[jumpman500]

> Pursuant to the last major thread on the topic, I was thinking further about it, and realized that the vast majority of progress civilization has made has been under conditions much more regulated in terms of which ideas may propagate. We've never had a situation where fake news can and does spread the way it does today, where authorities are being undermined like this and casually dismissed by people with no knowledge of the respective fields, etc.

I don’t think you have evidence to support this either. Really hard to say when progress in a civilization happens, and how it would be different if norms were different.

Just because historically speech has been controlled doesn’t mean anything. Slavery also was well accepted and “progressed” civilization, but most people don’t want slavery in the modern world.

[ss108]

I think you made a good point; to me the result is that we have to work off of where we are now and we are going, in the contemporary moment. And to me, that establishes even further that, at minimum, big platforms should be allowed and encouraged to moderate speech. The reason I say it strengthens that position is because a lot of the historical arguments fall away, leaving us with a world where free speech and the internet have permitted things like QAnon and anti-vaxxers to flourish.