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Dismantle the Censorship-Industrial Complex: The Westminster Declaration

89 points by ed-209 3y ago

jfengel 3y ago
I would have a lot more respect for this if they at least tried to recognize that the genuine concerns about unlimited free speech. Almost every government recognizes threats as not being protected. Libel and slander are also generally not allowed. Some kinds of pornography are considered by large numbers as beyond the pale. Making universal declarations is easy but not very useful. Real work is done by grappling with the actual limitations. I'd have a lot more respect for a maximalist position that at least understood why some people legitimately reject that position, and not just because they're stinky meanie snowflake boo-boos. Without that I expect governments to say "thank you for your unrealistic statement, we'll now ignore it and implement whatever we feel like because you're not saying anything to engage with."
- toyg 3y ago
  You still need some maximalism to signpost an Overton window wide enough for a fair compromise to emerge. Otherwise all you're doing is hopeless damage limitation, with the window sliding further and further towards the opposite maximalist position until it's the law of the land.
  - crooked-v 3y ago
    This nonsense attitude of "the good result is always in the middle of the two arguments" is one the worst failings of modern political attitudes.
    - uoaei 3y ago
      It is largely a product of Americo-centric modes of reasoning about politics, especially since an overwhelming part of Americans' engagement with political issues is predicated on how the Ds and Rs act and react to each other.
    - inglor_cz 3y ago
      "This nonsense attitude of "the good result is always in the middle of the two arguments" is one the worst failings of modern political attitudes." I don't read this in the previous argument. I read an appeal not to narrow the Overton window too much. Accidentally, what do you mean when you talk about a "good result"? Good from which perspective? Conforming to a certain ladder of values, or achievable without bloodshed or further deepening of already bad polarization? Precisely because the society cannot usually unify on what counts as "good", compromises are, at least, somewhat useful in placating the worst conflicts.
      - jfengel 3y ago
        I think we already know where the Overton window's extreme ends are. We don't learn anything by having a bunch of famous people endorse one end of it.
    - toyg 3y ago
      I didn't say "good", I said "fair"; and by that, I mean fair to the majority of people. Whether that's "good" or not, depends largely on one's view of the world.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  With or without that I expect governments to say "thank you for your unrealistic statement, we'll now ignore it and implement whatever we feel like. The standard of debate and progress of the UK Online Safety Bill offered ample evidence of an era in which complex, reasonable and nuanced debate, and appeal to the reasonability of governments, is over. Which is what this is all about really. Post classical democracy it's all about power, and who shouts the loudest. The voices in this impressive list of academics extolling the noble fight for Truth through free-speech seem like "the wind in dry grass". they, and yourself, are appealing to modes of argument and disputation the enemy no longer recognises. Already "censorship" seems too narrow a take of what's happening. It's about shaping the narrative, about shutting up your voice, and making sure the "right" ones get heard. The digital technological landscape is the battleground for this new epistemology. Truth, if it has a future, will either have to find a way outside the digital realm, or learn to celebrate its illegitimacy within it.
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    > Post classical democracy it's all about power, and who shouts the loudest. As opposed to previous eras of democracy?
    - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
      Previous eras of democracy often had some limitations on suffrage, and no round-the-clock media cycle that reached into every household. Under those circumstances, political debate was less sensitive to the loudness of the mob, and more sensitive to longform argument published and read among intellectuals. If you look at nascent American or European democracy, it is remarkable how much its tensions were negotiated by texts that seem emotionally balanced and complex indeed in the modern era of television, radio, and internet.
      - cedilla 3y ago
        Yeah, no. There was a lot of political violence in proto-democracies, especially around the topic of suffrage. If we just look at "limitation" of women's right to vote - Suffragettes would be called domestic terrorists today. It's not much more than nostalgia to think that in the good old times pens were mightier than sword. The nascent American democracy fought two wars to settle its tensions despite all the wise prose the elite wrote.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  You can prosecute people for criminal threats without creating technical apparatuses for shaping and controlling narratives. Prosecuting people for speech that's illegal isn't incompatible with forums that allow people to speak their minds freely and unfiltered. For instance, the US Postal System does not run my mail through content classifiers and filters to determine whether my mail should be suppressed or passed through. If I mail a death threat, the postal system will dutifully deliver it. Despite this, the government may still prosecute me for it. The government's ability to prosecute me for mailing illegal things is not contingent on the postal system having some nanny AI that reads my mail and shadow-bans me when it disapproves. Having laws that restrict speech does not necessitate creating automatic censorship systems. And "..but with computers" doesn't change this.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > Almost every government recognizes threats as not being protected. Libel and slander are also generally not allowed. And the common factor in all of these is that the problem with them is not speech. It's something going beyond speech. A threat is a threat--it's not protected because it's a threat of harm, not because it expresses something someone disagrees with or thinks is "misinformation". Libel and slander aren't protected because of the effects of false information on someone's reputation and ability to make a living, not because they don't meet someone's fact-checking standards. In other words, these are not problems with "unlimited free speech". They are problems with particular acts that, in addition to being "speech", are also something else, and it's the "something else" that is the problem. What this declaration is against, OTOH, is limiting speech that is just speech--it doesn't fall into any of the categories described above (or other exceptions like "yelling fire in a crowded theater" that have the same issues)--but happens to express opinions or views that some people disagree with or find offensive. That kind of speech should be unlimited.
  - jmye 3y ago
    Isn’t this just shifting the issue? I like your reasoning w/r/t threats of violence. But let’s say we’re talking about, I dunno, polio vaccinations. John posts that the vaccine is dangerous and will turn your children into frogs. Jane thinks that posts that decrease the chances all children will receive a vaccination that shows provable efficacy in preventing polio are, in essence, threatening society (say, by putting people unable to receive the vaccine at hugely greater risk). You might argue that John’s speech isn’t a direct issue and is a matter of political opinion and should be unlimited. Jane might argue that the speech is directly dangerous. Your framing doesn’t solve this issue - it just adjusts the point at which we adjudicate it, doesn’t it?
    - inglor_cz 3y ago
      One of the practical problems you run into is that not even China or Iran can efficiently suppress unwanted speech. Taboo topics still get discussed, only somewhere out of sight. Anti-vax ideology needs to be fought with better arguments, not with sheer suppression, which will only drive some distrustful people towards the "hey, why are THEY trying to ban this information" position. At the end of the day, the problem is one of trust, and you don't gain any trust by treating other people's opinions heavy-handedly.
- vivekd 3y ago
  Did you get the idea they were maximalists, the article seemed to restrict itself to talking about political speech which I understand is supposed to have the highest levels of constitutional protections because it seems obviously important to democracy They are asking for gov to abide by UDHR which is limited to politically motivated censorship
_lvbh 3y ago
I trust Matt Taibbi a lot less after he appeared on the Gutfeld show (Fox News)
- WD40forRust 3y ago
  ... and I trust him more now knowing this!
mcpackieh 3y ago
Governments asking or suggesting that media companies suppress a story, with the companies choosing to comply of their own free will, is nothing new. This is how most media censorship in the US and UK worked during WW2. Governments would explain to a newspaper or broadcast company that suppressing a story was in earnest best interest of the nation and the media company would usually comply voluntarily because they felt it was the right thing to do. There's a good argument to be made that this kind of thing really is good and proper; the government asking newspapers to stay quiet about D-Day preparations, and newspapers voluntarily complying, probably saved many lives. But I'm worried. I fear that governments flexing this kind of soft power over media companies now in recent years is a sign of the times. I am afraid that governments see major wars on the horizon and that's why they're dusting off their old bag of tricks and asking the new tech sort of media companies to get ready to respond to censorship requests when the time comes. So it's not the wartime suppression of information that worries me the most, but rather the upcoming war it hints at. Edit: If anybody can talk me down from this fear, I would sincerely appreciate it.
- em-bee 3y ago
  it isn't secret plans for war that are the concern but civil unrest. the problem is that you can't legislate peaceful coexistence. you have to actively encourage it through open conversation between the different groups. we need more interreligious and interpolitical dialogue at every level of society. we need to actively encourage everyone to listen to the concerns of others. this doesn't happen by itself. it requires the creation of offline spaces and forums open to everyone where people can meet and interact and are invited and encouraged to do so without prejudice.
- SenAnder 3y ago
  > Governments asking or suggesting that media companies suppress a story, with the companies choosing to comply of their own free will, is nothing new. What is new is that "media companies" now includes social media. I.e. what used to be real-life gossip has moved online, and been subjected to censorship. I should caution that it's not only government interference to fear - we don't want our public sphere to be moderated by giant corporations either.
shadowgovt 3y ago
> The US First Amendment is a strong example of how the right to freedom of speech, of the press, and of conscience can be firmly protected under the law. That amendment includes the right to freedom of association as well as the aforementioned freedom of the press, which are precisely the freedoms platforms use to choose who is on them. The freedom to speak one's mind and Reddit's freedom to not transit that speech are the same amendment.
- drewrv 3y ago
  It actually chuckled when they mentioned “labeling misinformation” or “manipulating search results”. Those are forms of speech! They are doing the thing they’re complaining about. Either this is being done in bad faith by peddlers of BS, or it’s just intellectually lazy. Judging from the list of signatories, probably some of both.
- SenAnder 3y ago
  Don't confuse the letter and the spirit of the law. It is unlikely the writers of the US constitution intended for private corporations to become mediators, and subsequently censors, of so much speech. They would not just throw their hands up and say "it's not the government so it's okay"
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    Not that one should put too much weight on the wishes or intent of a bunch of slavers who didn't let women or non-land-owners vote, but... Yes, they definitely intended for nobody to be able to tell presses whose words they could or could not print. The recourse was "If nobody will print you, buy your own press." A recourse Truth Social demonstrates still exists.
    - salawat 3y ago
      >Not that one should put too much weight on the wishes or intent of a bunch of slavers Politics is all a product of it's time; and furthermore, when it comes down to "compromise or realistically get rolled by a foreign adversary", those slavers you look down on still laid the foundation for the social liberalification that ultimately resulted in the world you live in today. That "bunch of slavers" built a state in which there was the understanding the populace would be armed heavily enough to overthrow it, and it (the Government) was fettered from doing anything to stop that replacement short of Congress declaring War. That... to put it mildly, was and still is pretty radical in the grand scheme of the history of Government.
macintux 3y ago
> Free speech is our best defence against disinformation. Do we know that to be true, or do we hope that to be true?
- kbelder 3y ago
  The irony of writing that question...
  - jfengel 3y ago
    It seems like a perfectly cromulent question to me.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  This is not mathematics, you can't expect a QED here. Free speech is certainly pretty good against government-backed disinformation. Governments have a lot of power to push their POV anyway; add the ability to prosecute dissent to the mix and the system loses necessary feedback.
- mayd 3y ago
  It gives me little shock every time I realise I have lived long enough to see the world turned upside down. What was once regarded as an anodyne statement of fact has become increasingly contested and is even rejected by a sizeable section of society. That is, that free speech is a universal right, and a good thing. For a very long time, going back to the 19th century, at least, every British (and American) politician, or other public figure, would have agreed with Voltaire's position on freedom of speech: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". How times have changed.
8bitsrule 3y ago
There's a difference between 'etiquette' and being threatened with being banned from a site for not using 'sensitive topic' features ...particularly for factual statements. Are social media sites part of the CIC? To what extent should we choose to censor ourselves 'out of consideration' to others? Today seems like a timely time to have this discussion.
- vivekd 3y ago
  I choose to censor myself all the time out of consideration. My issue is when the law mandates and controls political speech If you are American you are safe because political speech has a high level of protection in the US. If like me you are non American - even if you are from a G8 nation, you are watching your right to criticize the government slowly errode. But even if you are American, can you really go to court over a social media post. There should be something that at least restricts government action to the limits set out in the constitution
vivekd 3y ago
The article complains about misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and other ill-defined terms being used to censor speech. The opposition to this and the indifference of the population generally suggests the age of free speech is over. These conversations get mired in debate over free speech maximalism or what is disinformation. I think that's besides the point. Perhaps a better question would be when is it okay to suppress speech. On what basis do we measure and catalog harmful speech or disinformation. I can see some, like speech calling for violence against certain groups. But that's already illegal. What about when government goes outside established frameworks to also protect 'truth' from disinformation or catalogs some opinions as harmful. I'm religious, I believe in ultimate truths, so I have ideas of misinformation and disinformation. But our governments today are secular. They don't believe in ultimate truths - so on what basis can they claim something is disinfo or misinformation and suppress it? When we say harmful info or discourse - harmful to who. I haven't been hurt, I don't know anyone who has. I do however see governments and corporations being harmed by speech online. Isn't the real issue that there is a new medium the internet that lets ordinary people speak freely and this is very uncomfortable for the political and business elites and they wish to suppress that. Isn't the question not really about free speech but more about how much control can States exercise over channels of public communications before they can reasonably be called tyrannical?

89 points by ed-209 3y ago

I would have a lot more respect for this if they at least tried to recognize that the genuine concerns about unlimited free speech. Almost every government recognizes threats as not being protected. Libel and slander are also generally not allowed. Some kinds of pornography are considered by large numbers as beyond the pale. Making universal declarations is easy but not very useful. Real work is done by grappling with the actual limitations. I'd have a lot more respect for a maximalist position that at least understood why some people legitimately reject that position, and not just because they're stinky meanie snowflake boo-boos. Without that I expect governments to say "thank you for your unrealistic statement, we'll now ignore it and implement whatever we feel like because you're not saying anything to engage with."

toyg 3y ago
You still need some maximalism to signpost an Overton window wide enough for a fair compromise to emerge. Otherwise all you're doing is hopeless damage limitation, with the window sliding further and further towards the opposite maximalist position until it's the law of the land.
- crooked-v 3y ago
  This nonsense attitude of "the good result is always in the middle of the two arguments" is one the worst failings of modern political attitudes.
  - uoaei 3y ago
    It is largely a product of Americo-centric modes of reasoning about politics, especially since an overwhelming part of Americans' engagement with political issues is predicated on how the Ds and Rs act and react to each other.
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    "This nonsense attitude of "the good result is always in the middle of the two arguments" is one the worst failings of modern political attitudes." I don't read this in the previous argument. I read an appeal not to narrow the Overton window too much. Accidentally, what do you mean when you talk about a "good result"? Good from which perspective? Conforming to a certain ladder of values, or achievable without bloodshed or further deepening of already bad polarization? Precisely because the society cannot usually unify on what counts as "good", compromises are, at least, somewhat useful in placating the worst conflicts.
    - jfengel 3y ago
      I think we already know where the Overton window's extreme ends are. We don't learn anything by having a bunch of famous people endorse one end of it.
  - toyg 3y ago
    I didn't say "good", I said "fair"; and by that, I mean fair to the majority of people. Whether that's "good" or not, depends largely on one's view of the world.
nonrandomstring 3y ago
With or without that I expect governments to say "thank you for your unrealistic statement, we'll now ignore it and implement whatever we feel like. The standard of debate and progress of the UK Online Safety Bill offered ample evidence of an era in which complex, reasonable and nuanced debate, and appeal to the reasonability of governments, is over. Which is what this is all about really. Post classical democracy it's all about power, and who shouts the loudest. The voices in this impressive list of academics extolling the noble fight for Truth through free-speech seem like "the wind in dry grass". they, and yourself, are appealing to modes of argument and disputation the enemy no longer recognises. Already "censorship" seems too narrow a take of what's happening. It's about shaping the narrative, about shutting up your voice, and making sure the "right" ones get heard. The digital technological landscape is the battleground for this new epistemology. Truth, if it has a future, will either have to find a way outside the digital realm, or learn to celebrate its illegitimacy within it.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  > Post classical democracy it's all about power, and who shouts the loudest. As opposed to previous eras of democracy?
  - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
    Previous eras of democracy often had some limitations on suffrage, and no round-the-clock media cycle that reached into every household. Under those circumstances, political debate was less sensitive to the loudness of the mob, and more sensitive to longform argument published and read among intellectuals. If you look at nascent American or European democracy, it is remarkable how much its tensions were negotiated by texts that seem emotionally balanced and complex indeed in the modern era of television, radio, and internet.
    - cedilla 3y ago
      Yeah, no. There was a lot of political violence in proto-democracies, especially around the topic of suffrage. If we just look at "limitation" of women's right to vote - Suffragettes would be called domestic terrorists today. It's not much more than nostalgia to think that in the good old times pens were mightier than sword. The nascent American democracy fought two wars to settle its tensions despite all the wise prose the elite wrote.
mcpackieh 3y ago
You can prosecute people for criminal threats without creating technical apparatuses for shaping and controlling narratives. Prosecuting people for speech that's illegal isn't incompatible with forums that allow people to speak their minds freely and unfiltered. For instance, the US Postal System does not run my mail through content classifiers and filters to determine whether my mail should be suppressed or passed through. If I mail a death threat, the postal system will dutifully deliver it. Despite this, the government may still prosecute me for it. The government's ability to prosecute me for mailing illegal things is not contingent on the postal system having some nanny AI that reads my mail and shadow-bans me when it disapproves. Having laws that restrict speech does not necessitate creating automatic censorship systems. And "..but with computers" doesn't change this.
pdonis 3y ago
> Almost every government recognizes threats as not being protected. Libel and slander are also generally not allowed. And the common factor in all of these is that the problem with them is not speech. It's something going beyond speech. A threat is a threat--it's not protected because it's a threat of harm, not because it expresses something someone disagrees with or thinks is "misinformation". Libel and slander aren't protected because of the effects of false information on someone's reputation and ability to make a living, not because they don't meet someone's fact-checking standards. In other words, these are not problems with "unlimited free speech". They are problems with particular acts that, in addition to being "speech", are also something else, and it's the "something else" that is the problem. What this declaration is against, OTOH, is limiting speech that is just speech--it doesn't fall into any of the categories described above (or other exceptions like "yelling fire in a crowded theater" that have the same issues)--but happens to express opinions or views that some people disagree with or find offensive. That kind of speech should be unlimited.
- jmye 3y ago
  Isn’t this just shifting the issue? I like your reasoning w/r/t threats of violence. But let’s say we’re talking about, I dunno, polio vaccinations. John posts that the vaccine is dangerous and will turn your children into frogs. Jane thinks that posts that decrease the chances all children will receive a vaccination that shows provable efficacy in preventing polio are, in essence, threatening society (say, by putting people unable to receive the vaccine at hugely greater risk). You might argue that John’s speech isn’t a direct issue and is a matter of political opinion and should be unlimited. Jane might argue that the speech is directly dangerous. Your framing doesn’t solve this issue - it just adjusts the point at which we adjudicate it, doesn’t it?
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    One of the practical problems you run into is that not even China or Iran can efficiently suppress unwanted speech. Taboo topics still get discussed, only somewhere out of sight. Anti-vax ideology needs to be fought with better arguments, not with sheer suppression, which will only drive some distrustful people towards the "hey, why are THEY trying to ban this information" position. At the end of the day, the problem is one of trust, and you don't gain any trust by treating other people's opinions heavy-handedly.
vivekd 3y ago
Did you get the idea they were maximalists, the article seemed to restrict itself to talking about political speech which I understand is supposed to have the highest levels of constitutional protections because it seems obviously important to democracy They are asking for gov to abide by UDHR which is limited to politically motivated censorship

_lvbh 3y ago

I trust Matt Taibbi a lot less after he appeared on the Gutfeld show (Fox News)

WD40forRust 3y ago
... and I trust him more now knowing this!

mcpackieh 3y ago

Governments asking or suggesting that media companies suppress a story, with the companies choosing to comply of their own free will, is nothing new. This is how most media censorship in the US and UK worked during WW2. Governments would explain to a newspaper or broadcast company that suppressing a story was in earnest best interest of the nation and the media company would usually comply voluntarily because they felt it was the right thing to do. There's a good argument to be made that this kind of thing really is good and proper; the government asking newspapers to stay quiet about D-Day preparations, and newspapers voluntarily complying, probably saved many lives. But I'm worried. I fear that governments flexing this kind of soft power over media companies now in recent years is a sign of the times. I am afraid that governments see major wars on the horizon and that's why they're dusting off their old bag of tricks and asking the new tech sort of media companies to get ready to respond to censorship requests when the time comes. So it's not the wartime suppression of information that worries me the most, but rather the upcoming war it hints at. Edit: If anybody can talk me down from this fear, I would sincerely appreciate it.

em-bee 3y ago
it isn't secret plans for war that are the concern but civil unrest. the problem is that you can't legislate peaceful coexistence. you have to actively encourage it through open conversation between the different groups. we need more interreligious and interpolitical dialogue at every level of society. we need to actively encourage everyone to listen to the concerns of others. this doesn't happen by itself. it requires the creation of offline spaces and forums open to everyone where people can meet and interact and are invited and encouraged to do so without prejudice.
SenAnder 3y ago
> Governments asking or suggesting that media companies suppress a story, with the companies choosing to comply of their own free will, is nothing new. What is new is that "media companies" now includes social media. I.e. what used to be real-life gossip has moved online, and been subjected to censorship. I should caution that it's not only government interference to fear - we don't want our public sphere to be moderated by giant corporations either.

shadowgovt 3y ago

> The US First Amendment is a strong example of how the right to freedom of speech, of the press, and of conscience can be firmly protected under the law. That amendment includes the right to freedom of association as well as the aforementioned freedom of the press, which are precisely the freedoms platforms use to choose who is on them. The freedom to speak one's mind and Reddit's freedom to not transit that speech are the same amendment.

drewrv 3y ago
It actually chuckled when they mentioned “labeling misinformation” or “manipulating search results”. Those are forms of speech! They are doing the thing they’re complaining about. Either this is being done in bad faith by peddlers of BS, or it’s just intellectually lazy. Judging from the list of signatories, probably some of both.
SenAnder 3y ago
Don't confuse the letter and the spirit of the law. It is unlikely the writers of the US constitution intended for private corporations to become mediators, and subsequently censors, of so much speech. They would not just throw their hands up and say "it's not the government so it's okay"
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  Not that one should put too much weight on the wishes or intent of a bunch of slavers who didn't let women or non-land-owners vote, but... Yes, they definitely intended for nobody to be able to tell presses whose words they could or could not print. The recourse was "If nobody will print you, buy your own press." A recourse Truth Social demonstrates still exists.
  - salawat 3y ago
    >Not that one should put too much weight on the wishes or intent of a bunch of slavers Politics is all a product of it's time; and furthermore, when it comes down to "compromise or realistically get rolled by a foreign adversary", those slavers you look down on still laid the foundation for the social liberalification that ultimately resulted in the world you live in today. That "bunch of slavers" built a state in which there was the understanding the populace would be armed heavily enough to overthrow it, and it (the Government) was fettered from doing anything to stop that replacement short of Congress declaring War. That... to put it mildly, was and still is pretty radical in the grand scheme of the history of Government.

macintux 3y ago

> Free speech is our best defence against disinformation. Do we know that to be true, or do we hope that to be true?

kbelder 3y ago
The irony of writing that question...
- jfengel 3y ago
  It seems like a perfectly cromulent question to me.
inglor_cz 3y ago
This is not mathematics, you can't expect a QED here. Free speech is certainly pretty good against government-backed disinformation. Governments have a lot of power to push their POV anyway; add the ability to prosecute dissent to the mix and the system loses necessary feedback.
mayd 3y ago
It gives me little shock every time I realise I have lived long enough to see the world turned upside down. What was once regarded as an anodyne statement of fact has become increasingly contested and is even rejected by a sizeable section of society. That is, that free speech is a universal right, and a good thing. For a very long time, going back to the 19th century, at least, every British (and American) politician, or other public figure, would have agreed with Voltaire's position on freedom of speech: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". How times have changed.

8bitsrule 3y ago

There's a difference between 'etiquette' and being threatened with being banned from a site for not using 'sensitive topic' features ...particularly for factual statements. Are social media sites part of the CIC? To what extent should we choose to censor ourselves 'out of consideration' to others? Today seems like a timely time to have this discussion.

vivekd 3y ago
I choose to censor myself all the time out of consideration. My issue is when the law mandates and controls political speech If you are American you are safe because political speech has a high level of protection in the US. If like me you are non American - even if you are from a G8 nation, you are watching your right to criticize the government slowly errode. But even if you are American, can you really go to court over a social media post. There should be something that at least restricts government action to the limits set out in the constitution

vivekd 3y ago

The article complains about misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and other ill-defined terms being used to censor speech. The opposition to this and the indifference of the population generally suggests the age of free speech is over. These conversations get mired in debate over free speech maximalism or what is disinformation. I think that's besides the point. Perhaps a better question would be when is it okay to suppress speech. On what basis do we measure and catalog harmful speech or disinformation. I can see some, like speech calling for violence against certain groups. But that's already illegal. What about when government goes outside established frameworks to also protect 'truth' from disinformation or catalogs some opinions as harmful. I'm religious, I believe in ultimate truths, so I have ideas of misinformation and disinformation. But our governments today are secular. They don't believe in ultimate truths - so on what basis can they claim something is disinfo or misinformation and suppress it? When we say harmful info or discourse - harmful to who. I haven't been hurt, I don't know anyone who has. I do however see governments and corporations being harmed by speech online. Isn't the real issue that there is a new medium the internet that lets ordinary people speak freely and this is very uncomfortable for the political and business elites and they wish to suppress that. Isn't the question not really about free speech but more about how much control can States exercise over channels of public communications before they can reasonably be called tyrannical?