American support for the restriction of “false” information online, even if it restricts freedom of expression, has dropped, according to a Pew Research poll.
Since 2018, Americans had increasingly supported the U.S. government and tech companies censoring “false” information online, even if it meant that they would stifle freedom of expression.
Support for curbing false information had reached its zenith in 2023, with 55 percent of American adults saying that the U.S. government should limit false information, and 65 percent said that tech companies should do the same.
Conversely, only 42 percent of Americans said in 2023 that freedom of information should be protected even if it meant false information could be published, and 32 percent said the same about tech companies protecting free expression online.
Now, 51 percent of Americans said that the government should restrict false information online, a four-percent dip from two years ago, and 60 percent say tech platforms should restrict false information, representing a five-percent drop.
Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents are much more likely to support restricting false information than Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.
Forty-three percent of Republicans believe that the U.S. government should restrict false information, while 58 percent of Democrats said that the government should limit false information. In 2023, 70 percent of Democrats said that the government should limit fake information online.
The survey comes at a time the Trump administration has moved to shutter government agencies that worked to stifle free expression online under the guise of combating disinformation and/or false information.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week announced the closure of the Global Engagement Center (GEC), a subagency of the State Department that had served as part of the “censorship-industrial complex.”
“Over the last decade, Americans have been slandered, fired, charged, and even jailed for simply voicing their opinions,” Rubio wrote. “That ends today.”
He continued, “I am announcing the closure of the @StateDept‘s Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference, formerly the Global Engagement Center (GEC), which cost taxpayers more than $50 million per year and actively silenced and censored the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving.”
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on X @SeanMoran3.
