| > The problem with unregulated US-style definition of "freedom of speech" is that this definition only works with (and it was designed with) the 17th to 20th century media model, with newspapers, radio stations and later-on TV stations as "gatekeepers" to ensure that extremism (no matter if it's Nazism, ordinary conspiracy theories or quackery such as MMS/homeopathy/antivaxx) doesn't get too much reach. That's simply not true: the 18th century in particular was noted for widespread pamphleteering, in which private citizens or small interest groups plastered cities with pamphlets advocating the most absurd theories — not altogether different from blogs or social media. > measles have a happy time again "thanks" to anti-vaxxers The anti-vaxxers were kick-started by the gatekeepers of The Lancet, which published Andrew Wakefield's study detailing a purported link between the MMR vaccine and autism. > In India, people have been lynched "thanks" to virally spreading lies. That's par for the course with lynching, which well pre-dates the Internet. The problem, dear mschuster9, lies not in the Internet but in ourselves. (I do think that there are issues with mass media in general, and how perverse incentives align to encourage discord, disharmony and chaos — because there's more money to be made in reporting 'here's what Evil Outgroup did today!' than on reporting 'nothing new, here's a picture of kittens!', but I still believe that the harms of speech are outweighed by the harms of tyranny) |