It’s three against one on today’s thought-provoking episode of The Editors. Charlie Cooke stakes out a strong position over the recent social-media hearings, which puts him at odds with the other panelists.

During the discussion, Maddy allows that some of the senators’ accusations toward Mark Zuckerberg were a bit “overblown,” but agrees with Rich that there are some circumstances where government’s stepping in to regulate social media would be useful.

Michael concurs that the hearings were a “little unfair to Zuckerberg,” however, “it was dramatic and it illustrated a larger point, a political point, which . . . is that there is a growing and emergent policy consensus on the Hill that social media is bad for teenagers and maybe should be restricted from them in a serious way.”

Charlie is completely unconvinced. “I think that this was a repellent example of cynical tech illiterate populist demagoguery,” he says. “And that Josh Hawley should be ashamed of himself. . . . I think this was an example of problems that are the product of irrepressible technological change being blamed on the people who designed the core systems that undergird those changes rather than those who abuse them or who are responsible for monitoring abuse.

“Americans don’t like the negative consequences of social media, and I don’t either, but they also hate any of the things that we would need to do to fix it.”

To hear the rest of this discussion, listen below.

The Editors podcast is recorded on Tuesdays and Fridays every week and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.