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> We simultaneously fear the power of Facebook but then demand they become the final arbiter of the truth, censoring even the speech of our political leaders.
by CharlesColeman 7y ago
> We simultaneously fear the power of Facebook but then demand they become the final arbiter of the truth, censoring even the speech of our political leaders.
They won't be any kind of "arbiter of truth" if they just decide to refuse to carry all political ads, like Twitter has decided to do.
I think that it's quite possible that a total laissez faire attitude towards quantity of paid speech may be incompatible with democracy, in the context of disinformation campaigns and massive wealth inequality, etc. Free speech without democracy is pointless. These issues may require some adjustment to our social contracts.
- readams 7y agoYou believe that all political advertising of all kinds should be simply banned?
- CharlesColeman 7y ago> You believe that all political advertising of all kinds should be simply banned? I clearly said no such thing. I merely pointed out that 1) Facebook can respond to these problems without doing any (private) viewpoint censorship and 2) we as a society may need to adjust the parameters around paid speech to protect democracy. Most things aren't black and white, and the choice isn't a binary one between extremes like laissez faire and total bans.
- colejohnson66 7y agoI personally do, but I also recognize that that may be at odds with the First Amendment. However, political ads aren’t usually just any kind of ad; They are almost always using scare tactics, or sometimes, just flat out lying. Stuff that would be illegal for a regular ad to do can sometimes be done simply because it’s a political ad. Besides, who’s going to enforce the accuracy of the ads? We’ve seen many times that the government cannot hold itself accountable, so why would they do it for political ads.