Are "Hate Speech" and "Disinformation" often just an excuse for government censorship?

I don't know of anyone that disagrees.

 

AI-generated child p*rn is potentially the next battleground

Computer-Generated Child p*rnography: A Legal Alternative?

https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1585&context=sulr

 

that's what she argues, but this is a 25-year old law review article, and I'm not entirely sure her argument would hold up today. It's a "prevention of harm to society" argument--and I don't think that logic is as compelling as it once was. E.g., the original arguments against p*rnography were harm-to-women arguments (McKinnon etc); whereas today most folks find power-to-the-sex-worker arguments more compelling/persuasive.



If may be that in the future we might see a successful "harmless wrongdoing" defense of AI-generated child p*rn, where no children are harmed in the production of such materials. Moreover, I could see someone arguing that this is a benefit to society if it provides a child-cruelty-free option for pedophiles who might use these AI-generated materials as a means of preventing their acting on their sexual urges in actuality/reality.

 

fascism

 

Liberal ideas of speech have been taking a heavy beating. It went from promising unfettered speech towards a reasoned "marketplace of ideas" into shifting the load and responsibilities onto non-regulated private entities that are neither utilities nor individual actors.

The scale of ideas went from the hypothetical hatetul "falling tree in the middle of nowhere" into a timeless and reproducable digital zombie that can resurrect itself at any time or be misrepresented/edited/reformatted by whomever is spreading it. Brings serious questions of ownership, responsibility, and the inherent meanings/truth of a message.

I can't see a legal resolution until the social and ethical concerns are crystalized and broken down to "fix".

Obama blockchain >>>> Melanina NFTs

 

As much as we fret about misinformation, the government isnt actually doing any outright censoring. The closest we get is removing books about queerness and white supremacy from govt schools.

 

Experts say attacks on free speech are rising across the U.S.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/experts-say-attacks-on-free-speech-are-rising-across-the-us

 

no longer clear cut huh

but yes, definitely should be banned when it can now be ultra realistic

 

What the article said:

Former President Barack Obama has called for “digital fingerprints” to be mandatory online to help authorities censor so-called “misinformation.”

In a new interview, Obama suggested the development of new technology to track and identify people online to combat “disinformation.”​

What Obama said:

President Barack Obama
00:36:20
But just the odds are that I was. As a consequence, there's a lot of raw material there. So usually all the deep fakes start with like some version of Obama doing something, dancing, saying dirty limericks or whatever. Right. That technology's here now. So. So most immediately we're going to have. All the problems we had with misinformation before, this next election cycle will be worse. And the need for us, for the general public, I think to be more discriminating consumers of news and information, the need for us to over time develop technologies to create watermarks or digital fingerprints so we know what is true and what is not true. There's a whole bunch of work that's going to have to be done there, but in the short term, it's really going to be up to the American people to kind of say.
​

The article is misleading, to put it nicely. It's not about tracking and identifying people, nor did he said make it mandatory; rather, it focuses on verifying the accuracy of information. Although the wording could have been improved to avoid confusion, this concept is not new. AI technology can generate extremely realistic content, making it difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is fake. Many entities, from the tech industry to governments, have already discussed the need to mark AI-generated content to ensure its authenticity. You as a user would want to know if an audio clip, a video clip or other type of content is real or AI-generated.

 

No, it is more of a large salon. It is privately owned and the owners can impose whatever rules they want. ClutchFans has certain words censored, and that is the prerogative of the owner. The town square is by its nature a public space. There, the government is in control and thus limitations of the government apply. Currently that is for content neutral rules like time, place, and manner restrictions.

Intent and motive are irrelevant to free speech. The principle is based on everyone being entitled to speak their mind, regardless of the content of their speech. If someone wants to use their free speech to misgender people or use racial slurs, so be it. If someone wants to use their free speech to organize labor, so be it. If someone wants to use their free speech to talking about how much it sucks that the Rockets dropped down to the 4th pick, so be it. Intent and motive are important to the morality of any given speech, but not to the ideal of free speech. No one needs to fight to protect speech that no one disagrees with, it is the speech that people are looking to punish that requires protection.

Nuclear war or some sort of large scale natural event (like a supervolcano or asteroid impact) are the biggest threats to our country. Not being able to say the N word is a minor example of threats to free speech.

The most free society would allow everyone to say whatever they want, regardless of who was offended or made uncomfortable.

 

That's not what conservatives and Ron DeSantis have taught us recently.

 

Neither of the major parties is interested in advancing individual liberty, they each push their own agenda of control. Each of them also thinks what they are doing is to benefit the people (though not necessarily all of the people).

 

These are 3 interesting points

The AI child p*rn point is another interesting point (and terrifying), I also am thinking of how Germany has laws on speech and expression in regard to nazism and the holocaust.


Is a democratic enaction of censorship not a form of free speech/free expression/ freedom itself? If a government's decisions are made through a truly great democratic process?

If say, a set of rules are set by a government with the noble goal of protecting freedom, but the rules being set are not in the interest of the people being governed, is this really freedom?

This is an area where freedom and democracy can potentially contradict, depending on the definitions and values of each word as assigned by the beholder, I suppose.

 

No. Just because an infringement is imposed by a democratically elected government does not make it a form of free expression. The votes themselves are a form of free expression, but not the policies implemented by those elected.

Freedom is not necessarily "in the interest of those being governed". This is the contrast between a dangerous free society and a safe society ruled over by a benevolent dictator. Freedom is when there are fewer restrictions on the individual, and those primarily to prevent them from harming other individuals.

Freedom and democracy conflict all the time, because people don't always vote for more freedom. Often, they vote for less freedom in favor of goodies, punishing those they disagree with, etc.

 

Lol, no, that's not at all what he was saying.


Obama was saying there should be a digital fingerprint to show that something ISN'T fake so people know what is real vs not. Nothing to do with censorship. He was talking about deepfakes made by AI.

 

Socialism!

 

You write as if the topic is very clear cut matter-of-fact (and to you, it might be) ...but I have and can imagine wildly different interpretations of it all, even if it were to be bound within your own language on it above.

I think this is pretty hairy, personally.