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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 th

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.

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.