this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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This is a terrible, horrible idea. It would give the government the power to censor anyone and anything, and all they have to do is claim that the thing they are censoring is a lie.
Well treating lies to be as valid as fact has brought you half a population living in their own reality and Trump as president.
Placing exceptions on the freedom of speech does not mean that lies will get silenced. It means that whatever the government wants to censor will get silenced. Because the government will be the one who does the censoring. Or, if the censoring is not done by the government directly - the government will still be the one appointing the organization who does the censoring.
The freedom of speech must be protected - even if it means letting bad agents spread their lies uncensored. Because if you try to give the government the power to censor them, you'll end up with a new Department of Truth led by Alex Jones (who is now unoccupied)
So basically you want to give trump the power to censor you because he says you're lying?
How would you tackle the lies or are you happy that Fox is able to conjure up its own version of reality with no pushback?
I wouldn't. I would teach people critical thinking skills so they can tell a lie from a truth. How would you determine what is a lie and therefore needs to be censored?
Instead of modifying freedom of speech, make large-scale lies jusification to banish someone from the industry, like sex-offenders and schools.
Still a bit vague and as always figuring out what's true is hard and ajudicating truth is even harder, but any errors won't be nearly as bad, and it would still be effective.
The core issue here is still agreeing on truth though. Can you define a method of ajudicating truth that can't be misused by an overwhelming amount of bad-faith actors? Can you bind an organization to a method even if every member wants something else?
Please don't treat the freedom of speech (or any other important democratic right) as a creative limitation...
Hmm? A creative limitation? How have I done that?
I'm advocating for maintaining freedom from government censorship by using an industry ban instead. Specifically in the realms of news and knowledge, not entertainment. I don't think that impinges on any (currently held) right, democratic or not.
You can't use the full power of government sanctions and criminal charges to silence the people you disagree with (for whatever reason. Even if they are valid reasons) so you try to find creative ways to punish them. Well... not really "creative", since the idea of excommunication is not new. But my point is that this is still about using power to silence voices you don't like - you just use a slightly different power in a slightly different way.
Excommunication? What? This is requiring journalistic integrity to work in journalism, just like how medical malpractice can make you lose your medical license or legal malpractice can get you disbarred. There is precidence for this system, and I chose it specifically to reduce punishments and make sure those affected can still make a living.
I even point out one of the big issues of truth being difficult to define, and how this system might just push the problem down the road, and wonder if the actual problem (politics becomming unbound by reality for political gain, or a loss of political integrity) can even be regulated at all.
You want to silence certain voices (the one telling lies) but can't/won't use proper government sanctions, so instead you coordinate the community to keep distance from these voices, hoping to deter people from voicing them and preventing the ones too determined to be deterred from getting any reach. This is excommunication.
My problem is not with the exact way you are trying to censor your political opponents - it's in the very fact you are set out to censor them. You don't have to listen to them, you don't have to give them a platform, but if you try to establish a wide system to prevent other people from hearing these voices - that's censoring.