Brazil Bolsonaro: Facebook told to block accounts of president’s supporters

Speech is not Light

In fact, it's usually the opposite.

Most speech is just crude opinion, and the most popular speech has nothing to do with facts.

The 'free speech' arguments are all very academic - yes, of course' freedom of thought' is important.

But the 'real dimension' is not about political conscience, or the realm of ideas.

99% of people live and breathe on 'main street' not 'intellectual street' (including most of us during our daily lives) and it's not about 'ideas' it's just about bullying, sex and harassment.

Unfettered, every anonymous group becomes dick and boob picks, at minimum.

Do you know how the Rwandan genocide was inflamed? Talk radio. The hosts with large audience would, on a daily basis talk about how the Tutsi/Hutus were 'cockroaches' and 'subhuman' and deserved to die. The level of raw hate was on another level altogether.

Then as little confrontational incidents heated up, someone flipped the switch and the radio started calling everyone to 'get out their machetes and kill the cockroaches' and so it ensued.

This was mostly not a 'war' of 'soldiers and guns' - it was like a zombie uprising, people coming out of their homes with machetes and hacking up their neighbours.

I am not advocating for restrictions on civil opinions etc. - in any reasonable situation, people ought to speak their mind, particularly in academia, in the press etc..

But 'in the commons' (even in so called advanced countries) - things could get out of hand very quickly.

What we've witnessed over the last few years with false information about vaccines, a lot of Trump tweets, QAnon, a lot of false information about protests in every direction - is just barely scratching the surface of how bad it could get.

People will believe all sorts of crazy things and the 'angrier 'it is, the easier it is to get them to believe it.

Even in the US there is a small, but still very significant part of the population that would believe almost anything that Obama or Trump tweeted. If Trump decided to tell his base that 'the 2020 elections were rigged, the Army tried a coup, and you need to storm DC with your guns' there would be people who would do it, for example. Left unfettered, some really bad things could propagate, and the most popular voices would wield incredible power.

'Peace is Hard' Obama I think said, he was talking about geopolitical things, but in the commons it's just the same.

People should be able to discuss ideas freely, we need to protect that, but most people are not interested in that.

Consider what happens when the 'fake news' thing truly takes hold, and almost everything people read is completely fabricated. 'The Clintons leave a trail of Murder' - 'Trump secretly financed Putin's rise to power' etc..

It's a legit problem.

That's a commonly-held belief, but runs contrary to the history and law behind the quote. That particular quote was an example in a US Supreme Court case that was decided poorly and later changed (in 1969 I think). In the US, I believe threats of violence or harm are covered by the First Amendment, unless the speech "is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action". So the speech has to meet several qualifications to "not be free speech". What those people were doing on Facebook in Brazil would very likely be considered protected speech in the US. Not that what applies in the US applies to Brazil, but since the quote was from a US case, I figured it was with commenting.

Here's a good article about the quote's history: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...

As far as Modi is concerned, he has been vilified for over 2 decades now. Enough crap has been said about him and none of it proven till date. He was not the Prime Minister for 1 full decade. If there was a shred of evidence against Modi that would have implicated him it would have gotten him behind bars. If you can't find even one case that can be taken to logical conclusion then the onus is on you to prove Modi is guilty and not on Modi to prove his innocence.

The Congress party ruled from 2004 to 2014. And they hate Modi the most in India. Especially the top brass of the party. They tried every trick in the book and nothing stuck. So to say that Modi has control over all institutions is just baseless slander. Nothing more!

The Print has openly advocated for spreading fake news against Modi Government [1]. I wouldn't even take them as a media publication. More a Congress mouthpiece.

Direct quote from their article:

"4. Compete: Across the world, fire-hosing of falsehood is becoming a powerful propaganda tool. Those who want to defeat such propaganda may have to do their own fire-hosing of falsehood. As the Hindi saying goes, iron cuts iron. When public opinion is being manipulated with fake news and lies, the opposition cannot win the game with mere fact-checking. It may have to do its own rapid and continuous misinformation with little regard for the truth. The RAND researchers suggest this is what the US should do against Russia."

[1]: https://theprint.in/opinion/why-modi-government-gets-away-wi...