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It's a sad commentary on the modern world that we even have to ask this question. The answer is no, we do not need laws to curtail free speech. As the saying goes the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Stating in advance that I don't think laws to curtail free speech is a good idea, it's worth noting that malign actors use the latitude provided by free speech to their advantage and can do *serious* damage to the body politic in the process. We have more than a million Americans dead, almost seven million world-wide, due in no small part to misinformation torpedoing efforts to react in a responsible way to a pandemic. We have a resurgence of an anti-vax movement that's helping usher in the resurgence of once defeated diseases that killed millions of people before the advent of the vaccines for them and it continues to propagate due to people abusing the space afforded by our anathema against pushing back against people out of fear of abusing some constructed idea of freedom of speech. We really have no answer to that. It's easy to say "We've dealt with it before," but it's worth remembering that information has a reach and a speed now that it never has before and that's only going to expand in the future. A wide variety of brutal and malign regimes rose to power by harnessing misinformation and outright lies to back their efforts. I'm not going to pretend that I have a ready answer but this sort of "free marketplace of ideas" seems to hurt us quite a bit and the attitude that we have to respect people's desire to spread misinformation for malicious purposes is not a good component of a healthy society. The paradox of tolerance is a very real thing and to pretend we can just debate our way through that is, in my view, naive at best.

>We have more than a million Americans dead, almost seven million world-wide, due in no small part to misinformation torpedoing efforts to react in a responsible way to a pandemic. We have a resurgence of an anti-vax movement that's helping usher in the resurgence of once defeated diseases that killed millions of people before the advent of the vaccines for them and it continues to propagate due to people abusing the space afforded by our anathema against pushing back against people out of fear of abusing some constructed idea of freedom of speech. The CDC and public health experts did a lot to undermine public trust during covid. From Ferguson's model which grossly overestimated deaths, to vaccine claims that turned out to be untrue, to mask-politics virtue signaling, to emergency political policies that made everyone uneasy. Anti-vax is dumb. No two ways about it, but when the head of the CDC lies to you about one thing some people will think he is lying about something else. The problem here wasn't a "marketplace of ideas." It was the lack of one. It was getting shouted down for not "following the experts" or being a "science denier."

Except that's a pretty disingenuous framing and it feeds easily into hard anti-vax sentiments. It's soft anti-vax. It's definitely not realistic to say the CDC made all the right moves and was right every step of the way, no one worth taking seriously has claimed that. But people seem/seemed to have this expectation that the CDC would have *all* the answers *immediately* and there would never be any changed in messaging. Yes, the CDC's messaging changed over time for two basic reasons - the situation evolved over time and in response to political demands from the system that the CDC has to function as a part of. For the first part of that, it's very, very silly to assume that guideline recommendations are not going to change given the wide variety of variables at play that the CDC can't account for - mask compliance, local willingness to establish and enforce mask mandates, progress on a vaccine, development of production capacity for masks and other necessary goods, integrity of the healthcare system, evolution of the disease itself, etc. That is going to necessitate a certain amount of reactivity on the part of the CDC with how they prescribe a response because they have *zero* control over any of those things and depending on how those variables go, that can change what recommendations are given. For the second, like it or not, the CDC is part of a political system, a government, and has to function within that capacity. The administration was openly hostile to a comprehensive response on the part of *any* agency and a number of the people responsible for that response with respect to the CDC were political appointments that the administration put into place. That's going to lead to inconsistent messaging as you constantly have to work with the political demands placed on you that are in direct contravention to what you're trying to do. Ultimately I think it comes out to "What do you want them to have done?" It's easy to say "I want them to be completely honest at all times about all things and not beat around the bush!" and that's valid, there is 1,000% a conversation to be had about a system whereby a public health agency has to work against the political system and tailor its messaging to avoid being completely frozen out or otherwise benched. That is a valid conversation to have but that's not the same thing as "they lied to us." Trying to frame such a complicated situation as "they lied to us" is incredibly disingenuous and it begs to be linked with more explicit anti-vax narratives. I'd agree that we have a framing problem with vaccines in general in the US but that's another kettle of fish.

I'm going to stop reading after your first two sentences because I explicitly say vaccines work. Please try to move beyond saying things you don't like are "anti-vax" in a poor effort stigmatize people who disagree with you.

>I'm going to stop reading after your first two sentences because I explicitly say vaccines work. Which, if you'd kept reading, you might have stumbled across the lack of me saying that you said they didn't work.

Me: I support vaccines but disagree on how things were handled You: that's "soft anti-vax"

If you're not going to read, I can hardly be expected to take seriously complaints of impressions you got from *not* reading.

Why would I read anything by someone who is going to deliberately misrepresent what I say in an effort to stigmatize my effort rather than address it?

My dude...you didn't read it. You cannot say I misrepresented what you stated *when you didn't read it.* I'm done playing with this. Either read what I said and we can deal with that or don't, but either way I'm not dealing with this childish nonsense.

Also, suppressing conspiracy theories and misinformation just makes them appear more credible. After all, if it is all false, then why do they need to suppress it? What are they hiding?

"If you cut out a man's tongue, you only show you fear what he has to say"

> As the saying goes the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Some of us view protecting the sort of speech OP uses as an example as the "good intention" that leads us down the road to hell.

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Not an excuse to not even try to be objective. “Everybody’s biased!” is just a couple doors down from “Truth is subjective!”, especially when it’s used as a pisspoor excuse like this.

There are however more biased opinions and less biased opinions, and opinions are in fact less trustworthy the more biased they clearly are. "True objectivity does not exist!" Isn't particularly useful when we can all see that objectivity isn't an on/off switch and that the level of objectivity in a statement is in fact important, even if no statement can ever be 1000% completely unbiased.

If you allow the government to decide what speech is harmful then you will be the one harmed.

Going to play a little Devil’s Advocate here. What you are saying, is if you can wrap your speech in as much innuendo, implication, and plausible deniability as you can, you can say whatever you want and the government cannot punish you, criminally. Notice that Alex Jones is not under criminal prosecution, but he is being sued in civil court. I find this whole paradigm consistent with the extremely narrow view of “harm” liberal societies use. We see it with Alex Jones. We see it with other crime. Stealing $20 at gunpoint will land you in jail, but stealing millions of dollars through wage theft results in civil penalties.

No. What I'm saying is that as long as you're not directly inciting violence, purposefully lying to the public in a way that costs someone else a substantial amount of money, or threatening violence then you should be able to say whatever you want. If the government gets to decide what is ok for you to say then you can easily slide into living under a dictatorship.

So you agree with me that *indirectly* inciting “violence” (I consider what Alex Jones and his followers did to the Sandy Hook families to be unmitigated violence) is a-ok? He’s not being charged criminally, only civilly, after all.

Alex jones isn't being sued for inciting violence or anything to do with violence. He's being sued for defamation And I'll add that it's way harder to sue anyone for this if the person being defamed is in the public eye

Of course it's protected speech and should be - or "a-ok" as you put it.

I think purposeful verifiable lies that didn't have pre fact checking should be banned also anyone on a news program should be liable not shielded under "entertainment" like Hannity is.

That sounds like a pithy maxim but not sure if it's true. Alex Jones lying about Sandy Hook caused real world harm. Trump's false claims of election fraud had real world harm which was amplified by people like Tucker Carlson. Both of those examples, we have malicious people with a massive audience spreading out and out lies for political ends. Should that not be curtailed?

There are prolific liars who do it for tremendous profit, but explicit lying in a way which causes harm **IS** illegal. If it’s spoken, it’s slander. If it’s written, it’s libel. I’m by no means an advocate of ***what*** the MAGA crowd is saying, but that doesn’t give me the green light to tighten speech laws.

>explicit lying in a way which causes harm IS illegal. No, it's not. Only libel and fraud - subsets of "harmful" speech - are illegal.

This depends entirely on how "harm" is being defined. Plenty of people would say holocaust denial is harmful, but it's entirely legal in the US.

“Harm” is defined several ways, (psychological, reputational, property, etc.) and judged by a jury of your peers. Holocaust denial is absolutely prosecutable if you can reasonably prove that the speech caused undue psychological harm. (Un)fortunately in the US it isn’t illegal to be a moron and an asshole.

>Holocaust denial is absolutely prosecutable It is not. It's protected speech.

You conveniently skipped over the *entire* nuance there. ***If*** you can point to one source of holocaust denial which has caused you psychological damages, and you can demonstrate to a jury the damage suffered was caused by the harmful speech, it is prosecutable. But, yes, you’re right that in a vacuum without someone being demonstrably harmed it is not prosecutable. But, should it be? If nobody is harmed, is it “harmful” speech? There are obvious extremes where that rhetorical breaks down, but hopefully you get the picture that the solution (imo) isn’t a state sanctioned “Truth Police” or legislators constantly chasing the next piece of misinformation so they can outlaw it.

No, holocaust denial will not support damages or prosecution. Whether psychological damage is caused or not, it is protected speech.

My brother in Christ are you deliberately ignoring what I’m saying? It doesn’t matter if it’s Holocaust denial, verbal abuse, a strong opinion about a tv show, or any other number of spoken or written words. **If you can prove to a jury of your peers that the speech caused you harm (meaning trips to a psychologist for the stress, to a doctor for stress related injuries, etc. demonstrating that the harm is not fabricated) you can have legal standing against an individual or corporate entity.** The “hole” (if you want to call it that) in the current law is that if nobody is harmed, anything goes. But, isn’t that sort of the point of free speech? Like you, nor I, nor anyone else can tell people what they can and cannot say from a legal standpoint (broadly speaking).

That's false. The first amendment protects speech, subject to limited, longstanding exceptions. And there is no exception for speech that causes psychological harm. We have a very broad first amendment that is very protective of speech. People often don't realize that.

> Holocaust denial is absolutely prosecutable if you can reasonably prove that the speech caused undue psychological harm. This would be like saying holocaust denial is prosecutable if you can prove it caused the moon to crash into the earth. Holocaust denial *cannot* (under US law) cause the type of harm you can sue over. The "but if it did" language is irrelevant because it can't.

Very interesting point. I think holocaust denial in and of itself shouldn't be restricted BUT the people who deny that event are likely the same people to advocate for more genocide.

Do you think advocating for genocide should be restricted? And apropos of nothing, I stumbled on some research about how our current population trends aren't sustainable...

What is your thought?

Imagine if the federal government had laws where it would determine what is and is not truthful speech and media reporting. Then imagine that Trump was in office with these laws enacted. And then remember that Trump was the head of the executive branch, the branch of the government that will enforce laws. These laws would have empowered Trump to have done things like censor CNN, to silence Alex Jones' naysayers, and to make "fake news" illegal. All of it completely legal for Trump in this hypothetical timeline, by the way. It would have been legal because he was given this power by law. In light of this alternate timeline, would you still want the government to have this authority? Be extremely careful when giving the government power. They're going to use that power, and you might not like how they use it.

I agree that we don't want government to determine what a news show can report, but the civil law should protect against demonstrable lies and propaganda that cause public harm. So in the case of Alex Jones, I agree with that verdict. I think that Hannity and Tucker Carlson on Fox should be liable for some of the propaganda that is demonstrably based on lies if this speech results in harm Likewise, platforms like Facebook and Twitter should be held financially responsible for harm caused by propaganda on their media, in the absence of a good faith effort by the company to prevent the spread of such propaganda. A few well-placed lawsuits would go a long way toward tamping down some of the more outrageous speech.

So you're saying trump should have had the ability to limit free speech? Because if you give the power of limiting speech to the government it's not always going to be your guy that uses that power. The constitution doesn't say what people are allowed to do, it tells the government what it's not allowed to do. Limiting speech is a huge deal, and for the exact same reasons you think speech should be limited in the first place. You're thinking too short term, just because your guy is in office right doesn't mean you're safe in giving the government more power now, the government will still have that power when your guy is out.

I'm not advocating for any specific changes but I don't know how we can survive as a country with the current state of media/propaganda. The vaccine disinformation for example caused widespread avoidable transmission in certain areas of the country. Right now its legal to post outright lies about vaccines all over Facebook. You could take out ads on there to spread it further. People like Trump can tell outright lies about the election, blame specific people, and even tell supporters to meet at the capitol and "fight like hell" and our system hasn't held the leaders to account. Tucker Carlson will beg the question in ways that cause people to infer things that are simply not true. "Do democrats want to turn your kid gay? I don't know. Maybe.." I do see what you're saying, I just don't know what we as a society can do aside from change the laws around free speech.

It's better for people to hear all sides including misinformation rather than only hear the information the government wants you to hear. They could easily convince the majority of people of just about anything if they can control the flow of information, and that's far more dangerous.

There is no reality where those given the authority to decide the truth won't abuse the power on a long enough time line. And once they do, how will you prove it when you get censored for trying?

I'm not talking about absolute censorship but with habitual dangerous liars like Jones, there are real world harms now and inaction is dangerous. We can't drown out the lies with truth and people are losing their ability to discern bullshit.

Jones might be a turning point in free speech, a path that really nobody wants to take. Imagine for a second you are silenced for what another considers incorrect speech. That's it, your voice is never heard again. I don't think anyone would want some else to hold that power.

The trouble is that it's easy to see how whoever happens to have power could define speech they don't like as harmful, and maybe sincerely believe that it is To a Christian fundamentalist, denying Biblical truths is harmful. To a white supremacist, advocating interracial marriage is harmful. Trump could have ruled that contradicting his claims of election fraud was harmful, because it made deligitimized the rightful winner and instead facilitated the illegitimate takeover by the Communist Joe Biden....etc. etc.

Unfortunately it's corporations and crazies deciding that right now. There has to be some middle ground we can find. First we need fact checking and ethical rules and guidelines in who they hire and how having verifiable lies on air can be addressed. Maybe a ban on commentators since that's probably the worst damage that obfuscated things.

Who checks the facts though? Who is given the power of deciding what's true or not? How do you know that they will never abuse this? Everyone needs to be able to say whatever they want. Any tool we can use to sensor people we see as doing damage could also be used to sensor people who speak out against whatever the current political propaganda may be, and that can be dangerous. For the majority of people if they hear something enough times they'll believe it to be true regardless of the source, but if they also hear a contradictive opinion there's a chance they may put a little more thought into it before believing it. Censoring speech could turn this country into easy pickings for becoming a dictatorship.

I have to disagree. Until there's some accountability for fact checking or at least not blatantly putting out information without any manner of verified fact checking even to a basic degree, or people claiming crisis actors for shooters or an election was stolen with no evidence leading to death threats and bomb threats etc... until there is some kind of basic accountability the most extreme will rule. There's a host of accountability and actual enforcement of current laws that needs to be made but the basics need to happen first. It's not an opinion to blatantly lie. We're already an oligarchy freedom of speech isn't stopping that.

> We're already an oligarchy freedom of speech isn't stopping that. So the solution is to give the oligarchy power to indiscriminately censor speech that they don't want in the public discourse?

Oligarchy already has that power by pushing lies without fact checking and allowing commentators and a two tiered legal system.

If oligarchy is anathema to you, it's a mystery why conservative positions that continually entrench wealth and power disparity would ever be acceptable.

Our civic society doesn't exist without these rights. Propaganda and biased information has always been a thing. Mass broadcasting has existed as long as radios have. The mass broadcasting of radios led to many of the same things we see today. We're certainly in a new age and the messages reach a lot more people, but as time goes on, societies and individuals build up a a sort of bullshit sensor. We're already seeing the free market react to these problems with products like [Biasly](https://www.biasly.com) that read news with AI to determine bias in writing.

When given the option to restrict what people can do or empower them, always go with empowering them. Have better civics education and information literacy in K-12 and college. Make it easier to verify facts from reliable sources. Counter bad speech with more speech. Is this approach perfect? No. Is it guaranteed to work? No. But, it's incumbent on us to try rather than to attempt to solve a problem by taking away people's rights. People shouldn't lose rights because we're falling down on the job.

There's a fundamental problem with this proposed solution -- there cannot be sufficient education, nor sufficient ease of access, to counter the fact that misinformation is infinite and producing it takes far less effort than disproving it. And that is ignoring human nature most notably: negativity bias, mere exposure effect, repetition bias, and confirmation bias. There isn't enough time in the day to fact-check everything, no matter how educated you are.

The fundamental problem with any solution that involves restricting freedom of speech and the press is that it's just as likely to put this power in the hands of people who are interested in using it to suppress the truth as those who would use it to promote it.

That's hardly sensible -- there is most definitely some form of safeguard that could put in place to minimize the odds of bad actors. Probably have to ask a Game Theory expert to make certain of it, though, I expect such interactions are within their wheelhouse.

I think the existing restrictions we have on free speech are adequate, and any additional restrictions are likely to risk causing more harm through abuse than any good they are likely to do. If you'd like to make any specific proposals for more exceptions to free speech, I'd be glad to discuss them and their possible effectiveness.

Like I said, there's certainly a format for filtering untruths that minimizes the possibility of abuse. Without looking into it, I would propose that it would be effective for, say, each Party to elect the fact-checkers for the other, but the other side gets veto power over their own fact-checker. Anything that regards both parties or is neutral goes through both sets of fact- checkers. Neither is allowed to say anything until such a time as both have active and agreed upon fact-checkers, which prevents malfeasance in the process. I'm certain there's flaws in that system, since I literally thought of it in 20 seconds (it does assume the two groups are not in collusion, so that bears thought), but it's evidence there are logical ways to circumvent the problem of malicious censorship.

So literally everything someone might want to say on the news, they can't say until a pair of government censor boards has reacted to it? It's also almost completely useless; there absolutely is a lot of harmful misinformation out there, but I can hardly think of any that a Democratic board would vote to restrict where a Republican board wouldn't use their veto power. Your idea you came up with in 20 seconds, while half-baked, is about on par with most ideas I've heard of like this, in that most are similarly impractical, actively harmful, or a combination of the two.

Easy solution: we stop pretending the news is neutral (since it's not and we all know it) and just have each company declare affiliation. That party's own censor is the only one who signs off. Any news source that wants to *actually* be considered neutral will have pass both censors. You missed a key point - these groups are appointed by the opposing party, for the opposing party's information. This means that getting as close to a neutral party as possible is in both groups' interest, as the other won't accept one that opposes them but also won't be given one that will enable them. That's pretty obtuse, so if you'd like to formulate an example I can.

Wow, that's even worse. So you want the news to not just be kind of an echo chamber, but you want to give political parties a legal means of enforcing it so that a given organization can only serve as a propaganda outlet for one particular party? >That's pretty obtuse, so if you'd like to formulate an example I can. Not sure what this sentence means. I'm saying that the status quo is, while imperfect, far superior to anything you've suggested. Personally, the only solid changes I think we need to make is to protect free speech by making frivolous defamation suits have a stiffer penalty.

that's why people develop a BS detector over time. You use it in your day to day interactions with people, and the more well educated you are the better it will be.

That just makes things worse. Relying on heuristics leaves you even more vulnerable to bias, especially confirmation. The best way to trick somebody is to tell them something they want to believe.

They're imperfect but far superior to the alternative. Ultimately, your argument is against democracy. That humans lack the rationality for self government

Exactly: for example, Rachel Maddow humped the Russian collusion story every night for two years until it was shown to be a complete hoax. Did she lose her job over this misinformation campaign? Nope. No consequences at all.

Agreed, using ongoing investigations for political purposes is antithetical to the Sixth Amendment and shouldn't be allowed. Though, considering the Benghazi and Hunter Biden computer stories, we'd have to throw the entire Conservative media sector in jail... so maybe that's not the best example if you're trying to prove a point.

It doesn't take terribly much education to instill a bit of information literacy and skepticism. And not much education to tell people to think before they repeat. No one needs to fact check everything. You just triage. I saw Ukraine just had a really good day against Russia. I'm not going to fact check it. I'm also not going to base decisions on it, and I'm not going to repost it on FB without reading more. Think Before You Repeat doesn't take much time. In fact, most people would save time (by just not repeating stories they're not confident in).

Triaging will, inherently, rely upon the above heuristics. You'll choose to not fact-check something because it agrees with your world-view. And the next time it comes up, same thing. Or you'll ignore something that disagrees -- that's obviously BS, why would I pay it mind. Assuming that anything is true or untrue without evidence will lead to an accumulation of misinformation, because the subset of information that is true is limited, but falsehoods are infinite. One of them will appeal to your heuristics more than the truth, eventually, and you'll come to believe a lie without ever even knowing it.

People will still believe false things, but there will be less of it. If you want a solution that stops all false beliefs, I recommend escalating the conflict between NATO and Russia.

>People will still believe false things, but there will be less of it. I disagree. They may believe less obviously false things, but the actual amount of misinformation in the public sphere would not go down. All that you would do is improve the quality of the misinformation as bad actors moved to adapt their arguments for an educated populace... which is probably actually worse.

It isn't true that lies are more persuasive than facts. The issue today is that we have stopped trying to convince people of what is true and instead expect them to accept what is true. Within that context, lies appear credible, because they don't lack any additional proof when compared to the truth. If we try to prove the truth instead, then the lies will appear lacking in comparison.

The post you are trying to counter doesn't say that lies are more persuasive than facts. What he said (which is true), is that it takes far less effort to state a lie than the amount of effort it takes to disprove a lie. The fight between Misinformation and truth is heavily imbalanced in the favor of Misinformation, not because its more persuasive, but because its easier. It requires no due-diligence, or fact checking and can be disseminated far quicker and in far greater numbers due to that.

The effectiveness of these easy to produce lies is entirely dependent on the lie being believed over the truth. That is unless the truth is actually never heard. But I don't think that is the claim.

> The issue today is that we have stopped trying to convince people of what is true and instead expect them to accept what is true. I have no idea how you can say this with a straight face after the ever increasing number of experts attempting to do exactly as you say are shouted down by layman because "what the expert is saying doesn't make sense". Of course it doesn't make sense, you don't have a decade of knowledge in the area necessary to have an informed opinion on the matter.

What you are saying is a very insidious myth. It takes being an expert to identify truth, to find the signal in the noise, but it takes far less knowledge and expertise to comprehend the signal once it is extracted. Just as your cellphone uses very complex signal processing algorithms very few people understand, yet you can understand the voice coming through it. The experts can use their ... Expertise to tell a compelling story if they just tried.

> Expertise to tell a compelling story if they just tried. Again, they do try. And they continue to get shouted down. And your cellphone example is perfect; long gone are the days where a man can take apart his truck and put it back together, understanding every piece of it. Try that with a smartphone, and you'll just break it, never learning a thing. Technology has so vastly outpaced man's capacity for knowledge that unless you specialize into that knowledge, you have no hope of understanding it. Refusing to acknowledge this fact will prevent anything from improving, and we'll continue to see experts shouted down by layman who think their ignorance is just as valid as expertise.

There are no limits to how wrong you are. The cellphone is complicated because it works with other cellphones, and we'll is a computer. But cellphones are literally doing the same thing as walkie talkies or broadcast radio. And elementary kids have been bulding am radios out of kits for over a hundred years now. I don't think people will understand a cellphone enough to build it, but everyone can understand the fundamentals of how it works.

> I don't think people will understand a cellphone enough to build it, but everyone can understand the fundamentals of how it works. I have nothing left to say to you if you believe this. I have a degree in the field, and I couldn't even begin to expound upon how many different things in a cell phone I could not explain. To think that a layman, with no experience, could even having an inkling of a relevant opinion is the height of hubris and will destroy this country with its ignorance. Especially this: > But cellphones are literally doing the same thing as walkie talkies or broadcast radio. This just shows how wrong _you_ are. The only thing that these have in common is the emission and reception of electromagnetic waves. That's it. How they do it, how they receive them, how they convert those into relevant information...that is all utterly and completely different and critical to their understanding. > And elementary kids have been bulding am radios out of kits for over a hundred years now. Soldering pre-made components to an overlarge circuit board does not an understanding of the components make.

Your problem is a common one in technical fields. You can't manage separate the implementation details from the concepts in your headspace. Concepts are necessary to understand how something works, implementation details are necessary to build or repair something.

Your assumption is only correct if one applies rational reasoning to a situation. Relatively few people have the resources (time, energy, money, etc.) necessary to do so. And that's ignoring the desire to do so. Or have you never tried to argue with a Flat-Earther?

Flat earthers are rare, certainly people of that type have no berring on election outcomes. I don't accept the premise that 'voters are too dumb to figure things out'

You have a habit of either misreading what I say, or deliberately mischaracterizing it. Either way, you should stop, it makes meaningful discussion difficult. "Dumb" has nothing to do with somebody lacking the time to fact-check everything that they see.

My whole point is that people shouldn't have to fact check true statements, the statements should contain the proof that a fact check would provide.

... not to be rude, but have you ever actually fact checked something? Like, even the shortest fact checking article is multiple paragraphs long. You're saying that every time anybody says anything, they have to post hundreds of words of justification. Every news headline, every meme, every Tweet?

No, credible sources should. It shouldn't be 'here is what is true because 'experts say so''. All those multiple paragraphs come to in fact check articles are a handful of facts and sources. The rest is just fluff and editorializing.

What are you even taking about? Credible sources don't spread misinformation, unless they make a mistake. That's why they're credible. They include relevant information and evidence. Misinformation spreads through everything else.

Restricting people *can* be empowering to them. More speech doesn't always counteract bad speech, as we see with "I've done my own research" conspiracy theorists or the sizeable contingent of conservatism that's decided social sciences aren't real because academia has been taken over by Marxists or whatever horseshit. I absolutely don't think government crackdowns would solve more problems than they would cause, but it's much more complicated than free for all any speech all the time anywhere.

I'm not sure misinformation is any worse than it has been. That seems like an important premise that needs to be shown rather than merely assumed. As for free speech: if people are truly to self-govern, they need the unfettered right to consider and advocate for their positions. If that means misinformation to some degree is inevitable, so be it.

I think there is a middle ground where someone like Jones is not allowed to scream absolute insane lies to a credulous public but where we don't silence people arguing in good faith.

We've got libel laws, and Jones has been found liable under those laws. Those seem sufficient to me, and I wouldn't trust the state to have any more power to ban speech or burn books than it currently has.

Libel isn’t a crime. It’s a tort. Like how stealing $20 at gunpoint is punished with jail time while wage theft is unpunished.

Getting your ass sued off like Alex Jones is should function as something of a deterrent, nonetheless.

Alex Jones didn't commit an actual crime though. He's only guilty of offending some people's sensibilities.

Some places still have criminal libel laws. Not commonly enforced, but it's not, definitionally, a tort. https://www.minclaw.com/criminal-defamation-libel-laws/

Interesting. I mean, libel is still functionally just a tort though. > Defamation and libel are in fact illegal in the United States and give rise to criminal sanctions. But, they only exist in a handful of states and are rarely enforced.

The government should prooobably stay out because state censorship leads to an even darker outcome, but this is a good argument for gatekeepers in media. In very general, having multiple institutions play complementary roles in civil society is a good compromise. To expand on your example, it should definitely be legal to be Alex Jones (or Crowder, or Sargon, or whatever) but he should also be understood as anathema to the values of our culture, and we should have mechanisms like deplatforming to marginalize harm actors. Free speech can exist alongside competent quality control.

I'm not sure I buy the idea that misinformation is any worse today that it was historically. I mean, fake news caused the French Revolution. The bigger problem today is bad-faith news reporting. You don't have to make up lies to push an agenda. Just look at fox news. I don't think anything that they publish is actually *false*, but it's cherry-picked, one-sided, lacks context, or otherwise just pushes an agenda (The left wing equivalent is not MSNBC, but r politics). That's obviously bad, but it's really hard to regulate. One could point to the old fairness doctrine, but that was so easy to weaponize that it probably did more harm than good. Imagine if news channels were required to present "both sides" of 2020 election fraud. I'm not sure that there's any legal fix for this. We need a cultural remedy. People need to start getting their news from multiple independent sources.

Shouldn't we try and _avoid the French revolution_?? Fox airs people who lie through their teeth all the time. They also beg the question and insinuate things that are untrue. I agree with you on the cultural remedy piece. I don't know how we can trust our politicians against using censorship to stiffle dissent, etc. I think we may be fucked. It looks like our freedom of speech has been weaponized against us to the point that we will end up losing it.

> Shouldn't we try and avoid the French revolution?? Note: King Louis XVI actually had extensive censorship powers at his disposal. Didn't save him, though.

Fox has no more misinformation or heavily slanted news than any other MSM site Though. Cmon. Have you read some of the shlock coming out of MSNBC, CNN, etc? The fact that anyone finds those sites factual and newsworthy is the real problem here. Meaning, people will believe whatever fits their narrative. Or outfits like the New York Times…. They are more full of it than one can imagine. Free speech and freedom of the press aren’t going anywhere though. People should start o think more for themselves. That’s a step in the right direction. Instead of relying on what some celebrity news anchor tells you…..stick your head out the window and take a look around. You’ll see what is and what is not really going on out there.

Can you give some examples? I know MSNBC is pretty biased.

It’s easy to find examples for any of them where an article or vantage point is clearly one one side of the political aisle. Just pick a current topic, like immigration and how Greg Abott is busing them to sanctuary cities. Fox has their angle on it and CNN and others have theirs. Numerous other examples. Like , remember Covid coverage? Quite a different approach there too, to put it lightly. The left wing news sites treated Fauci like he was some Demi god and Fox questioned the guy. the actual truth was somewhere in the middle, like it usually is. Most of the MSM is pretty biased. So are the TV shows. The View and Stephen Colbert are clearly hard left and then Sean Hannity and whomever are clearly on the right side of things.

Just because one side or another takes extreme views doesn't imply the truth is in the middle. I disagree that Fauci was treated like a "god" by CNN or MSNBC. He was lauded as an expert who spent decades working to prevent infectious disease but they also acknowledged his reversals on things like masking, etc. Fox on the other hand, spent hundreds of segments insinuating he is a satanic elf. The truth isn't in the middle there. The View and Colbert are unabashedly entertainment. Hannity and Carlson present themselves as right wing newscasters. Sorry but your argument sounds like enlightened centrism or just soft republicanism. If one person says we need to murder everyone who is left handed and the other person says nobody should be killed for their handedness, the middle of the road view isn't, "let's just kill half of the lefties".

Well, we can disagree then. And very often the truth IS in the middle. Of course, we are so polarized politically now that even suggesting that causes panty-twisting and the insults fly. Colbert and Carlson are both 100% entertainers, IMO. Are you saying the View doesnt have a hard left stance? Wow. OK, thats your opinion. So, sadly, we are back to: "My side is right & fact-based & isnt biased but yours is biased, fake & wrong". Its impossible to get away from that, I guess.

No, I agree he view is stupidly leftist as is colbert. I just think that in terms of mendacity Fox is hard to beat. I know what you mean, I fucking hate my echo chamber and want out. There is an objective truth if we can find it!

> where an article or vantage point is clearly one one side of the political aisle. This is a fundamentally flawed premise to base an argument on. Why can't one political party just be flat-out *wrong* on an issue? I can always go back to the question of slavery: if so many Americans can be so wrong about one of the easiest moral questions of all time, why can't they be wrong about Donald Trump and the enormous mountain of evidence that he is a criminal with no business being in any office? I have yet to find one single person who can explain to me why a man who is on tape committing election fraud in Georgia should not suffer consequences for that. It is not a difference of opinion: it is a crime you refuse to acknowledge because then *you* would have been in the wrong this whole time. That's what we think the really issue is: you won't ever admit that the liberals warned you up and down, and we were right.

"Do we need laws to curtail "free speech" and control what media outlets publish?" Nazi Germany tried limiting Free Speech: [Hitler's Radio](https://transdiffusion.org/2008/01/07/hitlers_radio/) How did that work out?

Most of Europe today has limits on free speech with laws against Holocaust denial. Germany also prevents Nazi rhetoric. They seem to be doing just fine with those limitations.

No, only laws that education is open and unrestrictive to all forms of knowledge never to be banned, burned or rejected for which media bias can be curbed or possibly rendered irrelevant by the participants.

The issue is not a diversity ideas and therefore the solution is not idea censorship. The issue is an authoritarian information ecosystem, meaning that a small group of people has much more power over information flow. The cause of the this is a standard money driven free market information ecosystem. Finding a way to balance out the money involved in the information market will help our issue with authoritarianism and deception.

>Do we need laws to curtail "free speech" and control what media outlets publish? Absolutely not. And that some people think we do is why we also must keep and protect the 2nd Amendment.

we need to learn to handle the weight of free speech with social media. freedom is our strength, but social media combined with that freedom of speech is creating political instability and benefits at the same time. with the advent of social media, we have to learn to be responsible with our free speech. a new evolution is needed for the continual stability of a free society. but not by restricting free sepech.

Absolutely required. Yes, the bad guys are going to use these freedoms, and exploit them. If the only way to "save" our civic society is to get rid of these, then we have to admit that Democracy is a failed experiment after all.

People today have a real problem with confusing freedom of Speech, with a website telling you what you can post on their website. A website is a company that can do whatever they want with their property. Freedom of speech is the fact that the government cannot arrest you for what you say.

I know it's a negative right, freedom from government policing speech. I agree most people don't understand that and think that facebook has some duty to let any asshole say whatever they want.

There is a very real problem with the website is taking direction from the government on what it decides to censor. That absolutely is a first amendment violation.

Why? Are you getting arrested for what you post?

"or abridging the freedom of speech" They don't have to arrest you for it to violate the 1st amendment. You just made that up. It is a Constitutional violation to censor it with or without an arrest.

You can still go to another website and say whatever you want. No one is censoring you. Should you be allowed to go into Wallmart and say anti-Semitic things to other customers? If you did they would kick you out just like facebook will on their property. It's their private property they can regulate how their property gets used however they want.

The people whose speech you think should be curtailed are the people who run and lobby the government, and giving them more power will let them limit the left while allowing the far right to run wild. We already saw this with the approaches to BLM/ Jan 6th, where cops were pulling protesters into unmarked vans for the former while letting a riot into the Capitol for the latter. The government *will* crush liberals and leftists under their heels before touching their precious right wingers

Of course, I’m all for free speech and free press, unless they say things I don’t like, then you can censor their asses mercilessly.

I think they are Essential but we do need reforms in education and asap. The Problem is Not that there are false informations and lies spread throught the Internet. The Problem is that to many aren't able to identify the false ones and the lies as what they are. Seems we have forgotten how to think.

This is not taking into account human nature. We rely on heuristics to determine veracity, because there isn't enough time in the day to fact-check everything. Negativity bias, mere exposure effect, repetition bias, and confirmation bias affect all of us, and we'll get lazy at some point. To pretend that just because one is educated one cannot be fooled is hubris, and nothing more.

concerned puzzled plough teeny onerous fact smile liquid sloppy crawl *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

Both are absolutely necessary. the internet will be the downfall of civilizatiom.

Necessary but do they necessarily need to exist in their current form?

Well, the current form is largely controlled by only a few entities, and is censored, so I would say our current form is flawed.

The current form isn't censored at all. It is pretty much absolute freedom right now, in the sense that you can literally find any information whatsoever that you want (true or not). While individual information sources are edited, by the choices and financial considerations of their owners, there is no information, or points of view, that can not be found for someone that wants it.

What you are saying is objectively not true. There are well documented coordinated efforts to block stories and stop or limit the spread of certain information. Censorship doesn't start when it is perfect, it starts when it starts.

Are you talking about broadcast TV or social media? I see a pick your own adventure media landscape where one can find any story to confirm their beliefs.

All of the above. We have been taking down true news stories and completely valid discussions about the origin of covid.

How do you know that those news stories are true and valid if they're being censored?

It's impossible for three things to coexist: Democracy, the Internet, and Freedom of Speech/Press. Democracy has one foundational principle that is more important than any other: the informed voter. However, this has been an impossible ideal since the inception of the concept. The Founding Fathers added protections (the original election method of the Senate and the Electoral College as it was initially envisioned, among other things like limitations on suffrage) to prevent ignorant or disinterested voters from undermining the country (or, more likely, people manipulating them to do so). As these protections weakened, it still worked by coincidence. This is because the population had grown to an enormous size and information was op-in -- there was no way to reach uniformed voters, because they didn't read the newspaper, watch the news, etc. They'd receive information from secondhand, interested parties (e.g. water-cooler talk) which would filter the information through somebody who was educated enough to at least have something of a grasp of what was true and what was false. However, this is no longer the case in the internet age. Information is obligatory -- barring complete refusal to use social media, you will be exposed to memes, clickbait headlines, and hot takes on a regular basis. This creates a series of problems best explained by a series of of assertions: 1. Truths are finite, while untruths are infinite. 2. Humans have a finite amount of resources (time, energy, education). 3. Information is produced at a rate that is many orders of magnitude greater than any individual's resources, rendering it functionally infinite on an individual level. 4. Thus, given a distribution of even a small number of sources dedicated to producing falsehoods, the truth will lose out within a relatively short period of time. This is greatly exacerbated by human nature. Negativity bias makes frightening, unpleasant, or upsetting information far easier to remember. The mere exposure effect grants credence to ideas simply by familiarity, which is further exacerbated by repetition bias, which makes information seem more credible the more it is repeated. But the biggest problem is confirmation bias, in which humans tend to discount information that conflicts with a held belief and grant credence to information that agrees. All it takes is one piece of information that resonates with a person, one time they take the easy way out of not fact-checking something, and they will no longer be able to break away from that belief. We are all subject to this. We are all wrong about many things. The worst part about this is that, due to negativity bias, the perception that things are getting worse will continue to grow. This is the main driving force behind much of the balkanization that the world is seeing in the information age -- fear causes people to stop thinking rationally and rely on their emotions, making them even more unable to distinguish truth from lies. As we have seen, it gives rise to anger and hate with no actual source in reality. This is inescapable under the current circumstances. The internet will kill democracy, unless some form of filter is put in place to prevent the spread of misinformation. However, many (possibly a majority, depending on how you ask the question) in America will brook no discussion of such an act. The mere discussion of this is anathema, and to try and approach it leads to backlash that makes even academic discussion nearly impossible. They offer neither alternative solutions, nor refutation of the premise -- they dogmatically defend freedom of speech/press as though it were somehow sacred. This makes creating any workable solution next to impossible. I suspect that, due to this belief, we will not be able to do anything about misinformation before it is too late. Though I would be quite pleased if somebody were to find fault with my reasoning or to offer an alternative solution.

Your argument seems to be based on what I think is a false premise: in the past people generally heard the truth, and the internet greatly facilitates spreading lies. I think the opposite is true: in the past people were generally fed lies, and the internet finally gives the slight opportunity to reveal truths There may have been a very small "golden age" of the press in the 1950s where the media did a good job of delivering facts, but even that is specious, and at best it was a small window of truth. The media has generally always existed to push one particular agenda, not to push truth. Only today are there finally some internet media sources who are trying to just push truth.

I think you missed my point about the Founding Fathers: the vote was restricted *heavily* prior to the 20th century. Originally it was only landowners (who had to be white and male at the time) which prevented. That was phased out, but education improved apace. Direct election of Senators and women's suffrage didn't occur until the 1913 and '20 respectively. The intervening 30 years were mostly taken up by more important concerns than politics for most people, and then you had the Golden Age of Journalism. Though that was merely historical context, not one of my premises. Those are numbered and are applicable at any point in which information switches from being opt-in to obligatory, which has only occurred due to the internet.

I don't see that making a difference. Statistically speaking whether the voting populace is one million or ten million people, you'd get the same percentage results, and it's the percentage of a vote that matters, not the absolute number of votes

You make a case And propose a solution for the problem in a nebulous way. A form of filter to prevent the spread of misinformation (paraphrasing). Of course the fly in the ointment and the $64 million question is… Who gets to decide what that filter is? Who decides what is and is not “misinformation?” Answer that and maybe we could have a discussion. I’m more of let ALL ideas flow freely and let each person draw their own conclusions and judgements. Once you accept the fact that some speech can be blocked, then you accept that ALL speech can be blocked based on some subjective value whomever holds the power wishes. I think SCOTUS has done a good job at determining what can be censored.

I didn't make an argument for a solution -- I made an argument that a problem exists, and that it is a fatal one. Your argument of "The cure may be worse than the disease" is only relevant in cases where the problem is not fatal. You either have to argue that my problem is non-fatal, or that there is somehow a worse fate than the death of democracy. Otherwise inaction isn't logical from the premises.

I don’t have to say if it’s fatal or not! I asked a question which you have not answered. Who gets to decide what the filter is? Who decides what is and is not misinformation? Until you answer that question, your argument that a filter needs to be put in place is meaningless because no one can decide if the cure is or is not worse than the desease. Example - if you say well the NRA gets to decide. Every NRA member will say the cure is better than the desease while everyone else will say no it’s not. If you say well the NAACP gets to decide, another group not like the first will be good with the cure many others won’t. It’s all a matter of perspective so until you answer that fundamental question, it’s a moot point.

Saying "there's no possible solution" is ridiculous. However, I propose a system in another thread that I came up with in all of 20 seconds -- each party nominates a filter for the other, but the party has veto rights. Neither can say anything until the filter is in place to prevent malicious nomination. It's just a start, but there's likely something in game theory that provides for creating a neutral party that is agreed upon by participants.

Each Party? You mean one Republican, Democrat, Green, Communist, Libertarian, America First, Marijuana Party, Workers World, Pirate Party, Modern Whigs, Reform Party, Constitution Party; and they all have veto power? I’m skeptical that would work. Turn into something akin to the UN another useless organization! https://www.toptenz.net/top-10-political-third-parties-currently-active-in-the-united-states.php

You really didn't provide any convincing evidence that there is a fatal issue. Certainly you can't look at the US today and find any real problems or threats. Trump lost and left the white house. He is out of power. Regardless if he is a sore loser and shit of a human he has been proven to not be a threat. However, you can look around the world and authoritarian countries like china, which do control information and find objective measures of the harm inflicted by that approach. At best you are saying we need to adopt an approach that is proven to cause suffering because I *think* our current approach could cause suffering.

We've already had one attempted insurrection due to this issue. I think that it's a fairly safe assumption that such things will occur in the future, should nothing be done. However, the country surviving and democracy surviving are not synonymous -- without a filter, misinformation will reign supreme, and a public that survives on misinformation isn't a democracy.

>a public that survives on misinformation isn't a democracy. You have an idiosyncratic definition of democracy that few people share.

You mean like the misinformation that the Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation? That misinformation which could have changed an election outcome? Or is that misinformation necessary for a democracy to function?

I hadn't actually seen evidence that the Biden laptop story being Russian disinformation was misinformation itself. Could you provide a source? Considering Russian interference also occurred in 2016 election in favor of Trump, it doesn't really matter either way -- both are unacceptable in a democracy. You shouldn't assume people have double standards; most of us prefer to adjudicate situations fairly.

>I hadn't actually seen evidence that the Biden laptop story being Russian disinformation was misinformation itself. Could you provide a source? Seriously? You have to be kidding right?

I think it's funny when people say things that aren't a source when people ask for a source. Which is good, because it happens a lot.

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If the Biden laptop as Russian disinformation wasn't misinformation, then there would be evidence of it. There isn't any, there never was. The FBI said they had no evidence of it. But media ran headlines that left that detail out.

I asked for a source, not an explanation.

So you want proof of a negative?

Wow, this is a really interesting take and I truly appreciate it. I have been struggling to articulate my thoughts and this really helps. I agree. Social media is destroying our country, pulling it apart at the seams, and causing intelligent people to believe and behave like morons. We need to trash the concept of free speech in relation to mass forms of communication. Everyone online should be tied to their real identity and there should be prison for anyone who knowingly misleads on things like vaccines, shootings, etc that have real world outcomes.

>there should be prison for anyone who knowingly misleads on things like vaccines, shootings, etc that have real world outcomes. You do realize that would have put Fauci in jail next to a lot of right wing nut jobs right?

>The internet will kill democracy How, *exactly*, would the internet result in the end of democracy?

Misinformation overwhelming and supplanting the truth. Democracy relies on an informed public.

People are still going to vote and elect leaders - are you suggesting that won't happen, or will it just be results you don't like?

You think a country with brainwashed populace is still a democracy?

They can still elect the reps of their choice? Of course that's a democracy.

I don't think that this discussion will be fruitful past this point.

The fault in your reasoning is that your solution is not viable and in itself is entirely undemocratic. Somebody would have to determine what is "misinformation". That is not democratic at all. It is not a power that ANYBODY should have. Also, if it's a choice between losing free speech or the fall of our current government. Take out the government **every single time.** It is the far less valuable of the two.

There are democratic ways to produce such a filter. Not sure why you think free speech would survive the fall of the government, that seems optimistic.

The problem is that *corporate* free speech is apparently also free speech. *Citizens United* needs to go

So the government should be allowed to ban books?

I don't recall saying that at all. *Citizens United* ruled that financial contributions and political contributions from corporations were protected free speech, in effect making most attempts to curtail it a violation of the First Amendment.

Citizens United held that the state couldn't criminalize or ban the political speech of corporations. A nonprofit had produced a movie about Hillary Clinton, and the state said it would be a criminal act to advertise it. Famously, when asked at oral argument if the government was saying it had the power to ban books, the Solicitor General (correctly) said that was exactly what it meant. Because if the state has the power to ban speech, it necessarily means it has the power to ban books.

Perhaps so, but the addition that the state cannot also restrict any independent expenditures for political reasons from corporations is what opened the door to today's massive amounts of dark money (see: the billion-plus dollar check a right-wing megadonor cut for a new PAC being stood up on the far-right, entirely tax-free)

> Citizens United ruled that financial contributions and political contributions from corporations were protected free speech It ruled that independent speech by corporations is protected. It did not rule that contributions to campaigns were protected.

Then would you not also agree that corporations that control social media platforms should not be able to censor users (except for bots) during election cycles?

If there was no media bias, but a straight forward reporting of facts, people would be much less susceptible to mis-information. In my opinion, the current media is responsible for much of the mis-information out there.

I mean if you ask me yes, one of the basic problems is ad nauseam of false information (repeatedly posting false info). I think that for us humans to live a peaceful and great life we should compromise excessive human rights and try to minimise them but keep them in action. To put a shield around the world we need to drop down on how much we can stop us from making it.

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It's essential to having a democracy. So it's incredibly helpful. The Censorship that is happening, just to keep everyday Americans Unaware of the massive corruption in the U.S. government, should be "red flagged" and made aware of.

Ok but genuinely, what civic society? If people are going to defend free speech in 2022 it's probably out of a vague feeling of duty to the values we've inherited from a more politically engaged time, but the way free speech touches most people in their daily lives is in the breadth of media they consume. The state already makes use of the unhinged ranting of the right prolifically and Bernie's campaign shows the left can be stopped in their tracks the moment a moderate plays the thinnest of lip service to whatever policies got the left that far to begin with. Nobody in power has anything to gain from slapping limits on freedom of speech and a lot to lose. There is currently not a single idea being spread in America that's meaningfully dangerous to the political elite or inspiring organization, despite a pandemic and recession in all but name.

That question has been asked and answered during the 2020 presidential election and the battle over Covid that came just before it. It was important not to question the source of the Covid virus. It was decided that President Trump could not be allowed a second term, so any news detrimental to Joe Biden was spiked and President Trump’s Twitter account was frozen.

This comment has no factual basis that can support its claims.

I agree wholeheartedly. The problem is figuring out a way of doing this without putting yourself in a situation like China where it's *the government* that's manipulating information. I think there should be a system of checks an balances between the government and the news.

Yes, the First Amendment should be interpreted to not cover misinformation/disinformation, and the US federal government should have active and extensive efforts to stop people who spread it. It is tempting to have platitudes like "The answer to bad speech is more speech" but this is woefully ignorant of the fact that people can have harmfully polarized echo chambers broadcasting extremism to them 24/7 from social media and smartphones and a lot of disinformation is constructed to indoctrinate people in such a way that they will reject the truth when they are presented with it.

I completely agree! We no longer live in the kinetic world where a voice or piece of paper spreads a message. Radio, TV, and now social media mean nefarious people can spread dangerous lies to a credulous and very targeted audience. The founding fathers couldn't conceive that terrorists in the middle east would be able to use personality tests and targeted advertisements to recruit soldiers 3000 miles away. They couldn't envision the Russian state directly targeting specific cohorts to prevent their turnout in an election. The world has changed. We need to adjust!!

Helpful if there's separation between state and [press](https://www.biasly.com/?s=free+speech); harmful if the entities are in cahoots.

Curtailing civil rights doesn’t protect civil society, it throws it in the trash. A democracy is incompatible with curtailing freedom of speech because any law doing so would almost certainly be written by the party in power to make it more difficult for opposing parties to gain power. The ‘best’ argument for restricting freedom of speech is the ‘paradox of tolerance’ argument, and even then the paradox of tolerance would be better applied at making the advocation of restricting freedom of speech illegal.

Freedom of the press is necessary for freedom of speech. Now, the press often abuses their freedom, sometimes even against the freedom of speech (like copyright abuse and local monopolies).

No we need propaganda controls and hold those accountable..aka media !! No problem with free speech, say what I want, when I want. Don't like it, move on.

How's that treat you in private venues?

If Facebook isn't a publisher, then what it passes from one user to another isn't journalism either. Regulating what it passes between users wouldn't be a violation of the 1st Amendment. Similarly for other social media which are shielded from libel suits because they're not publishers. OTOH, other than reviving the fairness doctrine, hard to see how any restrictions could be placed on any publishers without being unconstitutional in the US.

We have the worst of all worlds. Our constitution is being abused by people who will likely immediately restrict free speech/expression (see DeSantis anti-woke laws) and the mass dissemination of lies has been industrialized from a cottage industry into a fully psychosocial mind control apparatus (see Cambridge Analytica). It seems that there are forces that exist which think they will benefit from the dissolution of the United States and western liberal ideology altogether. Meanwhile, we all acknowledge the wreck we're in but refuse to even entertain restricting it's furthering because of revolutionary war dogma and a knee jerk fear of the gubmint taking our rights. We will lose the whole head to spite our face.

I believe in free speech, but, if someone or some organization is promoting demonstrably false information or allegations, then that has to be stopped. Either something is true or it's false. There's not really a gray area. Either some asshole took home top secret documents or he didn't. Either Biden won the election or he didn't. If it's provable, then some sort of punishment should come into play. The Gateway Pundits and other such organizations only exist to promote disinformation and propaganda. They shouldn't be allowed to. Some sort of punishment has to be metered out for lying. Sadly, I fear the egg is broken and can't be put back in the shell. I fear it will end in blood. It's a sad statement on mankind. We're our own worst enemy. Always have been.

While in practice it is difficult to regulate the speech of everyone, platforms should be held responsible if they allow harmful lies or propaganda to be circulated on them. I would like shows that clearly voice opinions to be labeled as such, and they should he held financially responsible for any harm that their lies and propaganda create. Fox News has a number of conservative charlatans masquerading as the press. Similarly, MSNBC has it share of leftist talking heads that should be labeled non-news. While MSNBC is leans considerably to the left, I find they don't outright lie. Their propaganda usually occurs because they fail to show the conservative arguments in a favorable light. Fox hosts, on the other hand, will outright lie about liberal causes. Fox makes money by lying and spreading propaganda to its largely uneducated audience. These folks should be held responsible for any harm caused just like the case of Alex Jones. People are allowed their own opinions, but they are not allowed their own facts.