Facebook is in a no-win situation here. Regardless of what action they take, they are either accused of suppressing free exchange of ideas or of permitting the exchange of dangerous ideas.
While they are a private company, and there are arguments about their rights as such, having free speech means being willing to "permit the exchange of dangerous ideas" to avoid the suppression of 'good' ones. That is actually the whole idea and there is very little compromise possible while still maintaining a free society.
>there is very little compromise possible while still maintaining a free society.
How do you feel about copyright? Or false advertising? Or slander? Or bribery? Or harassment? Or threats of violence? Or conspiracies to commit crime? Or revenge porn? Or child porn?
It is so weird when people pretend that free speech is binary considering we already outlaw so many different forms of speech. Free speech is a spectrum and there is valid debate on where on the spectrum we draw the line. Germany happens to be draw the line in a difference place than the US but that doesn't mean they aren't a "free society".
There is a lot to unpack there, and I don't have time to expound on all those individually, but I'd come down as more of a hardliner on the side of free speech while letting other societal mechanisms moderate the extremes to varying degrees.
The reason being that without a clear line the government always pushes for less freedom, not more. Sometimes it is better to have a few societal ills than a slow slide into authoritarianism. Yes, this is a slippery slope argument but given the historical evidence I believe it is warranted.
The US is at an extreme in where it draws the line on free speech compared to other western democracies. Would you say that every other western democracy is on the path to authoritarianism because they drew the line somewhere else?
I can't say they are without looking into them individually. How can you expect me to know one way or another? Do you claim to know?
My point was it may be wise to err on the side of history and what your eyes tell you about the nature of politics in modern democracies. I don't want my fundamental rights subject to political whims and opportunism.
Also, I don't think there is anything extreme about the US's free speech laws. What do you think is extreme about them?
Hate speech, political advertising, and lobbying are some of the big types of speech that are heavily restricted in other western democracies compared to the US.
You said previously that "there is very little compromise possible while still maintaining a free society" and "The reason being that without a clear line the government always pushes for less freedom, not more. Sometimes it is better to have a few societal ills than a slow slide into authoritarianism."
I took those two statements as implying that countries that have "compromised" in comparison to the US will have trouble "maintaining a free society" and are pushing "for less freedom, not more" and that therefore they have begun "a slow slide into authoritarianism."
I'm opposed to banning `hate speech` solely because it is vague and likely ineffective against stopping hate. The vague-ness is open for abuse, depending on the political winds. I would say this is definitely is a step towards authoritarianism.
As for political advertising and lobbying, those seem like bandages for the larger issue of people blatantly ignoring political corruption and paying attention to political advertising. Has banning / limiting those had any great effect?
Canada, Australia, and basically all of Europe have restrictions on hate speech. So going back to my previous question, it sounds like you are saying that most western democracies are already on the path to authoritarianism.
I think many of the people in those same countries would also say that our relatively unrestricted allowance of political advertising and lobbying is what leads to the corruption. It shifts the importance from the size of one's constituency to the wealth of one's constituency. That is generally bad for the health of democracy as noted by the US dropping in international rankings of the world's democracies[1].
I'd argue everyone is (broadly) on a path to authoritarianism, it is just a matter of delaying it as long as possible by refusing to give up ground on basic rights, no matter the reason. It isn't binary though.
I'm not saying that political advertising and lobbying are good, but there are other approaches to stopping it without restricting speech, they are just more extreme in the sense they would require structural changes to the democracies themselves. For example, allowing constituents to override their representatives votes if they reach a quorum.. steps that move us closer to a direct democracy.
>I'd argue everyone is (broadly) on a path to authoritarianism, it is just a matter of delaying it as long as possible by refusing to give up ground on basic rights, no matter the reason. It isn't binary though.
Fair enough. I don't agree with that mindset, but it is certainly a valid one.
>I'm not saying that political advertising and lobbying are good, but there are other approaches to stopping it without restricting speech, they are just more extreme in the sense they would require structural changes to the democracies themselves. For example, allowing constituents to override their representatives votes if they reach a quorum.. steps that move us closer to a direct democracy.
I don't think there is evidence that direct democracy can overcome this money in politics issue. The most recent example is Prop 22[1] in California. That was voted on by direct democracy. It was also the most expensive Prop in history by a sizable margin. The Yes side won with 58% of the vote. That was at least partially because the rideshare companies spent over $200m which was more than 10x what the No side spent. This also doesn't factor in the non-paid advertising that these companies did natively in their various apps. I don't know how someone could see that $200m spent by corporations with a financial interest in that law passing without thinking of it as some form of corruption.
"The COVID vaccines were rushed through the approval process and have more health risks than the government will admit."
"Ivermectin makes you immune to COVID and will prevent you from spreading the disease to others if you get it."
"You can cure your child of autism by having them drink diluted bleach."
The President of the United States stated that Facebook is "killing people" by not suppressing the discussion of ideas like this (at least, the first two) on their platform.
What do you think of these ideas? Should Facebook allow them to be expressed at all? Should Facebook make it easy for people who believe these ideas to discuss them with other like-minded individuals? Should Facebook permit these ideas to be expressed, but specifically design their product to suppress them so that they are harder to find?
If Facebook shows an ad on a page that also contains a post from a user expressing an idea like this, is Facebook profiting from spreading dangerous ideas? Is that reprehensible? Should they be prohibited from doing so? Does that mean they should, in fact, suppress these ideas?
I said Facebook is accused no matter what they do - I didn't say I agree with the accusers. Regardless, it is clear that mainstream political thought in the US actually doesn't respect free speech all that much these days when it conflicts with their own values.
This requires you to accept that there are "dangerous ideas" in the first place; or worse, that a business is in a good position to decide what those are for everyone who participates.
I think that might just be a convenient rubric, though. I think their real problem is "advertiser unfriendly ideas."
Of course there are dangerous ideas, and it's a bizarre insinuation that they don't exist. Mass shootings are preceded by ideations of committing a mass shooting, how nice it would be to do that, and how it might be performed. These are not good ideas, they are bad ideas. Dangerous ideas.
Some people will reject that dangerous ideas exist because they think to accept that they exist is to approve of censorship, but that's not how it works.
> and it's a bizarre insinuation that they don't exist
The problem is, if you carry this idea out to it's conclusion then it would be a rational act to jail someone merely for the thoughts they have; if we could in some way prove what they were thinking in a court of law.
> Mass shootings are preceded by ideations of committing a mass shooting [...] Dangerous ideas.
There are dangerous _people_ with the means to act upon these thoughts, but the ideas aren't exclusive to them. There are plenty of people who have such ideations but do not act upon them. People play FPS video games where these actions are not only thinkable but can be simulated. The idea itself clearly does not pose a danger to anyone.
> to accept that they exist is to approve of censorship
It's not censorship on a private platform I'm concerned with, as I've said it's the exceptional governmental and psychiatric injustices that become possible if you begin to accept this as a basic premise.
>The problem is, if you carry this idea out to it's conclusion then it would be a rational act to jail someone merely for the thoughts they have
No it wouldn't. Moreover, whether or not you find the ramifications of a fact distasteful has no bearing on the validity of that fact. As I already said, that's not how it works.
The ideas that are entertained while playing video games are not the same as entertaining the idea of performing a real-life shooting. People playing the video game aren't planning a real shooting, and planning a real shooting involves ideas that are not held by a typical person playing GTA 5. It's really an easy distinction.
It is indeed a human right to spread disease and death to other human beings. Dying by drowning in an abundance of oxygen being pumped into one's body is the peak of freedom. No one can restrict one's rights after they're dead.
This is called Safetyism. It is tyranny dressed up as concern for safety. Life is about risk. If you go down the path of 'trying to make everything safe' you ruin people's lives because a lot of what makes life enjoyable is about risk, ie asking someone on a date is a risk, travelling to a foreign country is a risk, driving is a risk, going on holiday is a risk, having children is a risk, starting a business is a risk. If you box people in and say 'its for your/the greater good' you are a tyrant forcing your will on people who should always have choice and free will. Restricting people's movement, their lives, their speech, criminalising socialising, bankrupting people is tyranny and should never, ever be allowed in a free and democratic society.
I don't know of any single government in the world that doesn't do at least some of the things you describe here. If you're trying to make the case that all goverments are tyrannical because they enact laws to promote safety, that seems like a rather big stretch.
That's the thing. They are quite dangerous. Ask the Jim Crow South, the Chinese Communist Party, or the Bush Administration. They are very threatening to ruling classes that have a vested interest in the status quo, or in some radical vision they'd like to inflict or enforce upon the world.
