15 ms·

> Free speech absolutism is possible and is beneficial I don't think we have evidence to support this. Pursuant to the last major thread on the topic, I was th

• civilized 5y ago
  > the vast majority of progress civilization has made has been under conditions much more regulated in terms of which ideas may propagate. Lots of good things have happened in spite of bad conditions that hampered progress. These bad conditions have often revolved around a lack of freedom of expression, especially in the modern era, where this has been extensively documented. For example, there has historically been intense stigma for expressing skepticism of the local religion, and scientists have famously suffered for it. Should we bring that back as well, since most progress has been made under such conditions? If not, why? Do you like today's authorities better than those of centuries past?
  • beowulfey 5y ago
    Aren’t we already there? Just replace local religion with local ideology/belief. Edit: parent expanded their comment.
    • ianai 5y ago
      And isn’t twitter really reinforcing that already? So the sun rises and sets as it has for billions of years in the past and will another billion at least.
      • beowulfey 5y ago
        Yup, Twitter is just another “locality” no different than a town, state, or region. It has pockets of subgroups with different beliefs and has an overarching majority opinion. It is different only in the speed that communication travels peer to peer (and maybe in its size) but otherwise it is indeed the same shit that humanity does and has done for millennia.
        • ianai 5y ago
          Only you get the benefit of a whole, new organization of people to shame you into submission independent from your already binding social organizations. How wonderful. Edit-and I emphasize shame because the number of people who agree with everybody on earth is vanishingly small. Meanwhile, twitter does push your content to potentially everybody on earth. And we know that the people most likely to respond to content are those who disagree with it.
          • beowulfey 5y ago
            Well, it is optional at least. Nobody forces us to use it. I have one but barely look at it.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • ignoramous 5y ago
    Well, their point is, allowing all speech may aid in spreading such stigma nationally, even if not globally. Local pressures are at least contained.
    • civilized 5y ago
      I do not understand the eagerness to cede strong individual rights of expression to faceless institutions. Do you expect these institutions to be on your side? They will happily shut you up, permanently, the moment they do not like what you have to say.
      • jupp0r 5y ago
        There was never a right for your opinion to be published on a particular platform, nor is this free speech.
        • civilized 5y ago
          I do not think that social media platforms should be obligated to publish anything any individual wants published on them, and I do not think they should be legislated into a particular attitude toward speech. But a permissive default attitude with limited restrictions seems preferable to me, and such an attitude amounts to a policy of free speech in a facially obvious sense.
      • ss108 5y ago
        As the other poster said, our right to speech is not something a corporation needs to abide by, it's something the government needs to abide by (at least in the US). I see your point below about basically that we should have a more expansive view of the Right than the scope of its actual legal application, and, while I think it has merit, I ultimately think it's just a normative view that most of us simply don't share. If I don't like Twitter's policies, I won't use Twitter (I already don't, and would be even less inclined if someone like Musk owned it). Not to mention it's not clear that Twitter is even censoring speech--there is plenty of garbage on Twitter. The notion it's even an example of censorship is laughable, actually.
  • cft 5y ago
    Modern local religion (at least in the US) is neomarxism, and FAANG serves it on their platforms, duly suppressing opposing speech.
    • toiletfuneral 5y ago
      [dead]
    • ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      You have misspelt Neoliberalism
      • panick21_ 5y ago
        Neoliberalism as a term is something that the Left came up with to describe all policies they don't like. There was something called Neoliberalism in Europe but doesn't really fit with what is called 'Neoliberalism' became and was basically a term had very little use for decade and was basically not used anymore by anybody. Then the term 'neoliberalism' was used in a article used to critic the Chile Coup and from there spiraled into a everything that is not far left. Its really a critic of the Far left against the Center Left and has from there expanded to basically encompass everything. Its a terrible term that the supposed neoliberals have never actually used. But I guess is a great term if leftist hang around with each other and try to prove how smart they are. Anybody from the center left to the far right is an evil neoliberal apparently. Because if not then claiming that traditional neoliberalism is the 'local religion' is crazy as you could win a single election with classical neoliberal ideas.
        • toiletfuneral 5y ago
          [dead]
        • ClumsyPilot 5y ago
          Jesus, please read Economics - the User's Guide', it explains that Neoliberalism is a school of thought in economics, real economists debate it's merits, along with classical, neoclassical, Shumpeterian, etc. This comment is so big on hating the left, it's bordering on 'race mixing is communism'
  • ss108 5y ago
    > These bad conditions have often revolved around a lack of freedom of expression, especially in the modern era, where this has been extensively documented. Yeah, I just don't think this is true. I think a lot of progress has been agnostic in this sense--i.e., "free speech" in the sense that modern advocates of the term use it had nothing to do with, e.g., the invention of automobiles. Was it the yellow journalism of the late 19th/early 20th century that gave us any of the progress of those eras? It was instead property rights and basic rule-of-law things. > For example, there has historically been intense stigma for expressing skepticism of the local religion, and scientists have famously suffered for it. Again, a problem that wasn't solved via allowing every grandmother to be exposed to and propagate conspiracy theories; if anything, one might argue, those biases might have been continually reinforced if everyone had their say. Query whether the kinds of people who have brought about the positive changes to which you allude were analogous to Fauci or whether they were analogous to Breitbart.
    • civilized 5y ago
      This argument always revolves around whether the authority with the power to restrict speech can be trusted not to abuse that power. I don't think the state can be trusted to decide what is propaganda and what is a conspiracy theory. Historically, states have been the foremost perpetrators of propaganda and conspiracy theories. Democracies are not immune. See the propaganda efforts surrounding the Vietnam and Iraq wars, just the top of a very long list. The protest movements against these wars were so powerful and inspirational because the state had so little power to suppress them. Similar movements in Russia and China essentially do not and can not exist. State power is a ratchet. Limits on state power, once removed, do not come back. Every power we give to the state today will be used against us decades from now, in an utterly different context, with utterly different people in charge. Giving away limits only makes sense to stave off imminent demise, which, panicked op-eds aside, is not what we face today. I mostly agree with the people who currently have the most power to censor speech. My interests and viewpoints would be advanced by increased state censorship. But I am still against it for the reasons above. I'm more okay with private companies deciding these things, because other private companies can do things differently. They do not have the monopoly on power that the state does. I think a cultural norm favoring free speech should apply, but it's reasonable for platforms to apply judgment to set more limits.
• johnthewise 5y ago
• ianai 5y ago
  Hey maybe he’ll finally reveal his true nature in an irrefutable way and society can progress a little.
  • nkozyra 5y ago
    Never revealing his "true nature" has been a critical part of his myth building - people tend to fill in the blanks and mold the idea of Elon Musk into their ideal.
    • suction 5y ago
      • ianai 5y ago
        Is there much of a difference?
      • mwint 5y ago
        So you’re assuming his motives based on his skin color? There’s a word for that.
        • suction 5y ago
          point out in my sentence where the bad man hurt you?
        • JaimeThompson 5y ago
          We can assume his motives by making note of his actions and comparing how well they match up to his words. Often his actions are directly opposite of his words.
      • SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
        How much time have you spent in South Africa? When I was there I never talked to a single British or Afrikaans that I would ever describe as white supremacist, or even racist. Everyone of them at some point voted ANC, mostly in Mandela‘s time. However, going through Durban, I saw the dead remains of Namibian immigrants who were just necklaced in a almost 100% black area. Almost all the murder or violence there is white aggressors. I was forced out of Escort one day for being white. And our car was attacked by bottles and rocks in Mooi River, very presumably because we were the only white people around, although I didn’t ask specifically. Slandering someone you don’t know as white supremacist because they are a South African white, is really messed up.
• pxmpxm 5y ago
  > We've never had a situation where fake news can and does spread the way it This is a recycled church argument from when the Gutenberg press came around...
  • ss108 5y ago
    It's intellectually lazy to ignore the very different power of the internet and the very different social context in which the relevant technologies are developing. For example, the Gutenberg press didn't let literally any idiot immediately distribute their inane thoughts to everybody. There were still barriers of literacy, etc.
    • guerrilla 5y ago
      Actually, it was in a sense worse, it only let those able to afford to print distribute their potentially inane thoughts. It did not distinguish whether thoughts were inane or not, it only distinguished how much money you had. The assumption that being able to afford something prevents one from or is mutually exclusive with having inane thoughts to express is, I think all of history would corroborate, completely unwarranted.
    • boredumb 5y ago
      Being incredibly generous, barely 20% of the US population even logs onto twitter.
    • macinjosh 5y ago
      So what you're saying is illiteracy was a good thing? Perhaps we should bring that back /s
• mrfusion 5y ago
  > ..the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error. John Stuart Mill https://www.utilitarianism.com/ol/two.html https://www.utilitarianism.com/ol/two.html
  • smackeyacky 5y ago
    With respect, the handbill or pamphlet was about the most subversive means of communication he saw, in an age when literacy wasn't universal. The social media morass is something entirely different. There is no precedent for the mass hysteria of something as dumb as Qanon. Dead presidents dead children emerging from the grave to save the world? Oh wait...Jesus...David..rocks...easter. Nvm.
    • op00to 5y ago
      It took hundreds of years of proselytizing by some very highly educated people for Jesus David rocks Easter to have an affect on the world. Today, people who barely can string coherent thoughts together can have an instant platform to spread idiocy. I guess what I’m saying is the risk is much greater now for idiocy to take over than before.
    • deadpannini 5y ago
      The main change new technologies bring is that we can now see that a great many people disagree with us.
    • soundnote 5y ago
      The Taiping Rebellion in Qing China between 1850 and 1864. It was started by a man called Hong Xiuquan who failed his mandarin examinations, fell into a psychosis of some kind, and came to believe he was the brother of Jesus. The cult he started was wildly successful and turned an entire province into a cultist theocracy before being quashed by the Qing.
• mrfusion 5y ago
  > We've never had a situation where fake news can and does spread the way it does today, where authorities are being undermined like this and casually dismissed by people with no knowledge of the respective fields, etc. If authorities were never “undermined” you would still be drinking cocaine, giving your kids cough syrup laced with heroin, spraying people with DDT, and also smoking the cigarette brand your doctor recommended.
  • ceejayoz 5y ago
    Huh? The authorities are the ones who stopped each of those. With regulation.
    • ekianjo 5y ago
      Lol they fought tooth and nail against any change for a long time. Look at oxycontin in the US and how the FDA was complicit for like 20 years.
    • themitigating 5y ago
      Because the public was informed by the news. However, now that some are demonizing the the media or "The Main Stream Media" people trust it less. This was properly done to prevent the public from being informed about bad actors.
      • samstave 5y ago
        >the public was informed by the news --- inform (v.) early 14c., "to train or instruct in some specific subject," from Old French informer, enformer "instruct, teach" (13c.) and directly from Latin informare "to shape, give form to, delineate," figuratively "train, instruct, educate," from in- "into" (from PIE root *en "in") + formare "to form, shape," from forma "form" (see form (n.)). In early use also enform until c. 1600. Sense of "report facts or news, communicate information to" first recorded late 14c. Related: Informed; informing.
        • themitigating 5y ago
• pmontra 5y ago
  All speech must be allowed. The problem to solve is the scale and speed of diffusion. Most speech used to be confined into the room it was spoken or into a circle of friends. Damage was limited. Now everybody can chat with everybody else. The damage can bring down countries in a few years.
  • ss108 5y ago
    I get what you're trying to say, but a) I just don't see a strong case for why the fundamental proposition that it all must be allowed is something we should all hold; b) I don't think, even given/assuming the desirability of allowing all speech, the tension you allude to is resolvable.
  • jumpkick 5y ago
    It’s a common talking point in the US that the second amendment was written in a time when the most powerful guns were rifles that shot balls which took tens of seconds, at best, to reload. That the authors of the right to bear arms weren’t thinking about automatic handguns and that the amendment can’t apply to today because of modern weaponry. Maybe that’s the same for the first amendment too: it was written for a different time, with the technology of the time in mind, and so it can’t apply now.
    • ss108 5y ago
      It's funny, because a lot of the arguments in this thread in favor of maximal free speech use the example of past religious suppression and orthodoxy as support, and they act like they are on the side of the bloody Enlightenment, piercing the darkness of ignorant r3ligionz, but if you disagree with the rules set by the constitution on speech or guns[0], they want to cling to that text as it was written in the 18th century religiously, the same way a fundamentalist Muslim doesn't want to alter anything in the religion despite societal changes that have occurred since the 7th century (using this example because I'm Muslim, not because I'm a bigot who wants to pick on Muslims). [0] Legally, it's debatable whether the 2nd Amd applied to the bearing of arms for personal use, but we can go by the law on the books right now, and I think that the ship has sailed anyways
  • 5y ago
• zosima 5y ago
  Well, we have seen how authoritarian repression of alternative viewpoints turned out, with the imprisonment of Galileo, execution of Thomas More, horrors of Stalin and Hitler and too many more to mention. And we have seen what immense improvements of the conditions of man came through a free society like the founding of USA, with freedom of speech and eventual total abolishment of slavery. (Slavery, which up to then more-or-less had been part of the vast majority of civilizations, from Asia to Africa, to America, to Europe). And now you argue to run that experiment again, just to be sure?
  • ss108 5y ago
    The US wasn't like this in terms of free speech right off the bat (in both legal and cultural terms), and your historical analogies aren't well-supported. Stalin was able to kill a lot of people due to, inter alia, a lack of what we could term "the rule-of-law", and he did it in part to direct as many resources as possible towards industrialization. Hitler is a demagogue who arguably took advantage of a situation where anyone could say almost anything, and where faith in more standard institutions was low. Nobody is advocating for actually punishing people based on what they say, let alone in as dire a manner as execution, so the examples of Galileo and Moore are irrelevant.
  • themitigating 5y ago
    Isn't that more about authoritarian governments? Hitler was elected and wrote down with he thought in a book.
  • pgcj_poster 5y ago
    The United States abolished slavery later than most other Western countries, including the British Empire, and at its founding was "free" only for a minority of white, land-owning males. While the Bill of Rights protected local elites from dictates of the federal government, it was not applied to state governments until the 20th century. State-level blasphemy laws were applied up until the 1930s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law_in_the_United_St.... Additionally, free speech was applied highly unevenly throughout the 20th century. The 1960-70s liberation movements that gave us most of our substantive freedoms were fought viciously by the US government, with methods that went as far as assassination: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO. This, however, is not particularly relevant to content moderation on websites.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• jumpman500 5y ago
  > Pursuant to the last major thread on the topic, I was thinking further about it, and realized that the vast majority of progress civilization has made has been under conditions much more regulated in terms of which ideas may propagate. We've never had a situation where fake news can and does spread the way it does today, where authorities are being undermined like this and casually dismissed by people with no knowledge of the respective fields, etc. I don’t think you have evidence to support this either. Really hard to say when progress in a civilization happens, and how it would be different if norms were different. Just because historically speech has been controlled doesn’t mean anything. Slavery also was well accepted and “progressed” civilization, but most people don’t want slavery in the modern world.
  • ss108 5y ago
    I think you made a good point; to me the result is that we have to work off of where we are now and we are going, in the contemporary moment. And to me, that establishes even further that, at minimum, big platforms should be allowed and encouraged to moderate speech. The reason I say it strengthens that position is because a lot of the historical arguments fall away, leaving us with a world where free speech and the internet have permitted things like QAnon and anti-vaxxers to flourish.
• playpause 5y ago
  Free speech absolutism doesn't mean you can get away with any crime just because it involved you saying something. Even free speech absolutists agree that falsely yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre in order to cause a fatal stampede is (and should be) a criminal act. But the crime is not the utterance of the word. You could commit the same crime by setting off a fire alarm. In either case, the crime is in the action of tricking a group of people into stampeding. Similarly, impersonating a police officer is illegal. You could do this by lying (telling a gullible person that you are a police officer), or by wearing a police uniform in public. The criminal action is tricking people into thinking you're a police officer, whether you do it with lies or clothes. Lying itself is not illegal, but a lie may constitute an action that is criminal.
  • jesusofnazarath 5y ago
  • timeon 5y ago
    > Even free speech absolutists agree that falsely yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre in order to cause a fatal stampede is (and should be) a criminal act. Then they are not really 'absolutists'. Either you are free to speak or not. If you are considering something as criminal act and some other not then you are not 'free speech absolutists'. Words can have consequences yes, but you are here just arbitrary choosing which one can and which one can not have consequences.
    • f38zf5vdt 5y ago
      In what point in time or space has a human had the ability to communicate all of their ideas and not have consequences from them? There has never been a time in history in the United States where you could say or publish absolutely anything you wanted and were immediately absolved of all responsibility, government or otherwise, by invoking the first amendment. The US obscenity law still exists on the books today. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_obscenity_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_obscenity_law
• tomp 5y ago
  > the vast majority of progress civilization has made has been under conditions much more regulated in terms of who can have sex with whom
• HeckFeck 5y ago
  > The notion that all speech should be allowed actually seems stupid to me on its face, the more that I consider it. Who will decide which speech will be forbidden, and on what basis will the decision be made? How accountable will this person or body be, and to whom? Will it work transparently or in secret? How will it enforce its decisions? Who will be bound by them? What punishment will be appropriate for those who utter forbidden words? The praciticalities of censorship-enforcement are as nightmarish as the "ethical" arguments for it.
• david_draco 5y ago
  Free speech + Karma + community self-moderation + community self meta-moderation can work, as slashdot (and HN) showed.
• disambiguation 5y ago
  > The notion that all speech should be allowed actually seems stupid to me on its face, the more that I consider it. I couldn't agree more. I motion that we ban your speech immediately from this moment forward ;) Kidding aside, you've set up a false dichotomy. While absolute free speech itself (holocaust denial, etc.) is absurd, history shows that you can either have absolute free speech or you have censor authorities abusing their powers for political gains. In the real world those are your only two options.
  • wmeredith 5y ago
    You've set up your own false dichotomy, and have done it in literally the next sentence after accusing someone else of doing the same. Amazing. The situation is nuanced. It's not black and white–it's not easy. There is some balance to be struck on free speech. Some speech should be protected (dissent against the government), some should be forbidden (inciting a riot), and it's a thorny ever evolving problem to figure out what exactly defines those terms.
    • robertlagrant 5y ago
      You have not demonstrated a false dichotomy. Even inciting a riot doesn't have to be forbidden. Rioting itself is the problem, not talking about rioting. We may decide it's better to not allow rioting speech, but that doesn't make it a false dichotomy.
      • DaltonCoffee 5y ago
        I think he means this bit: >you can either have ... In the real world those are your only two options
    • spiderice 5y ago
      I'm not sure it is a _false_ dichotomy though. GP is basically saying there are two options. 1. Absolute free speech 2. People who have the power to censor, and abuse it You're basically just adding a third option 3. People who have the power to censor, and don't abuse it. I think many people would argue that #3 is impossible, and an unachievable ideal. At the very least, nobody is ever going to be able to agree that power isn't being abused in #3. In which case, GP's original 2 options are not a false dichotomy, and are simply the reality of the situation. edit: formatting
• caeril 5y ago
  > the vast majority of progress civilization has made You know for such a scientifically-minded group as HN, we sure seem to embrace Whig History as if it's axiomatic that the progress we've made thus far is some sort of global maxima. We don't have a control group timeline. We don't know the type and speed with which we'd have made different progress under different intellectual or social regimes. There is absolutely NO reason to believe that the path we've taken has led us to the Best Of All Possible Worlds.
  • ss108 5y ago
    Oh I don't really disagree! I just think the limit on our knowledge that you describe should lead us more towards caution than the opposite in a lot of situations. Because it could be worse too.
• throwawayacc2 5y ago
  > The notion that all speech should be allowed actually seems stupid to me on its face, the more that I consider it. The logical conclusion of this is speech should be regulated. And if speech is regulated, the next question is by whom? Good luck trying to get people to agree on this and even more good luck having this not be abused by those in charge. What you will end up with is a dictatorship like China and Russia.
  • stouset 5y ago
    There are bountiful examples of regulated speech in the modern world and yet the world isn't only China and Russia. Speech is regulated right here on this platform, where you clearly have no qualms with participating. Speech is regulated in Germany, where it is outright illegal to express Nazi-sympathizing opinions or to deny the Holocaust. Speech is regulated in the US, where you cannot shout "fire" in a crowded theater or promote investments you haven't disclosed your stake in. Not all slopes are slippery.
    • throwawayacc2 5y ago
      > or to deny the Holocaust Purely out of curiosity, what do you think about government mandated beliefs?
      • stouset 5y ago
        The government doesn't mandate beliefs. In this case, the government denies you a platform to spread particular beliefs. It's hard to argue that leaving holocaust denial out of the discourse is losing much of value.
        • throwawayacc2 5y ago
          > In this case, the government denies you a platform to spread particular beliefs. Is this something you believe to be a good thing?
          • 5y ago
• rlewkov 5y ago
  In general, more free speech is always preferable to less free speech. If you could stand on your proverbial soapbox and say something in the town square then you should be able to say the same thing on Twitter (modern day town square) without being censored. No one knows exactly what Elon will do but I think whatever he does will be a positive ... IMHO.
  • ss108 5y ago
    "In general, more free speech is always preferable to less free speech." Again, why? This is something people are repeating almost dogmatically in this thread, and the examples from history they point to in order to support this are inapposite in numerous ways. On the other hand, we have pretty concrete examples about how verifiably false information is spreading in contemporary society, in addition to things like hate speech.
    • jesusofnazarath 5y ago
• dang 5y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31025090 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31025090. (Not for moderation reasons—simply to prune the thread so the server isn't quite as overwhelmed.)
• rayiner 5y ago
  > We've never had a situation where fake news can and does spread the way it does today, where authorities are being undermined like this and casually dismissed by people with no knowledge of the respective fields, etc Real authorities don't need society to defer to them as such. Their mastery over nature--the power of their ideas to deliver tangible outcomes--makes their authority undeniable. It's the people whose expertise is of marginal real-world value who insist on deference to their "authority." At the limit, it's the clergy that insist on social norms to defend their claim to authority. Today, you'll find those sorts of folks mostly in the social sciences, insisting that their PhD in XYZ studies entitles them to speak authoritatively on issues of general concern: https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm.
  • ss108 5y ago
    They do have that authority. One of the reasons I left tech is precisely this attitude I see prevalent among engineers where they don't respect other peoples' areas of expertise. Just because something is of general concern doesn't mean everyone is equal in terms of their mental models or knowledge of the issues.
    • rayiner 5y ago
      "Knowledge" is not the same as "expertise" in the sense OP means above. Clergy go to school and have degrees and have deep knowledge in their field, but that doesn't mean that ordinary people owe them any deference on areas of general concern. True authority automatically draws respect because it enables those experts to do things and explain things ordinary people cannot. It's not just engineers--it's carpenters, accountants, lawyers, doctors, electricians, mechanics, etc. If literacy rates were skyrocketing because of the work done by Doctorates in Education nobody would be making snarky comments about them.
      • ss108 5y ago
        > True authority automatically draws respect because it enables those experts to do things and explain things ordinary people cannot. Taking a generous view of what you're saying ("authority gets as much respect as it merits in a kind of free market of ideas/actions"), I just think that's not true of contemporary Western culture at all. People denigrate authority all the time without any knowledge of the subject-matter. It's become a real problem in this culture. I also don't know why you think authority and expertise need to be tied to "doing". And, on both points, I can assure you lawyers can't "do" anything particularly interesting and also that what narrow expertise they do have is constantly denigrated--it definitely does not automatically draw anyone's respect lol. Often, they have a good knowledge of how law and government work, and also the reason why some laws are how they are. I see a lot of people denigrating and dismissing reasoned articulations of why some laws are x, why you can't automatically blame y government official for z outcome, etc. I find that people on the political fringes tend to really just totally ignore such things because they just want to blame (blame is a huge part of both progressivism and Trumpism). We have an adolescent culture.
• abduhl 5y ago
  >> We've never had a situation where fake news can and does spread the way it does today, where authorities are being undermined like this and casually dismissed by people with no knowledge of the respective fields, etc. ... The notion that all speech should be allowed actually seems stupid to me on its face, the more that I consider it. Seeing this come from someone in the legal profession is deeply concerning, although I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a "Biglaw first year" is in favor of restrictions on speech that would elevate their corporate clients' interests over the public's. It's important to understand history here, which you obviously do not. The Gutenberg press took the power of knowledge transfer from a small group of people (the church) and gave it to the larger public as a whole. You would argue that this did not accomplish as much as the internet has because people were still illiterate and writers still had to find a publisher; however, you are arguing quantum (erroneously, as well) rather than kind and so we should actually look at the quantum of change the internet has wrought. To do this we need to fast forward from the 15th century to the 20th and examine another technology that caused a fundamental change in the spread of information: radio. Radio blew away your literacy barriers, and the early history of radio establishes that (prior to FCC regulations) nearly anybody could start their own local radio station. "Fake news" and anti-authority speech was rampant in the early days of the radio. There are numerous books on the subject and the government's attempts to rein in this speech, you can find most of them by googling the phrase "Radio Right." Along comes TV, and sensationalism grows along with people's access to information. Now we can accurately compare quantum. Did the internet bring about as large a change in conditions as the Gutenberg press? That answer is not so clear cut as you have argued elsewhere here. The Gutenberg press took from the privileged few and gave to a much larger class of people. The internet took from a larger privileged few (radio and television) and gave to a much larger class of people. However, similar to the Gutenberg press's problems with literacy and access to a publisher, the internet's impact is diminished by its own barriers: access to the internet at all, access to electricity, and literacy (English is not the world's language, after all). The history of mass communication is not as black and white as you seem to suggest, and it is certainly not as barren of important movements forward. Where we are today is just the end of a long, slow march towards giving the public more free speech and access to information, a march which has been subverted and fought by governments every step of the way. The government's primary way of fighting this has historically been the "rule of law" that you so passionately advance as the reason for our current situation, but you could not be more off the mark. The rule of law is malleable and its use changes as populism waxes and wanes. I urge you to become more educated on the history of mass communication.
• systemvoltage 5y ago
  No one is advocating for absolute free speech. Just expanding what’s allowed. Currently, Twitter’s policies are extremely lopsided. I don’t think anyone is calling for allowing violence, threats, etc.
• cwkoss 5y ago
  > We've never had a situation where fake news can and does spread the way it does today, where authorities are being undermined like this and casually dismissed by people with no knowledge of the respective fields, etc. There have had situations where the authorities are the ones generating fake news, and they have also criminalized dissent or corrections. I view that situation as more threatening than the current one.
• sneak 5y ago
  > We've never had a situation where fake news can and does spread the way it does today Have you heard of the church? We've had authority figures spreading lies for personal gain for millennia.