What rules can you possibly have that distinguish the expert and the manipulator in all cases, without abuse?

I think free speech comes from the same base as universal vote: any selection mechanism would be corrupted and in the end cause more harm than good. That is why the solution is to let everyone speak / vote. If you have some uncorruptible people or mechanism for selection, just use that to make policy decisions directly.

I think the solution is to elevate critical thinking in the populations, so people can be less vulnerable to psychological warfare. Otherwise you're just picking a different manipulator - whoever writes or enforces the speech limits.

I think the solution is to elect a commission of experts to be deciding this. Term limits. Separate independent institution from the government - no meddling.

Critical thinking even in those capable of it is a limited resource. I can't spend all day every day critically examining every single statement the internet flings at me - it's mentally exhausting and wears one down.

Let's elect proxies to do it for us.

And who will watch the watchdogs?

The electorate.

Elect by the people at large? People who voted for Trump and such? What's the point in an elected institution separated from the government - the government is already elected, and people will mostly vote for candidates from the same parties in all elections.

Besides, "elect a comission of experts" is a contradiction. Experts are not elected. Expertise is not determined by voting. You want to appoint or select a comission of experts, or elect a comission of politicians. These are the choices. Appointment or selection will be done by someone else, likely politicians too.

You just hope some incorruptible competent people will get there by magic. They will not.

If you could do this, just elect a comission of experts to run the country, instead of this "truth comission" that makes sure people are well informed to vote correctly in elections for the real government, which will in turn run the country. Why do the indirection? There is no reason, if you could "elect" good people, but you can't.

> The speech of the manipulator is not the same as the speech of the expert

I don't think that's contentious. The point of free speech is not that all speech is equally valuable or positive. It's that I don't trust you to decide which speech shouldn't be allowed, because that power will 100% be abused, until it's just as pernicious as the "manipulators" it's claiming to defend against.

>American free speech extremists like these tech CEOs

well, claim to be free speech extremists at least

Indeed. I think with some of the more government-aligned oligarchs it's more of a pretense to enable said information warfare.

These tech CEOs just want to have to spend as little as possible to maintain their platforms. They don't actually care about freedom of speech beyond that.