Far more than 200,000 people can die in one year if we set up an apparatus of censorship, as these tools could always be commandeered by corrupt individuals and used to horrific effect.
Look at autocratic societies around the world, and see what giving any group, no matter how seemingly altruistic and enlightened, the power to censor, can lead to.
Once the social taboo against violating the right to free speech is broken, dystopia becomes a possibility, as it becomes possible for voices to be silenced and concentrations of power to magnify their control through constricting the flow of critical information.
Once the social taboo against violating the right
to free speech is broken, dystopia becomes a possibility
The types of censorship proposed in the article deal with expressing beliefs pertaining to highly complex and contentious social issues about which powerful special interests seek to shape the public's perceptions about. Once this class of speech becomes acceptable to subject to censorship, politics becomes a much more dangerous, winner-takes-all game.
Yes, lets use censorship to improve our democracies.
Good idea! Let´s also put all those who disagree in prison.
A better way to fight disinformation would be to challenge it with... an appeal to popularity.
But if Copernicus or Richard Feynman were alive and on Youtube today, they'd be unknowns compared to PewDiePie.
So neither sunlight, nor an appeal to popularity, are going to help us here.
I may not love censorship, but it beats having some deluded moron shoot at my car in a civil war, or infect me with Covid-19 thanks to a lecture by some Youtube science-ist.
If the choice is stricter Facebook moderation or to live in a new Dark Age... well, you catch my drift.