I’ve thought about this a lot, and I’ve personally come to favor “the freedom to state facts, opinions, and beliefs” to “the freedom of speech” as an ideal, but everyone gets weird when you...
I’ve thought about this a lot, and I’ve personally come to favor “the freedom to state facts, opinions, and ideas beliefs” to “the freedom of speech” as an ideal, but everyone gets weird when you suggest revising the first amendment. I understand the concern, but I wish people would also be concerned about all the sketchy things that “the freedom of speech” should supposedly cover enough to try and come up with real solutions.
I think “the freedom to state facts, opinions, and ideas beliefs” is pretty good though. It seems to me like anything that could not be described as any of those things must be some kind of deception, and why should that ever be protected?
My issue with that is that it gives the state the power to dictate truth. In a fair and transparent government, it might not sound so bad, but in a corrupt government, or even a standard...
Exemplary
My issue with that is that it gives the state the power to dictate truth. In a fair and transparent government, it might not sound so bad, but in a corrupt government, or even a standard government with self-serving and morally dubious leadership, you make it far easier to quell dissent and opposition by branding them deceptive and therefore illegal.
Furthermore, it gets trickier in gray areas such as if select facts and figures are combined in a disingenuous and deceptive manner for the express purpose of shifting opinion a certain way. Would that be illegal? Could you prove that the person spreading this was acting in bad faith, that it wasn't his honest belief?
The thing about protecting free speech absolutely is that it gives potentially oppressive regimes far less leeway on stifling opposition, even if it comes at the cost of allowing disinformation.
I don't have a background in law, but I don't believe the U.S. has absolute free speech. In 1942 in a 9-0 Supreme Court decision it was upheld that you aren't allowed to call a town marshall a...
In 1942 in a 9-0 Supreme Court decision it was upheld that you aren't allowed to call a town marshall a "damned racketeer/fascist" because those are "fighting words":
There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or "fighting" words--those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.
Often this ideal of absolute free speech is framed as a slippery slope, an ever-tightening ratchet of what is allowed to be said. In reality, after that 1942 ruling there were repeated challenges and steps in the opposite direction. Most recently, in 2011 actions of the Westboro Baptist Church were upheld, and I don't think anyone would argue that picketing the funerals of American soldiers with signs saying they were going to/deserved to burn in hell and depictions of sodomy are more inciting than calling someone a "damned fascist".
Furthermore, it gets trickier in gray areas
There are a lot of tricky and gray areas. That's life, and we have to do the best we can to work with that. Does an individual magically become an adult at 16-18? No. Are we better off having imperfect laws on the age of consent instead of getting stuck on the edge cases? Probably?
A lot of society is set up to try to do an okay job in a complicated world. Civilian jurors, discretion of what is chosen to prosecute, human judges, or appealing to representatives to make new laws are ways of adding in some human course-correction. I'd argue that is how we go from a 9-0 against calling someone a damned fascist to begrudging acceptance of the WBC.
I think you can have prudent rules on free speech or what's required of social media platforms without creating a Ministry of Truth. And it's not like the current U.S. gov't didn't scrub out references to climate change, lie about 3-5 million illegal voters, use a sharpy to change the path of a hurricane, or a thousand other things as is. Would it be better or worse if there was a precedent/framework to contest it when a president claims there were millions of illegal votes?
The internet as a platform also is fundamentally different from other types of speech that have existed in the past.
Not all are exclusive to the internet, but some jumping-off points are:
What do you do with chilling effects? If Call of Duty decided to ban aggressively for racist/misogynistic voice chat, and as a result women or other voices that hadn't felt comfortable or incentivized to talk talk more, is speech more or less restricted?
By function, Google and a lot of other technologies have to rank things by relevance. They have the stats on how many people read to the second page of search results or look past item #3. Is Google censoring or preventing free speech when it chooses to rank things past the first page?
When Google is faced with giving a parent looking for information on vaccines information how should they weight results that a) increase engagement/ad revenue they get, b) correspond to the consensus opinion of medical experts, c) the parent would find most relevant, d) come from government-endorsed sources, or e) represent a breadth of opinions (including anti-vaxxers and retracted studies like Wakefields')?
As things like text/profile generation or other astroturfing tools increasingly get better one individual is able to masquerade as tens of thousands of unique individuals and put out a firehose of free speech. At what point (if at all) does this need to be restricted?
Is someone who posts a thousand times a day at all analogous to a person with a megaphone drowning out what other people are trying to say? What about a million times, where those million posts are machine-generated but perfectly in line with what the person already wants to say? Are protestors who shout to drown out a controversial speaker engaging in free speech or suppressing it?
I don't really see how it "gives the state the power to dictate truth". I guess every time I get this criticism, it just feels like we are talking about a situation where you have a state that is...
I don't really see how it "gives the state the power to dictate truth". I guess every time I get this criticism, it just feels like we are talking about a situation where you have a state that is basically just ignoring the constitution anyway and it really wouldn't make a difference what's in it. Because the sort of thing you are describing definitely would not be constitutional.
Furthermore, it gets trickier in gray areas such as if select facts and figures are combined in a disingenuous and deceptive manner for the express purpose of shifting opinion a certain way. Would that be illegal? Could you prove that the person spreading this was acting in bad faith, that it wasn't his honest belief?
A constitutional right doesn't tell you what is or isn't illegal. It only tells you what freedoms of the citizens the state cannot infringe upon. If it was possible to come up with a law that made that sort of deception illegal that also managed to not infringe upon the right to state facts, opinions, and beliefs, then sure it could be illegal. And if it's not possible, then it'd be just as legal as it is now. As for having to prove mens rea, that is definitely not unique to this situation.
Those are all fair points. I'll admit, my views are probably a bit biased due to a personal distrust of government and power. In regards to acting in bad faith, I understand that an action doesn't...
Those are all fair points. I'll admit, my views are probably a bit biased due to a personal distrust of government and power.
In regards to acting in bad faith, I understand that an action doesn't need to be in good faith or bad faith for a law to be broken, I was referring to the specific and vague definition of a belief. If the revision of the first amendment would protect beliefs, it becomes hard to tell what's a genuine belief and whats a statement with an intent to deceive.
On your last point, in this context, I am referring exclusively to the ability of the government to infringe on your right to speech. To use your example, so long as it isn't the government painting groups as communist extreme-left terror organizations and thereby limiting these people's access to government run platforms, then that it is a problem for society at large to address.
I'm not against regulations in speech entirely. There are laws against libel, slander, and false advertising. I wholeheartedly agree with regulations like that. The difference there is that these laws are very pointed and specific. What I disagree with is placing vague and broad restrictions on speech in the constitution.
I’ve thought about this a lot, and I’ve personally come to favor “the freedom to state facts, opinions, and
ideasbeliefs” to “the freedom of speech” as an ideal, but everyone gets weird when you suggest revising the first amendment. I understand the concern, but I wish people would also be concerned about all the sketchy things that “the freedom of speech” should supposedly cover enough to try and come up with real solutions.I think “the freedom to state facts, opinions, and
ideasbeliefs” is pretty good though. It seems to me like anything that could not be described as any of those things must be some kind of deception, and why should that ever be protected?Edit: I misremembered it.
My issue with that is that it gives the state the power to dictate truth. In a fair and transparent government, it might not sound so bad, but in a corrupt government, or even a standard government with self-serving and morally dubious leadership, you make it far easier to quell dissent and opposition by branding them deceptive and therefore illegal.
Furthermore, it gets trickier in gray areas such as if select facts and figures are combined in a disingenuous and deceptive manner for the express purpose of shifting opinion a certain way. Would that be illegal? Could you prove that the person spreading this was acting in bad faith, that it wasn't his honest belief?
The thing about protecting free speech absolutely is that it gives potentially oppressive regimes far less leeway on stifling opposition, even if it comes at the cost of allowing disinformation.
I don't have a background in law, but I don't believe the U.S. has absolute free speech.
In 1942 in a 9-0 Supreme Court decision it was upheld that you aren't allowed to call a town marshall a "damned racketeer/fascist" because those are "fighting words":
Often this ideal of absolute free speech is framed as a slippery slope, an ever-tightening ratchet of what is allowed to be said. In reality, after that 1942 ruling there were repeated challenges and steps in the opposite direction. Most recently, in 2011 actions of the Westboro Baptist Church were upheld, and I don't think anyone would argue that picketing the funerals of American soldiers with signs saying they were going to/deserved to burn in hell and depictions of sodomy are more inciting than calling someone a "damned fascist".
There are a lot of tricky and gray areas. That's life, and we have to do the best we can to work with that. Does an individual magically become an adult at 16-18? No. Are we better off having imperfect laws on the age of consent instead of getting stuck on the edge cases? Probably?
A lot of society is set up to try to do an okay job in a complicated world. Civilian jurors, discretion of what is chosen to prosecute, human judges, or appealing to representatives to make new laws are ways of adding in some human course-correction. I'd argue that is how we go from a 9-0 against calling someone a damned fascist to begrudging acceptance of the WBC.
I think you can have prudent rules on free speech or what's required of social media platforms without creating a Ministry of Truth. And it's not like the current U.S. gov't didn't scrub out references to climate change, lie about 3-5 million illegal voters, use a sharpy to change the path of a hurricane, or a thousand other things as is. Would it be better or worse if there was a precedent/framework to contest it when a president claims there were millions of illegal votes?
The internet as a platform also is fundamentally different from other types of speech that have existed in the past.
Not all are exclusive to the internet, but some jumping-off points are:
I don't really see how it "gives the state the power to dictate truth". I guess every time I get this criticism, it just feels like we are talking about a situation where you have a state that is basically just ignoring the constitution anyway and it really wouldn't make a difference what's in it. Because the sort of thing you are describing definitely would not be constitutional.
A constitutional right doesn't tell you what is or isn't illegal. It only tells you what freedoms of the citizens the state cannot infringe upon. If it was possible to come up with a law that made that sort of deception illegal that also managed to not infringe upon the right to state facts, opinions, and beliefs, then sure it could be illegal. And if it's not possible, then it'd be just as legal as it is now. As for having to prove mens rea, that is definitely not unique to this situation.
Those are all fair points. I'll admit, my views are probably a bit biased due to a personal distrust of government and power.
In regards to acting in bad faith, I understand that an action doesn't need to be in good faith or bad faith for a law to be broken, I was referring to the specific and vague definition of a belief. If the revision of the first amendment would protect beliefs, it becomes hard to tell what's a genuine belief and whats a statement with an intent to deceive.
On your last point, in this context, I am referring exclusively to the ability of the government to infringe on your right to speech. To use your example, so long as it isn't the government painting groups as communist extreme-left terror organizations and thereby limiting these people's access to government run platforms, then that it is a problem for society at large to address.
I'm not against regulations in speech entirely. There are laws against libel, slander, and false advertising. I wholeheartedly agree with regulations like that. The difference there is that these laws are very pointed and specific. What I disagree with is placing vague and broad restrictions on speech in the constitution.