[Official] Censorship from governmental actors thread

It should be. This was a ruling at the municipal level. I think it could be challenged and overturned federally. But since the punishment here is very all(250 dollar fine), I doubt the fight is worth it unless they want to make a principles stand.

 

Yea, this is the public debate that's needed. My position has been that it's more dangerous in today's time.

Free speech is not ultimate anywhere, including here in the US. We have plenty examples of restrictions and the Yelling Fire in a crowded theater is one of the most well-known famous restriction. Sensible restriction for public health that we have accepted as a society.

So, how does spreading clear misinformation and lies about COVID vaccine worse than yelling fire in a crowded theater?

1- It's clearly in the realm of public health.
2- With today's social infrastructure that is almost boundless and unconstrained in time and space, the spread of misinformation and lies reaches more people at a faster rate and continues to spread after the initial statement. It easily reaches many magnitude more people in a shorter time than yelling fire in a crowded theater.

The more legitimate debate IMO is what is that baseline - who do you define what is misinformation that harms public health. I think that can certainly be done reasonably. We are a common-sense people and can come up with common-sense solutions when we work together. But the fear of overreach along with politics is what holds us back as a society for common-sense solutions

 

no, we are not going to see that

just like we did not see Biden dropping out of the debate that you were so sure about

the wall street journal decided to not run the Hunter story because they deem it stupid, not because the fed gov (you know Trump) put pressure on them to run it

 

I don't know about that. A municipality had a right to limit exposure of obscenity to minors. While I agree the concept of curse words are stupid and language shouldn't be obscene, hanging a sign with curse words in your yard certainly does expose minors to obscenities and why shouldn't a HSA or Municipality enforce rules that the home owner agreed to when they bought their house?

 

I agree.

But if I own property I can tell people to get out of my property based on not agreeing with their speech because I am not the government and only the government can suppress speech in context of the first amendment as that is the scope of the first amendment.... Government restrictions.

 

This is false. If you spread misinformation that results in harm of people, it is not protected speech. Yelling fire in a theater isn't protected because it causes harm.

Spreading misinformation that causes people to not get vaccinated based on lies costs lives. It should not just be removed from facebook, but those people should be prosecuted in the deaths of others.

 

The retort to that would be "who is the arbiter of what determines what is categorized as dangerous misinformation"

 

You are right, you actually can yell fire in a theater and it's still protected speech. You can't be thrown in jail for it. But you can be sued in civil court if your speech was shown to result in deaths.

That said, it's not about dangerous misinformation, as much as it is about misinformation that kills. And in this case, while such speech can be said to be legal speech, Facebook still has a right, and responsibility, to remove it. They can be the arbiter of what is dangerous misinformation because they own the platform.

 

This is a dangerous standard, letting the state determine what constitutes harmful speech. The state told us to eat carbs and avoid red meat for decades. That is harmful misinformation.

 

Red meat is still linked to bad outcomes like colon cancer. Irrelevant to the subject matter but I don't get this new found craze with red meat being a health food staple. It really isn't. I mean it's fine having red meat in moderation but too much is linked to certain cancers and are often high in saturated fat. They are also calorie dense in that a relatively small volume has more calories in them. So it's easier to get fat on them than something like lean chicken breast or salmon fliet.

Carbs is a very broad term. Added sugars is the main issue. Natural sugars in things like fruits that also come with soluble fiber is not an issue as those don't really spike blood sugar levels much due to the fiber.

 

It is a very sticky issue and I one I think needs to be very carefully considered. Yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater there is an immediacy regarding that it leads to an immediate reaction of a stampede likely harming people. Spreading vaccine misinformation doesn't quite have that immediacy of harm but yes can lead to harm.

The counter argument is because it's not immediate is that there is time to provide other information that can blunt the misinformation and the idea of free speech is that eventually the good speech overwhelms the bad. There are plenty of examples of where that isn't true.

I think it's also a good point that with social media such misinformation spreads faster so there is less time to counter it.

For me personally I don't have a good answer. I think we need to be cautious about the legal restrictions on free speech but for private entities I think it's best left up to them to decide what speech they allow under the principle of private property.

 

You're right, the state shouldn't decide what is dangerous information, but the courts can in the case of a civil lawsuit.

And Facebook certainly has that right to make the determination. They own the platform, why shouldn't they get to decide to remove misinformation if they deem it dangerous?

If you let your neighbors kids play with chalk on your driveway, and their kids put up obscene verbiage and commodore sucks, you have every right to remove it right? You aren't violating the kids first amendment.

 

Just to point out the irony of again of those on the Right arguing against legal regulations on speech but saying that private entities need to be regulated on speech.

 

Good point on "times for other information to blunt the misinformation", but the data suggests that's not happening enough to the detriment of public health.

I think the whole idea of "good" speech overwhelms the "bad" shouldn't be assumed or need to be adjusted heavily given "echo chambers", human being irrational and it's very hard to change people's minds once they convince themselves to a belief. The evidence in the impact we are seeing suggests that assumption needs to be looked at very carefully - it might take a few more years to see if eventually "good" overwhelms "bad", but at the same time, do we have time for the eventuality when it comes to public health?

With that said, I'm always wary of the government's role in suppressing speech. But I think a baseline can be established for public health. We did it somewhat clumsy for obscenity but it hasn't been so bad and abused. As time moves on, the gov and the public do evolve. Child p*rn, including depiction, is not artistic and not protected speech and is deemed obscene is what essentially it has boiled down to. Yes, there are still other cases of prosecution and jail time that are at the borderline imo, but those are few.

I think a baseline can be established. Furthermore, I think social media platform that benefits from the spread of misinformation (their algorithm push these for their benefits) need to be held accountable, at least financially. That incentive needs to be removed when it impacts public health.

 

I'm personally less worried about obscenity because those are evolving standards but I agree that public health is something that doesn't really change with culture and it is in the government's interest to protect public health.

That said there are problems with heavy handed suppression of speech even in the interest of public health. The danger is that if people don't have trust in the government they will feel that the government is hiding something from them and have even less trust if there is heavy handed suppression of speech. The idea behind free speech is an open debate of ideas that both informs and educates the public. While the speed and diversity of ways of transmitting information make that more difficult to happen I still think the idea of open debate of ideas is something we should abandon. If we look at countries where speech is much more constrained while we see less public discussion of misinformation conspiracy theories and other things still persist.

I also think there is a danger of creep of suppression of free speech in the name of the public good. While suppressing misinformation regarding a pandemic is one that many (no where near universal) might agree on. There are many things that we don't agree on is in the public good and the decision of what get's suppressed might be done on far narrower basis.

Again I'm not going to claim to have a good answer. I do think that the First Amendment is one that we should interpret more broadly and when it comes to government would rather err on the side of more speech than less.

I also agree that the one area I think there is a huge problems with the algorithms in social media that tend to push extreme views in order to get and keep more people visiting them. While I am leery of regulating private companies for content I think there an argument for regulating how they essentially addict people to those sites.

 

When there is so little agreement on what is healthy for the individual, and when public policy is constantly politicized, and I don’t know how we can ever reach consensus in this country on “public health”.

 

Yes, and public health policies are usually made at the local level in the US with very different policies from one place to another. There is such a wide range of policies that a baseline there is probably pretty difficult, but I'm sure there is a baseline.

However, I'm not talking about public health policies, but speech as related to public health and if some of that should NOT be protected and if the private sector (social platform) should be responsible as well.

I think we can make these definite statements: vaccine doesn't contain microchips. Covid vaccination almost entirely removes death and major health problems as a risk from Covid.

I remember reading recently that 1/4 of the US public believe covid was a gov power move to control the population. 5G chips are part of vaccines that will be activated at a later time. 1/4 is huge and the intended or unintended lies/misinformation around covid and covid vaccine are harming public health. Is there an actual value to protect speech that said 5G chip is part of covid vaccine?