So you don't use a spam filter in your inbox? You just subscribe to more emails that you _do_ want to drown out the spam? It's easy to say "just counter with more speech!" but it's harder to see how that works at the scale of a global network with nation state actors, bots, and extreme imbalances of power (100 people dogpiling onto 1 person).
Refusing to listen to one’s opinion, which is a valid form of self-expression, is in no way comparable to actively removing one’s right to speech as censorship entails.
And removing that speech will? Because that’s worked in the past, right? Ya know, demonizing speech, demonizing those who practice said speech, culling them (either literally or metaphorically), ostracizing them. All of that has done wonders in history.
I think you underestimate the effectiveness of techniques like the Gish Gallop and Firehose of Falsehood. It is far easier to spew a bunch of lies and half-truths in pursuit of a particular talking point than it is to refute, even in the best of conditions.
Even worse: people tend to latch on to anything that validates their own biases, and often times, they'll dig in their heels when presented with facts that refute their views.
Social media makes this even worse by largely steering people so they remain within echo chambers.
Heavy-handed curtailment of speech seems like a cure that's worse than the disease, for sure, but the current state of affairs is starting to resemble the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
If your only concern is keeping other people from believing "the wrong thing", sure censors can effectively prevent the spread of any single "bad" idea. But bad ideas, as you point out, have habit of growing like weeds.
You can't expect censors to be able to effectively manage and filter the flood of new ideas generated every day, evaluating how much truth vs fiction they contain. They must necessarily use blunt instruments which restrict the spread of true information as well. So, if you care about having as many true facts available to yourself as possible however, you can't trust censors to provide it for you.
The truth (or the closest thing we have to the truth, as many truths aren't even available to us, either because we lack the tools to determine them or because they simply haven't been thought up yet) will always surface in an unconstrained information ecosystem because truths have the benefit of accurately describing reality, something people are inherently interested in. The truth might not always be the most popular or accessible idea, but it is incredibly resilient
Yeah, yeah, I know that "let's murder jfengel" is wrongthink, and I'm a terrible bigot for trying to suppress the free speech. I should be out there making the case to not murder me. But I take it personally.
I always find the “they want to murder me” route rather humorous. Who is “they”? Have they actively made reasonable threats to you or people you know? And I don’t just mean a post on 4chan calling for ethnic genocide, I mean genuine threats to you specifically.
In most situations, those who obtain power would rather work you as a slave force, and a fair portion would argue it’s already happened.
I'm unconcerned about people having different opinions from me, even (especially?) in matters of policy.
What does concern me, though, is when objective truths get drowned-out by an avalanche of bullshit, particularly when that results in meaningful harm to people.
An example of this is the anti-vaxx movement. Vaccines do not cause autism. Period. Full-stop. There has never been any evidence it was true, and at this point, the claim has been debunked over and over. Yet, there has been such a significant effort made to push the claim and platform it that diseases once officially declared eradicated in the US are starting to make repeated flare-ups in small regions. Furthermore, until recently, we had a third-party candidate for the President of the United States whose primary claim to fame is his anti-vaxx stance.
Here, the truth is falling behind. The anti-vaxx movement is growing, and it arguably already has a larger and more trusted platform than the truth. I don't see a turn-around unless/until either an existing disease mutates or a new one shows up that starts causing six-figure+ annual deaths to shock people back to the reality that vaccines are one of the best and most impactful inventions in human history, estimated to have already saved over a billion lives.
Why is this movement even a thing? There's nothing for anyone to gain by spreading this misinformation. It's been demonstrated many times that some of the biggest mouthpieces of the movement vaccinate themselves and their loved ones, so it's clear many within the movement don't even believe what they're saying. The only purpose I can gather is a need to increase misery, as if life doesn't include enough of it already.
> we had a third-party candidate for the President of the United States whose primary claim to fame is his anti-vaxx stance
No, his primary claim to fame was the fact that he was the son and nephew of two assassinated beloved politicians from a US political family. The
media characterized him as an anti-vaxxer. However, he described himself as more an advocate for vaccine safety and simply treating vaccines with the same safety scrutiny processes as other drug approval processes in the United States.
Speaking one's actual opinion should certainly be protected, but intentionally spreading disinformation is not free speach, it's fraud.
There isn't and should not be protection to commit fraud, although interpretation of many free speach laws in modern times are also used to protect fraudulent misinformation.
