The famous “yelling fire in a crowded theory” test for free speech is an example of contextualizing liberties. There is nothing truly Orwellian about it.
“Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins” is another example.
Society is a context where we exercise our liberties.
"Yelling fire in a crowded theater" is a great example because it comes from a horrible Supreme Court ruling defending the arrest of someone handing out anti-war pamphlets.
I can't think of a better example of something that should be protected speech, or a better example of how "reasonable" limits will get abused.
Fortunately, that ruling has been mostly overturned by now.
A great example of..?
This comment seems more like you taking an opportunity to flex on someone in a comment instead of refuting my underlying point. That’s great the ruling this saying was used in was overturned (I’m taking your word for it) but citing that fact completely misses the point...
The yelling fire example is an extreme edge case, and it’s usually used by people who would like to limit freedom of speech much more than that.
I’ve never heard it being used genuinely not even once.
I find it irritating: you don’t want freedom of speech? State than openly and tell me why.
Yeah, I don't want unlimited freedom of speech. Some types of speech are harmful with little benefit, from my perspective. I don't see the justification for making it permissible to yell "fire" in a movie theater.
As I have already told you the yelling fire thing is essentially a rhetorical device, that has been used to promote suppression of free speech to a much larger extent.
I don’t think I even care, but please be honest about it and tell people why and what you would ban.
I am sure that, like every one using the arguments you are using, you would suppress free speech much more than that!
Be open and direct, we still have free speech my friend!
No need to hide between rhetorical devices.
It always comes down to censoring those you disagree with. Everyone loves free speech when it expresses views they agree with. If it's about silly edge cases, no-one really cares - the only reason to care is if it has political implications, regardless of if you are for or against suppression.
> Some types of speech are harmful with little benefit, from my perspective.
But for the people saying the things you don't want to hear, that same speech is beneficial, with little harm.
It's easy to want to ban things you don't want to do. That's the entire point of it being protected in the first place.
The yelling fire one was (partially) overturned in court in 1969. Such speech can now only be limited if it would incite imminent lawless action (such as a riot), and so that example does not count.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
Absolute freedom of speech is equally as detrimental to society as totalitarian government censorship. Propaganda, misinformation, and outright lies can convincingly be passed off as truth. The vast majority of the populace neither has the time, nor the inclination to properly vet, research, and confirm the information that is presented to them. Humans rarely acknowledge their own confirmation biases, which makes it trivial to manipulate the so called "marketplace of ideas". We're now beginning to see the myriad detrimental effects of an absolutist free speech society. Political troll bots manipulate opinions and sow discord. A huge slice of the United States relies on a reality warping "news" network that claims the right to fabricate falsehoods under the banner of free speech. Algorithms that feed users content send people down rabbit holes of extremist information fomenting groups of fervent believers in utter nonsense like "The Earth is flat", because the algorithms naively equate "engagement time" with value/truth.
Freedom of speech is a spectrum, and neither extreme of that spectrum is beneficial to a healthy society.
> Propaganda, misinformation, and outright lies
Who would decide what is fake news? The federal government? Perhaps a free speech Czar appointed by the president of the US? The current president of the US certainly does talk about fake news a lot. But no thanks.
He might refer to "right minded people" with the "right" ideology, whatever that might mean. For the "greater good", of course.
The facile answer is, "have an educated public who can make those decisions themselves". But it seems clear to me that the "educated public" approach has failed. The spread of memetic hazards has risen to the level where a significant segment of the public have been robbed of their ability to think critically, and the post-Enlightenment consensus that objective reality exists is under attack.
Beyond fighting a Fabian struggle in favor of critical thinking and quality information flows (which are lacking all across our society, even if that lack is particularly obvious with a certain political group) I'm by no means certain what a good, useful, and just response ought to be.
I am confident that the danger is real and needs to be acknowledged. We need to find paths forward if we're to have any hope of keeping our civilization. And that means talking (and doing something) about the "propaganda, misinformation, and outright lies". Sticking our heads in the sand and screaming "Free Speech!" while the tidal wave informational sewage rolls over us isn't going to be sufficient.
Education != ability to think critically. It is a problem of biology - we are hardwired to believe things in a certain way based on all kinds of cognitive biases, etc. I don't see a way around regulation, and I don't see a path towards effective regulation given the current system benefits those who would design the regulations.
> "And that means talking (and doing something) about the 'propaganda, misinformation, and outright lies'"
The problem with your viewpoint is that, unless you plan to remove the ability of large swaths of the population who have been "robbed of their ability to think critically" to vote, ending democracy as we know it, whichever authority you construct to define what is "true" may not remain under the control of you and people who think as you do and then it will become Orwell's Ministry of Truth in all but name. Game over; civilization loses.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions" as they say. Forgive us old-school liberals if we choose not to follow you down that road.
I reject the presumptions that the only possible response is a unitary authority and that we shouldn't do anything in response because any such response is automatically going to be bad. Come, on, this is Hacker News!
Why do we have to have a single central authority? We ought to at least be willing to speculate about AI-mediated Blockchains of Truth that reward factually accurate reporting. Or about ways to smoothly tell users how accurate the source they're reading has been in the past, or how to implement smart filtering of information streams to protect our own minds so that we can avoid wasting time on cognitive hazards.
The point is that we have options beyond just sitting back and giving up. The problem is real, as are the risks to responding poorly. But that doesn't justify not responding at all.
The options you described just leave us with a less direct version of what we have now. Someone owns and runs media companies because it is a source of influence and income. Someone will run the AI-mediated Blockchains of Truth, etc for the same reasons. All you will accomplish is shifting the power around momentarily, perhaps even to worse actors than we have now. But even if your ideas are very vague they are at least approaching concrete which is good because we can compare with existing solutions. But looking at those ideas, I don't see anything promising there.
Which is fine. It's a tough problem, and I have no expectation that a random poster (myself included) is going to suddenly come up with a perfect solution. As we search for solutions, there are at least two fallacious lines of reasoning that need to be rejected:
Something must be done. This is something. This must be done!
And,
This won't work. Therefore, nothing will work. We should do nothing!
I understand and agree with those who reject the first. But turning from the first only to embrace the second is also a mistake.
Did someone here embrace "This won't work. Therefore, nothing will work. We should do nothing!"? I don't see that in this thread, but feel free to point it out if I missed it.
I simply started with a seemingly easy question: who decides what is and is not fake news? Trying to answer that question yourself hopefully helps illustrate just how challenging it is to find a solution that isn't worse than the problem. But hopefully with enough pondering on that question, one does start to lean in the direction that any solution must include individuals ultimately deciding for themselves what is and isn't fake news.
Does that imply nothing will work? For sure it does not. But it might imply we are already there: the best cure for fake news might be working harder to make real news more persuasive. It could be a boring matter of will and effort - a lot of grunt work. By talking to the journalists engaged in that work, you would uncover the actual challenges and perhaps ideas around the technologies that could better empower that change. Or not. The internet itself was supposed to help us become better informed. Clicks + adverts + automatic measurement, rinse, and repeat; proved that ideal wrong. At least for now.
Yes, this is Hacker News and that means we understand systems thinking.
Either the people collectively get a say in what is "factually accurate", an ill-defined concept in the first place, or they don't (authoritarianism); the mechanics do not matter. And if we accept your premise that large swaths of the population have been "robbed of their ability to think critically", then whatever the system decides is "factually accurate" will be corrupted if the people have a say in it. Or, in other words, "garbage in, garbage out".
If there are other options, please articulate them.
I disagree to an extent, but it is a compelling argument. Can you elaborate on Fabian struggle? I never heard the expression used.
The expression is derived from 'Fabian strategy'[1], but the 'strategy' part didn't seem quite appropriate, since this isn't a military campaign. I've heard it before, but a quick round of googling shows that the 'Fabian struggle' construction is considerably rarer than I expected.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_strategy
I am not confident the danger is an existential threat. I think it's an interesting problem that markets are doing a poor job of solving. But since I don't want any government in charge of deciding what is fake news and you haven't sugeested a concrete solution so we can compare the cure to the illness, then what we have now will have to be sufficient.
We have a system to filter "real" information from "fake" information where distributing fake information is a lucrative business. It is called peer review, and it can be applied to news as well as science, and doesn't require some nefarious government czar.
Peer review of news by citizens is already done in an informal way based on what they click on and share. Even when you point someone to Snopes showing a news article is false, people will respond saying Snopes is run by lefties and cannot be trusted. All you are suggesting is mob rule - the majority decides what is fake news.
That's the opposite of peer review. Peer review means experts in the field review articles, not the unwashed masses.
That would be a horrible system for news. It would put a huge amount of power in the hands of whoever is determined to be an expert.
And I don't see how it fulfills your previous claim:
> and doesn't require some nefarious government czar.
Because someone has to decide who the experts are. Peer review in science is performed by those who have a degree from a government accredited institution.
> It's usually used by people who would like to limit freedom of speech much more than that.
Source with stats? Here's my anecdotal counter evidence: I only ever hear it used by people who don't want to limit speech except when it will cause immediate physical harm.