Ya, we have the right of free speech, but hate-filled and verifiably false speech/statements should be punished or at least labeled with mandatory warnings that indicate them as such.
As some of the other posters argued, this is a slippery slope to censorship by those in power, which does not allow for dissenting opinions to propogate.
Given that free speech doesn’t mean that anybody needs to listen, I feel that the problem (and solution) lies in the conduit for the free speech. I don’t understand the complexities of the laws but have wondered if adjusting the laws to hold entities accountable for their actions would have a positive effect. For example, an idiot shouting from the town square has a limited audience, but if a newspaper picks up the message and promotes it, aren’t they partially responsible for that message?
It gets tricky with opinion pieces, but we already have an established mechansm with newspapers’ opinion pages. One potential problem is that the current media companies enjoy no accountability, no content creation costs and profits from advertisers.
On that topic, I’d even go so far as to argue that advertisers share in the accountability of providing funds to organizations that support harmful messages.
There’s a lot more to this but would be interesting to see a country who has done it and if it had a net positive effect.
We have truth-in-advertising laws. You can’t make claims about a product that isn’t true.
Politics is just a product, being sold by a candidate. If that candidate lies about the product they “represent,” and the voters rely on those promised lies, the politician should be held responsible for that lie.
For instance, HitlerPig claimed for years that he had a first-rate health care plan that was two weeks away from release. Finally, during his debate with Harris, he admitted that all they had were “concepts” of a plan. Clearly, there was never a plan at all.
Politicians should be held accountable for their deliberate lies.
The problem with that kind of thing is always “who decides what’s hate-filled and false?” If there was a Federal government mechanism for that in the United States it would now be in the hands of Trump and the Republicans.
You’re both right which is the real conundrum. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that conspiracy theories and propaganda in our hyperconnected social media fueled internet are incredibly dangerous and rot the foundations of democracy. Democracy can not survive if these kinds of things are left unchecked. By the same token however any mechanism that immediately springs to mind to combat them is ripe for abuse and easily subverted by fascists and totalitarians. I honestly don’t know what the solution is, only that we desperately need one.
TL;DR: of that whole thing boils down to “the problem is too hard to solve and all the solutions are worse than the problem so don’t even try”. I don’t agree with the premise because if we accept it, then democracy is doomed.
We can not have a functioning society when we can’t even get a majority of the citizens to agree on basic aspects of reality and half the people are convinced the other half are lizard people that are putting mind control drugs in the water supply. A functioning democracy requires an informed and educated populace, and unchecked propaganda, disinformation, and conspiracy theories lead to the opposite of that, particularly when you have a wealthy group that profits from spreading it.
Technology advances quickly and lawmaking advances slowly. 50 years ago, this wouldn’t have been nearly as much of a problem, because the flow of information would be a lot slower, and fewer people would be exposed to these things. Today, Trump posts something hate-filled on the internet and his followers everywhere in the country see it immediately. Same goes for any other person with social media influence. If Elon Musk posts something provably false, tens of millions of people consume it. A hundred people can post the proof that it’s false within minutes, and a fraction of those people will see it and even fewer will care.
The problem isn’t the speech, the problem is the platform they’re given.
The platform is a tool, and like most tools it can be used for both good and evil. I agree it’s making the problem significantly worse, but hyper focusing on just the platforms while ignoring the people using them doesn’t seem like the right approach either. I don’t know how to preserve the positive aspects of platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and Youtube while also preventing them from being abused to spread hate and lies. I feel like there must be something that can be done to at least improve the situation a little. The various “community notes” features I don’t think were a terrible first step, although they’re also far from a solution. It’s a complicated problem with a lot of potential pitfalls, but one I think is going to be critical to solve and soon because the problem isn’t going away, as long as we have an internet it’s here to stay.
deleted by creator
Ya, we have the right of free speech, but hate-filled and verifiably false speech/statements should be punished or at least labeled with mandatory warnings that indicate them as such.
As some of the other posters argued, this is a slippery slope to censorship by those in power, which does not allow for dissenting opinions to propogate.
Given that free speech doesn’t mean that anybody needs to listen, I feel that the problem (and solution) lies in the conduit for the free speech. I don’t understand the complexities of the laws but have wondered if adjusting the laws to hold entities accountable for their actions would have a positive effect. For example, an idiot shouting from the town square has a limited audience, but if a newspaper picks up the message and promotes it, aren’t they partially responsible for that message?
It gets tricky with opinion pieces, but we already have an established mechansm with newspapers’ opinion pages. One potential problem is that the current media companies enjoy no accountability, no content creation costs and profits from advertisers.
On that topic, I’d even go so far as to argue that advertisers share in the accountability of providing funds to organizations that support harmful messages.
There’s a lot more to this but would be interesting to see a country who has done it and if it had a net positive effect.
We have truth-in-advertising laws. You can’t make claims about a product that isn’t true.
Politics is just a product, being sold by a candidate. If that candidate lies about the product they “represent,” and the voters rely on those promised lies, the politician should be held responsible for that lie.
For instance, HitlerPig claimed for years that he had a first-rate health care plan that was two weeks away from release. Finally, during his debate with Harris, he admitted that all they had were “concepts” of a plan. Clearly, there was never a plan at all.
Politicians should be held accountable for their deliberate lies.
The problem with that kind of thing is always “who decides what’s hate-filled and false?” If there was a Federal government mechanism for that in the United States it would now be in the hands of Trump and the Republicans.
Yes, but would things have gotten this far with a more reasonable information policy? I’d argue Trump would not have gotten elected (again).
You’re both right which is the real conundrum. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that conspiracy theories and propaganda in our hyperconnected social media fueled internet are incredibly dangerous and rot the foundations of democracy. Democracy can not survive if these kinds of things are left unchecked. By the same token however any mechanism that immediately springs to mind to combat them is ripe for abuse and easily subverted by fascists and totalitarians. I honestly don’t know what the solution is, only that we desperately need one.
TL;DR: of that whole thing boils down to “the problem is too hard to solve and all the solutions are worse than the problem so don’t even try”. I don’t agree with the premise because if we accept it, then democracy is doomed.
We can not have a functioning society when we can’t even get a majority of the citizens to agree on basic aspects of reality and half the people are convinced the other half are lizard people that are putting mind control drugs in the water supply. A functioning democracy requires an informed and educated populace, and unchecked propaganda, disinformation, and conspiracy theories lead to the opposite of that, particularly when you have a wealthy group that profits from spreading it.
Technology advances quickly and lawmaking advances slowly. 50 years ago, this wouldn’t have been nearly as much of a problem, because the flow of information would be a lot slower, and fewer people would be exposed to these things. Today, Trump posts something hate-filled on the internet and his followers everywhere in the country see it immediately. Same goes for any other person with social media influence. If Elon Musk posts something provably false, tens of millions of people consume it. A hundred people can post the proof that it’s false within minutes, and a fraction of those people will see it and even fewer will care.
The problem isn’t the speech, the problem is the platform they’re given.
The platform is a tool, and like most tools it can be used for both good and evil. I agree it’s making the problem significantly worse, but hyper focusing on just the platforms while ignoring the people using them doesn’t seem like the right approach either. I don’t know how to preserve the positive aspects of platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and Youtube while also preventing them from being abused to spread hate and lies. I feel like there must be something that can be done to at least improve the situation a little. The various “community notes” features I don’t think were a terrible first step, although they’re also far from a solution. It’s a complicated problem with a lot of potential pitfalls, but one I think is going to be critical to solve and soon because the problem isn’t going away, as long as we have an internet it’s here to stay.
That’s a fair conclusion to draw, but that very well might mean you have to physically fight for the outcome you want.