But the article has a pretty clear subtext, and it is that the exchange of such information on the Internet should be controlled. "I started thinking, 'How does one stop it?'" Allen told the Post. "Citizens and political scientists must face the fact that the Internet has enabled a new form of political organization that is just as influential on local and national elections as unions and political action committees…This kind of misinformation campaign short-circuits judgment. It also aggressively disregards the fundamental principle of free societies that one be able to debate one's accusers." The First Amendment doesn't have asterisks for "attributed" versus "unattributed" speech. The government may not abridge political speech, ever, ever, ever, period. The "fundamental principle of free societies that one be able to debate one's accusers" conflates political speech with legal proceedings, a confusion, coming from a so-called "genius scholar," that seems to indicate a desire to criminalize political speech.
Horrifyingly, this position is becoming more and more popular:
...Some prominent legal scholars say the United States should reconsider its position on hate speech. “It is not clear to me that the Europeans are mistaken,” Jeremy Waldron, a legal philosopher, wrote in The New York Review of Books last month, “when they say that a liberal democracy must take affirmative responsibility for protecting the atmosphere of mutual respect against certain forms of vicious attack.”
Stalinism chic.