The government has an explicit limitation on excersizing that power. The first amendment is, well, first, its not exactly forgettable. The primary law of our land is "government can't fuck around with free speech". I see no ambiguity here. There's a huge difference between shouting fire in a theater vs saying, are the vaccines safe. We can have our disagreements but its in nobody's interest to outlaw them.

> The first amendment is, well, first,

Well, no, the first article of amendment (usually abbreviated “first amendment”) is the eighth article of the Constitution, following the seven original articles. “Amendment” is revision/change.

Well thank you for your lawyering, but what's your point? The people that invented this country thought it was very important that people can speak freely (including you!), and you're like "nah"?

Oh please. Those are incredibly narrowly defined. Our republic won’t fall because some drug company can’t lie about a product they are selling.

This is a false equivalency - “telling Pfizer they can’t claim their drug cures AIDS is no different than suppressing the Covid lab leak theory”.

Yeah, it’s massively different.

Wat. I'm not arguing for a specific instance of 'has great effects' for judging good/bad speech.

Just that the government already has the power to judge good/bad speech - and people are not revolting against that.

Why doesn't the government's ability to judge good/bad speech give you the heebie-jeebies, but that specific instance does?

What I said, scope.