‘“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes”. This line is credited to Mark Twain, but the thought is older. Jonathan Swift complained three centuries ago that falsehood flies while truth comes limping after. What has changed since Swift is not human credulity but infrastructure. The most comprehensive study of online diffusion yet conducted found that false news travels significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth, and it does so through ordinary human sharing rather than automated accounts. The question here is as to what extent the state owes its citizens a duty against misinformation; cannot be resolved at the level of content alone. This post will argue that the state holds a duty that is real but narrow. It is a positive obligation to protect the conditions of safe and autonomous citizenship by regulating the architecture of virality, in the confined circumstances where amplified falsehood foreseeably threatens serious, rights-harming consequences, above all, violence.’
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UK Constitutional Law Association, 2nd July 2026
Source: ukconstitutionallaw.org