What used to be received, accepted, consumed, digested, considered, reflected upon, even discussed and perhaps finally judged by an individual taking responsibility for his own thinking, seems now to have become as if an electronic jolt administered to a large group, the measure of it being its seismic effect more than any appeal to reason. — tim wood

Do you really think most people were so responsible in their opinions fifty or a hundred years ago, or at any time in this planet's history? I don't think most people in any society of significant scale have ever had the opportunity to be as informed, and reflective, and responsible as you suggest.

Let's not romanticize the past. There's never been a shortage of ignorant, misguided, unreasonable, selfish, and hateful souls in this world.

The limitations on communication even a mere fifty years ago were such as to create a kind of space. Space for stupidity, ignorance, intolerance, evil to fall into and thereby fall out of notice. Obviously not always: history giving examples of that space being closed up and toxic ideas for a while thriving — tim wood

I'd be more cautious with this metaphor. Good ideas as much as bad ones fell through the cracks into that space. A glance at the historical record should persuade you that toxic ideas and despicable deeds -- including unjust government policies enthusiastically cheered by hordes of duped voters -- have been incessant.

Perhaps the most relevant difference is that it was easier for the powerful to influence the hearts and minds of the masses, to divide and rule, with flimsy ideological propaganda back in those days. Given the increasing accessibility of genuine information in recent decades, it's become harder to deceive and divide people the old-fashioned way. So the oligarchs have turned to making the people absolutely deranged. The same technology that has made information so accessible has also made consumers of information more susceptible to derangement.

Generations raised on that newfangled poison are coming up behind us. You're right to suggest it's becoming harder for everybody to find "space" from the new media environment and the culture it drives.

Famously in the US at least free speech does not permit calling out, "Fire!" in a crowded theater if there is no fire. And there are other restrictions, though it's not a simple subject. The point being that "free speech" does not mean free speech, and most people understand that. — tim wood

Free speech is free speech. Like all of our rights, our right to free speech must be limited so as to protect all the rights of all the members of our community. If everyone's rights are not limited in this way, there are no rights -- only privileges for a few.

My view is that modern communication has lent a fire-power to speech that itself requires greater control. And if not prior restraint - and how could that be done? - then a system of definitions and penalties that would have an effectively chilling and prohibitive effect on proscribed speech.

One way, to define "lie" such that it can be identified, and on being demonstrated to have been told, the teller(s) immediately subject to fierce penalties. In a sense, then, communication has turned the world into a giant crowded theater. False cries of fire become themselves too dangerous and thus rightly punished. Or are there better ways? — tim wood

I'm afraid I agree that recent technology makes it more urgent to regulate and penalize some forms of harmful speech.

I might aim to regulate and punish large-scale acts of misinformation, in some cases even when the misinformer didn't know they were spreading misinformation.

If a food seller fails to take precautions specified by law to ensure the safety of the food they sell, there may be warnings and penalties, regardless of whether the food is in fact unsafe. If a food seller hasn't taken the requisite precautions, and as a consequence consumers are harmed, there may be penalties even if the seller didn't know that the food was contaminated. At least in many jurisdictions, the regulations vary according to scale, and the smallest sellers are the least regulated. Someone who sells a few dozen homemade cookies at a local market isn't typically required to follow the same strict standards that apply to larger retailers, wholesalers, and distributors, because their potential to cause harm is far smaller and more easily contained; and it's thus safe enough to err on the side of personal liberty in such cases.

I suppose we could seek to regulate the distribution of putative statements of fact somewhat analogously. Say, by targeting platforms, publishers, and self-publishers with more than one-hundred thousand or one million readers, listeners, viewers, subscribers, followers, or users, to make those publishers responsible for fact-checking and accountable for misinformation.

Of course such a strategy comes with obstacles and risks. But it's come to seem that the risks associated with neglecting to regulate misinformation might outweigh the risks of cautious regulation.

Now the lie seems different and tailored to the need not of outdistancing the truth, but of right away cutting it off at the knees, this the method and tool of right-wing politics especially. An appeal to the immediate reaction, usually of emotion in terms of fear or hatred. In itself nothing entirely new, but, as the argument here claims, qualitatively different from its forebears. — tim wood

It is a good question. I do not know whether communication has qualitatively changed. The worry about the abilities of authoritarian regimes to use appeals to emotion is among us for a long time already. In this article (not free unfortunately :( ) Karl Loewenstein writes about the use of mass media to enhance a political strategy that appeals to emotion as a basis for its appeal. It reads like it could be written yesterday, but it is written in the 1930's and he refers to the radio, news paper op eds and public rallies...

The question is very thorny because it implies we might have to give up some of our most cherished rights to protect them and that is of course paradoxical. t is debated in law faculties currently, but an answer is very difficult to give, because the whole idea of free speech is that we are free to raise objections to the communis opinio... I think what we should worry about is the establishment of monopolies regarding the formation of discourse. Prohibition would be a last resort. I feel the key is to educate people to accept open and free debate, and encourage them to view matters from different perspectives, however harsh it may be. currently that is not the sign of the times though, where both the left and the right use tactics of canellation and villification.

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The US in currently in the process of trying to throw Julian Assange in prision forever, for exposing wonton American murder overseas.

The human rights lawyer Steven Donzinger was just thrown into jail by Chevron - literally by Chevron, the private company, and not the government - as punishment for winning a case against them for poisoning the environment, and securing an $18billion judgement against them.

Edward Snowden is still in exile because he exposed illegal government surveillance.

Academics lose jobs over critiquing Israel's protracted genocide against Palestinians.

The idea that we need less, rather than more free speech, is the height of lunacy.

It is of course, a classic liberal idea. Rather than have anything at all to say about the corporate control of the media - because liberals are effectively capitalist stooges who will go to bat for money wherever it is and whose politics is based on how comfortable they personally feel - and which has left (official) media a barren wasteland of corporate propaganda, they'd prefer to accelerate the problem by handing the keys of speech over to further control.

I'm nearing fifty and in my entire life, there has not been a single occasion, IRL or online, where I felt I could speak "freely".

There is no such thing as "free speech", there are always repercussions for what one says. Some are not so grave (such as being told off), some result in imprisonment and death, and then everything inbetween.

Things may be better for the rich and the powerful. But even they have their own power games and competition going on, so even they cannot just afford to speak "freely".

The “falsely yell fire in a crowded theater” dictum is not established law, but a -puerile analogy found in the unanimous opinion of Justice Holmes, who used the phrase to censor and jail a socialist who was passing out flyers urging resistance to the draft. Smarter jurists have long since overturned Holmes’ precedent (the clear and present danger test), and speech can only be prosecuted if it is directed to inciting or producing “imminent lawless action”, but it’s no surprise to find that the analogy still lives in the mouths of those who fear and wish to suppress speech—that is exactly what it was designed to do.

But I would never expect penalty for your misinformation because only speech itself can rectify it. I would be doing a disservice to both truth and myself by censoring falsity, which treats truth as no worthy opponent to lies, and myself a coward, fearful of words. In any case, calling for the censorship of lies out of one side of the mouth and spreading misinformation out of the other is not a good look. And one day your opponents will wield the exact same tools of suppression you created. What then?

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I need only to know your past comments on the subject of “yelling fire in a crowded theater”, which anyone can find. Here is journalist Christopher Hitchens falsely yelling “fire” in a crowded theater. He acted in contrary to the dicta, as anyone can do, and it was permitted and had procured no trouble or punishment. It appears free speech does permit it after all.



My point has already been made. Truth doesn’t need you to censor falsity, and at any rate, your sense of what is true or false is as useful as an asshole on the elbow. Yes free speech permits the distortion of truth, but only because free speech is the only way to straighten it. Censorship permits the distortion of truth and its suppression.

A positive statement about the way you think things should be — tim wood

All those who call for the curtailing of free speech without addressing the media ownership and power disparities in media production should be put into a barrel and shot into the sun.

And yes, literally by Chevron:

"When a NY Court decided to pass on prosecuting him for that, Judge Lewis Kaplan used a legal loophole to turn over prosecution of the case to Chevron ... Today, the Chevron-supported judge, aided by the Chevron-supported prosecution, sentenced Donziger to the maximum time of six months in federal prison".

Because now private companies have sovereign power to adjudicate law - and in other jurisdictions, ignore it entirely - and apparently some morons think this is a perfect time to call for the curtailing of speech.

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Cool. Must be nice to ignore the larger point so you can wangle with irrelevancies that you can't even be bothered to spell out.

But trust you to side with the billion dollar oil company that dumped toxic waste in Ecuador that killed hundreds of people. Classic liberal.

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Is how you present it reasonable? That manifestly is not. — tim wood

So, still can't be bothered to spell it out? No wonder you want to curtail speech. You simply can't be bothered to use it so there's nothing for you to lose anyway.

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I dunno, so far you replied to my post with a bunch of utter irrelevancies. "You're a negative nancy". What is this, a kindergarten?

Proposing a fine for anyone who speaks contrary to Tim’s truth is in direct opposition to the principle of free speech. If you do not oppose free speech, why do you oppose free speech?

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Anything good to say about anything? — tim wood

And this utterly irrelevant question addresses my initial post how?

Do you not understand the word “speech”? Is a lie not speech? Your silly analogies about guns, wildfires, and electric jolts cannot alter the fact that speech is speech: it produces none of the effects or damages you claim it does.

Is the ability to tell a lie constitutive of a right to tell a lie? — tim wood

No it isn't.

In fact this would fall under JS Mill's harm principle. Spreading lies which harm others is an offense.

We have a legal name for it if directed to a specific person -- slander.

We have a legal name for it if directed to a specific person -- slander. — Caldwell

We have a legal name if it isn't too: - fraud.

We have a legal name if it isn't too: - fraud. — unenlightened

I concur.