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For varying definitions of best. We have the first amendment in America. It says the government can't make laws that limit a private citizen's ability to expre

For varying definitions of best. We have the first amendment in America. It says the government can't make laws that limit a private citizen's ability to express themselves (among other things). That includes their political advertising. This is a really dangerous / slippery precedent to set, and the whole "we should change longstanding laws to deal with a problem that feels like a local maximum" is something that many people throughout history have warned us not to do. I think (and I don't think this is an uncommon position in America) that some political ads on facebook is way less of an evil than letting our government dictate what is allowed to be said by whom and when. No thanks.

taurath 8y ago
If Facebook is to be the public square, then it needs all the protections and consequences that come with it. You can’t say you’re a senator on a TV ad - that’s impersonating an elected official which is a plenty reasonable curb on free speech - just as you can’t walk around with a police officers uniform. There is SOME limit to speech in terms of fraud.
- jdminhbg 8y ago
  That's fine, but it depends on the value of you in "You can't say you're a senator." Is Vice liable for fraud here? Facebook? And don't forget, the OP is responding to GP proposing simply banning political ads on Facebook altogether, not simply fraudulent ones.
  - taurath 8y ago
    That you need to ask the question sort of implies that there is 0 value to Facebook in catching that they were defrauded - if thats right, then there's nothing wrong with regulation. If Facebook doesn't have the ability to determine who is running ads, then I agree with the GP that political ads should be banned on Facebook altogether. I'm sorry, we make people show ID to buy cigarettes and beer - mass political advertising needs SOME sort of regulation.
  - tracker1 8y ago
    Fraud is already a crime. And in most cases, prosecution comes after a crime is committed. Forcing independent organizations to pre-police is generally a bad idea. It's a good idea for them to do it, it's a bad idea to use threat of force (government) to do. In the end, I do know several third party candidates that had a lot of trouble posting genuine ads... so there's a bit of a problem all around.
    - azernik 8y ago
      > Forcing independent organizations to pre-police is generally a bad idea. It's worked pretty well for discriminatory housing ads.
      - true_religion 8y ago
        Because you can tell from the ad choice that it is discrinatory, and you cannot abet a crime knowingly. With political ads? What is the crime being committed? If it is fraud, then we make it illegal to place an ad without rendering your ID, like with a bank account.
      - tracker1 8y ago
        How so? Is craigslist required to pre-screen housing ads? I don't think so. The ads themselves are illegal, but there's no legal requirement to pre-screen that I'm aware of.
        azernik 8y ago
        Online outlets have a specific exemption for user-created content (https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230/legal); https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230/legal); print outlets do, indeed, have to pre-screen ads and that's worked very well. Even for tech companies, that exemption is limited; Craigslist got an exemption, but Roommates.com didn't because of the level to which its platform actively encouraged discriminating on prohibited categories. Facebook is even now being pursued by HUD over its own tools allowing housing ads to be targeted by race, gender, ZIP code, or disability. https://www.npr.org/2018/08/19/640002304/hud-hits-facebook-for-allowing-housing-discrimination https://www.npr.org/2018/08/19/640002304/hud-hits-facebook-f...
  - IncRnd 8y ago
    The ads never ran. There was no fraud, since was no intent to earn money from Facebook. Lying, in and of itself, is not illegal. While that may be unfortunate, that is also true. So to speak :)
paulddraper 8y ago
Though political speech is already significantly limited by U.S. "campaign reform" laws.
na85 8y ago
Money isn't speech. What's being proposed is a ban on certain business transactions, not a ban on a particular issue of speech.
- mathgeek 8y ago
  For better or worse, it legally is in the USA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC) for what we're talking about. To say that it's controversial would be an understatement.
- elsewhen 8y ago
  > Money isn't speech. there are several supreme court cases that have ruled differently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo
- matthewowen 8y ago
  This is a tiresome argument. The first amendment guarantees freedom of the press (ie, the printing press). The clear aim is to guarantee not just the right to speech, but also the right to _distribute_ that speech. In fact, without that the right to freedom of speech is of limited value. This doesn't mean Facebook couldn't ban political ads, but it does mean it would be unreasonable for the government to do so.
  - TomMckenny 8y ago
    One could just as easily the aim is to protect political graffiti. Especially given the actions of the founders during the revolution. The choice of protecting money is a strategic one, not one of judicial sobriety. And as we expect from that kind of ruling, it falls exactly along the political lines of the appointing president. It is an extrapolation to suppose the founders intended allowing every avenue of distribution regardless of outcome. It's just as (un)clear the founders would be appalled at the current tight feedback from campaign finance which in many cases is indistinguishable from bribery.
  - akiselev 8y ago
Spooky23 8y ago
The first amendment doesn’t require Facebook to publish candidate ads or Russian propaganda.
TomMckenny 8y ago
>...political advertising... This is a euphemism for quid pro quo bribery. The Europeans and other democracies recognize it as such. It is clear that the Western Democracies have at least as much freedom of speech as the US. For example, they do not have leaders who get sport figures professionally banned for what is conspicuously an instance of unpaid political speech.
- i_am_nomad 8y ago
  Though it may occasionally seem so, the NFL is not a government organization.
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    That makes it more of a free speech issue for the government to be meddling in its employer/employee interactions, not less.
    - lolpython 8y ago
      The government doesn't meddle in the NFL. The NFL issued the bans
      - ceejayoz 8y ago
        That's plainly false. "NFL execs admit pressure from Trump a factor on anthem policy": https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2018/05/24/nfl-execs-admit-pressure-from-trump-a-factor-on-anthem-policy/ https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2018/05/24/nfl-execs-a... "Trump says U.S. should change tax law to punish NFL": http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/20978787/president-donald-trump-says-us-change-tax-law-punish-nfl http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/20978787/president-donald... "The report found the Department of Defense had spent $6.8 million on what they called 'paid patriotism' between 2012 and 2015. This money was spread out among 50 pro teams from the NFL, NBA, MLB, NASCAR, MLS and others.": https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/25/us/nfl-national-anthem-trump-kaepernick-history-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/25/us/nfl-national-anthem-trump-...
lawlessquestion 8y ago
The government can limit speech if they have a compelling reason (the governments reasoning outweighs the persons freedom of speech, think yelling fire in a crowded theater). If the government has a compelling reason they can only limit the speech in the most narrowly tailored way to accomplish their goal and still allow the most freedom of speech possible.
- int_19h 8y ago
  Ah, "yelling fire in a crowded theater". I wonder how many people who use that phrase are aware of the original context in which it was introduced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States TL;DR: during WW1, Socialist Party members protested against the war, and particularly against the draft. As part of those protests, they handed out leaflets that encouraged those eligible to resist the draft. The government cracked down on it, and the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the government, likening the action to "shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic". Thankfully, the present standard is "imminent lawless action" instead, which is a far higher bar for the government to meet if it wants to regulate speech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio
thaumaturgy 8y ago
I too love idealism, but I have to wonder just how broken things have to get before people begin to accept that a thing that sounds good in theory just doesn't work right in the real world? In theory, unregulated free markets are always self-correcting. In theory, socialism works great. In theory, uninhibited free speech is one of the pillars of a free society. So if we start seeing torrential downpour of misleading ads with a "paid for" line that's a total lie, making it harder still for people to figure out what positions actually do belong to a candidate, will that be broken enough then? I mean, we've already got pharmaceutical advertising, massive media conglomerates muddying the waters, and a huge rise in hate speech that's dehumanizing people to the extent that they're being mass-murdered. We already accept a number of reasonable limits on speech. Society hasn't imploded yet, at least not for that reason, anyway. I think you've gotta do better here than "it's a slippery slope".
- kingofhdds 8y ago
  In practice, meanwhile, FS works well enough.
- int_19h 8y ago
  The question is, what do those limits on speech really add? For example, Germany has extremely stringent limits on hate speech. In fact, it goes beyond that, and gives courts the authority to outright ban political parties, and even informal associations, that promote certain political ideas (e.g. any form of government that is not a democracy), even if such promotion doesn't involve hate speech per se: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streitbare_Demokratie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streitbare_Demokratie. They have a robust enforcement regimen, too. And? They still have neo-Nazis marching in the streets (and, I must add, in far greater numbers than anything that happened in US to date). And they have AfD, which continues to grow in popular support, and to gain seats on both federal and regional level. I would argue that in that regard, Europe and US inadvertently did a useful experiment: one side went all-in for free speech, another side decided to enshrine "intolerance of intolerance" in law. Looking at Europe today, I would dare say that the result of that experiment is that political censorship is a failure. It's not that you can't do it - clearly, there are many countries that do it quite successfully, even today. The problem is, all those countries are very heavy-handed about it - they don't wince at punishing people for being suspected subversives, for example. And so we call those countries dictatorships and tyrannies. But the amount of censorship that Europe decided it can afford while still retaining free society is fairly trivial to work around, and therefore ineffective. It's basically just security theater. It lets politicians point at all those laws and say, "See, we did something about the neo-Nazis! You're safe!" to their voters, even as said neo-Nazis openly march in the streets.
scythe 8y ago
The freedom Facebook enjoys is not really the freedom of speech. It is the freedom of the press, the freedom to publish. Same amendment, different purpose. What is less clear is: to what extent is Facebook the press? The press, in 1789, could not send you push notifications. It was not gamified with the intent of increasing user engagement. It was not interwoven with a person's private communications with their friends. It did not encourage users to build "profile pages" on which they hang their reputations and opinions. Someone might have seen you reading The Federalist Papers, but everything else was up to you. Any of these provides a legal avenue to regulate Facebook without cheapening the broad freedoms prescribed to actual publishers. James Madison never dreamed that a Senator would send messages to his constituents that make their phones buzz when they aren't being looked at. In my unvarnished opinion, that's not freedom of the press, it's something else.
- slededit 8y ago
  You don't consider delivering a paper to my door to be a form of "push delivery"? At least with facebook I installed the app. These local newspapers/flyer delivery vehicles don't have any business relationship with me at all.
bobthepanda 8y ago
This is actually perfectly legal and is already practiced by government agencies that have advertising: https://nypost.com/2016/03/03/mtas-ban-anti-muslim-ads-on-subway-is-legal-court-rules/ https://nypost.com/2016/03/03/mtas-ban-anti-muslim-ads-on-su... A Supreme Court case saying that advertising is not a public forum: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/418/298/#tab-opinion https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/418/298/#tab-opi...
Aeolun 8y ago
I think the problem comes when you define it as ‘some’ political ads. This is unfortunately never the case. It’s either none, or floods of them.
Waterluvian 8y ago
I hear what you're saying. And I think there's plenty of room on this planet for many nations with different lines drawn in the sand on free speech. On one hand, I think there are many nations that are subjectively better places to live than the U.S., whose citizens have ceded more of their freedom of speech for scores of years and it's worked out pretty well so far. On the other hand, I think the manifestation of a nation is derived as much from the side effects of its laws as the primary effects. By this I mean it's likely impossible to answer, "would what makes America tick still tick if we changed freedom of speech?" Who can really predict what side effects would come out of trying to make the U.S. more like Europe, Canada, Australia, etc.
- hazz99 8y ago
  > ... there are many nations that are subjectively better places to live than the U.S., whose citizens have ceded more of their freedom of speech ... it's worked out pretty well so far. As someone not in the US, I agree there are many places that are subjectively "better", but this is /definitely/ not because of free speech restrictions, but because of universal healthcare/welfare/education. Freedom of speech is incredibly important, and countries who restrict it (in the philosophical sense) walk a dangerous path. E.g. Australia making it illegal for people to comment on living conditions within refugee camps, or making it illegal to take photos inside factory farms.
- mmmBacon 8y ago
  You’re right to point out that many nations have better standards of living than the US. But I do think that standard of living has been mostly due to the relatively peaceful period of human history that we find ourselves in. It really wasn’t that long ago when most of Europe lived under some form of totalitarianism. Much of European history is filled with persecution of people for their beliefs, religion, etc... And so I think your statement shows how much you are taking your freedom for granted.
  - Waterluvian 8y ago
    Maybe I am taking it for granted. I wish I knew the trick to be sure I wasn't but I think it's just kind of the condition of growing up in health and prosperity with parents who grew up in the same and grandparents who were a bit too young for the war. Canadian history has been fairly peaceful.
notatoad 8y ago
>This is a really dangerous / slippery precedent to set, Except for all the other countries in the world that have mostly free speech with a few sensible restrictions, and it mostly work pretty well.
airstrike 8y ago
> We have the first amendment in America. It says the government can't make laws that limit a private citizen's ability to express themselves (among other things). No, it doesn't, and the U.S. isn't the only country that understands freedom of speech. God, this is so tiring.
PopsiclePete 8y ago
This "papers written by people 300 years ago and their interpretations are infallible" thing is a really common POV in America. People make mistakes. It's ok to correct them. As brilliant as the Founding Fathers are, they did not, and could not, foresee a future where corporations have more money than entire governments, where they've been given personhood, and given carte blanche to just "buy" legislation. All in the name of free speech? How far does free speech actually extend - because we might as well cut the red tape and just auction Senators off the to highest bidder on an open market at this point. I bet you $50 that if you were to resurrect the Founding Fathers and showed them the present situation and were ask "so - is this what you had in mind?" - they'd be absolutely horrified.

taurath 8y ago

If Facebook is to be the public square, then it needs all the protections and consequences that come with it. You can’t say you’re a senator on a TV ad - that’s impersonating an elected official which is a plenty reasonable curb on free speech - just as you can’t walk around with a police officers uniform. There is SOME limit to speech in terms of fraud.

jdminhbg 8y ago
That's fine, but it depends on the value of you in "You can't say you're a senator." Is Vice liable for fraud here? Facebook? And don't forget, the OP is responding to GP proposing simply banning political ads on Facebook altogether, not simply fraudulent ones.
- taurath 8y ago
  That you need to ask the question sort of implies that there is 0 value to Facebook in catching that they were defrauded - if thats right, then there's nothing wrong with regulation. If Facebook doesn't have the ability to determine who is running ads, then I agree with the GP that political ads should be banned on Facebook altogether. I'm sorry, we make people show ID to buy cigarettes and beer - mass political advertising needs SOME sort of regulation.
- tracker1 8y ago
  Fraud is already a crime. And in most cases, prosecution comes after a crime is committed. Forcing independent organizations to pre-police is generally a bad idea. It's a good idea for them to do it, it's a bad idea to use threat of force (government) to do. In the end, I do know several third party candidates that had a lot of trouble posting genuine ads... so there's a bit of a problem all around.
  - azernik 8y ago
    > Forcing independent organizations to pre-police is generally a bad idea. It's worked pretty well for discriminatory housing ads.
    - true_religion 8y ago
      Because you can tell from the ad choice that it is discrinatory, and you cannot abet a crime knowingly. With political ads? What is the crime being committed? If it is fraud, then we make it illegal to place an ad without rendering your ID, like with a bank account.
    - tracker1 8y ago
      How so? Is craigslist required to pre-screen housing ads? I don't think so. The ads themselves are illegal, but there's no legal requirement to pre-screen that I'm aware of.
      - azernik 8y ago
        Online outlets have a specific exemption for user-created content (https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230/legal); https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230/legal); print outlets do, indeed, have to pre-screen ads and that's worked very well. Even for tech companies, that exemption is limited; Craigslist got an exemption, but Roommates.com didn't because of the level to which its platform actively encouraged discriminating on prohibited categories. Facebook is even now being pursued by HUD over its own tools allowing housing ads to be targeted by race, gender, ZIP code, or disability. https://www.npr.org/2018/08/19/640002304/hud-hits-facebook-for-allowing-housing-discrimination https://www.npr.org/2018/08/19/640002304/hud-hits-facebook-f...
- IncRnd 8y ago
  The ads never ran. There was no fraud, since was no intent to earn money from Facebook. Lying, in and of itself, is not illegal. While that may be unfortunate, that is also true. So to speak :)

paulddraper 8y ago

Though political speech is already significantly limited by U.S. "campaign reform" laws.

na85 8y ago

Money isn't speech. What's being proposed is a ban on certain business transactions, not a ban on a particular issue of speech.

mathgeek 8y ago
For better or worse, it legally is in the USA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC) for what we're talking about. To say that it's controversial would be an understatement.
elsewhen 8y ago
> Money isn't speech. there are several supreme court cases that have ruled differently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo
matthewowen 8y ago
This is a tiresome argument. The first amendment guarantees freedom of the press (ie, the printing press). The clear aim is to guarantee not just the right to speech, but also the right to _distribute_ that speech. In fact, without that the right to freedom of speech is of limited value. This doesn't mean Facebook couldn't ban political ads, but it does mean it would be unreasonable for the government to do so.
- TomMckenny 8y ago
  One could just as easily the aim is to protect political graffiti. Especially given the actions of the founders during the revolution. The choice of protecting money is a strategic one, not one of judicial sobriety. And as we expect from that kind of ruling, it falls exactly along the political lines of the appointing president. It is an extrapolation to suppose the founders intended allowing every avenue of distribution regardless of outcome. It's just as (un)clear the founders would be appalled at the current tight feedback from campaign finance which in many cases is indistinguishable from bribery.
- akiselev 8y ago

Spooky23 8y ago

The first amendment doesn’t require Facebook to publish candidate ads or Russian propaganda.

TomMckenny 8y ago

>...political advertising... This is a euphemism for quid pro quo bribery. The Europeans and other democracies recognize it as such. It is clear that the Western Democracies have at least as much freedom of speech as the US. For example, they do not have leaders who get sport figures professionally banned for what is conspicuously an instance of unpaid political speech.

i_am_nomad 8y ago
Though it may occasionally seem so, the NFL is not a government organization.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  That makes it more of a free speech issue for the government to be meddling in its employer/employee interactions, not less.
  - lolpython 8y ago
    The government doesn't meddle in the NFL. The NFL issued the bans
    - ceejayoz 8y ago
      That's plainly false. "NFL execs admit pressure from Trump a factor on anthem policy": https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2018/05/24/nfl-execs-admit-pressure-from-trump-a-factor-on-anthem-policy/ https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2018/05/24/nfl-execs-a... "Trump says U.S. should change tax law to punish NFL": http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/20978787/president-donald-trump-says-us-change-tax-law-punish-nfl http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/20978787/president-donald... "The report found the Department of Defense had spent $6.8 million on what they called 'paid patriotism' between 2012 and 2015. This money was spread out among 50 pro teams from the NFL, NBA, MLB, NASCAR, MLS and others.": https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/25/us/nfl-national-anthem-trump-kaepernick-history-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/25/us/nfl-national-anthem-trump-...

lawlessquestion 8y ago

The government can limit speech if they have a compelling reason (the governments reasoning outweighs the persons freedom of speech, think yelling fire in a crowded theater). If the government has a compelling reason they can only limit the speech in the most narrowly tailored way to accomplish their goal and still allow the most freedom of speech possible.

int_19h 8y ago
Ah, "yelling fire in a crowded theater". I wonder how many people who use that phrase are aware of the original context in which it was introduced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States TL;DR: during WW1, Socialist Party members protested against the war, and particularly against the draft. As part of those protests, they handed out leaflets that encouraged those eligible to resist the draft. The government cracked down on it, and the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the government, likening the action to "shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic". Thankfully, the present standard is "imminent lawless action" instead, which is a far higher bar for the government to meet if it wants to regulate speech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio

thaumaturgy 8y ago

I too love idealism, but I have to wonder just how broken things have to get before people begin to accept that a thing that sounds good in theory just doesn't work right in the real world? In theory, unregulated free markets are always self-correcting. In theory, socialism works great. In theory, uninhibited free speech is one of the pillars of a free society. So if we start seeing torrential downpour of misleading ads with a "paid for" line that's a total lie, making it harder still for people to figure out what positions actually do belong to a candidate, will that be broken enough then? I mean, we've already got pharmaceutical advertising, massive media conglomerates muddying the waters, and a huge rise in hate speech that's dehumanizing people to the extent that they're being mass-murdered. We already accept a number of reasonable limits on speech. Society hasn't imploded yet, at least not for that reason, anyway. I think you've gotta do better here than "it's a slippery slope".

kingofhdds 8y ago
In practice, meanwhile, FS works well enough.
int_19h 8y ago
The question is, what do those limits on speech really add? For example, Germany has extremely stringent limits on hate speech. In fact, it goes beyond that, and gives courts the authority to outright ban political parties, and even informal associations, that promote certain political ideas (e.g. any form of government that is not a democracy), even if such promotion doesn't involve hate speech per se: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streitbare_Demokratie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streitbare_Demokratie. They have a robust enforcement regimen, too. And? They still have neo-Nazis marching in the streets (and, I must add, in far greater numbers than anything that happened in US to date). And they have AfD, which continues to grow in popular support, and to gain seats on both federal and regional level. I would argue that in that regard, Europe and US inadvertently did a useful experiment: one side went all-in for free speech, another side decided to enshrine "intolerance of intolerance" in law. Looking at Europe today, I would dare say that the result of that experiment is that political censorship is a failure. It's not that you can't do it - clearly, there are many countries that do it quite successfully, even today. The problem is, all those countries are very heavy-handed about it - they don't wince at punishing people for being suspected subversives, for example. And so we call those countries dictatorships and tyrannies. But the amount of censorship that Europe decided it can afford while still retaining free society is fairly trivial to work around, and therefore ineffective. It's basically just security theater. It lets politicians point at all those laws and say, "See, we did something about the neo-Nazis! You're safe!" to their voters, even as said neo-Nazis openly march in the streets.

scythe 8y ago

The freedom Facebook enjoys is not really the freedom of speech. It is the freedom of the press, the freedom to publish. Same amendment, different purpose. What is less clear is: to what extent is Facebook the press? The press, in 1789, could not send you push notifications. It was not gamified with the intent of increasing user engagement. It was not interwoven with a person's private communications with their friends. It did not encourage users to build "profile pages" on which they hang their reputations and opinions. Someone might have seen you reading The Federalist Papers, but everything else was up to you. Any of these provides a legal avenue to regulate Facebook without cheapening the broad freedoms prescribed to actual publishers. James Madison never dreamed that a Senator would send messages to his constituents that make their phones buzz when they aren't being looked at. In my unvarnished opinion, that's not freedom of the press, it's something else.

slededit 8y ago
You don't consider delivering a paper to my door to be a form of "push delivery"? At least with facebook I installed the app. These local newspapers/flyer delivery vehicles don't have any business relationship with me at all.

bobthepanda 8y ago

This is actually perfectly legal and is already practiced by government agencies that have advertising: https://nypost.com/2016/03/03/mtas-ban-anti-muslim-ads-on-subway-is-legal-court-rules/ https://nypost.com/2016/03/03/mtas-ban-anti-muslim-ads-on-su... A Supreme Court case saying that advertising is not a public forum: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/418/298/#tab-opinion https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/418/298/#tab-opi...

Aeolun 8y ago

I think the problem comes when you define it as ‘some’ political ads. This is unfortunately never the case. It’s either none, or floods of them.

Waterluvian 8y ago

I hear what you're saying. And I think there's plenty of room on this planet for many nations with different lines drawn in the sand on free speech. On one hand, I think there are many nations that are subjectively better places to live than the U.S., whose citizens have ceded more of their freedom of speech for scores of years and it's worked out pretty well so far. On the other hand, I think the manifestation of a nation is derived as much from the side effects of its laws as the primary effects. By this I mean it's likely impossible to answer, "would what makes America tick still tick if we changed freedom of speech?" Who can really predict what side effects would come out of trying to make the U.S. more like Europe, Canada, Australia, etc.

hazz99 8y ago
> ... there are many nations that are subjectively better places to live than the U.S., whose citizens have ceded more of their freedom of speech ... it's worked out pretty well so far. As someone not in the US, I agree there are many places that are subjectively "better", but this is /definitely/ not because of free speech restrictions, but because of universal healthcare/welfare/education. Freedom of speech is incredibly important, and countries who restrict it (in the philosophical sense) walk a dangerous path. E.g. Australia making it illegal for people to comment on living conditions within refugee camps, or making it illegal to take photos inside factory farms.
mmmBacon 8y ago
You’re right to point out that many nations have better standards of living than the US. But I do think that standard of living has been mostly due to the relatively peaceful period of human history that we find ourselves in. It really wasn’t that long ago when most of Europe lived under some form of totalitarianism. Much of European history is filled with persecution of people for their beliefs, religion, etc... And so I think your statement shows how much you are taking your freedom for granted.
- Waterluvian 8y ago
  Maybe I am taking it for granted. I wish I knew the trick to be sure I wasn't but I think it's just kind of the condition of growing up in health and prosperity with parents who grew up in the same and grandparents who were a bit too young for the war. Canadian history has been fairly peaceful.

notatoad 8y ago

>This is a really dangerous / slippery precedent to set, Except for all the other countries in the world that have mostly free speech with a few sensible restrictions, and it mostly work pretty well.

airstrike 8y ago

> We have the first amendment in America. It says the government can't make laws that limit a private citizen's ability to express themselves (among other things). No, it doesn't, and the U.S. isn't the only country that understands freedom of speech. God, this is so tiring.

PopsiclePete 8y ago

This "papers written by people 300 years ago and their interpretations are infallible" thing is a really common POV in America. People make mistakes. It's ok to correct them. As brilliant as the Founding Fathers are, they did not, and could not, foresee a future where corporations have more money than entire governments, where they've been given personhood, and given carte blanche to just "buy" legislation. All in the name of free speech? How far does free speech actually extend - because we might as well cut the red tape and just auction Senators off the to highest bidder on an open market at this point. I bet you $50 that if you were to resurrect the Founding Fathers and showed them the present situation and were ask "so - is this what you had in mind?" - they'd be absolutely horrified.