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Is it “free speech” to deliberately create a misleading story/propaganda for your advantage, then spend money on fake accounts to astroturf your propaganda and
by abootstrapper 6y ago
Is it “free speech” to deliberately create a misleading story/propaganda for your advantage, then spend money on fake accounts to astroturf your propaganda and give it fake credibility on third party corporate services? — That sounds beyond the intent of “free speech” to me.
BTW, I use to run “blue ribbon campaign” banners on my 90s era webpages. So I understand where you’re coming from.
- giardini 6y agoYou're describing what's long been called a "confidence game".
- whiddershins 6y agoIt falls within free speech, because otherwise the institution which determines whether the speech is what you describe becomes too powerful. The correct way to deal with this is probably twofold: to have a variety of organizations which determine what is untrue, and to somehow figure how to make them seem credible. Those organizations should probably operate independently of the companies actually implementing their blocking algorithms, and obviously of each other. Then we need a diverse enough set of communications channels that each can make independent determinations how they filter communications on their platform, referencing the analysis of various organizations in the first paragraph. This would maybe make for more controlled environments while not having universal censorship of controversial ideas.