[protonfish]

"The People" believe whatever information has been promoted the most. To claim that we should do nothing to stop malevolent organizations from radicalizing vulnerable citizens is reckless. To lay the blame on individuals to fight this is victim-blaming. We need to battle this industrialized con artistry with whatever power we have - including police, courts, and laws.

Throwing up our hands because "censorship bad!" is sick and wrong.

[rayiner]

> The People" believe whatever information has been promoted the most. To claim that we should do nothing to stop malevolent organizations from radicalizing vulnerable citizens is reckless. To lay the blame on individuals to fight this is victim-blaming. We need to battle this industrialized con artistry with whatever power we have - including police, courts, and laws.

This is exactly what conservatives said in response to people promoting liberal ideas. Violent left-wing events in the 1970s (e.g. courthouse shootings) could easily have been used as a pretext for massive speech suppression. 9/11 and cries about the radicalization of Muslims through jihadist materials online could have been used the same way. Luckily none of that happened.

[protonfish]

Exactly! It is a powerful tool that works and conservatives wield it well while the cringing libs are all "But if we use effective techniques doesn't that make us as bad as them?" No, it doesn't - it just them the pathetic failures they are.

Good and wise people don't bring knives to gunfights.

[pfortuny]

Yes but we have made the judiciary the judge of what goes further than free speech, not the legislative.

And that is key.

PREEMPTIVE censorship is always a mistake because it only relies on power ideologies.

[technick]

Ironically, you were censored (flagged) in following posts while arguing for censorship. Further, in your example, the people are clearly the problem. They need to learn how to fact check and educate themselves. Victim blaming is OKAY when people make themselves the victim by their inaction.

[minikites]

Exactly, the current strain of Conservative "thought" is to attack all forms of authority in order to muddle the truth and introduce doubt that any subject is knowable or provable. Allowing misinformation to spread serves that goal nicely and all they have to do is sit back and do nothing.

Their entire goal is to create a society where their gut opinions are just as good as knowledge from experts, because experts hurt their feelings (e.g. the Conservative reaction to the 1619 Project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1776_Commission).

[dragonwriter]

> Exactly, the current strain of Conservative "thought" is to attack all forms of authority in order to muddle the truth and introduce doubt that any subject is knowable or provable.

Which is kind of a weird whiplash, because it was not all that long ago that that was the standard attack of the Right against the “postmodern” Left.

[skynet-9000]

This is a strikingly illiberal stance. Attacking free speech is precisely the opposite of what civil liberties has traditionally all been about.

[minikites]

Why is it worth protecting speech that is knowingly false and inflammatory? Think about the paradox of tolerance. True free speech is under threat by the torrent of misinformation and from the constant assault on the very idea of expertise. We as a society have to be active agents to counter misinformation, we can't just sit by and hope it works itself out in "the marketplace of ideas" because that's not how misinformation functions. This is not a new problem, but the internet gives it a new scale which we have yet to reckon with.

[throwaway0a5e]

>Why is it worth protecting speech that is knowingly false and inflammatory?

Because absurd opinion like "the earth goes round the sun" and "there's nothing wrong with being gay" were once "knowingly false and inflammatory" according to the overwhelming majority of people.

[krapp]

>Because absurd opinion like "the earth goes round the sun" and "there's nothing wrong with being gay" were once "knowingly false and inflammatory" according to the overwhelming majority of people.

... therefore we need to keep protecting the speech of people who still believe the world is flat and that homosexuality is an affront to God just in case?

No, I'm sorry, that's an appeal to emotion disguised as rationality. We don't need to keep knowingly false, disproven and regressive ideas around any more than we need to keep arguing the merits of miasma theory, phrenology or the luminiferous aether. To say otherwise is to claim that truth cannot exist, merit cannot be measured and all ideas are equally valid... a premise already discredited by the value judgement made by your argument.

[linuxftw]

Who is 'we'? I don't wish to be included in 'we' and I prefer that the group of 'we' not be in charge of much of anything.

[whydoibother]

Does the concept of a collective confuse you?

[linuxftw]

As long as someone can adequately explain who the collective is, and what they perceive legitimizes their ability to make decisions for others.

[technick]

Isn't this venturing into Borg territory?