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" this is the price we pay for abandoning free speech." This is completely upside down. This is not the 'erosion of free speech' - it's actually the 'explosio

by jariel 6y ago

" this is the price we pay for abandoning free speech." This is completely upside down. This is not the 'erosion of free speech' - it's actually the 'explosion' of it. Free from any kind of filters of credibility, people can now promote whatever fictions they want to promote. When fictions are emboldened by those in positions of legitimate authority, aka The President, the truth falls by the side. The ratio of 'noise to truth' has blown up, and it's mostly a result of our ability to communicate in a more direct manner. The voices of mostly uninformed individuals, free to express themselves on the soap box, are now much louder. That's not a slight: we're all busy and have different roles in life. We can't be experts in everything, ergo, most of us are not legitimate sources of truth on that much. We allocate those responsibilities to people within whom we entrust a certain degree of trust. Like the free press as one example, Science as another. Far from 'restrictions' on speech, the internet itself, Facebook, Twitter - whatever their policies provide for 100x more communication than existed before. We used to get information from news, politicians, bureaucrats, teachers - and some gossip from the neighbours. Now the 'gossip, youtube and TikTok information' factor is 10x greater - and that's mostly a function of free expression. Random people on Facebook will 'like' and 'propagate' whatever 'science' they want to believe is true - which is obviously not going to result in rigorously verified information, rather the opposite. 'Good or Bad?' - that's a more complicated issue - but what we are seeing now is 'much more expression' not 'limited expression'. I challenge anyone here to demonstrate, over the last 25 years, how there could possibly be fewer channels and sources of public information and expression. Edit: I should add that obviously there are issues with freedom of expression, on campus, and the in the commons with certain forms of shaming for certain opinions, but that's an entirely different issue from 'public information' and 'how people are misinformed' about things like election results. The public commons is several orders of magnitude bigger than it ever was. It's not even comparable to 25 years ago, this is a completely different era we live in.

simonbarker87 6y ago
Can’t believe I had to scroll so far to find a comment like this. This is absolutely nothing to do with a limit on free speech but a failing of education and the explosion of free speech on social media. To be flippant, there are more village idiots than ever before and they are all talking to each other on the internet. The solution to this, in my opinion, is a massive investment in public education and a shift of American politics to the left. America doesn’t have a left and a right, it has a far right and a right. In the UK American democrats would be very comfortable in the UK Conservative party.
- jariel 6y ago
  'Free Speech' is one of the HN 'trigger' issues, so there won't be any actual discussion of the issue here, sadly. To wit a top comment is talking about 'suppressed speech' when we have 100x more avenues to speak and express ourselves, and more people have voices than ever before, by several orders of magnitude ... is evidence of that is abundant. YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Blogs, the fact we can now access information from around the world, the readiness 24/7 nature of information, any book, from anywhere, people from around the world interacting on Facebook. Only 25 years ago it was literally unthinkable - I was alive then and nobody was predicting this. If you wanted to learn about 'Russia' you went to the 'Library'. Now - you can read Russian News, videos, TikToks, Instas, communicate with Russians, heck - you can even work with them. HackerNews itself is an amazing opportunity for information clearing and individual expression that did not exist in any form 25 years ago! The very comment you are writing is 'revolutionary' in the broader picture of time. There was nowhere to do this before. Nobody could interact with people from around the world about 'daily tech news'. It's not even a debate how much more expression there is today. To your point about 'education' - obviously that would be wonderful, but that's not going to be good enough. Just look at the issue here: we have incredibly more power as individuals to express ourselves publicly - and a 'very educated' HN board can't seem to grasp that. We're just starting to grasp the power and influence of Social Media - and now that Trump has shown 'what can be done', I'm afraid it will be an 'arms race' of misinformation for a while. Our system depends on integrity: that your doctors is certified, professional, moral. Same for your teacher. The Judge. And the same applies to information. We 'fact check' books, reports. We certainly expect that in the Scientific domain. So we must have that for public information as well. Which is not to say we won't have other expressive channels, but randoms on 'TikTok' just can't be a source of news, other than the experience they might be able to grab on their phones (which FYI can be enlightening). So yes, education, but we need credibility in our institutions as well.

by jariel 6y ago

simonbarker87 6y ago

Can’t believe I had to scroll so far to find a comment like this. This is absolutely nothing to do with a limit on free speech but a failing of education and the explosion of free speech on social media. To be flippant, there are more village idiots than ever before and they are all talking to each other on the internet. The solution to this, in my opinion, is a massive investment in public education and a shift of American politics to the left. America doesn’t have a left and a right, it has a far right and a right. In the UK American democrats would be very comfortable in the UK Conservative party.

jariel 6y ago
'Free Speech' is one of the HN 'trigger' issues, so there won't be any actual discussion of the issue here, sadly. To wit a top comment is talking about 'suppressed speech' when we have 100x more avenues to speak and express ourselves, and more people have voices than ever before, by several orders of magnitude ... is evidence of that is abundant. YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Blogs, the fact we can now access information from around the world, the readiness 24/7 nature of information, any book, from anywhere, people from around the world interacting on Facebook. Only 25 years ago it was literally unthinkable - I was alive then and nobody was predicting this. If you wanted to learn about 'Russia' you went to the 'Library'. Now - you can read Russian News, videos, TikToks, Instas, communicate with Russians, heck - you can even work with them. HackerNews itself is an amazing opportunity for information clearing and individual expression that did not exist in any form 25 years ago! The very comment you are writing is 'revolutionary' in the broader picture of time. There was nowhere to do this before. Nobody could interact with people from around the world about 'daily tech news'. It's not even a debate how much more expression there is today. To your point about 'education' - obviously that would be wonderful, but that's not going to be good enough. Just look at the issue here: we have incredibly more power as individuals to express ourselves publicly - and a 'very educated' HN board can't seem to grasp that. We're just starting to grasp the power and influence of Social Media - and now that Trump has shown 'what can be done', I'm afraid it will be an 'arms race' of misinformation for a while. Our system depends on integrity: that your doctors is certified, professional, moral. Same for your teacher. The Judge. And the same applies to information. We 'fact check' books, reports. We certainly expect that in the Scientific domain. So we must have that for public information as well. Which is not to say we won't have other expressive channels, but randoms on 'TikTok' just can't be a source of news, other than the experience they might be able to grab on their phones (which FYI can be enlightening). So yes, education, but we need credibility in our institutions as well.