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The last 5 years have really made question the benefits of free speech in our hyperconnected world. My knee jerk reaction to defend free speech has certainly been dampened by the efficacy of disinformation campaigns in the West.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The problem with freedom is that people abuse it and cause harm to others." Edit: (to be clear, I do not personally believe this, just offering a little insight as to how the "not insignificant majority" think)
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Words are just words. One may hear or read words that provoke them to violence or other negative behavior but blaming the speech in whole or in part removes agency from those who choose to react in a negative way.
But I don't want to censor the internet. There are 1.3m death from traffic accidents and 0 deaths from Twitter.
What I’m becoming more painfully aware of with each passing year is that “free speech” is actually (sadly) a very unpopular ideal. We haven’t really had it in a long time, and we have less of it with each passing year - cheered on by a not insignificant majority.
What happened is that wide publishing used to be expensive and thus restricted to the ruling/educated class.
Sure, I could say whatever I wanted at the pub or Speakers' Corner (to take British examples) but it would not go further than the people in the immediate vicinity. I.e., no-one cared.
Beyond that, there was either newspapers (filtered and not everyone could read) or published books (filtered), and, later radio and TV, which are filtered like newspapers. So 'improper' material and disinformation (or what was deemed to be) was controlled.
Now the barriers to global circulation are close to nil. So how do we deal with that? It's not unreasonable to adapt the legal framework because very clearly this has a lot of negative consequences.
The last 5 years have really made question the benefits of free speech in our hyperconnected world. My knee jerk reaction to defend free speech has certainly been dampened by the efficacy of disinformation campaigns in the West.
I think you have a very rose-tinted view of how these restrictions would be applied, and by whom. The power to decide what counts as "disinformation" would be the most valuable political real estate there is.
If you find yourself saying, "yes, but it could work if only...", I'd suggest you are failing to understand human nature.
The last 5 years have really made question the benefits of free speech in our hyperconnected world. My knee jerk reaction to defend free speech has certainly been dampened by the efficacy of disinformation campaigns in the West.
But I think decentralization and legal liability are better solutions. Drop section 230 and it becomes legally fraught and prohibitively expensive for Facebook to allow disinformation and hate groups to organize on its platform.
Get serious about anti-trust so that one monopoly / monopsony isnt allowed to own another and now Facebook and Instagram have to be split up, as well as Google and YouTube.
In a decentralized world with many more small networks, the scariest stuff (like state sponsored election manipulation) becomes much, much harder. With the addition of legal liability for the content your platform distributes, I think we’d see a shift toward far more HN-like sites and far less Facebook dominance.
Finally, consider that our democratic process in the US needs to be more resistant to polarization and radicalization. First past the post voting and a lack of proportional representation are the key drivers of broken democracy in the US over the last thirty years. These are fixable!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Words are just words. One may hear or read words that provoke them to violence or other negative behavior but blaming the speech in whole or in part removes agency from those who choose to react in a negative way.
I actually think that words can hurt plenty, bullying can drive people to suicide or indeed bring them to commit terrorist acts. But I don't want to censor the internet. There are 1.3m death from traffic accidents and 0 deaths from Twitter.
You think bullying on twitter has caused 0 deaths?
It will no doubt fall at the last hurdle. Another attempt to 'control' the thing they don't understand, ignore any technical advisors, and play to the crowds. Unfortunately there are a vocal group who want little Johnny protected from the big bad internet, and who have no desire to educate him themselves, so want a Gov approved scheme - and these sort of plans fit nicely into that. Hopefully common sense prevails aga…
I've been really impressed by GDS, i know it's popular to bash on the gov but in this case, i really think it's mis-placed, they've been really good. Take a peek under the covers and see that their work was adopted in other nations too: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/government-digit... Now if we're talking about a public tender then of course i agree completely. Are Capita still blocking new Army recrui…
GDS is best seen through an anti corruption lens.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The problem with freedom is that people abuse it and cause harm to others." Edit: (to be clear, I do not personally believe this, just offering a little insight as to how the "not insignificant majority" think)
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Words are just words. One may hear or read words that provoke them to violence or other negative behavior but blaming the speech in whole or in part removes agency from those who choose to react in a negative way.
A: “You just killed him!”
B: “I didn’t kill him, the bullets and the fall killed him.”
Me? I don’t have any easy answers. The reason I value freedom of speech is the exact same reason I consider it dangerous: that it can effect change.
> blaming the speech in whole or in part removes agency from those who choose to react
How many people grok — really grok — that they have a choice to not react to their feelings? How many can really go against the tide of a mob when inside one? Can you genuinely compensate for the availability heuristic, or any of the other cognitive biases that a skilled propagandist knows how to manipulate?