[thegrimmest]

I couldn't disagree more strongly that disinformation, incitement, or propaganda maim and kill people. People kill other people. Don't give killers an avenue to abdicate responsibility for their actions. Propaganda doesn't cause anyone to do anything. It may convince them, but those are entirely separate things with a clear, bright line between them. Best not mix them up.

[reubenmorais]

It might be instructive to consider for example the history of genocide, in particular of civilian collaboration in state lead genocide. It might be instructive to consider why the genocide convention criminalizes not only acts of genocide, but also incitement of genocide. Why it criminalizes not only the failure to prevent genocide, but also the failure to prevent incitement of genocide. The US has an extraordinarily strong position on freedom of speech, it is nowhere near a universal moral value.

People kill other people is a statement so simple as to be devoid of any positive meaning. What are you actually trying to say? Don't justice systems almost universally contain notions of incitement of crime, criminal negligence to prevent a crime, and other accessory considerations to the actual act?

Don't justice systems almost universally have several levels of responsibility in relation to intent, which at its most basic level can be established by predictable outcomes?

If, for example, you are a leader of armed forces, and also a leader of organizations capable of creating propaganda. Let's say you create and distribute some propaganda (maybe using some AI tools), and a predictable outcome of that is that soldiers will be more lenient in their consideration of the rules of engagement and international law. In that case, one could at the very least establish that you were negligent in your creation and distribution of propaganda. The actual crime would have been the people killing people, namely your soldiers, but you would certainly be given some responsibility for that.

You can similarly take a small next step after that and consider that a company producing, distributing, and profiting from a dual use technology capable of creating propaganda and disinformation that can be responsible for crimes could be held at the very least morally accountable for those crimes, if not criminally.

Responsibility, accountability, moral and criminal, are not black and white notions. They are heaviest and easiest to attribute around physical acts of damage, but they stretch far and wide. To think otherwise is to allow the people with the most power to rampage unaccounted.

[thegrimmest]

> freedom of speech .. is nowhere near a universal moral value

It depends on the basis form which you derive your (universal) moral values. Maximalist liberty as a universal moral value can be derived from the dual axioms of universal moral equality and a lack of moral oracle. If you accept these axioms, it follows that there is no source of moral authority that can legitimately constrain the non-infringing actions of another (eg. your right to wave your fists around ends where my nose begins). These ideas were first laid out in The Declaration of the Rights of Man, and expanded on in the Declaration of Independence.

> What are you actually trying to say?

That the causal chain of an action is completely interrupted at the first agent/actor in the system, who bears full responsibility for their actions.

> justice systems almost universally

It very much depends on the justice system. If you look at US/British/Roman law, a guilty mind (mens rea) and a guilty action (actus reus) are core facts that must be established in order to prove a crime has been committed. These still apply in cases of eg. criminal negligence, where a reasonable person ought to have known that their actions will result in harm. Mens rea is quite challenging to prove in cases of incitement, and legal precedents vary.

In combination with the above causal thesis, I hold that restricting incitement is in all cases an overstep of federal authority and an infringement of fundamental liberty. Incitement as a crime seems to have been established to make policing easier, not because telling someone to do something makes you responsible for their actions.

> you were negligent in your creation and distribution of propaganda

People are not inanimate objects. They are decision-making agents. The world is not a Rube-Goldberg machine. The soldiers who do the killing are responsible for their own moral attitude, and their own actions. You cannot be reasonably expected to know how your ideas will impact the minds of others, since every mind is a black box. Everything that contradicts this does so with generalizations too broad to be predictively useful.

> You can similarly take a small next step

This is where everything goes insane. Where does the responsibility end? You're trying to piece the butterfly effect back together.

Are people who make and sell bullets responsible for shootings? What about those that refine brass and lead? What about those that mine for ore? Creating economic demand, or promoting an idea, are morally neutral actions. People buying goods are in no way responsible for the conditions of their manufacture. People promoting ideas are in no way responsible for the actions a listener may take. Responsibility is zero-sum. Don't allow slavers and murderers to dispense with even a tiny portion of the sum responsibility for their actions. They must bear it all.