Free Speech really only applies to the government, not private companies, so FB can impose whatever rules they want (though that might depend on if the FEC decides to try and enforce some regulation). Also, even Free Speech has its limits, for example, yelling "fire!" into a crowd to cause a mass panic when there is no fire is not protected speech.
Other examples include slander, this wiki page has a nice discussion on Supreme Court decisions as it relates to the First Amendment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
"In 1969, the Supreme Court's decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio effectively overturned Schenck and any authority the case still carried. There, the Court held that inflammatory speech--and even speech advocating violence by members of the Ku Klux Klan--is protected under the First Amendment, unless the speech "is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action""
According to case law and Supreme Court decisions, "Free Speech" is much more absolute than most imagine.
Ref: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
Principled defense of free speech is often accused of being a slippery slope fallacy, usually by the same people who give "fire in a crowded theater" as a counterpoint. I wonder how many of them are aware that the phrase itself is a historical example of a very real slippery slope.
Except, as evident, they don't. And they don't really have a financial motive to police speech, in fact they have financial motives to turn a blind eye to it.
And moreover, Facebook not making more money does not affect society at large, but the continued distribution of misinformation has direct repercussions for society at large.
Look at it this way. Huge numbers of Americans and especially Democrats believed for the longest time, and many still do, that Trump was a Russian spy. The entire "Russiagate" phenomenon was investigated to ludicrous depth and found no evidence such claims were true; so does that mean every journalist and Democrat politician that fueled those flames now goes to prison, or can't speak in public anymore? Think about what you're arguing for here! That was an absolutely massive factual inaccuracy so how would it be held to account?
And let's not even get into cases where someone genuinely believes they're repeating something true, which turns out not to be. If that were the case, given the replication crisis in science virtually all politicians would end up being unable to speak publicly as they'd have repeated the claims of studies that later didn't replicate.
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
What makes it particularly interesting is that it was written by a socialist who volunteered to go and literally fight fascists (with bullets, not fists), and it was written in the immediate aftermath of WW2. You'd think that a person like that, at a time like that, would be very sympathetic to the kinds of arguments that are being paraded on the left today - that, basically, once politics gets sufficiently extreme, immediate concerns about that should trump any abstract freedoms. And yet, Orwell criticizes the treatment of Oswald Mosley (of the British Union of Fascists) during the war...
The irony is that the essay was effectively censored itself - it was meant to be a preface to the Animal Farm, but no publisher was willing to publish it as such. It was eventually published on its own, 27 years after it was written.
As someone who has no love for the Republican party, I have to say that your statement shows a sort of tunnel vision. Just take the latest Ukraine scandal: it's true that Trump pressured the Ukrainian government to investigate his political rival, but at the same time, it's obvious that Hunter Biden only had his job because he was the US Vice President's son. That's corruption by any reasonable definition. Yet plenty of Democrats are insisting that there was nothing improper with Hunter Biden taking the job, and that this is all fake news. But if it were Trump's son on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, guess how Democrats would react (and rightly so)?
> To be frank I think the benefits of "Free Speech" are vastly overvalued. You shouldn't have the right to say whatever you want, at least not in the context of politics.
I prefer the First Amendment to the truth police. Of course, if I get to pick the truth police and they always agree with me, that's great for me. But it's not so great for anyone who disagrees with me, and it ultimately means the end of democracy.
If you talk to the average Republican voter about, for example, climate change, you'll hear about China is faking the whole thing to make American industry less competitive, or about how, since we got some snow last night, that must mean it's a hoax. If you talk to them about job growth, they'll tell you we need to resurrect the COAL INDUSTRY, which was in rapid decline already and has only accelerated as coal continues to be less and less appealing as an energy source, because, you know, it's coal, and it's not very good. Jobs have been slipping in that industry since the 1940's, and automation has only worsened it. Yet Trump campaigns about revitalizing it, and the rest of the Republican party enables that, no matter how unrealistic it is.
It's just non stop conspiracy theories, disinformation, denial of fact, on and on. Watch Fox News some time. It's unbelievable how utterly insane the coverage is. I'm not talking a "different point of view" I'm talking about they are literally destroying any sense of truth to push their agenda, which shouldn't be surprising to anyone paying attention because that's basically what Roger Ailes started the company to fucking do: Appeal to conservative viewpoints that felt left behind as progressive stances became more and more mainstreamed.
This is not a conspiracy theory: Fox News' origins, along with smaller outfits like InfoWars, various talk radio stations, all the way to more recent ones like Brietbart, have been running this grift for decades; enabling the intellectual rot that has destroyed the GOP from it's core, and annihilated everything they ever stood for, all of it murdered on the altar of making money.
I say all of this as someone who is ashamed to acknowledge being a conservative, who has slowly watched the party he grew up believing in become a sad parody of it's former self, able to stand for NOTHING, NOT A THING other than squeezing out the last few dimes before the planet bursts into flames. What the GOP is today is a disgusting husk, a cancer-laden zombie kept moving by Koch brothers money and the sheer refusal of huge parts of the country lacking in proper education to admit they were fucking conned.
MSNBC is every bit as unhinged as Fox News. It wasn't always that way, but it's become worse and worse over time. Rachel Maddow's ranting and raving about the Russians, panel discussions about Tulsi Gabbard being a Russian asset - it's bad. I feel sorry for anyone who gets their news from either channel.
I don't care about Joe Biden. He's as crooked as any of the other big business Democrats. He'd do the country a tremendous service in just fucking off back to Pennsylvania and never going on TV again.
> I prefer the First Amendment to the truth police.
I welcome the truth police with open arms, because the alternative is what we have now: a free-for-all in which well funded interests, both political and corporate, can spew whatever well produced and intelligent-sounding bullshit they please onto our mass media and an unsuspecting populace. This is not sustainable. I would've really hoped that people would know better and be able to properly vet sources, but it's been proven, again and again, that they cannot, or will not.
> I welcome the truth police with open arms, because the alternative is what we have now: a free-for-all in which well funded interests, both political and corporate, can spew whatever well produced and intelligent-sounding bullshit they please onto our mass media and an unsuspecting populace.
This always sounds like a great idea if you assume that you're the one who will get to decide what's true and what's false. But what makes you think the truth police themselves won't be corrupt? Once they exist, and once they come for your views, it's too late. By throwing away the First Amendment, you're condemning your own views to eventual suppression.
I do not care about Joe Biden. He's a disheveled artifact of pretty much everything wrong with the Democrat party. You can criticize him all you want and I'll agree with you but please stop presenting this as though it means anything about the vast majority of the Democrat party, which again, is not supporting him.
> Elizabeth Warren has also been reluctant to condemn what looks like obvious corruption, which is notable, given that that's one of her signature issues.
What "looks like corruption" that she hasn't condemned?
> But what makes you think the truth police themselves won't be corrupt?
You say this as though corruption isn't fought off regularly in basically all functions of Government? And that's not say we're totally free of corruption, because well, yeah. But in general the country gets along okay. It's not stellar and could be improved quite a lot, but in the grand scheme, roads are maintained, government workers are paid, government contractors get paid, our sewage and water systems (in most places) are fine, our electrical grid is pretty standard.
You know it's easy to get disillusioned and say our Government as a whole is a shitheap, but honestly, we're doing okay. Certainly well enough to say that just because something the Government does might be influenced by corruption isn't reason enough, by itself, to not even try.
And this idea that mass media should be policed for something resembling accuracy and honesty means the first amendment is dead is just ridiculous false dichotomy. We police speech CONSTANTLY. Spreading information you know to be false about a person is already covered under the law as libel, and in order to put that law to someone speaking requires THOROUGH, WELL DOCUMENTED evidence, it's not just something that gets thrown around, other than by people who don't understand what it really is. We police speech that incites violence, again requiring thorough proof as we do for any crime. In my mind, there's no difference between that, nor any requirement for the "Truth Police," and going to a place like a talk radio station and say "This host on this date espoused a thoroughly debunked viewpoint that has been proven false, demonstrably, with data, multiple studies, and testimony from experts all over the country. Because of this we're assessing your station a $50,000 fine, and $5,000 per day additionally that this host is on the air and has not yet fully retracted this statement, and accepted that they have been spreading misinformation."
Hunter Biden working for Burisma. She was asked about it, and the contorted answer she gave to avoid condemning it is rather hilarious.
> You say this as though corruption isn't fought off regularly in basically all functions of Government?
And you're proposing giving a corruptible institution vast new powers to control public dialogue.
> And this idea that mass media should be policed for something resembling accuracy and honesty means the first amendment is dead is just ridiculous false dichotomy. We police speech CONSTANTLY.
Libel and incitement are very narrowly defined, and proving either is incredibly difficult. Those laws could be used as a political tool to suppress speech, which is why they're so narrowly construed.
I can predict with 99% confidence what will happen if the truth police are instituted. The truth police will be heavily influenced by the same industries and financial interests that dominate government today. Many views that you hold will be declared false. Black Lives Matter will be declared a form of incitement. Socialism will be declared a false ideology.
I'm just very surprised by how many Americans have decided after Trump's election that the First Amendment has to go. It's very short-sighted.
And you're continuing to argue as though the vast already thoroughly corrupted institution already doing that is somehow better.
> Libel and incitement are very narrowly defined, and proving either is incredibly difficult.
No shit. I'm saying exactly that laws to police speech can be done right. It should be a sizable burden of proof needed, it should be difficult specifically so that the Government can't simply say "that's bad, stop saying it." That's my whole damn point.
> I can predict with 99% confidence
Is this prediction based on something besides your own biases?
> I'm just very surprised by how many Americans have decided after Trump's election that the First Amendment has to go. It's very short-sighted.
I said no such thing. Please read my posts if you intend to respond to them.
No, I'm arguing that that institution should not be given vast new powers to determine what can and cannot be said, based on what it deems to be true and false.
> I'm saying exactly that laws to police speech can be done right.
The right way to do it is to not give the government the power to censore "untrue" speech in the first place. What you're proposing is incredibly dangerous, and would be a clear break with the 1st Amendment - the bedrock of American democracy.
> Is this prediction based on something besides your own biases?
It's based on a simple analysis of what would serve the interests of those who wield great influence in government. Since November 2016, I've heard lots of liberals argue for censorship of "untrue" or far-right speech. They seem to imagine that they can create a system in which they will determine what is true or acceptable, and that those definitions will be imposed on the "bad guys." I think that's incredibly naive. Lots of conservatives call Black Lives Matter "hate speech" and the like. If you give them a tool to suppress speech, they'll turn it against BLM and other causes they dislike.
> I said no such thing. Please read my posts if you intend to respond to them.
You're arguing against the 1st Amendment. You want to impose an official government standard of what is true and false, which can be used to muzzle speech. I get that you want this standard to be objective, but the obvious direction that such laws will go is towards wide-ranging political censorship. The 1st Amendment is central to American democracy, and one shouldn't play around with it. Leave it alone. You can't ban people you think are wrong from speaking. Try arguing against them, convincing them.
Perhaps this is a good time then, to revisit this norm itself? Why is this allowed? Sure, politicians lie, it is known, but we've reached a point where the lies on one side (and it is one side, the Republican side) have diverged so far from reality than the base of that side can no longer engage in any meaningful debate on any issue. It's not even a question of bias, most Republican talking points and positions literally do not make logical sense. They scream and rant about problems that don't exist, and refuse to acknowledge the ones that do that are inconvenient. So much of the right is based on such hard misinformation as to be ridiculous.
And of course Democrats fudge the truth a little here and there too, and that should stop as well. To be frank I think the benefits of "Free Speech" are vastly overvalued. You shouldn't have the right to say whatever you want, at least not in the context of politics. You should be held to account for factual inaccuracies, perhaps not penalized but it should be noted, and you should be penalized for what can be demonstrably proven as outright lies and misinformation.