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This is not what freedom of the press means to me - I think you are using the wrong metric. This is like when old people claim that Person X is not poor becaus

This is not what freedom of the press means to me - I think you are using the wrong metric. This is like when old people claim that Person X is not poor because they have a smartphone. They still think about smartphones as a luxury item and do not understand that in Lambeth London you can't even register a birth and get a birth certificate without a smartphone.

carlosjobim 3y ago
Could you explain yourself better? You said I was wrong and then made an analogy that escapes me.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  You can use social media to reach 100's of thousands of people in Russia, Saudi Arabia and China. Do we consider that those countries have freedom of speech? Perhaps, it should be called freedom after speech. The issue is not isolated to kleptocracies, many western countries are backsliding. UK government has insane libel laws, they allowed the head of notorious Wagner group to sue UK journalist for libel in Britain. At the time head of Wagner was under international sanctions for war crimes. The journalist was reposting on the very same war crimes. He was taking advantage of the same laws that protect extremely wealthy people in Britain, whether domestic or foreign. Freedom of press needs investigative reporting, serious institutions to do research, etc. Without them, all you have is crazy people spreading conspiracy theories on social media.
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    I agree in general with your points, but what I'm emphasizing is freedom of press _as practiced_ has never been better than today. There are Russians all over the internet writing exactly what they think, even though their government would oppress their speech if they could. About Chinese and Saudi Arabs - I have no clue if they are circumventing censorship. Do you know? Governments and people of power are attempting to surpress free speech as hard as ever today in most of the world, including your example Britain, or why not Australia or Brazil. The difference is that with the internet, speech is much more free _as practiced_ than ever before. Your talk of "crazy conspiracy theorists" doesn't reflect well on the rest of your comment. This is a term that has been used very much as a slur to oppress free speech. It's basically the modern equivalent of calling somebody a heretic. Many of the people doing the investigative reporting you're calling for have to endure being called this when people do not agree with their reporting.
    - rschneid 3y ago
      I think you two are largely agreeing but speaking past each other. It's true that technology enables individuals to objectively act in ways that were previously cost prohibitive. These previously unavailable actions, looked at on the scale of individuals, is objectively 'more' freedom. However there is a complexity added to this analysis when you consider society beyond the scale of ones or tens of people that quickly becomes very chaotic. When everyone gets these new abilities, it's unclear whether how our 'net' freedom has actually changed. If everyone is louder, it's harder to hear anyone. It's more choices to pick from who we want to listen to, but if that choice becomes SO vast as to be overwhelming to the individual then maybe we're actually less free, in the ways that we'd like to be. I don't think freedom is a scalar value so can't really be directly compared/reasoned about, but I also think it's a mistake to finish the train of thought at: 'More people can do more stuff so we must be more free.' The world is more complicated, and these increasingly sophisticated abilities come with cost and responsibility. We're asking a lot of citizens to keep up with the deluge of data. There are definitely benefits to being informed, but what are the costs? How are the asymmetries in these costs leveraged by bad actors? There are so many questions...

carlosjobim 3y ago

Could you explain yourself better? You said I was wrong and then made an analogy that escapes me.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago
You can use social media to reach 100's of thousands of people in Russia, Saudi Arabia and China. Do we consider that those countries have freedom of speech? Perhaps, it should be called freedom after speech. The issue is not isolated to kleptocracies, many western countries are backsliding. UK government has insane libel laws, they allowed the head of notorious Wagner group to sue UK journalist for libel in Britain. At the time head of Wagner was under international sanctions for war crimes. The journalist was reposting on the very same war crimes. He was taking advantage of the same laws that protect extremely wealthy people in Britain, whether domestic or foreign. Freedom of press needs investigative reporting, serious institutions to do research, etc. Without them, all you have is crazy people spreading conspiracy theories on social media.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  I agree in general with your points, but what I'm emphasizing is freedom of press _as practiced_ has never been better than today. There are Russians all over the internet writing exactly what they think, even though their government would oppress their speech if they could. About Chinese and Saudi Arabs - I have no clue if they are circumventing censorship. Do you know? Governments and people of power are attempting to surpress free speech as hard as ever today in most of the world, including your example Britain, or why not Australia or Brazil. The difference is that with the internet, speech is much more free _as practiced_ than ever before. Your talk of "crazy conspiracy theorists" doesn't reflect well on the rest of your comment. This is a term that has been used very much as a slur to oppress free speech. It's basically the modern equivalent of calling somebody a heretic. Many of the people doing the investigative reporting you're calling for have to endure being called this when people do not agree with their reporting.
  - rschneid 3y ago
    I think you two are largely agreeing but speaking past each other. It's true that technology enables individuals to objectively act in ways that were previously cost prohibitive. These previously unavailable actions, looked at on the scale of individuals, is objectively 'more' freedom. However there is a complexity added to this analysis when you consider society beyond the scale of ones or tens of people that quickly becomes very chaotic. When everyone gets these new abilities, it's unclear whether how our 'net' freedom has actually changed. If everyone is louder, it's harder to hear anyone. It's more choices to pick from who we want to listen to, but if that choice becomes SO vast as to be overwhelming to the individual then maybe we're actually less free, in the ways that we'd like to be. I don't think freedom is a scalar value so can't really be directly compared/reasoned about, but I also think it's a mistake to finish the train of thought at: 'More people can do more stuff so we must be more free.' The world is more complicated, and these increasingly sophisticated abilities come with cost and responsibility. We're asking a lot of citizens to keep up with the deluge of data. There are definitely benefits to being informed, but what are the costs? How are the asymmetries in these costs leveraged by bad actors? There are so many questions...