COPYRIGHT © 2018 BY THE PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE
HARVARD JOURNAL OF
LAW & TECHNOLOGY
VOLUME 31, NUMBER 1
FALL 2017
CONTENTS
ARTICLE
THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF CRIMINALIZING FALSE SPEECH
MADE ON SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES IN A POST-ALVAREZ,
SOCIAL MEDIA-OBSESSED WORLD
Louis W. Tompros, Richard A. Crudo, Alexis Pfeiffer, & Rahel Boghossian
Harvard Journal of Law & Technology
Volume 31, Number 1 Fall 2017
THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF CRIMINALIZING FALSE
SPEECH MADE ON SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES IN A POST-
ALVAREZ, SOCIAL MEDIA-OBSESSED WORLD
Louis W. Tompros, Richard A. Crudo, Alexis Pfeiffer, Rahel
Boghossian*
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................ 66!
II. THE SOCIAL MEDIA REVOLUTION .................................................. 70!
A. What Is Social Media? ................................................................ 70!
B. Social Media as a Reliable News Source or a Gossip
Platform? .................................................................................. 71!
1. Social Media’s Use During High-Profile Events and
Crises ................................................................................. 72!
2. “Digital Wildfire”: Why and How Social Media
Propagates False Information ........................................... 75!
III. CRIMINALIZING FALSE SPEECH ON SOCIAL MEDIA: FALSE
REPORTING STATUTES .................................................................... 80!
A. Repercussions for False Reports on Social Media ..................... 80!
B. False Reporting Statutes’ Derivation and Theoretical
Underpinnings .......................................................................... 83!
C. New York’s False Reporting Statute: A Blunt Tool for
Combating False Speech .......................................................... 84!
IV. THE FIRST AMENDMENT’S ROLE IN REGULATING FALSE
SPEECH ............................................................................................ 87!
* Louis W. Tompros is a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School and a partner in the Bos-
ton office of WilmerHale LLP. Richard A. Crudo is a former senior associate in the Wash-
ington, D.C. office of WilmerHale. All research and drafting of this article occurred while
Mr. Crudo was employed at WilmerHale. Alexis Pfeiffer is an associate in the Palo Alto
office of WilmerHale. Rahel Boghossian is a former summer associate in the Washington,
D.C. office of WilmerHale.
66 Harvard Journal of Law & Technology [Vol. 31
A. Theoretical Underpinnings: Testing Truth in the
Marketplace .............................................................................. 87!
B. First Amendment Framework ..................................................... 89!
1. The First Amendment Does Not Protect Certain
Categories of Low-Value Speech ...................................... 89!
2. Content-Based Restrictions Are Subject to Heightened
Scrutiny ............................................................................. 90!
C. The First Amendment Protects Some Types of Harmful
Speech ...................................................................................... 92!
D. The First Amendment Protects Some Types of Lies ................... 94!
V. FIRST AMENDMENT CHALLENGES TO FALSE REPORTING
STATUTES AS APPLIED ON SOCIAL MEDIA ...................................... 98!
A. Example: The Louisville “Purge” Hoax .................................... 99!
1. The New York False Reporting Statute Is a Content-
Based Restriction on Speech ............................................. 99!
2. The Government Has a Compelling Interest to Restrict
False Reports Because False Reports Cause Alarm
and Waste Resources ....................................................... 100!
3. The New York False Reporting Statute Is Not
Narrowly Tailored to Promote the Government’s
Interest ............................................................................. 102!
B. False Reporting Statutes as Applied to Social Media
Pose a Significant Threat of First Amendment Harm ............ 107!
VI. CONCLUSION ............................................................................... 109!
I. INTRODUCTION
[A] NATION THAT IS AFRAID TO LET ITS PEOPLE JUDGE THE TRUTH
AND FALSEHOOD IN AN OPEN MARKET IS A NATION THAT IS AFRAID OF
ITS PEOPLE.
— JOHN F. KENNEDY1
FREE SPEECH HAS REMAINED A QUINTESSENTIAL AMERICAN IDEAL,
EVEN AS OUR SOCIETY HAS MOVED FROM THE INK QUILL TO THE
TOUCH SCREEN.
— MARVIN AMMORI2
The emergence of social media led to profound changes in the
way we interact with technology and each other. Every day — often
1. John F. Kennedy, Remarks on the 20th Anniversary of the Voice of America (Feb. 26,
1962), http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9075 [https://perma.cc/Z4CJ-BH72].
2. Marvin Ammori, Should Copyright Be Allowed to Override Speech Rights?, THE
ATLANTIC (Dec. 15, 2011), http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/12/should-
copyright-be-allowed-to-override-speech-rights/249910/ [https://perma.cc/JMS6-DSDN].
