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Free speech is about the right to __articulate__ opinions and ideas. To articulate ideas and opinions, you have to think and formulate your thoughts. What Face
by code_sloth 7y ago
Free speech is about the right to __articulate__ opinions and ideas. To articulate ideas and opinions, you have to think and formulate your thoughts.
What Facebook enables and optimizes for can hardly be called free speech. Articulation is not encouraged, merely the spreading of thoughts (both good and bad). Engagement has been optimized for advertising purposes. It led to banal agreement in the form of likes and reshares. There is hardly any discourse, people get silo-ed in echo chambers, and the extreme ends of the spectrum get magnified. Confirmation bias rules, and bad ideas aren't defeated by good ideas because they hardly come into contact.
So no, Facebook isn't enabling free speech, as much as they'd like to claim they are. At best they are a communication tool, nothing more.
- tdhoot 7y agoFree speech is not only about articulation. It's also about the ability to share, disseminate, and influence others.
- code_sloth 7y agoSpeech without thought isn't free speech. It's just people and sometimes mobs saying things. Freedom of information flow isn't the same thing. Democracy works best with an informed electorate. Information flow without discourse is just indoctrination. And that's what Facebook (unintendedly) optimizes for.
- NeonVice 7y agoSpeech even without thought is still free speech. You would hope that the most thoughtful speech would be easily recognized and followed in place of its opposite. However, free speech does not exist in a world where only one group decides what is thoughtful speech.
- tus87 7y agoThe only speech without thought is tourettes.
- bencollier49 7y agoAnd glossolalia, and sleeptalking. Oh, and recitation from memory. Probably some other things. Depending on your definition of "thought".
- talmand 7y ago>> Speech without thought isn't free speech. That's a rather strong opening to limiting free speech. Who gets to decide that my speech was without thought? Is there an approval process? Can I repeal the decision? Do I have to document my thoughts before I speak to prove later that I did indeed think before I spoke out against the people that make those distinctions?
- tus87 7y ago> Free speech is about the right to __articulate__ opinions and ideas Liberal fascists start off like this, but then it becomes: > Free speech is about the right to __articulate__ correct and legitimate opinions and ideas And then you get sent to gulags. Happens every time.
- stickfigure 7y ago...banal agreement...hardly any discourse...Confirmation bias rules... Speak for your own friend group, please. Maybe I just have better friends.