[kevin061]

I see lots of disagreements here, but I must say I also soured on free speech. I used to think that free speech was necessary and overall a positive for society. Then I saw the Capitol attack in US. The disinformation spread in England about kids stabbed that led to riots. I see disinformation every day, especially from USA, saying Europe has no freedom, that it's overrun with criminals, and people not only believe it, but vote accordingly. This has to stop. Humans weren't trained to use rationality and reasoning every second of their life. Reason costs a lot of cognitive power so the brain implements a hundred shortcuts. For example: if you see something appear frequently, you assume it to be true. This is good for avoiding poisonous plants, but it's terrible when you go in Twitter and you're spammed with the same lies day and night. It's messing with us. Enough is enough. Free speech with guardrails.

You should be able to insult and criticise the Prime Minister.

You should not be able to gain a position of power and then go on a crowded stage to claim that vaccines cause autism. This is intolerable. We are attacking the foundations of society. People are not rational actors. Not you, and not me. We are very simple animals.

[vladvasiliu]

I agree that people clearly don't use critical thinking 100% of the time and are easily influenced.

But you're basically arguing for not criticizing the status quo.

Many social improvements have been attained by "attacking the foundations of society". How would you like living under some absolute monarchy? How do you think gay people would like to live in a church-run society like 500 years ago?

[tankenmate]

"But you're basically arguing for not criticizing the status quo.", but that wasn't what was argued ("You should be able to insult and criticise the Prime Minister."), but more your interpretation of what was said. You're making a strawman argument.

[vladvasiliu]

Well, the PM isn't exactly the status quo, I wasn't replying to that. Rather, I was responding to this specific bit, emphasis mine:

> You should not be able to gain a position of power and then go on a crowded stage to claim that vaccines cause autism. This is intolerable. We are attacking the foundations of society.

Not sure when the strawman is. "The foundations of society", for me, means "the way things are". Which can be vaccines, sure, or any kind of general policy which has been showed to have a positive effect on society, but it can also be all kinds of things taken for granted which aren't necessarily rooted in reason.

[Imustaskforhelp]

To be really honest, I share a similar stance to you overall but I would still admit that there is some partial truth to it

I would like to expand this not only to foreign state actors that people mention but also companies inside which are actively trying to do nefarious stuff

As an example, Tobacco industry knew that the damages were there but they still tried to spur up medical confusion around it all so that people would still think that medical discussion is going on when it was 100% clear that tobacco harms. Who knows how many people died

The man who discovered that washing hands saved lives was so ridiculed and I think met with hostility because doctors couldn't comprehend the idea that it was they would could spread diseases. This is decades before germ theory was invented

His name is Ignaz Semmelweis and the world was unjust to him. Doctors ridiculed and threatend him and he was labelled obsessive and doctors called it mere coincidence. His career crumbled as he was forced out of vienna/his hospital and his mental health deteriorated as his warnings were ignored

in 1865 Semmelwise was commited to an asylum where he died just two weeks later at age 47

Only after pasteur developed germ theory and lester pioneered antisceptic surgery, semmelwise was finally vindicated.

This simple practise of handwashing is now considered the most basic medical standard worldwide saving countless millions of lives in the process.

(I had to write it by hand here basically transcribing this really amazing video that I watched about such a topic, I would highly suggest watching it)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBCOh1SYQYA (crazy people who were proven right)

Semmelwise's stories can brings chills to spine.

[techblueberry]

Yeah, I want to be more supportive of free speech, but I don’t think anyone is doing a great job of representing how to do it in the social media age. FIRE does a terrible job of it with mostly platitudes with no nuance.

But one maybe counterintuitive reason I don’t like free speech absolutism in the social media era — one of the platitude’s of FIRE is like, “the answer to hate speech is more speech” and “I want to know who the racist are so I can avoid them.”

1. The answer to nothin in this firehouse of speech in modern society is “more speech”.

2. Part of the peace we used to have in society is I didn’t have to know about everyone’s political opinions. Loosely speaking maybe I thought small-town folk were close minded, but there weren’t tens of thousands of examples of it across feeds on the internet all day.

[ricardobeat]

Those are not matters of freedom of speech, but the unhealthy amount of power social media platforms have come to possess. The problem is how they amplify and distribute disinformation because engagement = advertising money. Free speech does not (and should not) mean you get worldwide reach.

Any platform distributing 'content' over a certain audience size should be treated as a media company and subject to much stricter rules and some kind of ethical oversight - like newspapers used to.

[kevin061]

I can agree with that.

Unlimited free speech could have been positive maybe 100 years ago. Strikes, protest, writing angry letters to your Mayor demanding change are all great forms of speech.

Posting some unhinged xenophobic conspiracy theory on Twitter for everyone to see and to get retweeted by the President of the US or the most powerful CEOs are toxic and corrosive forms of speech.