A majority of Americans now approve of restrictions on false information and violent content online for the first time in history, Pew Research suggests. Surveys show that the percentage of American adults that support online government censorship has increased by 16% in recent years—and Democrats support it far more than Republicans do.
The survey, conducted earlier this month and published last week, surveyed 5,115 U.S. adults from Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel, with a sampling representative of various races, ethnicities, partisan affiliations, and education.
The nonpartisan think tank lists the key takeaways of its survey as follows:
- 65% of Americans support tech companies moderating false information online and 55% support the U.S. government taking these steps. These shares have increased since 2018.
- Americans are even more supportive of tech companies (71%) and the U.S. government (60%) restricting extremely violent content online.
- Democrats are more supportive than Republicans of tech companies and the U.S. government restricting extremely violent content and false information online. The partisan gap in support for restricting false information has grown substantially since 2018.
These findings show that, since this survey was first conducted in 2018, the percentage of Americans supporting online censorship has trended steadily upwards, finally reaching a majority this year. 55% of the nation’s adults favor a government solution to the issue, while an even larger 65% prefer giving tech companies that power instead.
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But when the respondents are divided by party affiliation, the differences become even more striking.
Democrats and Republicans were statistically tied in the 2018 survey (40% and 37% respectively), and both of those groups saw those numbers increase in the intervening years. However, the rate of increase perfectly highlights the growing gap between the two parties today. While Republican support for censorship only increased to 39%, Democrat support shot up to 70%!
Given the current ongoing debates surrounding issues like book bans, hate speech, and government restrictions on contradictory information, these numbers seem to be supported by the culture at large.
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