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by JediWing
2764 days ago
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Lots of risk to free speech, with little benefit.
Who decides the truth? All the same problems with automatic/AI approaches to fact-checking are repeated but in the legal arena. Also, I don't think it's really comparable to say "hey make sure what you say about the money receive is true", vs. "hey make sure everything you say is true" |
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A jury? In most Western societies the final arbiter of "truth" in a legal dispute is the court, usually the judge but (especially in the U.S.) the jury. If the court's fact finder says the sky isn't blue then the sky isn't blue, period, at least in the context of the dispute. This is one of the principle roles of the courts, and it's why the judiciary is supposed to be independent of the executive organs.
The U.S. is unique in holding journalists and politicians to a lower standard of truth. The U.K. has tough defamation laws that are arguably abused to quiet newspapers, but even so it's a stretch to equivocate the state of free speech in the U.K. to authoritarian societies. That is to say, few people would argue that U.K. citizens don't as a general matter enjoy free speech rights commensurate with American citizens.
A legal principle like defamation, however, requires a cognizable injury to a particular person. It's difficult to pin point the injuries caused by any particular piece of fakes news, so you may have to loosen that standard if you want to encompass fake news. Recognizing, e.g., injuries to the public can be dangerous. OTOH the requirement of intent can help to reign that in.