do. In practice, the censorship will end up being done by the government, which is what Haugen is demanding. The government deciding directly or indirectly what is true and false is not the way to truth.

“I don’t hate Facebook,” Haugen wrote in an internal message to her former colleagues: “I love Facebook. I want to save it.” The new Facebook “censor” and Haugen are two types of harmful busybodies wanting to protect some people from themselves or from others whose opinions are thus discriminated against. Facebook and Haugen seem to envision majoritarian democracy or politicians’ control as the only moral value. Haugen’s charge of “moral bankruptcy” against Facebook looks like moral emptiness at best.

She — and many others — justify their demands as necessary to protect “our children.” But children will ultimately be harmed much more by the continuous erosion of individual liberty and private property rights than they could ever be by Facebook. Besides, children have parents, don’t they? They are not our collective property.

Of course, real crimes such as murder, theft, and child abuse must be punished. But if the government cannot satisfactorily combat those criminal acts, why should we expect it to succeed at directly or indirectly controlling social media? Using the Facebook network to commit real crimes is apparently a serious issue in underdeveloped and corrupt countries, but further undermining individual liberty in America won’t solve this problem — probably just the contrary.

A practical piece of advice for Facebook, if it is not too late, would be to hire more libertarians, who are much less likely to fall into collectivist shibboleths and the philosopher-king mentality.

And a thought for the illiberal left and right: If you think that Facebook is bad, just imagine what it would be like if it were run by the White House, Congress, the World Health Organization, OPEC, or the United Nations. What if it were run by flesh-and-blood politicians like Trump or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?