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Completely ridiculous and destructive to any political system. In any democratic system political conflict is also a conflict about determining truth, giving so

Completely ridiculous and destructive to any political system. In any democratic system political conflict is also a conflict about determining truth, giving some institution the power to determine truth from lie puts far too much political power into that institution. That institution will naturally be a target for capture as it allows the criminal prosecution of the opposition. This is a genuinely insane idea and goes against essentially all democratic thought, which always wanted to give political opposition some means of participation.

Towaway69 2y ago
Any other suggestion for fixing the problem of „fake truths“ in politics? The underlying problem of lying in politics exists. Banning it is one approach, what about education so that the average voter can recognise lies? Personally banning things isn’t my cup of tea yet societal it seems to be the easiest, cheapest and laziest solution to most problems.
- coldtea 2y ago
  >Any other suggestion for fixing the problem of „fake truths“ in politics? There's no problem of "fake truths" in politics. It's a recently made-up "problem", used to justify controlling. Politics is the very process of working out disagreements on what is the truth and what needs to be done. You can't agree on truth in advance.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    That works for people interested in working out disagreements. There's a large number interested in just shouting their lies again every time they're debated. The concept of posting something slightly incorrect to get people to disagree with you, just so you can grow the number of your followers (who don't care) has really only became a thing since Twitter and it's definitely used for political reasons.
    - rayiner 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - coldtea 2y ago
        Or the mountain of lies rightists and centrists around the world used to justify imperialism, capitalism, seggregation - all the way to colonialism and slavery.
        rayiner 2y ago
        Singapore, QED.
      - viraptor 2y ago
        It's really not clear what timescale you're talking about here. Specifically - do you mean today's tankies (in which case it's new), or people at the time of the Soviet union (in which case, where were they posting these incorrect opinion in order to generate outrage that gets them more popular with the algorithm)?
  - g-b-r 2y ago
    There's every problem in fake truths, and the recent phenomenon is people so entrenched in troll farm lies to come to believe that truth is impossible. Politics is the process of lying so well that you can get things your way.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- constantcrying 2y ago
  >Any other suggestion for fixing the problem of „fake truths“ in politics? The problem is as old as large scale human societies. There are hundreds upon hundreds of ways those groups have dealt with this problem. Banning lies is the same as criminalizing the opposition, as politics is also a conflict about truth. Do you believe that a political situation should be allowed to exist where your staunchest political opponents control the definition of truth and gets to prosecute based on that definition? Of course not, it is something so horrifying that it seems reasonable to use violence to prevent it.
  - Towaway69 2y ago
    Why do you assume the opposition lies more than those in power? Both sides lie when it suits them. How does banning lies criminalise the opposition? Because those in power will claim they lied? That’s why there are courts of law for both parties to state their case. Defamation cases abound, these being classic examples of people lying about others. It only seems fair to extend that to politics and partly remove the immunity enjoyed by politicians.
    - cauch 2y ago
      Exactly, I really don't understand the logic of people saying that it will allow to arrest the opposition. Surely, if the people in power have such power that they can force the judicial system concludes that an opponent has lied when there is no proof, then they can already arrest their opponents using a ton of already existing laws. They just need to say "they killed an old lady", and it is done.
      - constantcrying 2y ago
        >Exactly, I really don't understand the logic of people saying that it will allow to arrest the opposition. Because politics is about finding facts. It is the process of reconciling different viewpoints. The winner in politics has won on fact finding, the looser lost. By definition the opposition are liars in the political conflict.
    - 2y ago
- jerf 2y ago
  There is no solution, because there is no oracle of truth that we all can and do completely trust. Thus, banning "lies" is just a backdoor way of centralizing political power into the entity that gets to decide what is "truth" for legal reasons. The real problem here is the idea that a political entity can determine "truth". People on average have a huge cognitive blind spot around labels and have a hard time processing the idea that a label can be placed on something and the label can be just... wrong. It sounds great to have a political body label things as "truth" and then punish "lies"... but there is no more connection between the "truth" label they would hand out and the actual truth than exists currently. You're just asking to be told more soothing and subtle lies rather than disturbing and blatent lies, and while that may feel better that's not actually progress. To be honest, you can see that even today in our culture. As near as I can see there's still a lot of people, even yea verily here on Hacker News, that have not deeply processed the fact that just because something is labelled "misinformation" that means nothing whatsoever as to its truth value. It's nothing more than a particularly successful way for some politicians to label what other politicians say as lies, which they've done since time immemorial, but this one still slips past people's cognitive defenses for some reason, even now. I expect we're past the halfway mark on that one being used up, though.
energy123 2y ago
If it requires a court case with a jury, I think it's a good experiment to run.
- constantcrying 2y ago
  If a liar can convince millions of people he is saying the truth, why couldn't he convince twelve?
  - energy123 2y ago
    Courts have good truth finding mechanisms, with burden of proof, standards of evidence, jury deliberation, and both sides presenting their case over a long period of time in a controlled manner. You could design the law to only target damaging lies, such as false election fraud claims. This increases the bar on the prosecution and makes it harder to get convictions, and will make it so that frivolous lies are less likely to be prosecuted. I'm less excited about the actual convictions and more excited about the long-run deterrence effect and cultural shift that could happen.
ben_w 2y ago
The current status quo in UK politics is that Boris Johnson was able to say demonstrably false things, but the person who called him out on this was ejected. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jul/22/dawn-butler-ejected-from-commons-for-saying-johnson-has-lied-repeatedly https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jul/22/dawn-butler...
- rootusrootus 2y ago
  Am I understanding it correctly that this was just an MP getting ejected from the chamber because there are rules of decorum? That does not seem controversial. Presumably she can say whatever she wants about the PM out in public, in the media, or whatever?
  - ben_w 2y ago
    That's my understanding, yes. The only point I disagree with you on is: > That does not seem controversial Surely the existence of the news story at the root of this thread is evidence that the particular rule of decorum is controversial? That having liars in power is worse than having people call out those liars?
    - rootusrootus 2y ago
      I concede that while the concept of decorum makes sense, this particular example seems like it has gone too far. I sort of understand the idea that just calling someone a liar amounts to petty namecalling and is out of place in a legislative setting. But dryly presenting specific examples of provably false statements ought to be fair game.
viraptor 2y ago
> That institution will naturally be a target for capture as it allows the criminal prosecution of the opposition. They can put some protection on that ahead of time. But it's not that different from not having this institution at all and just flooding the media with lies about the opposition since you're not liable. So worst case things stay the same; best case they improve.
- qup 2y ago
  Arresting your opponents is quite different from telling lies about them.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    Parties in power arrest opposition in many places in the world without this institution. If they'd try to use this institution to jail someone, I don't see why they wouldn't use some other way right now.
    - constantcrying 2y ago
      >If they'd try to use this institution to jail someone, I don't see why they wouldn't use some other way right now. Because in most western states it is extremely hard to jail someone for a political crime. It doesn't happen because the most important thing to a working democracy is a powerful opposition. And in most western countries oppositions have more than enough political power to prevent this.
  - cauch 2y ago
    How can you arrest your opponents in such system? It is explained that it will go through the independent judicial system. If your argument is that the judicial system will be captured by the power, then, why is this law a problem: if the judicial system is captured, they can already arrest their opponents by just saying "they rob a bank yesterday".
    - constantcrying 2y ago
EGreg 2y ago
Hard disagree. I would prefer that politicians be required to run every statement in their speeches (not impromptu interview answers) through a fact checker. But failing that, AT THE VERY LEAST can we please have transparency in government? Hiding information is A FAR MORE IMPORTANT ISSUE and it supports lies that get countries into wars via the spy agencies and cover up the failures of the elected officials to deescalate. And later it is “declassified” and “mistakes were made.” Look: https://community.qbix.com/t/transparency-in-government/234 https://community.qbix.com/t/transparency-in-government/234
- constantcrying 2y ago
  >through a fact checker Facts are the subject of political debate. If there is no disagreement about facts politics ceases to exist. It would be just one group saying "I believe A" and another group saying "I believe B", no communication could take place.
  - g-b-r 2y ago
    There's ongoing disagreement because people lie when they say "I believe x" (when it's actually "I've been paid to support y") On most subjects people would come to an agreement after a while, if they were forced to be honest.
    - rayiner 2y ago
      But you can’t trust the “fact checkers” to be honest.
      - g-b-r 2y ago
        Most "fact checkers" actually rarely get it wrong. As with any law anyhow, of course there have to be enough judicial safeguards.
    - constantcrying 2y ago
      >On most subjects people would come to an agreement after a while, if they were forced to be honest. This is completely delusional. Genuinely surprised to hear such a ridiculous thing.
tootie 2y ago
Honestly I don't think so. You can write a statute in a way that is at least partially enforceable and that may be enough. We already have functional laws against perjury that have a higher standard than simply saying something wrong. All you'd have do is make all statements at political debate sessions subject to perjury. The lie would have to be proven to be both intentional and material. I would imagine every decent politician would be safe.
Escapado 2y ago
The devil is in the details and a very careful process and very careful wording of said law could mitigate that to some degree. I mean representative democracy could also be considered a system conflicting in principle with values underlying a direct democracy, which, to be clear, I think would be an even worse system but my point is that regardless of which rules of the game you make up, there is almost certainly upsides and downsides to them. E.g. You want a functioning economy? Well, listening to the corporations that employ a vast majority of the workforce might be a good idea in principle - until they start corrupting politicians and the lobbyism presents a detriment to society at large. I think there is a lot of nuance when it comes to determining truth too. In germany for example the AFD is full of climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers. And even when there is a public discourse and plenty of information to discredit their lies, they keep growing in popularity - so even if truth presents itself, it is apparently of little consequence to their political power. And to turn that problem around: I think we are kind of in trouble when truth is primarily determined by democratic consensus and history has a lot of examples to show that. Furthermore for different types of statements truth has fairly different forms. If some politican made up that eating 4000kcal of raw sugar every day is the healthiest way to live and coincidentally his family runs a sugar plant then it's incredibly easy to discredit that based on scientific evidence from mechanistic studies to randomized human control trials. Now this is a case that currently is not handled in the political system and apparently impresses a significant amount of voters. At least from my perspective the lies used in european politics are in their quality not very far from the example given. Now what kind of punishment there should be for lying exactly and in which case I can not say. But leaving it up to the voters is showing to be increasingly fragile imho.
DoubleDerper 2y ago
"There is a fire in the theater" when there isn't one creates a chaotic stampede. People die. The theater is the political culture war. Millions of human lives will die in the chase for politically charged click bait. In no sane world should this not be punished severely.
- willcipriano 2y ago
  How "truth" works today: "I see homeless people every day on the way to work, I'm having trouble making ends meet, the economy sucks." "Fact Check: False, The economy is fine, take a look at NVIDA shares!"
  - rootusrootus 2y ago
    Two anecdotes followed by an opinion, responded to with another opinion and anecdote. There is not any meaningful argument about 'truth' going on there.
    - willcipriano 2y ago
      Real life example: https://x.com/paulkrugman/status/1712494317024026761?lang=en https://x.com/paulkrugman/status/1712494317024026761?lang=en
      - pessimizer 2y ago
        "Winning the war on inflation" isn't a statement of fact, it's a jingoistic military metaphor.
      - rootusrootus 2y ago
        The "reader added context" below that post seems on point. It is an opinion, not a fact. I assume the graph is accurately representing truth. It is a decent demonstration of the old saw about lies, damn lies, and statistics, but it is real numbers, real dates, and the metric is described specifically. Excellent for misleading, but still truth. The assertions that "we won" or it is "over" or it was "at very little cost" are all one man's opinions, however.
IneffablePigeon 2y ago
Is it not already illegal to deliberately mislead a courtroom? Many of the same concerns apply, and yet thankfully the solution is not generally to throw our hands in the air and say it’s impossible to deal with the nuance.
- rayiner 2y ago
  That’s because court cases tend to be between two parties, and don’t have far-reaching impacts on the whole country.
  - salawat 2y ago
    ...Ever heard of precedent? Many cases never see a trial specifically to keep advantageous ambiguities from becoming case law.
g-b-r 2y ago
The opposition can be targeted with any whatsoever law, in any country that doesn't have immunity for politicians (none does for any politician, by the way). Try to think of some of what you hate of your country's politics, or some f* up that recently happened, and you'l easily find out that a prohibition to lie in public statements for politicians would have prevented it.
- constantcrying 2y ago
  It is legitimately a totalitarian idea. There is no good it could do which isn't outweighed by the evil it will cause. It invalidates politics as a whole.
  - g-b-r 2y ago
    I think your idea of totalitarianism is messed up, or maybe you think it would be the government to enforce the law (democratic countries typically have separation between the judicial and the executive branch - yes, the US much less so). If you just imagine some scenarios I think you will quickly see how game-changing it would be (in a positive way). It invalidates the typical current politics, which is a contest of lies and pretense
EasyMark 2y ago
I’m not so sure. Sometimes there are opinions and either times there are easily verified, straight up lies that are destructive and dangerous to the common good. I have no problem seeing that stuff easily taken off the internet and the person doing it fined, they usually can’t be found though, because it’s often foreign propaganda preying on those who seem to have given up on facts.

Towaway69 2y ago

Any other suggestion for fixing the problem of „fake truths“ in politics? The underlying problem of lying in politics exists. Banning it is one approach, what about education so that the average voter can recognise lies? Personally banning things isn’t my cup of tea yet societal it seems to be the easiest, cheapest and laziest solution to most problems.

coldtea 2y ago
>Any other suggestion for fixing the problem of „fake truths“ in politics? There's no problem of "fake truths" in politics. It's a recently made-up "problem", used to justify controlling. Politics is the very process of working out disagreements on what is the truth and what needs to be done. You can't agree on truth in advance.
- viraptor 2y ago
  That works for people interested in working out disagreements. There's a large number interested in just shouting their lies again every time they're debated. The concept of posting something slightly incorrect to get people to disagree with you, just so you can grow the number of your followers (who don't care) has really only became a thing since Twitter and it's definitely used for political reasons.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - coldtea 2y ago
      Or the mountain of lies rightists and centrists around the world used to justify imperialism, capitalism, seggregation - all the way to colonialism and slavery.
      - rayiner 2y ago
        Singapore, QED.
    - viraptor 2y ago
      It's really not clear what timescale you're talking about here. Specifically - do you mean today's tankies (in which case it's new), or people at the time of the Soviet union (in which case, where were they posting these incorrect opinion in order to generate outrage that gets them more popular with the algorithm)?
- g-b-r 2y ago
  There's every problem in fake truths, and the recent phenomenon is people so entrenched in troll farm lies to come to believe that truth is impossible. Politics is the process of lying so well that you can get things your way.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
constantcrying 2y ago
>Any other suggestion for fixing the problem of „fake truths“ in politics? The problem is as old as large scale human societies. There are hundreds upon hundreds of ways those groups have dealt with this problem. Banning lies is the same as criminalizing the opposition, as politics is also a conflict about truth. Do you believe that a political situation should be allowed to exist where your staunchest political opponents control the definition of truth and gets to prosecute based on that definition? Of course not, it is something so horrifying that it seems reasonable to use violence to prevent it.
- Towaway69 2y ago
  Why do you assume the opposition lies more than those in power? Both sides lie when it suits them. How does banning lies criminalise the opposition? Because those in power will claim they lied? That’s why there are courts of law for both parties to state their case. Defamation cases abound, these being classic examples of people lying about others. It only seems fair to extend that to politics and partly remove the immunity enjoyed by politicians.
  - cauch 2y ago
    Exactly, I really don't understand the logic of people saying that it will allow to arrest the opposition. Surely, if the people in power have such power that they can force the judicial system concludes that an opponent has lied when there is no proof, then they can already arrest their opponents using a ton of already existing laws. They just need to say "they killed an old lady", and it is done.
    - constantcrying 2y ago
      >Exactly, I really don't understand the logic of people saying that it will allow to arrest the opposition. Because politics is about finding facts. It is the process of reconciling different viewpoints. The winner in politics has won on fact finding, the looser lost. By definition the opposition are liars in the political conflict.
  - 2y ago
jerf 2y ago
There is no solution, because there is no oracle of truth that we all can and do completely trust. Thus, banning "lies" is just a backdoor way of centralizing political power into the entity that gets to decide what is "truth" for legal reasons. The real problem here is the idea that a political entity can determine "truth". People on average have a huge cognitive blind spot around labels and have a hard time processing the idea that a label can be placed on something and the label can be just... wrong. It sounds great to have a political body label things as "truth" and then punish "lies"... but there is no more connection between the "truth" label they would hand out and the actual truth than exists currently. You're just asking to be told more soothing and subtle lies rather than disturbing and blatent lies, and while that may feel better that's not actually progress. To be honest, you can see that even today in our culture. As near as I can see there's still a lot of people, even yea verily here on Hacker News, that have not deeply processed the fact that just because something is labelled "misinformation" that means nothing whatsoever as to its truth value. It's nothing more than a particularly successful way for some politicians to label what other politicians say as lies, which they've done since time immemorial, but this one still slips past people's cognitive defenses for some reason, even now. I expect we're past the halfway mark on that one being used up, though.

energy123 2y ago

If it requires a court case with a jury, I think it's a good experiment to run.

constantcrying 2y ago
If a liar can convince millions of people he is saying the truth, why couldn't he convince twelve?
- energy123 2y ago
  Courts have good truth finding mechanisms, with burden of proof, standards of evidence, jury deliberation, and both sides presenting their case over a long period of time in a controlled manner. You could design the law to only target damaging lies, such as false election fraud claims. This increases the bar on the prosecution and makes it harder to get convictions, and will make it so that frivolous lies are less likely to be prosecuted. I'm less excited about the actual convictions and more excited about the long-run deterrence effect and cultural shift that could happen.

ben_w 2y ago

The current status quo in UK politics is that Boris Johnson was able to say demonstrably false things, but the person who called him out on this was ejected. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jul/22/dawn-butler-ejected-from-commons-for-saying-johnson-has-lied-repeatedly https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jul/22/dawn-butler...

rootusrootus 2y ago
Am I understanding it correctly that this was just an MP getting ejected from the chamber because there are rules of decorum? That does not seem controversial. Presumably she can say whatever she wants about the PM out in public, in the media, or whatever?
- ben_w 2y ago
  That's my understanding, yes. The only point I disagree with you on is: > That does not seem controversial Surely the existence of the news story at the root of this thread is evidence that the particular rule of decorum is controversial? That having liars in power is worse than having people call out those liars?
  - rootusrootus 2y ago
    I concede that while the concept of decorum makes sense, this particular example seems like it has gone too far. I sort of understand the idea that just calling someone a liar amounts to petty namecalling and is out of place in a legislative setting. But dryly presenting specific examples of provably false statements ought to be fair game.

viraptor 2y ago

> That institution will naturally be a target for capture as it allows the criminal prosecution of the opposition. They can put some protection on that ahead of time. But it's not that different from not having this institution at all and just flooding the media with lies about the opposition since you're not liable. So worst case things stay the same; best case they improve.

qup 2y ago
Arresting your opponents is quite different from telling lies about them.
- viraptor 2y ago
  Parties in power arrest opposition in many places in the world without this institution. If they'd try to use this institution to jail someone, I don't see why they wouldn't use some other way right now.
  - constantcrying 2y ago
    >If they'd try to use this institution to jail someone, I don't see why they wouldn't use some other way right now. Because in most western states it is extremely hard to jail someone for a political crime. It doesn't happen because the most important thing to a working democracy is a powerful opposition. And in most western countries oppositions have more than enough political power to prevent this.
- cauch 2y ago
  How can you arrest your opponents in such system? It is explained that it will go through the independent judicial system. If your argument is that the judicial system will be captured by the power, then, why is this law a problem: if the judicial system is captured, they can already arrest their opponents by just saying "they rob a bank yesterday".
  - constantcrying 2y ago

EGreg 2y ago

Hard disagree. I would prefer that politicians be required to run every statement in their speeches (not impromptu interview answers) through a fact checker. But failing that, AT THE VERY LEAST can we please have transparency in government? Hiding information is A FAR MORE IMPORTANT ISSUE and it supports lies that get countries into wars via the spy agencies and cover up the failures of the elected officials to deescalate. And later it is “declassified” and “mistakes were made.” Look: https://community.qbix.com/t/transparency-in-government/234 https://community.qbix.com/t/transparency-in-government/234

constantcrying 2y ago
>through a fact checker Facts are the subject of political debate. If there is no disagreement about facts politics ceases to exist. It would be just one group saying "I believe A" and another group saying "I believe B", no communication could take place.
- g-b-r 2y ago
  There's ongoing disagreement because people lie when they say "I believe x" (when it's actually "I've been paid to support y") On most subjects people would come to an agreement after a while, if they were forced to be honest.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    But you can’t trust the “fact checkers” to be honest.
    - g-b-r 2y ago
      Most "fact checkers" actually rarely get it wrong. As with any law anyhow, of course there have to be enough judicial safeguards.
  - constantcrying 2y ago
    >On most subjects people would come to an agreement after a while, if they were forced to be honest. This is completely delusional. Genuinely surprised to hear such a ridiculous thing.

tootie 2y ago

Honestly I don't think so. You can write a statute in a way that is at least partially enforceable and that may be enough. We already have functional laws against perjury that have a higher standard than simply saying something wrong. All you'd have do is make all statements at political debate sessions subject to perjury. The lie would have to be proven to be both intentional and material. I would imagine every decent politician would be safe.

Escapado 2y ago

The devil is in the details and a very careful process and very careful wording of said law could mitigate that to some degree. I mean representative democracy could also be considered a system conflicting in principle with values underlying a direct democracy, which, to be clear, I think would be an even worse system but my point is that regardless of which rules of the game you make up, there is almost certainly upsides and downsides to them. E.g. You want a functioning economy? Well, listening to the corporations that employ a vast majority of the workforce might be a good idea in principle - until they start corrupting politicians and the lobbyism presents a detriment to society at large. I think there is a lot of nuance when it comes to determining truth too. In germany for example the AFD is full of climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers. And even when there is a public discourse and plenty of information to discredit their lies, they keep growing in popularity - so even if truth presents itself, it is apparently of little consequence to their political power. And to turn that problem around: I think we are kind of in trouble when truth is primarily determined by democratic consensus and history has a lot of examples to show that. Furthermore for different types of statements truth has fairly different forms. If some politican made up that eating 4000kcal of raw sugar every day is the healthiest way to live and coincidentally his family runs a sugar plant then it's incredibly easy to discredit that based on scientific evidence from mechanistic studies to randomized human control trials. Now this is a case that currently is not handled in the political system and apparently impresses a significant amount of voters. At least from my perspective the lies used in european politics are in their quality not very far from the example given. Now what kind of punishment there should be for lying exactly and in which case I can not say. But leaving it up to the voters is showing to be increasingly fragile imho.

DoubleDerper 2y ago

"There is a fire in the theater" when there isn't one creates a chaotic stampede. People die. The theater is the political culture war. Millions of human lives will die in the chase for politically charged click bait. In no sane world should this not be punished severely.

willcipriano 2y ago
How "truth" works today: "I see homeless people every day on the way to work, I'm having trouble making ends meet, the economy sucks." "Fact Check: False, The economy is fine, take a look at NVIDA shares!"
- rootusrootus 2y ago
  Two anecdotes followed by an opinion, responded to with another opinion and anecdote. There is not any meaningful argument about 'truth' going on there.
  - willcipriano 2y ago
    Real life example: https://x.com/paulkrugman/status/1712494317024026761?lang=en https://x.com/paulkrugman/status/1712494317024026761?lang=en
    - pessimizer 2y ago
      "Winning the war on inflation" isn't a statement of fact, it's a jingoistic military metaphor.
    - rootusrootus 2y ago
      The "reader added context" below that post seems on point. It is an opinion, not a fact. I assume the graph is accurately representing truth. It is a decent demonstration of the old saw about lies, damn lies, and statistics, but it is real numbers, real dates, and the metric is described specifically. Excellent for misleading, but still truth. The assertions that "we won" or it is "over" or it was "at very little cost" are all one man's opinions, however.

IneffablePigeon 2y ago

Is it not already illegal to deliberately mislead a courtroom? Many of the same concerns apply, and yet thankfully the solution is not generally to throw our hands in the air and say it’s impossible to deal with the nuance.

rayiner 2y ago
That’s because court cases tend to be between two parties, and don’t have far-reaching impacts on the whole country.
- salawat 2y ago
  ...Ever heard of precedent? Many cases never see a trial specifically to keep advantageous ambiguities from becoming case law.

g-b-r 2y ago

The opposition can be targeted with any whatsoever law, in any country that doesn't have immunity for politicians (none does for any politician, by the way). Try to think of some of what you hate of your country's politics, or some f* up that recently happened, and you'l easily find out that a prohibition to lie in public statements for politicians would have prevented it.

constantcrying 2y ago
It is legitimately a totalitarian idea. There is no good it could do which isn't outweighed by the evil it will cause. It invalidates politics as a whole.
- g-b-r 2y ago
  I think your idea of totalitarianism is messed up, or maybe you think it would be the government to enforce the law (democratic countries typically have separation between the judicial and the executive branch - yes, the US much less so). If you just imagine some scenarios I think you will quickly see how game-changing it would be (in a positive way). It invalidates the typical current politics, which is a contest of lies and pretense

EasyMark 2y ago

I’m not so sure. Sometimes there are opinions and either times there are easily verified, straight up lies that are destructive and dangerous to the common good. I have no problem seeing that stuff easily taken off the internet and the person doing it fined, they usually can’t be found though, because it’s often foreign propaganda preying on those who seem to have given up on facts.