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> (because when was the last time someone ran a political ad that was wholly truthful?) Perhaps this is a good time then, to revisit this norm itself? Why is t

> (because when was the last time someone ran a political ad that was wholly truthful?) Perhaps this is a good time then, to revisit this norm itself? Why is this allowed? Sure, politicians lie, it is known, but we've reached a point where the lies on one side (and it is one side, the Republican side) have diverged so far from reality than the base of that side can no longer engage in any meaningful debate on any issue. It's not even a question of bias, most Republican talking points and positions literally do not make logical sense. They scream and rant about problems that don't exist, and refuse to acknowledge the ones that do that are inconvenient. So much of the right is based on such hard misinformation as to be ridiculous. And of course Democrats fudge the truth a little here and there too, and that should stop as well. To be frank I think the benefits of "Free Speech" are vastly overvalued. You shouldn't have the right to say whatever you want, at least not in the context of politics. You should be held to account for factual inaccuracies, perhaps not penalized but it should be noted, and you should be penalized for what can be demonstrably proven as outright lies and misinformation.

bluejekyll 7y ago
> To be frank I think the benefits of "Free Speech" are vastly overvalued. Free Speech really only applies to the government, not private companies, so FB can impose whatever rules they want (though that might depend on if the FEC decides to try and enforce some regulation). Also, even Free Speech has its limits, for example, yelling "fire!" into a crowd to cause a mass panic when there is no fire is not protected speech. Other examples include slander, this wiki page has a nice discussion on Supreme Court decisions as it relates to the First Amendment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
- FussyZeus 7y ago
  > so FB can impose whatever rules they want Except, as evident, they don't. And they don't really have a financial motive to police speech, in fact they have financial motives to turn a blind eye to it. And moreover, Facebook not making more money does not affect society at large, but the continued distribution of misinformation has direct repercussions for society at large.
- caseysoftware 7y ago
  The Schenck case, which created the "yelling fire" line was overturned over 40 years ago: "In 1969, the Supreme Court's decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio effectively overturned Schenck and any authority the case still carried. There, the Court held that inflammatory speech--and even speech advocating violence by members of the Ku Klux Klan--is protected under the First Amendment, unless the speech "is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action"" According to case law and Supreme Court decisions, "Free Speech" is much more absolute than most imagine. Ref: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
  - int_19h 7y ago
    It's also worth noting what, exactly, was the offending speech in that court case, and several related ones (such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debs_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debs_v._United_States). It was anti-war propaganda, and specifically, calls to resist the draft. The defendants were high-ranking members of the Socialist Party of America. Principled defense of free speech is often accused of being a slippery slope fallacy, usually by the same people who give "fire in a crowded theater" as a counterpoint. I wonder how many of them are aware that the phrase itself is a historical example of a very real slippery slope.
DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
> but we've reached a point where the lies on one side (and it is one side, the Republican side) have diverged so far from reality than the base of that side can no longer engage in any meaningful debate on any issue As someone who has no love for the Republican party, I have to say that your statement shows a sort of tunnel vision. Just take the latest Ukraine scandal: it's true that Trump pressured the Ukrainian government to investigate his political rival, but at the same time, it's obvious that Hunter Biden only had his job because he was the US Vice President's son. That's corruption by any reasonable definition. Yet plenty of Democrats are insisting that there was nothing improper with Hunter Biden taking the job, and that this is all fake news. But if it were Trump's son on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, guess how Democrats would react (and rightly so)? > To be frank I think the benefits of "Free Speech" are vastly overvalued. You shouldn't have the right to say whatever you want, at least not in the context of politics. I prefer the First Amendment to the truth police. Of course, if I get to pick the truth police and they always agree with me, that's great for me. But it's not so great for anyone who disagrees with me, and it ultimately means the end of democracy.
- bigwavedave 7y ago
  Oh, there's nothing "sort of" about it- it's the kind of tunnel vision and mentality that make up the extremists on every side (the ones screaming in everyone's face and giving their respective parties a bad name). It's a little sad that the post you responded to laments the loss of meaningful debate in the very same breath as a sweeping umbrella vilification of the entire party and every one of its values.
  - FussyZeus 7y ago
    The first step of a debate is to have a set of understood and shared facts, the reality of whatever is currently going on. On some issues, yes, this is still possible. On the vast majority, and unfortunately the ones most pressing, it is not. If you talk to the average Republican voter about, for example, climate change, you'll hear about China is faking the whole thing to make American industry less competitive, or about how, since we got some snow last night, that must mean it's a hoax. If you talk to them about job growth, they'll tell you we need to resurrect the COAL INDUSTRY, which was in rapid decline already and has only accelerated as coal continues to be less and less appealing as an energy source, because, you know, it's coal, and it's not very good. Jobs have been slipping in that industry since the 1940's, and automation has only worsened it. Yet Trump campaigns about revitalizing it, and the rest of the Republican party enables that, no matter how unrealistic it is. It's just non stop conspiracy theories, disinformation, denial of fact, on and on. Watch Fox News some time. It's unbelievable how utterly insane the coverage is. I'm not talking a "different point of view" I'm talking about they are literally destroying any sense of truth to push their agenda, which shouldn't be surprising to anyone paying attention because that's basically what Roger Ailes started the company to fucking do: Appeal to conservative viewpoints that felt left behind as progressive stances became more and more mainstreamed. This is not a conspiracy theory: Fox News' origins, along with smaller outfits like InfoWars, various talk radio stations, all the way to more recent ones like Brietbart, have been running this grift for decades; enabling the intellectual rot that has destroyed the GOP from it's core, and annihilated everything they ever stood for, all of it murdered on the altar of making money. I say all of this as someone who is ashamed to acknowledge being a conservative, who has slowly watched the party he grew up believing in become a sad parody of it's former self, able to stand for NOTHING, NOT A THING other than squeezing out the last few dimes before the planet bursts into flames. What the GOP is today is a disgusting husk, a cancer-laden zombie kept moving by Koch brothers money and the sheer refusal of huge parts of the country lacking in proper education to admit they were fucking conned.
repolfx 7y ago
Your political opponents think exactly the same about you, though. Your belief that "truth" would be objectively measured and enforced is pretty naive. Especially if you count "refusing to acknowledge problems that are inconvenient" as untruth. Look at it this way. Huge numbers of Americans and especially Democrats believed for the longest time, and many still do, that Trump was a Russian spy. The entire "Russiagate" phenomenon was investigated to ludicrous depth and found no evidence such claims were true; so does that mean every journalist and Democrat politician that fueled those flames now goes to prison, or can't speak in public anymore? Think about what you're arguing for here! That was an absolutely massive factual inaccuracy so how would it be held to account? And let's not even get into cases where someone genuinely believes they're repeating something true, which turns out not to be. If that were the case, given the replication crisis in science virtually all politicians would end up being unable to speak publicly as they'd have repeated the claims of studies that later didn't replicate.
int_19h 7y ago
Orwell had a great essay on the subject of freedom of speech and of the press. https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-freedom-of-the-press/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel... What makes it particularly interesting is that it was written by a socialist who volunteered to go and literally fight fascists (with bullets, not fists), and it was written in the immediate aftermath of WW2. You'd think that a person like that, at a time like that, would be very sympathetic to the kinds of arguments that are being paraded on the left today - that, basically, once politics gets sufficiently extreme, immediate concerns about that should trump any abstract freedoms. And yet, Orwell criticizes the treatment of Oswald Mosley (of the British Union of Fascists) during the war... The irony is that the essay was effectively censored itself - it was meant to be a preface to the Animal Farm, but no publisher was willing to publish it as such. It was eventually published on its own, 27 years after it was written.

bluejekyll 7y ago

> To be frank I think the benefits of "Free Speech" are vastly overvalued. Free Speech really only applies to the government, not private companies, so FB can impose whatever rules they want (though that might depend on if the FEC decides to try and enforce some regulation). Also, even Free Speech has its limits, for example, yelling "fire!" into a crowd to cause a mass panic when there is no fire is not protected speech. Other examples include slander, this wiki page has a nice discussion on Supreme Court decisions as it relates to the First Amendment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

FussyZeus 7y ago
> so FB can impose whatever rules they want Except, as evident, they don't. And they don't really have a financial motive to police speech, in fact they have financial motives to turn a blind eye to it. And moreover, Facebook not making more money does not affect society at large, but the continued distribution of misinformation has direct repercussions for society at large.
caseysoftware 7y ago
The Schenck case, which created the "yelling fire" line was overturned over 40 years ago: "In 1969, the Supreme Court's decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio effectively overturned Schenck and any authority the case still carried. There, the Court held that inflammatory speech--and even speech advocating violence by members of the Ku Klux Klan--is protected under the First Amendment, unless the speech "is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action"" According to case law and Supreme Court decisions, "Free Speech" is much more absolute than most imagine. Ref: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
- int_19h 7y ago
  It's also worth noting what, exactly, was the offending speech in that court case, and several related ones (such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debs_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debs_v._United_States). It was anti-war propaganda, and specifically, calls to resist the draft. The defendants were high-ranking members of the Socialist Party of America. Principled defense of free speech is often accused of being a slippery slope fallacy, usually by the same people who give "fire in a crowded theater" as a counterpoint. I wonder how many of them are aware that the phrase itself is a historical example of a very real slippery slope.

DiogenesKynikos 7y ago

> but we've reached a point where the lies on one side (and it is one side, the Republican side) have diverged so far from reality than the base of that side can no longer engage in any meaningful debate on any issue As someone who has no love for the Republican party, I have to say that your statement shows a sort of tunnel vision. Just take the latest Ukraine scandal: it's true that Trump pressured the Ukrainian government to investigate his political rival, but at the same time, it's obvious that Hunter Biden only had his job because he was the US Vice President's son. That's corruption by any reasonable definition. Yet plenty of Democrats are insisting that there was nothing improper with Hunter Biden taking the job, and that this is all fake news. But if it were Trump's son on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, guess how Democrats would react (and rightly so)? > To be frank I think the benefits of "Free Speech" are vastly overvalued. You shouldn't have the right to say whatever you want, at least not in the context of politics. I prefer the First Amendment to the truth police. Of course, if I get to pick the truth police and they always agree with me, that's great for me. But it's not so great for anyone who disagrees with me, and it ultimately means the end of democracy.

bigwavedave 7y ago
Oh, there's nothing "sort of" about it- it's the kind of tunnel vision and mentality that make up the extremists on every side (the ones screaming in everyone's face and giving their respective parties a bad name). It's a little sad that the post you responded to laments the loss of meaningful debate in the very same breath as a sweeping umbrella vilification of the entire party and every one of its values.
- FussyZeus 7y ago
  The first step of a debate is to have a set of understood and shared facts, the reality of whatever is currently going on. On some issues, yes, this is still possible. On the vast majority, and unfortunately the ones most pressing, it is not. If you talk to the average Republican voter about, for example, climate change, you'll hear about China is faking the whole thing to make American industry less competitive, or about how, since we got some snow last night, that must mean it's a hoax. If you talk to them about job growth, they'll tell you we need to resurrect the COAL INDUSTRY, which was in rapid decline already and has only accelerated as coal continues to be less and less appealing as an energy source, because, you know, it's coal, and it's not very good. Jobs have been slipping in that industry since the 1940's, and automation has only worsened it. Yet Trump campaigns about revitalizing it, and the rest of the Republican party enables that, no matter how unrealistic it is. It's just non stop conspiracy theories, disinformation, denial of fact, on and on. Watch Fox News some time. It's unbelievable how utterly insane the coverage is. I'm not talking a "different point of view" I'm talking about they are literally destroying any sense of truth to push their agenda, which shouldn't be surprising to anyone paying attention because that's basically what Roger Ailes started the company to fucking do: Appeal to conservative viewpoints that felt left behind as progressive stances became more and more mainstreamed. This is not a conspiracy theory: Fox News' origins, along with smaller outfits like InfoWars, various talk radio stations, all the way to more recent ones like Brietbart, have been running this grift for decades; enabling the intellectual rot that has destroyed the GOP from it's core, and annihilated everything they ever stood for, all of it murdered on the altar of making money. I say all of this as someone who is ashamed to acknowledge being a conservative, who has slowly watched the party he grew up believing in become a sad parody of it's former self, able to stand for NOTHING, NOT A THING other than squeezing out the last few dimes before the planet bursts into flames. What the GOP is today is a disgusting husk, a cancer-laden zombie kept moving by Koch brothers money and the sheer refusal of huge parts of the country lacking in proper education to admit they were fucking conned.

repolfx 7y ago

Your political opponents think exactly the same about you, though. Your belief that "truth" would be objectively measured and enforced is pretty naive. Especially if you count "refusing to acknowledge problems that are inconvenient" as untruth. Look at it this way. Huge numbers of Americans and especially Democrats believed for the longest time, and many still do, that Trump was a Russian spy. The entire "Russiagate" phenomenon was investigated to ludicrous depth and found no evidence such claims were true; so does that mean every journalist and Democrat politician that fueled those flames now goes to prison, or can't speak in public anymore? Think about what you're arguing for here! That was an absolutely massive factual inaccuracy so how would it be held to account? And let's not even get into cases where someone genuinely believes they're repeating something true, which turns out not to be. If that were the case, given the replication crisis in science virtually all politicians would end up being unable to speak publicly as they'd have repeated the claims of studies that later didn't replicate.

int_19h 7y ago

Orwell had a great essay on the subject of freedom of speech and of the press. https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-freedom-of-the-press/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel... What makes it particularly interesting is that it was written by a socialist who volunteered to go and literally fight fascists (with bullets, not fists), and it was written in the immediate aftermath of WW2. You'd think that a person like that, at a time like that, would be very sympathetic to the kinds of arguments that are being paraded on the left today - that, basically, once politics gets sufficiently extreme, immediate concerns about that should trump any abstract freedoms. And yet, Orwell criticizes the treatment of Oswald Mosley (of the British Union of Fascists) during the war... The irony is that the essay was effectively censored itself - it was meant to be a preface to the Animal Farm, but no publisher was willing to publish it as such. It was eventually published on its own, 27 years after it was written.