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I am of two minds of this and would invite people to give me some opinions on this thing. On one hand, I love free speech and think it is good. The innovation

• daveevad 4y ago
  > the loved one of a politician was severely injured because of someone who believes the incorrect speech of influential figures Would you be so kind as to elaborate which speech and which figures you believe are at fault?
• redbar0n 4y ago
  People need to be held ultimately accountable for their own actions, without recourse to «they told me to». If you cultivate a strong culture of ultimate responsibility, people will learn to think twice. If everyone took ultimate responsibility for their own actions, then the cult leader / dictator / influencer would just be a person shouting in a room.
• zmgsabst 4y ago
  How does censorship help any of those problems? I can think of two recent examples where it failed, bitterly dividing the country: 1. in the case of the Hunter Biden laptop, a media organization was censored based on false allegations of “misinformation”; and, 2. during COVID, people who said authoritarian policies were a bad idea were censored — including medical professionals; resulting in devastating but only marginally effective authoritarian policies. How, specifically, do you only censor “wrong” speech — without in practice just giving special government powers to the people who manipulate speech in the pursuit of personal power, eg Fauci?
  • xcrunner529 4y ago
  • encryptluks2 4y ago
    Censorship isn't about doing what is right. It is about promoting authoritarian ideas to maintain status quo. It is an abuse tactic that decides for you what is right and wrong and doesn't give you a choice.
• la64710 4y ago
  If someone yells FIRE without a real FIRE in a crowded town hall that causes a stampede resulting in death or injury - I guess it is ground for bringing criminal charges against the original yeller. I don’t see what is so hard to understand here. We already have the legal clarity , they just needs to be implemented diligently.
  • musingsole 4y ago
    > I don’t see what is so hard to understand here. We already have the legal clarity , they just needs to be implemented diligently. Then read between the lines and recognize the public in general has moved away from recognition/acceptance of the rules as written and now all the mobs are demanding speech they don't like be restricted by powers on high.
  • nickff 4y ago
    The hypothetical you're using has a long and troubled history, if you're in favor of restrictions on speech, I suggest you use a different one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
    • runnerup 4y ago
      Any suggestions to help steel-man this?
      • janalsncm 4y ago
        The current legal standard for 1A protection is “imminent lawless action” from Brandenburg v Ohio. Shouting fire is from an old standard “clear and present danger”. You can look at their respective wiki pages for details and definitions. The history of Free Speech in the US is pretty interesting. The kinds of things that are acceptable today would get you thrown in prison 100 years ago (for example, handing out anti war pamphlets) and are more akin to the kinds of things Americans look down on other countries for criminalizing.
• onetokeoverthe 4y ago
• charbonneau3 4y ago
  > I don't want to assume that assaulting people is just the cost of free speech Is it? Are there more assaults in countries with more freedom of expression?
  • jwagenet 4y ago
    I don’t think free speech/ assaults is a relationship in isolation. The US particularly seems to have issues with violence being a preferred method of conflict resolution, all else being equal.
    • claytongulick 4y ago
      Do you have any information to back up this claim? From what I understand, the US is fairly unique in history for pioneering peaceful transfer of power without violence. Elections are a form of revolution each term. In most of world history, this type of transfer of power was incredible bloody. Also, from what I see on the news, the US isn't at all unique when it comes to political violence, and in general it's much more rare and less extreme than what I see elsewhere. It wasn't long ago that Ireland had horrific bloody political conflict, the likes of which we've never seen in this country other than the civil war.
      • dane-pgp 4y ago
        > the US is fairly unique in history for pioneering peaceful transfer of power without violence. The US inherited much of its political culture from that of England (not to say that the US didn't innovate heavily and positively on top of that heritage). Would you say that England / the UK has had less of a history of peaceful transferring of power since American independence, or since the US Civil War? You can say that the UK has faced violent opposition to its rule in Northern Ireland, but it would seem more reasonable to equate that to attacks like 9/11 in the US.
        • cool_dude85 4y ago
          If you go back to the civil war in the US, you'd also be going back to violent opposition to its rule in what's now the Republic of Ireland, its genocide in Kenya, the collapse of the British Empire in general. It's true that (as in America) the metropole has been relatively peaceful in the UK, but outside of that it's pretty grim.
• wonderfilled 4y ago
  Attacking ideas rather than individuals is a great start. Censorious actions are, to my eye, attacks on individuals; especially when power is transferred/controlled/manipulated under the guise of "positive" group think. Many cliches apply, sweeping under the rug, kicking the can down the road, turning a blind eye. Well-intentioned good faith conversations about integrity, accountability and forthrightness are in vogue :)
  • throwaway29812 4y ago
    > Attacking ideas rather than individuals is a great start. That's not how humans treat argumentation
    • wonderfilled 4y ago
      Username checks out with that type of framing. update: their emotions were thrown away
      • throwaway29812 4y ago
        denying reality doesn't make you more intelligent or rational.
        • wonderfilled 4y ago
          perception, definition and adaptation. curiouser and curiouser
• slg 4y ago
  The common refrain I hear from communities like HN seems to be that the way to fight disinformation is through education. However, what that looks like is never really explained in practical details. Is this just new curriculum that is taught to middle and high school students? Is there some course that all citizens have to take? If it is only taught to school age kids, what are we supposed to do for the next 30 or 40 years that the country is run by people who haven't had this training? What are we supposed to do when this disinformation education is corrupted by people who themselves have already fallen victim to disinformation because they haven't been educated properly? I just don't see any practical solution that doesn't involve some type of restriction on disinformation.
  • luckylion 4y ago
    Do you think the same way about health issues, e.g. smoking, obesity etc etc?
  • encryptluks2 4y ago
    Well for starters schools are part of the issue. Having students being taught whitewashed history while pledging to a flag under God each day only reiterates cult like behavior. Our society is brainwashed from the time they are children to like certain things based on ads that use all manipulation techniques. Kids ask for things without even really knowing why they want them. In order to educate children to question things and keep an open mind would require big changes that I don't think society is willing to make. The best we can do is an open dialogue with children about there techniques and how they can recognize and empower themselves to be independent thinkers unwilling to succumb.
  • chrisco255 4y ago
    Everyone thinks that the other side of an issue is spreading disinformation. It's such a vague and ridiculous assertion to assume that any person, organization, entity, or any one side has the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Freedom of speech is a prerequisite for a society to arrive at anything close to resembling truth, because no one has a monopoly on truth. No one can adjudicate it. Ideas must compete. Perspectives must be entertained. Right now, in this very moment and in all moments in history, there are mainstream ideas that are thought to be absolute truths which are brazenly false. Debate is how you get educated. Nothing else can suffice.
• akira2501 4y ago
  > On the other hand, I'm aware that certain influential figures explicitly manipulate their speech in order to primarily amass personal power regardless of any second-order effects. E.g. cults are horrible, even though people are freely congregating, they just feel like they can't leave because of the emotional abuse these influential figures are heaping via their speech. If they're that influential, then what chance do laws limiting free speech have at curtailing their efforts? The solution seems to be pass laws that only effect the average citizen and ignore the obvious differences in scale with these flagged "problem cases." > the loved one of a politician was severely injured because of someone who believes the incorrect speech of influential figures Is there actual evidence of that? I mean, which exact "influential figures" lead to this crime? What writing of theirs were the most provocative to this individual? What should we be considering when examining this situation? Is there anything other than vague accusations? > So what's to be done about the actual, real harm being done, while also protecting free speech? I don't want to assume that assaulting people is just the cost of free speech. It seems to me that's exactly what you're doing.. and you've not made the connection between free speech and generalized harm in anything but a casual way. This makes people exceptionally uneasy, you're suggesting that a defined right should be curtailed simply because there's an implication in one particular notable situation. And why is this _one_ newsworthy situation being used to spark this debate? Doesn't this raise questions of inappropriate "influence" itself? Again, we know nothing about this individual, yet all kinds of motivations are being ascribed to his actions all in service of suggesting that "a little too much free speech" might be responsible here. This entire line of thinking makes my uneasy.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • usernomdeguerre 4y ago
    "Is there actual evidence of that? I mean, which exact "influential figures" lead to this crime?" To the former, I imagine this was brought up as an example. Whether you think it's the strongest example seems immaterial unless you're saying there is no example at all in the history of the world? To the latter, that seems to be the exact purpose of courts and lawmaking, no? To take the murky uncertainty of life and create a reasonable line of evidence that binds two points together. That we, in American society, have decided not to draw the line between those two points to see if they intersect the same victim is our choice. Unless you believe no ones words are influential in any context?
• luckylion 4y ago
  I think it comes down to the question that everyone working on tools has to answer: is the good that it can bring worth the potential for evil that it can also be used for? TOR says yes, and they develop it even though terrible people can use it to hide their tracks, because it also allows nice people to hide their tracks so terrible people can't see what they're doing. I do believe that free speech is so incredibly beneficial that it's always worth having, even if that means accepting cults, celebrities, politicians etc preying on the weak.
• dporter 4y ago
  > On a third hand, the loved one of a politician was severely injured because of someone who believes the incorrect speech of influential figures and I desperately do not want further injury or violence to occur spurned by incorrect speech on the facts of reality. If the loved one of a politician was severely injured because of a drunk driver should alcohol be banned? What if the person injured isn't related to a politician?
  • readthenotes1 4y ago
    Or just advertising for inebreating products?
  • reillyse 4y ago
    We have many curbs on alcohol. Many to prevent situations like you describe. Maybe it is responsible to also limit speech especially when it can cause harm.
    • dporter 4y ago
      Breaking into someone's house and assaulting them with a hammer is already illegal. This is also an isolated incident and not a pattern of behavior.
    • bluescrn 4y ago
      Who do you trust to define 'harm'? I certainly don't trust governments, whether they lean left or right, as they all have heavy biases and big money influencing decision making.
      • reillyse 4y ago
        Step one, get rid of the money in politics. Step two, solve people's problems.
    • Avicebron 4y ago
      Aside from this particular assault which obviously is harm and curbing assault in general should be a priority. How does one distinguish preemptively which speech will cause harm and in what form such that it can be mitigated?
• washadjeffmad 4y ago
  By what standards would disinformation be classified and exempted? It would have to be 100% public - no discussion or decisionmaking in darkness. Would religion be policed for making unproven claims? Would there be any allies of political favorables who could correct the record with their version of the truth? Is inconvenient information disinformation, as in, will they define disinformation as any information disruptive to the status quo as able to be proven without revealing state secrets, classified information, or restricted media like the "collateral damage" video, whether true or false? Despite CNN and MSNBC being broadcast in Russia and China, their news is all but forbidden in the US. How damaged and fragile is the US mindset that it can't exist in the presence of other ideas?
  • themitigating 4y ago
    Why did you only mention cnn and msnbc when Russian media has been using Foxnews clips of Tucker Carlson to bolster their case for the Ukrainian war?
    • washadjeffmad 4y ago
      That's a weird question. Where in the US would we see that if we're not getting any news from Russia? On another note, that's one for the warhawks and their pro-war lobby. Aid doesn't mean bandages and medicine, you know.
• tjs8rj 4y ago
  Bluntly, that’s just the cost of freedom. How many people get punched in the face for saying something unsavory, yet there is no national conversation about curtailing speech? Why didn’t we have that conversation after the Dallas police shooting shortly after Obama talking about police violence? Or the mass riots spurred on by democrat politicians? Or the Jan 6th riots following trumps speech (actually, he got deplatformed everywhere following that). Or the congressional baseball shooting following Bernie Sander’s calling Republicans hateful for not passing healthcare bills? Obviously this attack is unacceptable, but if these other instances didn’t move people to curtail speech, the fact that this relatively minor event does tells me this is more about pushing an agenda and putting politicians ahead of freedoms. As far as I’m concerned in the conversation about the limits of free speech, Pelosi is nobody special. Would we curtail speech because some random person in Ohio got assaulted for saying mean words? Of course not, so why would we do it for some powerful politician, who’s used speech in just as inciting ways as well no less? To put it plainly: should we curtail freedoms because somebody attacked Pelosi? The answer to that is the same as the answer to “should we curtail freedoms because speech makes people mad sometimes”. The way we’ve answered that as a society in all other instances is “no”, so the answer remains the same.
  • kenjackson 4y ago
    Actually there was a lot of discussion about this sort of thing after the baseball attack. But in any case, we can't limit freedom of speech because of "unreasonable" implications of speech. Simply saying you hate Pelosi, isn't grounds for any reasonable person to think you try to kill her with a hammer. But if someone said, "we need to kill her" then that is much more prosecutable IMO. Unfortunately what probably works best to avoid these sorts of incidents is critical thinking and common sense. I do think the echo chambers on the internet create less of this - so these sorts of things will happen more frequently.
• addingadimensio 4y ago
• abnry 4y ago
  • ericmay 4y ago
    What evidence would you need to show that the person who assaulted the Speaker's husband did so because they were spurned by "stop the steal", and similar rhetoric?
    • markkanof 4y ago
      How about any evidence at all?
• perihelions 4y ago
  - "and I desperately do not want further injury or violence to occur spurned by incorrect speech on the facts of reality" How is that any different from violence inspired by correct facts? Following the logic you're laying out, I don't think it's the defense of truth you're advocating for; it's social harmony and stability. Basically the ideals favored in the Chinese model -- which censors true things and false things equally, depending on their social impact.
  • nonethewiser 4y ago
    I wonder which model the federal government prefers.
    • emeraldd 4y ago
      Realistically, the federal government (and by definition any government) is made up of people with their own self-interests. They will favor the style of "censorship" that keeps them in power.
  • esrauch 4y ago
    Violence inspired by disinformation is so drastically different than violence inspired by correct information though. If a pizza parlor was actually a pedo ring or a politician was actually sacrificing babies (both real examples of widely spread and believed misinfo right now) the violence induced against the perpetrators would be vigilantism but still considered morally defensible to most people due to failure to take action from the authorities. It seem perfectly sensible to say that we apparently have a big problem due to people literally shooting up pizza parlors over disinformation, and that if someone was shooting up a pizza parlor over correct information the situation would be different and warrant different responses.
    • vxNsr 4y ago
      > It seem perfectly sensible to say that we apparently have a big problem due to people literally shooting up pizza parlors over disinformation This is a perfect example of why this is a bad idea. Thank you for being the example. No one shot up a pizza parlor due to disinformation. A single concerned citizen brought a gun to a pizza shot to ascertain if there was a pedo ring being operated in it, after confirming there was not, he handed over his gun and not a single shot was fired. But you honestly believe that to be the case, either because it benefits your argument or because someone lied to you or because you misinterpreted something you read. But you now believe this is the truth and everyone who disagrees with that "truth" should be censored.
• SllX 4y ago
  The FedGov is an interested actor in the dissemination of information and is therefore not fit for task on arbitrating on incorrect or inaccurate information. It can be a source of information, but it cannot be trusted as an uncompetitive source. If you are interested in accurate and correct information, it is procedurally discovered in a competitive information environment with multiple interested actors; not decreed by the President and his employees.
  • marmadukester39 4y ago
    Or it isn’t, because “discovered” doesn’t apply to most participants, who are only exposed to a narrative and likely never see followup.
    • SllX 4y ago
      Why does it surprise you that people with more interest in getting accurate information are going to be the ones with more accurate information? If information doesn’t have value to you, you’re not going to pay for it.
      • marmadukester39 4y ago
        No, you wont. You are right. And in a democracy, eventually your rights will be curtailed by those who can’t afford or don’t know to spend that time and money.
  • Eleison23 4y ago
    It used to be that the State had an established Religion that worked with the state to establish Truth and its boundaries. Therefore the Spanish Inquisition was not merely a religious event but a State event, where heretics were considered seditious or treasonous, and thus handed over to the State to be dealt with before it could be destabilized by dangerous thoughts, words, and actions. Now what do we do about Truth in this age of disestablishmentarianism? There is no one Religion of the State, and therefore there is no one Truth, there is a Plurality of Truths. That seems to present an existential problem for arbiters of Truth within the borders of the State, doesn't it.
• jimmyjazz14 4y ago
  Its true that freedom can lead to harm but the alternative is much worse; no system is utopian but some systems are better than others. Collective authoritarian states can achieve great things but when they fail, they fail in very big ways. Places that value freedom may in many ways be more chaotic and even dangerous at times, but I believe they are more likely to interrupt themselves when they are moving toward calamity.
  • marmadukester39 4y ago
    This is the case if the participants are well informed. If they are not, there is no reason to believe they will interrupt themselves.
    • pclmulqdq 4y ago
      Then the solution is to inform them, not to attempt to police information.
      • shadowgovt 4y ago
        How does one inform them if one cannot address the signal-noise ratio?
        • pclmulqdq 4y ago
          You add signal. You don't try to remove noise. Also you adjust the algorithms of your content feeds away from "maximize engagement," because that tends toward feeding people lots of videos that confirm their biases (no matter what those biases are).
          • shadowgovt 4y ago
            Noise is cheaper than signal. For every piece of signal that can be added, more noise can be added. That is not an arms race one wins. Consider how education is done. We do it in classrooms, not in the street. Controlled environment where noise can be down-filtered. How do we handle it if the problem is we need to educate everyone? (I do agree with changing incentives off "maximize engagement". How, I do not know; it is the nature of capitalism in the interest economy to chase that brass ring. May problems, no obvious solutions...)
• Ambolia 4y ago
  >On the other hand, I'm aware that certain influential figures explicitly manipulate their speech in order to primarily amass personal power regardless of any second-order effects. This also happens because if there's an explicit or implicit ban on addressing those topics and retaining a place in polite society, then only people crazy enough to disregard polite society will address those topics.
  • xenophonf 4y ago
    > This also happens because if there's an explicit or implicit ban on addressing those topics and retaining a place in polite society, then only people crazy enough to disregard polite society will address those topics. What topics would those be?
    • ben_w 4y ago
      By definition, writing down specific current examples would be a terrible idea. Historically, I might suggest the song "God Save the Queen" by the Sex Pistols, or the book "Lady Chatterly's Lover", or poem "The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name", given the effect they had on "polite society".
• zozbot234 4y ago
  The proper remedy to incorrect speech is not violence, from either state or non-state actors. It's more correct speech.
  • naravara 4y ago
    What if bots and nations state actors can flood the platform with so much incorrect speech that correct speech cannot be heard?
    • at-fates-hands 4y ago
      Then who decides what is incorrect and correct speech? In the highly charged partisan climate, we saw how that turned out in the last two elections.
      • themitigating 4y ago
        There's a difference between opinions and facts.
        • kbelder 4y ago
          In theory, not so much in practice.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      • ben_w 4y ago
        If we knew which speech was correct from its content alone, we wouldn't need freedom of speech. However, naravara started the comment with: > What if bots and nations state actors can flood the platform… Which is much easier to deal with.
    • tbrownaw 4y ago
      How would that work? Most platforms I think let you follow specific accounts, and noise from other accounts shouldn't matter (unless it's enough to DDOS the system).
• 8note 4y ago
  I think it's an evolution of criminal conspiracy, where the head conspirators avoid legal culpability for the crime. Conspiracy is already illegal, despite going against free speech, so making updates to conspiracy laws to handle these cases is the best path forward
• munificent 4y ago
  The model I apply to, basically, everything about the past twenty years, is to compare it to the Industrial Revolution. I believe we're in the midst of the Information Revolution now and while history doesn't map to the present 1-1, it comes pretty close. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, there was relatively little policing of the natural environment. Aside from property laws, once you were out in nature you could basically do what you wanted. That worked tolerably well, because the scale of what a single person could do to that shared environment was relatively limited. But with industrialization came massive force multipliers. A single company could cause absolutely devastating pollution to the environment. They could reap all of the rewards while foisting all of the externalities onto everyone else. I believe we're now in an era where we have to think of the information environment that we live in as a precious commons shared by us all. We still absolutely must have freedom of speech—everyone should have an inalienable right to visit and participate in that information environment. At the same time, no one should have an unbounded right to cause large-scale pollution that environment in ways that harm others, which is exactly what disinformation is. Good laws are rarely all or nothing. We need legislation that balances individual rights and collective rights.
  • helloworld11 4y ago
    You're using bad analogy to promote a bullshit idea of speech control for the sake of the "common good". The problem with your idea is that unlike environmental pollution in which real, physical spaces are damaged or destroyed by measurable physical contaminants, intellectual "pollution" is extremely subjective. It's subject to the biases of those who decide what is and isn't disinformation and its subject to changes in these biases over time. The damage it does is also hard to measure, especially when weighed against the damage caused by giving anyone or group of people the authority to decide what others can say and believe. It's easy to apply such ideas to obviously stupid conspiracy theories and fringe claims, but it's also very easy to start spreading the scope of what gets claimed as disinformation over time. We could look at the entire pandemic as just one very evident example of these tendencies happening. We can also look at a number of authoritarian countries that have taken advantage of the western media obsession with "misinformation/disinformation" of the last few years and used it as a cover for passing their own clearly authoritarian speech-repressing laws in the name of "fighting misinformation". Freer countries are also never immune to going down the same road, their governments DO NOT need more tools for making it easier. Truly bad information and grossly ignorant opinions are not only not anything new in all of human history, they are if anything today less extreme and less common than they've ever been. The proliferation of better thinking has moved best in exactly those countries where free speech has been best protected. It's in places where it has been repressed that the opposite tends to happen more easily. It's sad to me that educated, intelligent people can use sophistry to try building moats around their personal biases in defense of speech controls and then claim that they're working towards the protection of people's minds, or any sort of common good. History has shown that such attempts at controlling speech almost invariably produce the opposite and that giving power over speech to any authority does so especially. Grotesque.
• lazide 4y ago
  ‘Those who would trade away their liberty in exchange for safety will have neither’
  • pfarrell 4y ago
    The actual quote from Benjamin Franklin is Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
    • slg 4y ago
      And it doesn't mean what people often claim it means. He was speaking literally. William Penn's family was trying to buy off the state legislature with a one time payment for military defense in exchange for the state legislature conceding more power to the Penns. It wasn't about some abstract liberty like privacy or safety against something abstract like terrorism. It was Franklin judging a specific political offer to help the legislature fight a war in exchange for giving up some rights to self-governance.
• Maursault 4y ago
  > E.g. cults are horrible, even though people are freely congregating, they just feel like they can't leave because of the emotional abuse these influential figures are heaping via their speech. Linux is not a cult. It's a holy war spreading across the Universe like unquenchable fire.
• Lammy 4y ago
  > the loved one of a politician was severely injured Agreed that's unacceptable, but maybe we could criminalize aggravated assault instead? https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=PEN&sectionNum=245 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
  • chowells 4y ago
    No, the problem is clearly that the attacker believed they were saving America - and they believed this because they were told that politician was the problem.
    • Karunamon 4y ago
      I also happen to believe that politician is a severe thorn in the country's side… But for some reason I am not breaking into their home or advocating such. Why is that? The intuitive answer is that the information we are operating on is not the cause of the attack. The idea that we need to police information to the point where crazy people do not get ideas is a nonstarter.
      • ip26 4y ago
        for some reason I am not breaking into their home Presumably because you believe they are merely a thorn and not an existential threat. I suspect many people might be willing to commit a felony if you could convince them they were, with certainty, saving their family, friends, and country.
        • Karunamon 4y ago
          Sincerely believing that any singular politician in the system we have is an "existential threat" that justifies violence against them comes under the heading of things only crazy people believe, and even the crazier act on.
          • ip26 4y ago
• didibus 4y ago
  To me, the problem currently I believe is with the internet and how it creates a new quality to speech. People can speak up, but it turns out that there's now too much noise and nobody can distinguish the source of the speech, the context of the speech, the trustworthiness of the speech, and the occurrence of the speech (how many people are saying the same thing versus parroting what they were told). Not only that, but the cost to speak is so low now, that bad actors have a field day, and I include bad faith people looking to just amass political fame, power, following, etc. Mix that in with our new shortened attention span, and people no longer engage with the speech, instead it becomes like advertisement, if you've seen the same message a lot you'll subconsciously have taken it as a truth. It becomes which opinion have you seen most becomes your opinion, and everyone does this, so the truth becomes a matter of who can parrot their message as often, as loudly and to as many people. This also means that catchy speech will win over non-catchy speech, because everything is more like a marketing game. Appealing to emotions is attention grabbing, controversy is attention grabbing, so all speech of that form becomes the winning speech in terms of getting viewed and heard. That's why I think all reasonable people are doomed here, this mechanism of social conversation lends itself automatically to destabilizing opinions winning over stable reasonable but boring and not attention grabbing perspectives. Before the internet, there were more filtering happening in a layered approach, publications and journalist were there to filter out the noise, the low quality, the unsubstantiated, the agenda driven, and all those. Speaking up about injustices involved having to physically mobilize yourself to a public square, which takes a lot of effort from the speaker, again allowing a filtering out of bad actors and bad faith individual since the effort demanded had a cost, only people really motivated by great injustice would have the will to go through with protesting. I don't think it was ideal before either, as publications as a filter had their own bias to what they'd filter out. But at least even what they let through, since there wasn't an abundance of it, the listeners could have a deeper think about it, and didn't believe it to be true just because they keep hearing about it over and over. Hopefully we can find a way to improve on both. I think we need to put more contextualizing and filters over the internet speech, nothing that removes or bans speech, but allows to manage all the noise. Algorithms are already in place doing this, except they filter based on corporate profit making, which often involves around engagement and attention grabbing. Again this is extra counterproductive, worse than a simple unfiltered approach with everything chronological. I'm not sure how best to implement improvements, but I feel strongly it is needed, because even I can no longer make sense of all the noise on the internet, and it feels more and more like I actually can't tell what's real or not anymore, even though I'm in an ocean of information.
• olkingcole 4y ago
  I think we have to stop thinking "what do we do about these bad individuals". Disinformation is a force that is increasingly shaping what americans think, which is obviously a big deal in a society which has individual choice as its foundation (in government, economy, etc). This force is being used by bad actors from every corner, within the country and without, and has already threatened societal upheaval. It just _can not_ be ignored. It will get worse, not better. Forget trump, putin, musk, whoever the current individuals are, we need an answer to this force. Now, I am also a believer in your first point. The cure _must not_ be worse than the poison. And I don't know what the right solution is. But we need one because we are not equipped to deal with this. Just a couple days ago a single individual bought one of the biggest speech platforms in the world and proceeded to post a defamatory conspiracy theory from a "fake news" outlet about a political target. The way the world is set up right now I think things can really go sideways. And while I am sure most people here prides themselves on their ability to discern the truth, remember that the electorate is not comprised of hacker news users. Thanks
• moviewise 4y ago
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• vxNsr 4y ago
  How would you feel about this if it were coming from the Trump DHS? or if somehow Trump inherits this in 2024? would you still be so circumspect or would you be in full disaster meltdown mode. This sort of thing assumes that bad actors don't exist and will never get into power... only it turns out bad actors do exist and... gasp, they already control many of the reins of power, why would you support ceding more control?
• aylmao 4y ago
  I'm on the side of free speech on this one. We can't have "perfect" security, and policing what people say will be as effective towards ending extremism as the war on drugs has been towards ending drug use. The solution to the misinformation is education, critical thinking, and depolarization; not criminalization. It's a slower process but it's the right one. The more a government gives up on educating and trusting the people it represents, and tends towards instead treating them like little children who can't possibly make decisions on their own, the more that population will be become just that— incapable of making decisions on their own. We don't want that to be the case; that's dangerous.
  • themitigating 4y ago
    Republicans don't want schools to teach beyond the core subjects and are attacking higher education with unproven allegations of liberal indoctrination. In my opinion the right is attacking schools because misinformation benefits them more since they constantly tell people not to trust the government and elect them to drain the swamp. 1.Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signs a law punishing student 'indoctrination' at public universities and threatens budget cuts https://www.businessinsider.com/desantis-signs-law-to-punish-student-indoctrination-at-florida-universities-2021-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/desantis-signs-law-to-punish... 2. CRT taught in just one university course is a major talking point. Another attack on schools Etc
    • lumb63 4y ago
      Unproven allegations? 1% of Harvard faculty identifies as conservative: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/7/13/faculty-survey-political-leaning/ https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/7/13/faculty-survey-... 77% of students say professors espouse liberal ideas: https://freebeacon.com/campus/campus-conformity-college-students-say-they-self-censor-political-opinions-poll-finds/ https://freebeacon.com/campus/campus-conformity-college-stud... Other miscellaneous statistics: https://www.aei.org/articles/are-colleges-and-universities-too-liberal-what-the-research-says-about-the-political-composition-of-campuses-and-campus-climate/ https://www.aei.org/articles/are-colleges-and-universities-t... My own anecdote from my time as an undergrad at UConn: my ethics professor once said, verbatim, that anyone who supported a pro-life stance was, flat out, wrong. I watched conservative speakers come to campus and the associate vice president said that “even the thought of an individual coming to campus with [conservative views] can be concerning and even hurtful” [1]. This was after an “event review process” was stood up, ostensibly with the intent to moderate content that could be discussed at the university, following a right-wing speaker’s talk breaking out into violence after being called a Nazi and having his property stolen [2]. My own experience has been that “liberal indoctrination” correctly captures the magnitude of this effect. 1: https://www.dailywire.com/news/uconn-acts-uc-berkeley-offers-mental-health-daily-wire?utm_content=062316-news&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dwbrand https://www.dailywire.com/news/uconn-acts-uc-berkeley-offers... 2: https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/29/us/lucian-wintrich-uconn-speech https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/29/us/lucian-wintrich-uconn-spee...
• GoblinSlayer 4y ago
  Assaulting people can be a cost of bad culture or bad education.
• goatcode 4y ago
  Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem.
• loceng 4y ago
  "... certain influential figures explicitly manipulate their speech in order to primarily amass personal power regardless of any second-order effects" And this would include those currently in power, no? Who want to further their ability to put their narrative of choice forward - regardless of how truthful - while suppressing any counter-narratives, even if true.
• freejazz 4y ago
  "So what's to be done about the actual, real harm being done, while also protecting free speech? I don't want to assume that assaulting people is just the cost of free speech. That just seems so wrong to me." More speech.
  • ryandrake 4y ago
    "More speech" works when the number of voices is limited to an actual number of people. The truth would eventually/inevitably drown out the conspiracies and disinformation. Now, with bots and social media's algorithmic amplification, the "amount of speech" a single person can contribute is unbounded, and bad actors are weaponizing the unlimited nature of speech to drown out the truth. "More speech" is too simplistic to work in the modern world.
    • acdha 4y ago
      I strongly agree, also with the factor of energy and rewards: many of the people spreading disinformation have MUCH greater appetite for spreading it, even if it’s not actually their job, than normal people do for debunking it. There’s a burnout problem, especially when the volume of noise overwhelms the rewarding aspects of using a particular forum — less of a Gish Gallop than a Gish Stampede now.
    • neurobot123 4y ago
      [dead]
    • OrangeMonkey 4y ago
      In general, when someone suggests the only solution to "too much free speech" is for people to be filtered, I say "You first."
• ben_w 4y ago
  The reason I value freedom of speech is the same reason I am not an absolutist: it is a power to trigger changes, and while all improvements are changes, so are all declines. As with all other laws, my personal preference is the maximum possible liberty that doesn't allow people the liberty to remove other people's liberty. Unfortunately, that's a soundbite and not a well-defined policy position, and I don't know how to generate the latter from the former.
  • jessaustin 4y ago
    ...while all improvements are changes, so are all declines. Trivially true, but this doesn't go deep enough. Changes that come about as a result of collective discussion and decision are of a different character than changes that are the predictable result of preexisting feedback loops. For example, once upon a time a single breadwinner on minimum wage could support a family. For some time after that was no longer true, two breadwinners on minimum wage could support a family. That's no longer the case now, but we never had big debate to decide that. It wasn't "disinformation" that caused our soaring inequality; indeed it could be argued that we would have noticed it happening had there been more information allowed to reach the public consciousness.
• a123b456c 4y ago
  Could there be a commercial or nonprofit media platform that licenses users before they're allowed to post, and revokes the privilege if they abuse it?
• bjt2n3904 4y ago
  > On a third hand, the loved one of a politician was severely injured because... The USFCS (United States Fact Checking Service) has flagged this as malinformation, and limited your ability to comment for the next 72 hours. If you believe this is in error, please win the next election, so that you gain control of the censorship bureau and show us how to do it right.
• kvathupo 4y ago
  As someone who supported Biden at the time of his withdrawal from Afghanistan, I think it's unreasonable to equate criticism of his Afghanistan withdrawal (one area of "inaccurate information" DHS was targeting) to the promotion of cults and political violence. Even so, if an individual goes so far as to ignore Occam's razor as to ascribe to QAnon, then I'm certain that such a nut-job would flock to other, equally ridiculous, conspiracy theories. Furthermore, our government can be wrong, e.g. Powell's disastrous UN speech that ignored the State Department's own intelligence [1]. At a fundamental level, one must ask why people are attacking 5G towers, storming the Capitol, and calling for violence against politicians: they believe their voices are not being heard. Censorship and banishment to alt-tech platforms only reinforces that belief. To use the words of Scalia in "R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul", I believe the government "has sufficient means at its disposal to prevent such behavior without adding the First Amendment to the fire" [2]. [1] - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/18/colin-powell-un-security-council-iraq https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/18/colin-powell... [2] - [PDF] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/505/377/case.pdf https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/505/377/case.pdf
  • pclmulqdq 4y ago
    This is the idea of the "boxes of freedom." The soapbox, the ballot box, the jury box, and the ammo box. Depriving people of one encourages them to turn to the others. There is a part of the US population that feels deprived of all but the last box currently: big tech censorship of their ideas, beliefs in a stolen election, and belief in a rigged justice system (thanks in no small part to Merrick Garland's actions). It doesn't matter if they are right. All that matters is how they feel about it. If you combine that with the rising cost of food and shelter, you get the recipe for a violent revolution.
  • x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
    • Amezarak 4y ago
      The "demographic window" created by policies that none of said people voted for?
• decremental 4y ago
  • themitigating 4y ago
    Do you have a source for that? "I think it's coming out" what does this mean? You've seen rumors and assume they are true or that evidence is coming soon?
  • YeahNO 4y ago
    This discredited story began on a conspiracy website, was repeated by Republican candidate(s), Elon Musk (since deleted), and other conspiracy nutters. It has no traction as it doesn't appear to be based in truth, any more than the false story of Democrats running a pedophile ring out of the basement of a pizza restaurant in a slab-on-grade building. Conspiracy theories used to seem harmless before the internet was spreading them far and wide, but more and more, these stories are encouraging (generating?) stochastic terrorism.
• Georgelemental 4y ago
  > the loved one of a politician was severely injured because of someone who believes the incorrect speech of influential figures I don't believe a motive has been established in the Paul Pelosi case?
  • paulmd 4y ago
    Guy had a list of democrats he was going to target after Pelosi, which completely disproves the whole gay lover idea. Why would he have a premeditated hit list of unrelated people if it was a crime of passion against his lover? https://www.foxnews.com/politics/paul-pelosi-attack-suspect-david-depape-list-people-target-police https://www.foxnews.com/politics/paul-pelosi-attack-suspect-... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/paul-pelosi-attack-suspect-target-list-sources-say-nancy-pelosi-husband/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/paul-pelosi-attack-suspect-targ... Let alone the screaming that he was gonna smash Nancy's kneecaps, etc. How does that fit into the whole thing with the hitlist, do you think? It was ridiculous on the face of it, the fact that the attacker bonked a hippie chick in SF and did some nudity stuff with her doesn't mean he wasn't a conservative attacking the targets that conservatives have railed against for a decade. He literally posted about the pizzagate hoax lol. It was a ridiculous circumstantial theory spun by some conservative website to deflect blame for their violence as usual, and even Fox admits the guy had a list of targets to attack next. Meanwhile it's literally a microcosm of the disinformation problem, you have people actually taking this whole idea seriously when literally a few minutes thought shows it's not reasonable at all. But it was a politically advantageous theory to push.
• ErikVandeWater 4y ago
  Is concern about free speech really the right concern? The right concern to me is the lack of critical thinking skills that lead to being swayed by rhetoric. Policing free speech is not the answer, because it will certainly lead to suppression of legitimate speech.
  • GoblinSlayer 4y ago
    But critical thinking is genetic: https://philpapers.org/rec/SCHPBJ https://philpapers.org/rec/SCHPBJ
• stuckinhell 4y ago
  • Firmwarrior 4y ago
    Yeah, what a crazy situation One major news article I read mentioned he was a hemp craftsman living in Berkeley, somehow I doubt he's an alt right Qanon type if that's the case The only other info I could readily find was from ZeroHedge, though, so I don't want to take it as the gospel truth just yet
• mw888 4y ago
  Oh right, because people don’t get assaulted in places where free speech doesn’t exist. It’s totally the free speech that is causing the violence and not anything specific to any circumstance of violence or some other general state. /s
  • chasd00 4y ago
    yeah i'm a little confused. Assault is illegal no matter what you've been told. You could be grossly misinformed yet when you assault someone you're breaking the law. The point is, don't assault someone because it is illegal and you'll goto jail for it. Now if you're so mentally ill that the law doesn't matter anyway then i don't see how information, bad or otherwise, makes any difference.
• nomel 4y ago
  > because of someone who believes the incorrect speech of influential figures and I desperately do not want further injury or violence to occur spurned by incorrect speech on the facts of reality. This person was mentally unstable/disturbed. I'm not sure we should frame our world, an freedoms, around the craziest of us all, otherwise our society will eventually look no different than an insane asylum. I do believe there are memetic "contagions", but I also believe that a better solution is proper mental healthcare for those in need, like this person was.
  • P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
    > I do believe there are memetic "contagions", but I also believe that a better solution is proper mental healthcare for those in need, like this person was. People in general are just stupid, but no one seems to have the self-reflection necessary to recognize it. Think about it like this. You can look back in history and see actions and behaviors that make absolutely no sense. Those people were just stupid. Salem witch trials, the internment of the Japanese, concrete examples of mass hysteria, ad nauseum. The question is, what are we doing that will look obviously stupid to people 100 years from now? "omg, they drill holes in their teeth and put metal in it?!?!". The point is, these "memetics" have always existed in some form, what do you think local superstition is? To argue that this is only a problem for those in healthcare is extremely naive. Perfectly healthy, normal people, have on many occasions participated in various mass hysteria events or believed incorrect things. Blowing smoke up ones ass was literally a medical procedure. The scary part about social media isn't about the social part, it's about the technology. Never in history has it been possible to manipulate so many people so easily. This isn't a fight about people, it's a fight about control of the masses.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• chasd00 4y ago
  I was hoping youtube and facebook falling on their faces trying to implement censorship during the pandemic would make it clear the practice is a non-starter. Why do people cling to this notion of censorship being a good thing? I feel like it's an attempt at a power grab with "won't someone please think of the children!" as the justification to the masses.
  • phpisthebest 4y ago
    They only cling to it when their tribe is perceived to be in power Twitter is a prime example of this, before Elon the mantra was "meh private company can do what it wants" the second the people that followed that mantra perceived their tribe as losing power over the platform that changed so fast that people got whiplash now twitter is a threat to everything from the foundation of democracy to national security.
  • Amezarak 4y ago
    The article makes it very clear what the motivation for this is: > In a March meeting, Laura Dehmlow, an FBI official, warned that the threat of subversive information on social media could undermine support for the U.S. government. As the people running the US government - particularly the democratically unaccountable set - become increasingly divorced in their values and beliefs from a a large segment of the population, they become increasingly obsessed with control of the Other, which by its very nature appears subversive. This doesn't end well for any of us. It's interesting to see people see the exact same arguments people have made for centuries, always in service of the existing status structure. "Misinformation" and "disinformation" aren't new. Twitter didn't radically change the world. If anything, we have returned to the pre-20th century environment, where rumors and conspiracies led to mobs, riots, and all kinds of civil unrest. It was a major concern of people in the Constitutional Convention that "designing men" would use misinformation to rile up the people to take over the government. > In Massts. it had been fully confirmed by experience that they are daily misled into the most baneful measures and opinions by the false reports circulated by designing men. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun. What's "different" now in the so-called Information Age is that the brief era of a small class of people having near total control over what is published has ended. And they really, really don't like it.
• rrradical 4y ago
  I don't think anyone has a perfect answer to this question, but I'd prefer we invest in education. My english class, many years ago, tried to teach us how to identify whether a website contained useful information. I thought it was helpful.
• dpatru 4y ago
  A mistake that I've made before, that I think is quite common, is to assume government will enforce laws the way I would. Regarding speech, because I am a person of good will, tolerance, and open-mindedness, I assume government will enforce the law this way. This is a grave mistake. The people who would seek out jobs in which they can control other people's speech are exactly the sort of people who should not be given that power. Even if the actual enforcers of speech law were honest, they would never be allowed to enforce the law where it is most needed, namely government itself. Wars are usually supported with lies. [1] [2] Will speech laws be used to punish government officials who lie the country into war? I think not. Instead, such laws will be used to protect powerful people, especially people in government. For example, in Citizen's United, a case that Democrats still criticize, the government was prosecuting the members of a small non-profit with felonies for publishing a 90-minute documentary critical of then Senator Hillary Clinton. [3] [1] https://militaryhistorynow.com/2015/07/15/damned-lies-nine-wars-started-under-false-pretexts/ https://militaryhistorynow.com/2015/07/15/damned-lies-nine-w... [2] https://www.europereloaded.com/false-flags-and-the-american-way-of-war/ https://www.europereloaded.com/false-flags-and-the-american-... [3] https://www.oyez.org/cases/2008/08-205 https://www.oyez.org/cases/2008/08-205
  • hintymad 4y ago
    Exactly. I thought what you said was pretty evident, but boy was I wrong
  • raxxorraxor 4y ago
    You are correct. There are honest politicians that clearly state in subtext about the honesty of public information. Disinformation is nothing else. It is how politics work these days and we can hope it will improve with time. I don't know how the parent can compare an instance of a crazy person to government sending people in war that kill hundreds of thousands of people. Because these lives are no media personalities? To me this is nothing one should base an opinion on. Information needs to be free of course and if government gets their hand on some platforms, these will become unreliable sources with far more and significant disinformation than we have seen before.
• heresie-dabord 4y ago
  Civil society cannot tolerate threats of violence or acts of violence. This applies to all aspects of civil society. There is a limit to freedom of speech. There is nothing exceptional about social media except that it has taken so long to apply the sane principles of civil society. People who threatened the founding fathers with physical violence probably earned themselves a horsewhipping or a duel. People who resent society must find a way to express their resentment by democratic action, not through threats and violence. The founding fathers were not senseless followers of written words. They did not relinquish critical thinking by signing a constitution. The constitution was not a declaration of the end of critical thinking, education, and progress. Violence is a destructive cultural anti-pattern.
  • pclmulqdq 4y ago
    I'm not entirely sure if it was a felony to threaten violence, but assault was a felony at the founding. The definition of felony was originally "crime that is punishable by death." You can commit assault without touching someone (but it has to be more than words). I would assume that there were quite a few more consequences for threats than there are today. I would also assume that there was quite a bit of tarring and feathering of people who held deeply unpopular beliefs, because this did happen.
  • nradov 4y ago
    There are acceptable levels of violence. Levels of interpersonal violence today are much lower than when our Republic was founded. A few isolated incidents do not constitute a valid reason to restrict freedom of expression. If the cost of free speech is that occasionally some people die then that is an acceptable trade-off.
• jessaustin 4y ago
  ... the loved one of a politician was severely injured because of someone who believes the incorrect speech of influential figures... It seems likely that there is more to the story than is represented in this summary. Truly "new" news is rarely completely accurate and accurately complete.
• adolph 4y ago
  > the loved one of a politician was severely injured because of someone who believes the incorrect speech of influential figures For one, stop making up stuff like the above. Are you in the attackers head? No? Then be responsible and make a claim like that. Otherwise, I’m glad there’s no fact gestapo to stop you from running your fingers; keep typing; be as irresponsible as you’d like; make the mistakes everyone makes; eventually realize people are and must be responsible for their own actions no matter what people say (in both senses).
• refurb 4y ago
  So what's to be done about the actual, real harm being done, while also protecting free speech? I don't want to assume that assaulting people is just the cost of free speech. That just seems so wrong to me. That’s exactly it - the cost of free speech. And why should we pay that cost? Because the alternative is far worse. The problem everyone ignored is who decides what speech is “ok” and which is not? Clearly someone would have to. And when that someone uses that power to silence “disinformation” that is in reality legitimate opposition? Well now you’re screwed. I’ve lived in countries where speech is highly regulated and it’s basically used to control political opposition. Posting the wrong thing on Facebook can get you jail time.
• ls15 4y ago
  > On the other hand, I'm aware that certain influential figures explicitly manipulate their speech in order to primarily amass personal power regardless of any second-order effects. E.g. cults are horrible, even though people are freely congregating, they just feel like they can't leave because of the emotional abuse these influential figures are heaping via their speech. > On a third hand, the loved one of a politician was severely injured because of someone who believes the incorrect speech of influential figures and I desperately do not want further injury or violence to occur spurned by incorrect speech on the facts of reality. Terrible things, but I wonder how someone can come to the conclusion that it is a better solution to police the information than actually strengthen people's ability to detect arbitrary BS by themselves. Policing disinformation does not scale (Brandolini's law), while teaching people to think does. Why aren't logical fallacies a part of every school's curriculum? Is it because the "official" disinformation would suffer from that too? Before we start to police disinformation, don't we need a court-proof definition of the term disinformation? I tried to look up the definition of truth, only to learn that there is no commonly accepted philosohical definition of that. So most likely, any definition of disinformation that is used to depress certain information will be BS too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth
• incomingpain 4y ago
  >So what's to be done about the actual, real harm being done, while also protecting free speech? I don't want to assume that assaulting people is just the cost of free speech. That just seems so wrong to me. Free speech has reasonable limits. Slander/Libel is necessary. Death threats, bomb threats, incitement to suicide or genocide. All completely reasonable exceptions nobody will argue against. All of these are IRL physical damages or at least threat of. So do you go further to amoleriate or prevent psychological damage? This is really the biggest part of the controversy. So what happens when you create hate speech laws? If you define what isn't allowed to be said. For example N-word isn't allowed tobe said. You actually are going to receive the opposite effect. In order to hurt, people now know what to say; if they don't want to break the law but still hurt you invent new words. Civilized people who aren't looking to hurt don't care, they simply avoid those words without the law. So you end up with a cat and mouse game where you say you cant use the N word but I sure can invent the same destructive word which isn't the n word. The law is utterly pointless. So you don't define the words. You just say 'anything that offends' or "anything which incites hatred" But now even the civilized people are at a loss here. What the law ends up being is a direct method to silence your political opponents. E-word used to be the term for the inuit up in the north. It's now considered a slur. Why? Because it is similar to words that mean snow in other languages that dont matter? But what happened was the inuit used this 'slur' to silence their political opponents. It was orchestrated by the same people who wrote this: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/dear-qallunaat-white-people-inuit-sandra-inutiq-1.5020210 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/dear-qallunaat-white-pe... To anyone you can see the problem with hate speech but better yet that isnt the whole story. We now have compelled speech. Hate speech avoids words, but compelled speech... that's next level. The government under force of law are telling you what you must say. This is to avoid offending people. It's remarkable how bad this has been. The primary battlefield has been a bunch of overworked doctors have been getting fired from our public healthcare and going into private clinics for more money and less work. All because they were accused of not using the right pronoun. No wonder they don't really try to defend themselves. So what happened? You break your arm or whatever emergency. You'll be in the ER for >15 hours and very likely not be able to see a doctor. The real argument for free speech is that policing speech is not practical.
• eric_cc 4y ago
  > On a third hand, the loved one of a politician was severely injured because of someone who believes the incorrect speech of influential figures and I desperately do not want further injury or violence to occur spurned by incorrect speech on the facts of reality. Oooh you really lost me here. It feels like you’ve fallen hook line and sinker for the news emotional storyline. Deranged individuals exist regardless of current rhetoric. Never give up free speech in an attempt to cure society of deranged individuals. It won’t work. Also, “the facts of reality”. You believe this exists in the political realm?
• account42 4y ago
  > So what's to be done about the actual, real harm being done, while also protecting free speech? IMO, the solution is to teach and reward critical thinking and questioning authority instead of blind obedience and defering to others who know best. All policing disinformation does is make people afraid of questioning what they are told - and that will still hold true once the authority they follow changes to one you disaprove of.