What does it mean to "give them the mic"? I feel like your comment makes sense in the abstract but when it gets more concrete it gets a lot fussy. Do you mean disallowing people who make nasty radio broadcasts? Jailing people who send nasty tweets to all their 10 followers?
Most people aren't "given the mic" by some benevolent all-powerful force, they just grab a mic and use it.
Prior to the eighties, if you put out something sufficiently noxious or unbalanced on broadcast media, you could have the FCC come visit you and threaten to revoke your broadcast license. The broadcast license was required to be used in the public interest.
Then the 80s came and you had cable TV which didn’t require a broadcast license, you had video tape, and you had the repeal of the fairness doctrine.
Prior to all that the only way you’d get your weird message out was through print, which reqires someone to pay for the printing and distribution, so it’s slower and more limited, and print doesn’t have the same emotional punch of TV or radio.
Obviously the Internet has turbocharged this transition. If it were the 80s someone like Andrew Tate would have a very hard time getting an audience. He’d have to use print, and probably a lot of his material would be age restricted. The closest analogue I can think of is Hugh Hefner, and to read his stuff you had to be over 18, although obviously a lot of boys got their hands on a Playboy or two.
enforcing this would require building a panopticon world of brains in jars. no thank you. ill hold individuals responsible for their own actions and keep my freedom of speech thanks
And even then no jars would be involved. Just keep the platform accountable.
This makes so much sense, that what seeks to destroy freedoms felt compelled to warp the notion of free speech. Now look how much those free speech absolutists actually care about free speech. A classic case of the Paradox of Tolerance.
> by some benevolent all-powerful force, they just grab a mic and use it.
You are a bit optimistic. It is way worse. What happens is: your media mogul more often than not lives in an environment where people's belief systems and preferences vary from oligarchy, tech-fascism, corporatism, cultism, gilded-age etc. I.e. the cult of wealth problem. Then that media mogul buys a platform, and installs a certain kind of people. Double profit: more engagement, belief systems of regular people getting anti-social. The fear, hate and disgust for their compatriots make way for sado-populism. Regular, normal people are getting so mindfucked that instead of seeking the common good they they give autocracy consent to purify society from their imaginative enemies.
> Do you mean disallowing people who make nasty radio broadcasts?
Yes, the paradox of tolerance is a paradox. The only way to keep a tolerant society is to not tolerate the intolerants.
Most people aren't "given the mic" by some benevolent all-powerful force, they just grab a mic and use it.