The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation

Sure, those are examples, however what about people like rush limbaugh? Michael richards should be in trouble for what he did and he suffered the consequences, but somebody like rush limbaugh has an active listener base where he essentially lies about every group under the sun and there are no consequences. Here is his Wikipedia page which lists all his views, many of which are just abhorrent and factually incorrect (he doesn't belief that we damaged the ozone layer, this is a non political example) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_Limbaugh

We also elected a president who spread birtherism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_citizenship_con...

And there was the pedophile ring pizzeria conspiracy theories floating around a few years ago that had real consequences not just for the politicians implicated but the pizzeria owner themselves https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory

It doesn't seem like there were consequences for any of these the people who spread lies (in pizzagate people were arrested, but not the spreaders of the rumors).

Imo, we should be intolerant of the intolerant as they say. I have nothing against obscene language, pornographic ideas, dark humor, etc. But speech has influence and the second speech is used to infringe on the rights of people, it should really be stamped out.

I came into the article expecting to hate it, but the author eventually kind of won me over. She doesn't think Americans should abandon free speech, but she does think we should approach it more like Germany and France.

> Germany and France have laws that are designed to prevent the widespread dissemination of hate speech and election-related disinformation. “Much of the recent authoritarian experience in Europe arose out of democracy itself,” explains Miguel Poiares Maduro [...] “The Nazis and others were originally elected. In Europe, there is historically an understanding that democracy needs to protect itself from anti-democratic ideas.”

Society is misdiagnosing the issue here.

It's not unchecked free speech. Instead, it's unchecked curation by media and social media companies with the goal of engagement.

As long as media companies get the most benefit from people engaging with content, they will continue to promote information that is damaging to society. It may even be true information but when the goal is engagement, it's purpose will be to enrage and divide because that's what's engaging.

Limiting speech will not cause this issue to go away. It's bigger than just misinformation. The core issue is the underlying system that values engagement over all things. That is, the advertising system.

Companies that make their money selling ads while providing content to engage have a perverse incentive to make society worse. This is the bad seed that needs removal.

This business model should be illegal. It's already trivially unethical.

I think you have the core of the issue here.

>Yes, that means a lot of bad ideas are going to be out there, which is a price I firmly believe we should be willing to pay.

This is an easy out, as it assumes bad ideas are just "out there" like a noble gas, not interacting with anything around them. But speech doesn't exist in a vacuum, it always has consequences, and very often exists explicitly to enact change or call to action.

Do you believe the effect of the spread and adoption of bad ideas is a price we should always be willing to pay?

For instance, a political party spreading lies and conspiracy theories about a religious and ethnic minority, or widespread disbelief in the legitimacy of modern science and medicine, or historical revisionism and the denial of genocides and atrocities?

It's easy enough to argue free speech as an absolute if your model is people giving speeches at Speaker's Corner or arguments over philosophical and political abstractions at a coffeeshop, but it seems less cut and dry, pun intended, when the machetes come out.

And regarding your point about regulations being abused, yes, all regulations and laws can be abused. But abuse is a known problem and remedies exist for it - such as the lawsuit being filed by the ACLU in the link you posted.