“And if we agree with John Stuart Mill (1978) that speech should be protected because it leads to the truth, there seems no reason to protect the speech of anti-vaccers or creationists.”
This sentence assumes that the state, however it is made up, or perhaps the scientific elite or even clergy, is the final arbiter of truth. If we bring ourselves back a few hundred years, the latter part of the sentence could instead have been written like this: “there seems no reason to protect the speech of round-earthers and atheists.”
I think this illustrates quite well the difficulty of regulating speech, at least from the standpoint that it should protect “truth,” because immediately the qestion of “who's truth?” arises.
Yes, it is a misunderstanding of Mill. He wasn't arguing that all things spoken freely are true and therefor valuable. He was arguing that censoring speech will stop the propagation of both true and false ideas, and that better to allow the ideas to fight it out in the open than to squash any hope of discovering many truths.
>and that better to allow the ideas to fight it out in the open than to squash any hope of discovering many truths.
This assumes two things: firstly, that truth is itself an ultimate goal, and this pursuit overrides all other conflicts of rights; secondly, that ideas really do "fight it out in the open" and the long-run result of this process is desirable. It says nothing of what happens along the way (the "means"), it only cares about the ends.
Why is there a dichotomy between "[any and all ideas] fighting in the open" and "squashing hope of discovering many truths"? I also see no reason why this argument on the basis of truth would not justify restrictions on things which do not even foster dialogue on truth. The truth-value of 'hate speech' (if there is any truth value) is likely negligible compared to the same ideas expressed otherwise.
The same algorithm that would ban anti-vaxers today would also have banned Ignaz Semmelweis two centuries ago.
(On a more sensitive topic, the same algorithm that would ban "covid is just a flu" today would have also banned "face masks protect against covid" a year ago.)
It's not the opinions of anti-vaxers that are valuable, but potential other opinions which may look similar to the censor.
That's a strawman argument. Judges are are not final arbiters of truth either, yet they can take away certain constitutional protections from people. It is perfectly possible to have non-final and fallible arbiters of truth - or something more modest like the interpretation of laws - to decide on such matters, as long as there is enough democratic division of power, due process, and appeals mechanisms.
This matters very little to the one being censored. For them, that is indeed the “final stop,” as it were. As it stands the warnings and fact-checkers on places like Facebook serve only as annoynances to most people, and proof to them that the system is both authoritarian and wrong. This is also why so many want to fact check the fact checkers, and so on... In the end, it has just given a cause for a lot of people to unite against.
>“The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance” (1978, 53).
...
>But those who exhibit cruelty, malice, envy, insincerity, resentment and crass egoism are open to the greater sanction of disapprobation as a form of punishment, because these faults are wicked and other-regarding.
Many things spoken today have nothing to do with truth. They are just expression of hate and anger and make insincere argument. Even worse, they want to wear out others in discussion.
> Acts, of whatever kind, which, without justifiable cause, do harm to others, may be, and in the more important cases absolutely require to be, controlled by the unfavourable sentiments, and, when needful, by the active interference of mankind.
The problem is that "nuisance" here is not considered to include speech. The whole section this is in is about how "human beings should be free to form opinions, and to express their opinions without reserve;"
And if you read further you will recognize this is not predicated on the speech being true.
>This sentence assumes that the state, however it is made up, or perhaps the scientific elite or even clergy, is the final arbiter of truth.
Not really; it could easily be the case that when such an issue comes to trial, you can present your evidence and arguments. The issue you point out only arises in the case where undue priority is given to the scientific elite or clergy.
But I think the sentence isn't implying what you think it is. It's only highlighting that the goal of seeking truth isn't sufficient to justify the principle of free speech. This is for two reasons: it's not clear that all speech does lead to truth (even in the long run), and it's not clear that all truths should be revealed.
The sentence only argues against people who justify free speech on the basis of truth. It does not propose that lies or discussion to find truth should be prohibited. "Free speech is good because it leads to truth/revealing the truth is a good in all contexts" does not stand up as an argument - at least according to this refutation of Mill.
"it could easily be the case that when such an issue comes to trial, you can present your evidence and arguments."
Trial? Do you mean like in a court of law?
The whole point of the First Amendment is to prevent the state from hauling you to court just for making some utterance. Moreover, you shouldn't be asked to defend your views at the mercy of judges who threaten you with a loss of your freedom if you are deemed to have the "wrong" ideas. That doesn't only threaten your own freedom, but democracy itself.
Priority, undue or not, does not matter, and it assumes that someone is the arbiter of that priority, whereas the idea of free speech claims that the final arbiter is truth itself, as it will conquer all if we just give people the freedom to find it. The maxim that comes out of this, is that the only way we can possibly find the truth, is by allowing ideas to compete freely, by giving people as much freedom of speech as possible, because if we don't, then lies will prevail.
>The whole point of the First Amendment is to prevent the state from hauling you to court just for making some utterance
And the whole point of the legislature and judiciary is to prevent passage of laws which would allow the executive branch to haul you to court for just "some utterance" - but speech is not in itself always just "an utterance".
>That doesn't only threaten your own freedom, but democracy itself.
Arguably, democracy is undermined through some uses of free speech which in the U.S. in particular cannot be legislated. the OP article has a whole section on this as it relates to porn or hate speech, and the arguments made therein.
>is that the only way we can possibly find the truth, is by allowing ideas to compete freely
This may be true of "ideas" as abstract entities, but ideas take concrete form in particular acts of speech and modes of expression - the real picture isn't a heavenly battle of ideas, it's the real effects of speech - only some of which carry an idea. Child porn or threats both carry 'ideas', or they can be imbued with the intention to carry an idea. This does not mean they should not be censored.
>as much freedom of speech as possible, because if we don't, then lies will prevail.
Is there empirical evidence confirming this in the context of the modern populace in the information age?
I suppose you have two kinds of truth when using that word:
* That which can be rationally defended with evidence. The whole definition of a fact being a justified, true belief etc.
* That which is believed to be true on faith.
Regulating on the former with the proviso that encountering new evidence should inform our understanding of the truth seems prudent. For example the "scientific method". So for example not only can we show that anti-vax beliefs are wrong we can also show that disseminating them is actively harmful. So there is certainly a case to be made that regulating the propagation of these harmful beliefs under an evidence based regime is the prudent thing to do.
Regulating on the latter is a terrible idea and that's what you'd get if anti-vax believers were trying to prevent evidence of the efficacy of vaccination from spreading.
This is easy in examples such as anti-vax, flat-earth etc, but harder is more nuanced situations.
That's because he who counts the votes, controls the election; and He who decides what counts as evidence (or its weight) controls the empirical truth. all scientific conclusions are at least some degree theory-laden.
Then we get to the fact that scientific truth is not a priori for individuals, it must be communicated from a specific community which, if not at least self-motivated itself (as are most human groups) will be filtered through various political layers; The more privileged that community is (wrt exclusively wielding the power of truth), the more 3rd parties will interfere to acquire it.
This is why political principles exist as well as impossibly ideal empirical ones; The issue is less about the complex issue of objective truth, and more about the autonomy of individuals to choose their own actions, whatever beliefs may motivate it.
Right and regulation based on evidence would be a political principle and further we have to regulate nuanced situations all the time. Hence an entire branch of government usually set up to deal with the nuance of it.
Sure, but medicine differs from politics. Just b/c we have the mains to fairly consistently regulate one based on scientific consensus (and associated power-politics) doesn't mean it applies to all.
On that note: would you consider the decision-making process of the supreme court to be "scientific"? as opposed to, say, the FDA. If so, why, or why not?
> not only can we show that anti-vax beliefs are wrong
But can you? The CDC was supposed to publish reports every 2 years on child vaccinations, since 1986, in 2018 it came out that they never had. An independent peer-reviewed study found that the health of unvaccinated children was better than those of vaccinated [1][2]. For freedom of speech, you could argue that the studies are wrong, but you could argue that _any_ study is wrong, that's science and healthy skepticism. But then we would need to do more studies, something the CDC doesn't appear to want to do. Opposition spurs us on to find out more, to study more; science dies in unopposed silence.
The main point is-- sometimes we assume things that we really _don't_ know. We assume the evidence is all there for our side and there is none for the other side. The truth is usually more nuanced, both sides are partially right and partially wrong. The danger is attempting to silence others, even when we haven't looked at _their_ evidence. What we should do is let all sides speak, find the nuances and fuse together what is wrong. If all sides are allowed to fairly argue in the public, then there is no shame when someone is eventually found to be wrong. Otherwise we risk becoming little dictators by silencing those we "know to be wrong", but later find out that we deceived both ourselves and others, and did it by force and coercion.
We then become morally liable for the harm we have done, because we have arrogantly silenced what is true.
Furthermore, on some of the most important aspects of our lives, which is how we ought to live (i.e. matters pertaining to values and not facts), we do not have any way to determine the "truth", objectively.
In my view "truth" is not even a well defined concept for anything not pertaining to fact. And politics, by it's very nature, is not restricted to the realm of facts. If it was it would be science and not politics.
Politics is about applying values to facts.
EDIT: This concept is fairly well explained by Karl Popper in his book, The Open Society and Its enemies. In Chapter 5, Nature and Convention [1] which is worth a read if this is hard to grasp.
quoted>
It is important for the understanding of this attitude to realize that
these decisions can never be derived from facts (or from statements of
facts), although they pertain to facts. The decision, for instance, to
oppose slavery does not depend upon the fact that all men are born free
and equal, and that no man is born in chains. For even if all were born
free, some men might perhaps try to put others in chains, and they may
even believe that they ought to put them in chains. And conversely, even
if men were born in chains, many of us might demand the removal of these
chains. Or to put this matter more precisely, if we consider a fact as
alterable—such as the fact that many people are suffering from
diseases—then we can always adopt a number of different attitudes
towards this fact: more especially, we can decide to make an attempt to
alter it; or we can decide to resist any such attempt; or we can decide
not to take action at all.
All moral decisions pertain in this way to some fact or other,
especially to some fact of social life, and all (alterable) facts of
social life can give rise to many different decisions. Which shows that
the decisions can never be derivable from these facts, or from a
description of these facts.
Something that I find interesting is that in the Netherlands no one talks about “freedom of speech”, rather, what is spoken of is “freedom to express opinions” — this different phrasing putting the focus not on the broad “speech” but the more narrow “opinion” seems to color the discourse differently.
For instance, the fire in a crowded theatre-argument has no meaning in that reference, for it is not an opinion; whether there be fire is a fact.
Pornography could also not be made legal by it, as it expresses no opinion.
In reality however, the Dutch constitution does not guarantee freedom to expression opinions unknown to much of the population, it merely prohibits the government from enacting præventive censorship with the exception of commercial advertisements and broadcasts aimed at minors — it is allowed to censor post factum.
>Pornography could also not be made legal by it, as it expresses no opinion.
Pornography is very opinionated. By deciding on what acts are shown, what actors are shown, where the camera is placed, what zoom level is chosen, etc. the creators exhibit no less opinion than any other author.
Viewed via a historical lens, the kind of pornography being created and consumed in a society can be very indicative of that society's values and morals, and possibly quite influential in its turn.
> Pornography is very opinionated. By deciding on what acts are shown, what actors are shown, where the camera is placed, what zoom level is chosen, etc. the creators exhibit no less opinion than any other author.
Are you serious?
If it was truly meant to enunciate a particular opinion, then that same opinion could be expressed in clearer, more verbal ways.
The crux is that the opinion itself isn't censored, but that does not mean that one has carte blanche as a choice of medium to express it, such as for instance shouting it with a megaphone in the middle of the night, exceeding the legal sound volume limits.
I could also express an opinion by murdering people and carving my opinion in text in their corpes and say that it should be legal, for I expressed an opinion. In which case, I am not prosecuted for any opinions I expressed, but the means by which I did so.
That having been said, the Netherlands has more liberal pornography laws than the U.S.A..
> Viewed via a historical lens, the kind of pornography being created and consumed in a society can be very indicative of that society's values and morals, and possibly quite influential in its turn.
>If it was truly meant to enunciate a particular opinion, then that same opinion could be expressed in clearer, more verbal ways.
Any opinion can be expressed in clearer ways - and indeed many opinions in artworks can too.
>The crux is that the opinion itself isn't censored, but that does not mean that one has carte blanche as a choice of medium to express it
Some would say that porn is the best method to express their opinions and ideas. For instance, if I may want to express what I find sexy, a picture is worth well more than a thousand words. Sometimes, I may opt for a (pornographic) thousand words. There is immense complexity in at least some pornography, and some feminist philosophers would contend that porn is the best medium (on a variety of metrics) to convey the idea that women should be subordinated. I don't agree with that reading, but there a many points of view.
>So can the kind of murders committed therein.
The idea is that porn also expresses ideas and opinions, not that porn is pure and good by light of doing just that. Murder is also expressive, but it causes harm. Whether porn causes harm is very contentious.
> Some would say that porn is the best method to express their opinions and ideas. For instance, if I may want to express what I find sexy, a picture is worth well more than a thousand words. Sometimes, I may opt for a (pornographic) thousand words. There is immense complexity in at least some pornography, and some feminist philosophers would contend that porn is the best medium (on a variety of metrics) to convey the idea that women should be subordinated. I don't agree with that reading, but there a many points of view.
And some would say the assassination of a politician is the best way to express many political ideas.
Again, if you wish to follow this logic consistently, you must essentially abolish the concept of crime.
> The idea is that porn also expresses ideas and opinions, not that porn is pure and good by light of doing just that. Murder is also expressive, but it causes harm. Whether porn causes harm is very contentious.
So indeed — you make a distinction on whether it cause harm or not, not on whether it be an opinion or not.
Is it now your claim that one only enjoys freedom of opinion if the powers that be consider the opinion, or the means by which they are expressed, not harmful?
>Is it now your claim that one only enjoys freedom of opinion if the powers that be consider the opinion, or the means by which they are expressed, not harmful?
In a roundabout way, yes. But it is not left to "the powers that be", but a process involving evidence and rigorous reasoning. It's also important to distinguish "mere hurts" from harms. Some potential "harms" we may argue should be prioritized lower than free speech, much in the same way the potential harms of a drunk person on others are prioritized lower than the right to drink (or even produce) alcohol.
You pointed this out yourself; there are many ways to express many opinions, but their expressions can run up against other rights, or at least cause other harms. It's a balancing act, not a settled question. I may also trust the state more to recognize the harm of killing than I trust it to recognize the harm of some other forms of expression.
"Oh, so you believe this now?" isn't a gotcha in a complex process where many different interests need to be considered, and all of us have different views on what society should look like. The law on murder in most countries is extremely complex, with various tiers and problems. Even that is up for debate - England and Wales has a much criticized "mandatory life sentence" and pretty much one tier of murder.
So no, I don't have the answers, but good-faith discussions may bring us closer.
> For instance, the fire in a crowded theatre-argument has no meaning in that reference, for it is not an opinion; whether there be fire is a fact.
Okay, but how do we determine fact (i.e. positive descriptive statements about the natural world that are true [1])?
In science we can define repeatable experiments, and we can them use them to test hypothesis, but such experiments cannot say if our hypothesis is true, just if it is not false.
But outside of the realm of science we are much more limited. Take for example terrorist incidents, with this things are significantly different, because these are not things we can test by repeatable experiment as we can in science.
For another example, no experiment is available to me to check whether or not Lukashenko rigged the election of Belarus in 2020. I suspect he did, but I don't know. It is a matter of fact though, so can I now no longer say I expect he did? What if I find evidence, can I then say he did?
Take also a murder trial, does a conviction mean someone did it? Does an acquittal mean that someone did not do it? I mean if you truly believe so then how do you explain wrongful convictions and acquittals?
Should we eliminate courts as they make claims of facts with no ability to guarantee their correctness?
What if some witness was mistaken? Should they be convicted? Should incorrect statements about matters of fact be crimes? And if so how do we judge them? Can't use courts, because courts can make mistakes.
Libel and fraud are already crimes, both in US and most of the western world, but I think restricting freedom of speech to exclude statements about fact is a misunderstanding of reality.
No person is an oracle, no person has a monopoly on truth or fact, just because someone says something, does not make it so.
Same in Germany. E.g. you cannot publicly state that the Holocaust was an invention because that it happened is a fact. So it cannot be an opinion. Although differentiating between the two is not always easy and often left for the courts to decide (like in the above example [1]). And of course it leaves room for using clever language to hide statement behind an opinion.
In Germany it’s illegal to come to the “wrong” conclusion publicly on this topic, and thus it’s not quite right to claim that the German government protects people’s rights to express their understanding of the truth.
I’ve heard this joked about like this: “it’s a fact so true you’re put in prison for denying it”
He's not discussing the historical facts. He's discussing the authoritarianism of not being allowed to argue against those historical facts, even if you are clearly wrong, without the risk of losing your freedom. Part of the morality of freedom of speech is that you should be allowed to express opinions even if they are wrong. With that said, I can of course sympathise with German authorities in wanting to subdue anything that could lead to another tragedy.
The literal provision in German law reads like this:
> Whosoever publicly or in a meeting approves of, denies or downplays an act committed under the rule of National Socialism of the kind indicated in section 6 (1) of the Code of International Criminal Law, in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace shall be liable to imprisonment not exceeding five years or a fine
Now, it doesn't mean that disputing or discussing the finer details of what has happened is outright outlawed and a prosecutable crime. If that were the case, historical research, remembrance and reflection wouldn't be possible. One needs to be able to discuss what happened, re-interpret what has happened, be able to dispute what has happened in order to come to new insights.
The key provision is this:
> in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace
The German law very much looks at the intent with which you approach history. If you publicly proclaim revisionist history with the express aim of inciting ethnic, religious or political tensions, then you will very much get prosecuted.
Whether you do it by publishing a pamphlet, a book, starting a non-profit, an online forum, a political party, a protest march,... The format doesn't matter: it's your intent that makes all the difference.
Freedom of speech is often touted as an absolute right. You should be free to express anything, including denial of the Holocaust. To many, it's an acceptable trade off since any limits put forward by a government are perceived as a slippery slope to authoritarianism.
The events of last week demonstrate the inherent paradox in the line of thinking. Allowing anything to go unchecked, culminated in a downright insurrection aiming to disrupt a constitutionally enshrined legal process. It wasn't just storming a building, it was very much storming the foundational framework that governs how people organize themselves in the United States... and this includes threatening that very same unchecked free speech right.
It was basically a demonstration of Karl Popper's famous paradox of free speech. See, free speech is an equitable right. Free speech doesn't exist if the humanity of certain groups in society is denied through legal policies which are founded in racial, gender, origin, religious, political or other types of discrimination.
In order for free speech to be truly free, society has to be intolerant towards such discrimination.
That's what laws such as in Germany are about. They aren't intended to curb free speech. They are intended to protect it. You can say and promote whatever you want. You just can't promote ideas with the express intent of curbing free speech rights based on discrimination.
An often heard argument is that such frameworks are a form of discrimination itself. But that's just a rephrasing of the paradox with the express goal of derailing the discussion into a circular argument.
The best response to that argument would be: "Well, sure, punishing revisionism is a form of discrimination. But would you rather have people freely rewrite history with the express intent of disrupting society based on a framework of free, open, equal and democratic values?"
See, when confronted with revisionism, a sensible approach is never "Well, they are wrong, and we need to fact check their claims." It's always a set of questions you have to ask yourself first: "Who are they? What do they want? Why should we even listen to them? And why should we allow them to disrupt the peace?"
History is written by the victors. The fact that the winning side can say "this is what happened, and any discussion about it shall land you in jail" should raise a few eyebrows.
Perhaps, but using Germany's ban on holocaust denial is not a good example to prove the point. Ideally you'd find an example of a government of an otherwise free society actually rewriting
history to hide actual real facts.
I find it terrifying that defending the truth always hits massive friction, whereas flooding all places with nonsense is barely an inconvenience.
The whole point of protecting what we _know_ is true now, is that if we don't scholars in 100 years will not be able to discern fact from fiction because there will be more fake versions of history than any true records. At best we'll be able to say "we don't know".
You see this all the time when discussing with, say, antivaxxers when a sufficient argument for them is to say "I read an article somewhere where a doctor said..." but when you try to raise your argument they suddenly need a whole lot of undeniable evidence + an ELI5 explanation of all biology.
Maybe it's a slippery slope when platforms start arbitrating the truth, but at the same time not doing anything or doing little is a free fall and we are already in it.
Because reality isn’t so stark as your neat examples of antivaxers and Holocaust deniers. Real issues are complex and multifaceted with room for multiple seemingly contradictory viewpoints. Allowing somebody to arbitrate truth will inevitably result in a corrupt or self-serving entity use that power for purposes not in the public interest.
Having a scientific truth commission be the deciding authority about climate change, for example, is great until it gets stacked with oil industry representatives.
Read up on your Orwell. Controlling “truth” is the autocrats playbook. If having some nutjobs voicing scientifically illiterate nonsense is the price to pay for liberty, then so be it.
The proper response is not to ban free expression of ideas deemed “wrong”, but to provide better education, mental health, and a social safety net free of charge. Rob the anti-intellectual virus of it’s host by treating the underlying causes.
> Because reality isn’t so stark as your neat examples of antivaxers and Holocaust deniers.
However measures are taken only against those particular, clean-cut issues.
In general I’m not fond of slippery slope arguments because the fact that even getting to arbitrate those basic facts is proof that the system is working.
A few people yelling nonsense is a non issue, half of the country though, is a danger to democracy.
I agree with your solution, however that is a decades long plan. We need to survive until then and also have government that could potentially pass laws to make this possible.
And then COVID happens and people want to express a legitimate concern about taking a hastily approved vaccine, but can’t.
And then some politician claims ancestry from Holocaust survivors to score political points, but the details seem questionable... only you’re not allowed to question whether this person’s story is real.
These issues are never, ever clear cut enough to make all discussion of truth illegal.
Then I suggest you advocate most religions be illegal, lest scholars in the future no longer know whether creation myths were true or not.
It's funny how such arguments of protecting truth only come when the lie be emotionally sensitive, nay, they come just as easily when the truth be so sensitive.
It has nothing to do with veracity an everything with emotional sensitivity. The holocaust's occurrence could have been as false as the sun orbiting around the earth, but provided it'd be as sensitive as it now is, it would have been just as illegal.
Which is also why it's in particular Germany that bans it — the holocaust is no more or less true in different places of course, but the denial thereof is far more sensitive in Germany.
Rewriting history doesn't just mean hiding undesirable facts, it can also include perpetuating false histories - Consider Kim Jong Il's famous round of golf.
The holocaust may have happened, but there's no reason a genocide attributed to the enemy couldn't be invented and written in the history books of any particular nation.
Once you carve out a category of thing, recreating that thing is as easy as adding to that category; or in this case (banning falsehoods), expanding the list.
> Same in Germany. E.g. you cannot publicly state that the Holocaust was an invention because that it happened is a fact. So it cannot be an opinion.
Of course, some falsehoods are easily spoken and unpunished, such as the claims by many a religion.
It does not solve the issue that sensitive falsehoods are more easily censored that those the public has no particular emotional investment in.
Even on the subject of genocides, denying that the Armenian genocide happened, or even denying that the genocides of the Third Reich against the Slavs and the Gypsies happened seems to be quite legal in Germany.
> Same in Germany. E.g. you cannot publicly state that the Holocaust was an invention because that it happened is a fact. So it cannot be an opinion. Although differentiating between the two is not always easy and often left for the courts to decide (like in the above example [1]).
Another example on the flip side that another commenter pointed out, is that Galileo was prosecuted because he didn't accept the 'fact' that the earth was flat. People across all of history have been killed because they said they supported the 'wrong' god.
And in Turkey you cannot publicly state that the Armenian genocide was a fact, because "it was an invention" and differentiating between invention and fact is left for the government to decide. Even though the Armenian genocide was the most direct inspiration for the Holocaust and even Hitler said as much.
Does Germany not also play along with Turkey in this to some extent to salvage it's diplomatic relations?
The Dutch government has only recently taken a public stance on admitting it. Prior, they purposefully avoided talking of the issue as to placate Turkey and soothe diplomatic relations therewith.
Oh please! Forgive us for not taking seriously the ideas, on this subject, of a country that arrested and tried, multiple times, an elected parliamentarian for the recitation of plain facts about criminal arrest statistics within the country.
He was not arrested merely for citing statistics. The final straw was his “Less Moroccans!” chant which was interpreted as possibly made with the intent to inspire violence — it is not legal in the Netherlands to tell a man to kill another and the argument was whether his statements could be construed as such.
It was on the line, as you see in the article the public prosecutor originally did not want to bring charges but did so regardless, and he was acquitted.
The way you phrase it, suggesting that he was merely tried for citing statistics is obviously a big misrepræsentation of some of the comments he made, and the primary legal quæstion was whether they constituted a call to commit crimes, and the court found that they did not, though that he skirted awfully close to the line.
You would have a far stronger argument with the situation with MARTIJN, a pro pædophile activist group that was first forbidden, then that ruling was reversed on appeal, and a further appeal forbade them again, with the legal quæstion indeed being whether they issued a call to break the law — I personally do not believe they did and I find that the supreme court was searching for a reason and that the intermediate court's ruling was the correct one and that they remained within their legal right to advocate the law be changed, all the while not calling it be broken while it was still in effect as it was.
"It is “axiomatic,” the Supreme Court held in Norwood v. Harrison (1973), that the government “may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.” That’s what Congress did by enacting Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which not only permits tech companies to censor constitutionally protected speech but immunizes them from liability if they do so."
I wish we would revisit these rulings in light of the destructive potential of software.
We accept that a person can’t cry out “fire” in a theatre to induce a panic. Why can’t we accept that coordinating messages for propaganda/special interests through misleading ads or fake accounts to also be damaging?
Why can a country like Saudi Arabia or Israel both whitewash its crimes on Twitter/Facebook and suppress its enemies? Why can corporations and rich political campaigns specialize ads to prey on fears in an individualized manner to advance its agenda?
Such opinions will trigger endless debates when the damage on the ground is real and ongoing. Post-reality is truly the terrible state of this world.
Isnt the government dictating the of speech of private companies/people a bigger violation?
230 has nothing to do with censorship/moderation. If anything, it permits more types of content by absolving platforms from the responsibility.
Should 230 remove the right for companies/individuals/platforms to have a say in the content they publish? Should platforms not be able to make decisions about how they moderate their own platforms?
230 is a legal protection afforded to platforms which host user-generated content. It absolves them of legal liability for the content posted by their users, providing they moderate illegal content properly.
> Should 230 remove the right for companies/individuals/platforms to have a say in the content they publish?
If they wish to be afforded the legal protections offered by 230, yes. It is a choice - not an obligation. A trade-off.
> Should platforms not be able to make decisions about how they moderate their own platforms?
They should be able to, but, again, accepting the responsibility of being a platform rather than a publisher means that there should be limits to what can be considered inappropriate. There is certainly no easy answer for where that line is drawn, but it does need to be drawn. A heavy-handed moderation policy can effectively become publishing requirements.
That interpretation is backwards. The "default state" of these websites would be getting sued into oblivion. 230 protected them from that, providing they act as neutral platforms. As they have continually expanded the list of content which is not allowed, whether or not they are acting as a neutral platform is being called into question.
Whenever one group accumulates too much power, that power is inevitably abused. The point of the policy is to limit the extent to which companies can control information.
I read the Tech Dirt article [1] and I don't understand how 230 has anything to do with: "permits tech companies to censor constitutionally protected speech". Isn't all about enabling tech companies to actually publish speech without being sued?
Companies and individuals have always been free to censor constitutionally protested speech (unless they are common carrier or there is some other special exception).
Section 230 protects companies from liability in the case they censor and fail to censor unprotected speech.
> which not only permits tech companies to censor constitutionally protected speech but immunizes them from liability if they do so
Without that, they are not immune from liability for what someone else wrote. That means, they would censor more, because they would be liable full stop.
Private companies are allowed to censor on their servers by default, section 230 does not allow them to censor more then before.
> Without that, they are not immune from liability for what someone else wrote. That means, they would censor more, because they would be liable full stop.
> Private companies are allowed to censor on their servers by default, section 230 does not allow them to censor more then before.
In the absence of 230, platforms would either vigorously censor everything, or would moderate nothing except for outright illegal content (e.g. child pornography). §230 gave more flexibility to allow some "community standards" without subjecting the platform to liability as a publisher.
> Today hate speech can piped into eyes and ears by our mobile phones, turbocharged by algorithms which are funded by billions in advertising dollars.
>
> Back in John Stuart-Mill's day the most anyone could achieve would be to write a book or a newspaper article, which are quite easy to ignore.
Turning off Twitter and Facebook are quite easy to do, apart from their addictive designs. (I permanently disconnected from Facebook two years ago, and today only occasionally check Twitter a few times a month.) There are a few things I miss out on not being on Facebook (mostly some groups that would be helpful for my actual, real-life networks); I miss absolutely nothing by being off of Twitter (and HN is like a quality filter for the tech industry Twitter crap).
So, indeed, even if someone could define an objective criteria for "hate speech," everyone is still offended by their own consent.
"Apart from their addictive designs" is the key phrase here.
Purdue only created OxyContin for legitimate pain management but they knew full well the level of abuse because of their profits
I'd rather live in a society where the creators of these things take some responsibility for effects of whatever they've created, whether intentional or not
I think your point has its limitations but is quite important. "Just turn off FB" sounds similar to "Just build your own social media", it may be seen as too limiting.
On the other hand I think people against non-censored speech often frame the receivers of the message as somehow mindless. Now that I think about it, censoring people on social media (i.e. deplatforming Trump) implies that users have no free will (whatever that means) and can only act as an obedient crowd. From that perspective, everyone who might become a leader of the masses seems dangerous and requires intervention. Not only that, their followers are also potentially dangerous, just not powerful enough. To me such attitude is in contradiction with individual's freedom to express their views but also a denial of existence of freedom to act in accordance with one's views.
"I know we asserted a principled stance against smoking, but we now live above a tobacconist!"
You could also say that when rumors did spread back in Mill's day (or before), they were harder to correct as quickly. As an example Cervantes spends a whole chapter in Don Quixote Part II arguing against the inauthenticity of a false sequel.
Times have changed, but the bar must remain high to dismiss centuries of political synthesis and struggle, based on a few new conditions.
I don't think they were easy to ignore. News was far more valuable before mass communication, and authority was also far more respected. We can see this with how they used paper (and its equivalents) to distribute information, which is arguably far more expensive than distributing it over a wire or through radio waves. And indeed it was also more expensive the further back you go, because of how difficult it is to produce. For instance, there was a time when letters were so expensive that every millimetre of it was used to write on before sending it away.
Yes, paper is of course still used today, but only for more valuable information, such as those connected with formalities or ads that the sender hopes will result in profit. Industrialization has of course made paper cheap enough to use it a lot more frivolously than before, but the mere difficulty and “slowness” of it prevents most people from using it more in daily life.
Before the internet, or indeed before radio, it was really hard to find evidence to the contrary of any received information, so the default was to trust authority. Today you can find a scientific study (or perhaps a “scientific” study...) that opposes nearly whatever view you distrust at a click of a button. And thus groups and blocks form, and it's not easy to tell which one believes in the truth and which one does not. Indeed at some point most people just retire and trust the authorities that they like, which is how most political divides are created anyway.
On a slightly different tangent; without condoning hate speech, today there is a great debate raging as to what should be defined as hate speech, and by whom, and I think the growing consensus is that big tech is a poor censor.
Accessibility is a non-issue unless your intent is to become the morality police. You don't get to decide for others what speech they have access to. It's actually absolutely none of your business what conversations others are having, and what debates they're engaging in.
You can also ignore advertising and social media in very much the same way you ignore nudity. Hate speech is not "piped" into our eyes and ears. Is there lots of it? Yes. Are you forced to engage with it? No. You don't report your cousin Dave to the morality police for racist or sexist comments over the dinner table, despite the fact that you're less likely to avoid hearing it than the hate speech on social media.
Thing is, the big social media platforms are deciding what speech their products consume. The algorithms seem to be designed to feed into division and biases. It's absolutely no business what conversations others are having and yet this precise metric is being leveraged to abuse people into generating income. You and I can ignore social media but it seems to have caught an alarming majority in its wake. Add in misinformation and encouraging division and it's a troubling state of affairs, especially when it is proving to be so very profitable.
I definitely agree that a morality police can only make things worse, but a fact police may help :-)
To everyone who uses the phrase "Shouting fire in a crowded theater". An important historical note.
This phrase comes from a judgment in the case Schenck vs. United States [0], where the judges found that U.S had the right to punish a pacifist for spreading leaflets that induced young men to resist WWI draft.
This is a pretty sordid case from today's point of view and has been partially overturned half a century later by Brandenburg vs. Ohio, which established a much more restrictive "likely to incite imminent lawless action" test for punishability of speech.
I wish people were more aware of the context of this phrase when uttering it. It sounds innocent and reasonable, but so do "states rights", which were a code word for slavery. Only in case of "states rights", most people know the history of the phrase.
I think the whole reason is why we are having such an issue with the freedom of speech today is that this, just as many other "fundamental" rights, were invented in a time when purely technological reasons created a certain threshold to their use.
In XVIII century, realising one's right to free speech meant say, printing a pamphlet. Which means a certain level of education because it would be a shame to print on paper some piece of utter bullshit, and some money to print and distribute it. Also, there was a certain threshold of audience too because by far not everyone could read - and thus utter bullshit was unlikely to pass. And just shouting in the corner won't agitate too many people.
In 1922, that changed with mass propagation of the radio - and Mussolini reaped all benefits of it - it is entirely unsurprising that totalitarianism was first born in Italy which wasn't such a prepared ground for it as defeated and destroyed Germany or Russia - it happened simply because commercial radio, being invented by Guglielmo Marconi, first became a thing there.
Now, Facebook and Twitter let bullshit make another bold step.
Same thing can be said about right of free movement: when it took a lot of time and money to travel on a sailing boat, it was OK - now it is entirely different thing - so right of free movement no longer exists.
I'll go on to say that probably, all human rights are subject to that rule: they are a benefit for everyone only as long as few are practically able to exercise them.
I think our current issues around free speech on the internet are not caused by free speech but by free megaphones. It’s the free amplification of speech that is most problematic. Media companies should step up and only amplify opinions they agree with, or only those they think are worth discussing, instead of amplifying opinions even if they think they are terrible or harmful. Stop trying to be “free speech” platforms. You aren’t, and the attempt is making society a worse place.
This piece takes as a given that speech is actively limited, and then begins to discuss when and how much.
I disagree. The mechanisms for censoring and shutting people up are often problematic and unacceptable, rather than the extent of their use. Once the mechanisms are in place, it is easy for the extent of their use to expand.
> This piece takes as a given that speech is actively limited, and then begins to discuss when and how much.
It begins from the most influential theorist of liberal rights of all time, J.S. Mill, and his very permissive attitude as to what should be restricted - notably, what causes harm. You'd be hard-pressed to find any theorist who argues that we should both have a state, and that no speech (such as threats, child porn, calls to immediate violence, etc.) should be restricted. Once you admit that any restriction on speech (such as the examples I just mentioned) is available, as it is in the U.S. for instance, it becomes a question of where we draw the line.
It is decidedly not easy to widen the extent of those restrictions in the U.S. It takes a lot of agreement to change the constitution.
> It begins from the most influential theorist of liberal rights of all time, J.S. Mill
1. It doesn't begin from there, it begins with the sentence I pointed out.
2. Mill, while not a nobleman, was still deeply rooted in the British upper class - a state functionary from a well-off family. This is a guy who advocated for the benevolent dictatorship of Britain over its colonists. Even if you could describe him as "permissive" (which I doubt) - that's already a philosophy for the oppressive masters. They permit, or fail-to-permit. Like I said - the _power_ to disallow speech is problematic, not just what gets permitted.
>1. It doesn't begin from there, it begins with the sentence I pointed out.
This is because freedom of speech is fundamentally a discussion of rights and their justification. It's a "freedom", situated in a concept of society. The actual article discusses the matter from this point of view. I'm not sure where you expect an article on what is an idea originating in liberal philosophy to start.
>Like I said - the _power_ to disallow speech is problematic, not just what gets permitted.
This seems like you have a problem with the state itself - or the idea that the state should have powers to compel, anyway. But once you admit some state power over actions (which you may not do, that's fine) then speech easily falls within this remit too. If you think no power over individuals is permissible - whether to speak or kill - a discussion of liberal rights and freedoms is irrelevant.
> This seems like you have a problem with the state itself
That's a straw-man argument. I didn't say no power to prevent speech is legitimate. In recent days, the issue at hand was censorship by social media platforms / large tech companies.
Sorry, but I'm really just trying to understand your position on this, so hopefully I can learn something too - not argue against you. I'm not trying to pull a gotcha.
>I didn't say no power to prevent speech is legitimate.
You said it's "problematic". What did you mean by that?
Some people are worth censoring. For example, the 1st president of Stanford University, David Starr Jordan. He was one of the most prominent eugenicists in the US, and his ideas served as the basis for the eugenics programs in Nazi Germany.
I'd argue that the Nazis are responsible for the loss of lives. Knifes can be murder weapons, we don't ban all knifes.
The problem with banning problematic books, is you then establish problematic books can be banned. Once the precedent is established, it creates an additional attack vector on freedom of expression - any attempt at censorship will begin with an attempt at portraying something as problematic/harmful, and liberties will be taken with all variable definitions. Consider "hate speech" is one of few exceptions to the freedom of expression, so now people redefine all kinds of things they dislike as hateful for the purpose of social control.
Knives have many uses. A better comparison would be a ballistic knife, which has a more specific purpose. A ballistic tactical knife is not for spreading butter on bread, it is for killing people.
Eugenics is achieved by sterilization, euthanasia or murder. It always involves death in one way or another. If you write books promoting eugenics you are promoting the idea some people should die.
Those books were written in a very different historic context.
I have higher expectations for a 20th century scholar than people that lived 2000 to 1000 years ago.
I'd point out there are plenty who'd kill in the name of someone who lived 100s of years ago - so what is you metric here: ban b/c of the consequences, or ban to punish the author?
"Almost everyone thinks by talking. They don't even know what they think until they speak. So often, you'll let people speak and they become aware of some internal contradictions or maybe they shock themselves... they hear what they have to say and it's being revealed to themselves. That is often enough to change them. But even if it isn't... you want that out in the air so that people can hear it. Do you want to drive people that hate underground? We know what happens psychologically when you do that - anything you drive underground thrives. It partly thrives because it isn't allowed to express itself and then it festers and turns into hatred that far exceeds the original. The idea that you make society safe by not letting horrible people say terrible things is not a good proposition - you want those people out in the open where they can say what they have to say. First of all, so they can see what they're like. Second of all so they can see how people respond, because you don't even know what you should think, in some sense, until you watch how people respond."
-Jordan Peterson [1]
The recent Digital Censorship Campaign(s) are attempts to manicure the modern social landscape, in order to identify & quell dissent impeding the more favorable cohesion that would define a progressive society.
Consider that the recent commander-in-chief curriculum vitae includes "reality TV" - this qualifies as an acting shaman we can deploy (kingmaker initiative) as part of a four year plan to draw corresponding minds out of the expansive woodwork (given permission to imitate what they are strategically being fed on their handheld screens). Behind closed doors, this operative enjoys symphonies and philosophical musings, but on camera the real work is being done. The resulting "following" is what we are all meant to see - the ones Among Us willing to betray cordial/calm/civilized mannerisms in favor of the Will of an Absolute Demigod (direct contradiction to hive-mind democracy & consensus).
We do not seek to reciprocate the harm enacted towards us. We desire corrective measures that can reintroduce the affected into a welcoming community.
Socrates thought that writing would ruin memory, because externalized symbols are only reminders and cannot represent the human.
The traction of these tyrannical transgressions would not be gained if verbal dialogue in-the-flesh was still the standard of interaction.
Something i rarely see come up: misinformation is itself an assault on free speech. You are confusing the minds of people who have a right to the truth and therefore the freedom to express themselves. If someone believes a lie that was told to them, their thoughts aren't really their own. They were manufactured by a people whose goal was to gain something out of their ignorance. By contrast, if you were told the truth, you actually have the axiomatic foundations necessary to produce unique thought.
Your right to spread misinformation cannot be justified on the grounds of free speech.
That is impossible to police. The topic is Freedom of Speech. You need to ban these topics or there will always be battles, as there should be.
Greatgirl also makes an important point. It also appears she only made this point once, here, and has no other "violations". The comment wasn't provoking or ill-meaning. It most certainly did not "trample curiosity".
Ah. In Russia there is a `fake news' law. They just put label `fake news' on anything they don't like, and censor it. Glad to know that Russia has free speech.
As other comment rightly pointed out, your implication requires censor.
Also it implies that misinformation is decidable, i.e. there is a strictly objective rigid method of telling what it The Truth™ everybody agreed upon. Could you show me such a decision procedure?
...and none of which produce irrefutable dogmas or relies on censure to validate itself. In fact it's the opposite: the scientific method, reason and philosophy relies on the availability of stupid ideas to reinforce the "truth" of the non-stupid ones.
my standard approach is to follow the old, standard
"The burden of proof is on the proposer."
Or, it is not up to me to try to debunk such a claim. And I'm not obligated either to debunk the claim or accept it.
So I want to discard essentially all claims that don't come with solid information, the "proof".
Right, such proof can be good stuff in pure math and in parts of mathematical physics but less good elsewhere.
If there is a claim such as
The tap water is toxic.
as long as we have sources of safe water, we might make a decision to avoid the tap water and go with the safe water until we have more evidence about the tap water.
And that is where it seems we are stuck on practical decision methodology and procedures.
Yeah, but what's a proof? What if Putin try to poison Navalny (as he did), but will deny it? Everybody believes that, but there is no proof that he is in charge.
Does it mean that this is misinformation until proven otherwise, and Russian censorship is justified?
Your example appears to be similar to my example of the tap water: In a case of a threat but without proof, we may make a decision that will help us be safe.
Otherwise, in a case without threat, we are reluctant to devote the resources to develop a proof and just ignore the claim that has no proof.
> Show me a rigid decision procedure proving it right or misinformation.
You and another commenter missed a crucial part of my sentence: dialectics.
The method of isolating the contradictions of a system so as to arrive at the best possible answer. No one said there is a quick formula for this, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be attempted.
Dialectics is a good method for two people who want to uncover the truth of a situation, but judging when two people are engaging in dialectics is subjective so it isn't a suitable tool for politics in the way free speech is.
It is much easier to tell if someone is free to say what they think than it is to tell if they are properly employing dialectic techniques.
> No one said there is a quick formula for this, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be attempted.
If you can't tell truth from lies how are you sure something is misinformation?
What's the point of the term misinformation then? Most people agree upon the shape of earth anyway, but questionable topics are questionable due to, you know, lack of persuading argument which would persuade the bulk of people.
There's a wealth of information on the safety and efficacy of vaccines. They literally publish the data, the analysis, the follow-up, for a great many vaccines. There exists no technology to add tracking equipment into a vaccine because of the size, power, and transmission requirements.
5G cannot cause infection by the coronavirus because it is merely a non-ionising radiation. It is a waveform of specific frequency of the electromagnetic spectrum and cannot carry viral nanoparticles through the airwaves, penetrating the skin, and infecting the body.
I won't even bother to debunk flat Earth or Moon landing hoaxes because they're beneath me.
Your argument is in bad faith as you've either read none of the disinformation that is perpetrated or you're pretending that most of the claims are verifiably, irrefutably incorrect.
You know, this infallible social institution which never pushed society towards cringeworthy ideas, which never revised previous theories (wiki has a whole article on superseded theories). And who said reproducibility crisis? It doesn't exist, science is perfect, ergo we know.
Like when Swedes practised eugenics and sterilised innocent people, that was just a bad science, yeap. Hopefully today we have perfect science so this couldn't happen.
Not to mention that science is not applicable to everything, most questionable questions are not scientific, hence I don't know who is arguing "in bad faith" by cherry-picking grotesque examples.
> Your argument is in bad faith as you've either read none of the disinformation
No, your arguments are completely orthogonal to what I said.
You are saying that some people tell lies.
I'm saying that there is no objective decision procedure which tells truth from lies.
If you don't see the difference, it means you are too dumb for me to continue this argument "in bad faith".
Why is moon landing hoax less admirable? The US, a large wealthy government, was in a cold war with Russia at the time. It would seem to mean the US had the means, and the motivation to fake a moon landing.
But for actual evidence that it's true (supporting the claim that it's true) - I don't see as much evidence that it's false (supporting the claim that it might be true).
Would "lots of people would need to be involved" the only rebuttal in that case?
you didn't reply with a procedure. You cherry picked one example, and argued one point.
So other than making proactivesvcs the arbitrator of misinformation, what process do suggest to replace the status quo?
I would describe the status quo as: everyone is allowed to publish information unrestricted. everyone else can review any information and either ignores it or amplifies it.
The more people who have critical reasoning skills, the better the system works.
> Your right to spread misinformation cannot be justified on the grounds of free speech.
My response has long been that from the media, etc., I want solid
information, up to, say, at least common high school term paper writing standards with complete quotes, with context, with credible references to objective, original sources. Then I want the author to have a long established solid reputation.
In practice, that approach does not work very well. First, nearly nothing in the media meets such standards. Second, even with the high school standards, it is still too easy to manipulate, deceive, or lie to an audience.
My view of deception in politics is that it stands on a foundation of the audience wanting only headlines or very short articles. Then, writing deceptive material is easy.
It would appear, then, that at least for now, stopping the deception in politics would be easy since the deception depends on just no more than short news articles and, thus, should be easy to debunk for the fraction of the audience willing to read some material a little longer and more complete. At this point, until the means of deception react, there may be some potential via such longer materials.
And if found to have published misinformation, if one does not publish a retraction that is at least as prominent as the falsehood, one should suffer punitive consequences and be prohibited from being employed or contracted in any media organisation.
The devil is in the detail here, though. Who is going to decide what is misinformation and not? In all practical cases it would seem to be that this person and/or organization is soon going to be a censor. Also, truth is not quite enough to decide what is true, weirdly enough. There is a gazillion facts in the world and just by selecting a subset of these one can paint a rather different picture. Everybody has their own subset. Then there is the matter where facts end and interpretation begins. This line is never 100% clear. One could also philosophically argue that every fact is at leas partially interpretation. If I have noticed a subset of the gazillion facts and drawn a conclusion from that but you have noticed a different but potentially overlapping subset you might well draw the opposite conclusion and then start asserting that I am spreading misinformation. Also, it is quite possible to draw a different conclusion from the same fact when one has different basic views. In practice this is not possible in any practical way.
It seem to me the main problem are that there are things like troll factories and also that everybody is just getting information from their own bubble. The latter could maybe be addressed in a small way if we forbid these big companies to spy on people so much. For the first problem I just do not see a solution. Maybe the only thing that can be done is waiting until peoples BS-detectors have calibrated themselves somewhat to the new online world that we are living in. Which may or may not happen.....
> The devil is in the detail here, though. Who is going to decide what is misinformation and not?
I think that it is separate question - should the government have power to censor misinformation? Is it good or bad for this company to censor that misinformation?
However, that does not mean that misinformation campaign itself can not be considered "an assault on free speech" or whatever else.
First, I quoted someone upthread who set the term. Second, in contemporary English, the word assault is used figuratively in the meaning of "attack" including "verbal attack".
It does not require the prohibition to happen. It does not have to succeed either.
We only have a whole system of evidence-finding and scientific discovery to solve that question, but ok, let's ignore all progress of the last 200 years.
If you want to deprive people of their right to free speech, you'll have to do it through the courts. Saying that human judges won't be necessary because you'll 'use science' is inane.
Philosophy, logic and science are all applied by persons and the results tend to vary depending on who is applying it. I suppose logic could be a bit more on the objective impersonal side of things but philosophy and science are definitely not. That is, only if logic is actually logic in the sense of logic. If one start talking about tings like 'logical falacies' (e.g. ad homininem, argument from authority and so on) as often is done on forums like these one is already very far from anything objective. For one thing, one is probably inclined to be much more severe in pointing out 'logical falacies' in statements that one disagrees with rather than in statement that one agrees with.
This is implying there is always a Right™ answer or way to do something - especially when it comes to policy, for example, there's plenty of space for nuance that has no objective right or wrong. Life isn't math, regardless of how much our polarised world wants it to be so
Your assertion falls apart when I ask you if there is a Right™ answer to "Is the Earth flat?".
There are irrefutable answers to some questions. Others are backed up by a mountain of reproducaeble data, collected and re-checked over years, decades, by many people who go out of their way to disprove their own hypothesis and wriggle out of their own data. When they cannot reasonably do so, we are left with a fact.
Most of them are not perfect, immutable or immortal, but even if not, no rational person can accuse them of being wrong.
> Your assertion falls apart when I ask you if there is a Right™ answer to "Is the Earth flat?".
No it doesn't, I didn't claim there are no issues or questions where we know the answer. The empirical kind, like the one you present, are a good example for that. But policy isn't about whether the Earth is flat or whether climate change is real, but about how to tackle them in the best way possible, which depends on what you value.
> There are irrefutable answers to some questions.
I didn't claim that wasn't the case, though you can continue with your strawman if you'd like.
> Most of them are not perfect, immutable or immortal, but even if not, no rational person can accuse them of being wrong.
So what happens if we have multiple theories that no one can accuse of being wrong because we simply don't have enough insight into some very complicated matters? Which one do we put in practice? Or do we wait years before we gather the data for it, by which time it might be irrelevant anyway
> But policy isn't about whether the Earth is flat or whether climate change is real, but about how to tackle them in the best way possible, which depends on what you value.
I think the US is somewhat special at the moment in that it appears to have two dominant political factions which seem to be almost polar opposites in their goals and values. This is not the normal state of things in policymaking in this extreme form.
Also note that values are not as arbitrary as you make them out to. A large part of the history of civilization was in some way about determine which values are good ones to have and which aren't.
One standard which we honour today are the human rights.
Of course you can have a value system which rejects basic human rights, but then I don't see a lot of reason to respect people following that value system or make accomodations for them.
"This is implying there is always a Right™ answer or way to do something" suggests to me that you assert there is not a right answer when there certainly are in some cases. I definitely agree that some policies require nuance and changes with new data.
> So what happens if we have multiple theories that no one can accuse of being wrong because we simply don't have enough insight into some very complicated matters? Which one do we put in practice? Or do we wait years before we gather the data for it, by which time it might be irrelevant anyway
I wasn't addressing your statement that policy is often difficult to pin down, only the inference that there are no right answers.
We have been attempting our best to come towards the most correct answers for everything, since forever. To suggest all of a sudden that this method is irrelevant is odd. It is to suggest that we should no longer pursue truth and instead lay everything on the table and say it's all correct and you should just pick whatever makes you feel the best.
We can't pursue Truth where there is no objective Truth to be pursued, we have to figure out what a good course of action is right now, without spending centuries to solve a problem that destroys society tomorrow.
I wasn't really talking about free speech in particular, though it applies there as well. Is there a general consensus in philosophy on what The Truth About Free Speech is? Where the limits *need* to be? How to implement it in the context of large social media corporations?
There isn't some grand set of values that everyone has to agree with, btw, unless you're willing to sacrifice everyone else's mental frameworks and perspectives (which might be a sacrifice you're willing to take, but I guess not everyone is so keen on :) )
No single person, group or authority. It is an ongoing determination by many people from a host of backgrounds, biases and intentions who still all agree on what is reasonable and what is not. It is determined by merely asking oneself "do I have doubt that is logical, fair and as unbiased as possible?". Gather enough of these people - from as wide a field as possible - and you have reason.
> it is an ongoing determination by many people from a host of backgrounds, biases and intentions who still all agree on what is reasonable and what is not.
Dialectics. Immanent critique. The method of isolating the contradictions of a system so as to arrive at the best possible answer. No one said there is a quick formula for this, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be attempted.
And it's humans who decide what "science" is based on their incorrect p value selection and corruption and mishandling of statistics even if they mean good.
Irrelevant. Misinformation is information that is known to be false by the spreader. They can not make the argument that they honestly thought it to be true.
That's a special case that we can discuss when necessary.
I think it's useful enough for practical purposes that we can clearly classify something as misinformation where the spreader knew what they were doing.
Yes, but much is created by bad actors knowingly spreading misinformation so it will go viral. I do not fault those who do not know better but I fault those who do or should by the result of their position. All leaders and candidates have an obligation to check there information. All purported news agencies or pundits as well. There is a different burden depending on audience an reasonable affect.
Since you seem to be splitting hairs: if I think the Earth is flat and I tell people this, my belief makes no difference to whether it is misinformation or not.
My belief means that it is a falsehood rather than a lie.
The original post discusses harm as a boundary condition.
Things like libel, slander, false statements of fact, false advertising, etc have long been considered beneficial as a limitation on free speech (e.g., not protected by the First Amendment)
The term "misinformation" contains an argument that there is a broader set of statements (not yet considered libelous or false in the eyes of the law), which should be regulated by an appointed group or new set of laws.
The backlash is against this new zeitgeist: a campaign against misinformation is certainly one that dials back the liberal view on freedom of speech, more so than the current boundary conditions already established.
You seem to assume misinformation is perpetrated with cynical malicious intent. Misinformation may also be the result of people earnestly being misinformed or generally just ignorant.
> misinformation is itself an assault on free speech.
Misinformation is a type of free speech. Whether purposeful (medical experts lying as to whether we should wear masks) or accidental (weather forecasting,) misinformation is merely a facet of freedom, to use wisely or not. Some instances are made illegal (e.g. in a stock exchange,) whereas most instances are seen as harmless (Santa Claus) or used to prevent greater harm (this shot will only hurt a little, Louise.) What's healthy is to reserve a bit of skepticism towards the information you get till you can confirm it is 'truthful' or not.
> You are confusing the minds of people who have a right to the truth and therefore the freedom to express themselves.
That is a most silly argument.
One does not loose any freedom to express oneself if one believe in a falsehood, for if that were true, no man would enjoy any such freedom as all believe at least some falsehoods.
I'd argue that if you have been misled then you have not formed an opinion: you have been tricked into accepting someone else's opinion. I do not think that a delusion is truly an opinion.
Perhaps, but how does that limit one's freedom to express one's opinion? It only limits one's power, not freedom in forming it.
Having the freedom and the power to do things are two entirely different things. A mute and deaf man is considerably hampered in the power to express his opinion, but not in his freedom to.
Similarly, freedom to own property is an entirely different matter to whether a citizen have the capital to purchase it.
Ah, I did not put across my point very clearly. I was not trying to imply that believing in a falsehood should mean one should be prohibited from speaking it (with exceptions). I meant an opinion born from manipulation is not truly one's own, and to express it is not expressing one's own opinion, rather someone else's.
If you only believed lies, your thoughts can never truly be free. However if you believe some truths, your thoughts as expressed and built on top of those truths are free, whereas those built on top of lies are not. Freedom here means freedom of expression. You can still tell lies, but you will never truly be free to produce confident thought because your mind is trapped in a prison of delusion.
No. I'm fine with someone orating their opinions. Blogging about them, writing to newspapers with them. What should not be allowed is that they are framed as factual statements, repeated by those in public offices or used to make policy.
This. We should call this "fake speech". American absurdism is rooted in fake speech with the intent to cheat and steal. It's perfectly permisible for politicians, businesses, and even individuals to say whatever they need to say to get what is not rightfully theirs. And they all get away with it, because the law hasn't caught up with fake speech yet.
Why did this happen? Because they intended to. But the law only punishes what they did, and provides loopholes for not ever admitting intent, so long as they lie about it. That lie is the true crime. That lie is profitable.
Irnonically, in modern America, it takes a fake news show to be honest about the news, and a comedian to be honest about modern culture. That's also absurd. Hilarious, but absurd.
"When telling the truth, if you don't make them laugh, they will kill you."
This sentence assumes that the state, however it is made up, or perhaps the scientific elite or even clergy, is the final arbiter of truth. If we bring ourselves back a few hundred years, the latter part of the sentence could instead have been written like this: “there seems no reason to protect the speech of round-earthers and atheists.”
I think this illustrates quite well the difficulty of regulating speech, at least from the standpoint that it should protect “truth,” because immediately the qestion of “who's truth?” arises.