This is what happens when conspiracy theories and propaganda go wildly unchecked in our “free market.” You get a populace saturated with garbage information thinking they need to do insane stuff like this to “save America.” Right wing media is the worst aggregator of this crap.
Ya, we have the right of free speech, but hate-filled and verifiably false speech/statements should be punished or at least labeled with mandatory warnings that indicate them as such.
The problem with that kind of thing is always “who decides what’s hate-filled and false?” If there was a Federal government mechanism for that in the United States it would now be in the hands of Trump and the Republicans.
You’re both right which is the real conundrum. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that conspiracy theories and propaganda in our hyperconnected social media fueled internet are incredibly dangerous and rot the foundations of democracy. Democracy can not survive if these kinds of things are left unchecked. By the same token however any mechanism that immediately springs to mind to combat them is ripe for abuse and easily subverted by fascists and totalitarians. I honestly don’t know what the solution is, only that we desperately need one.
TL;DR: of that whole thing boils down to “the problem is too hard to solve and all the solutions are worse than the problem so don’t even try”. I don’t agree with the premise because if we accept it, then democracy is doomed.
We can not have a functioning society when we can’t even get a majority of the citizens to agree on basic aspects of reality and half the people are convinced the other half are lizard people that are putting mind control drugs in the water supply. A functioning democracy requires an informed and educated populace, and unchecked propaganda, disinformation, and conspiracy theories lead to the opposite of that, particularly when you have a wealthy group that profits from spreading it.
As some of the other posters argued, this is a slippery slope to censorship by those in power, which does not allow for dissenting opinions to propogate.
Given that free speech doesn’t mean that anybody needs to listen, I feel that the problem (and solution) lies in the conduit for the free speech. I don’t understand the complexities of the laws but have wondered if adjusting the laws to hold entities accountable for their actions would have a positive effect. For example, an idiot shouting from the town square has a limited audience, but if a newspaper picks up the message and promotes it, aren’t they partially responsible for that message?
It gets tricky with opinion pieces, but we already have an established mechansm with newspapers’ opinion pages. One potential problem is that the current media companies enjoy no accountability, no content creation costs and profits from advertisers.
On that topic, I’d even go so far as to argue that advertisers share in the accountability of providing funds to organizations that support harmful messages.
There’s a lot more to this but would be interesting to see a country who has done it and if it had a net positive effect.
We have truth-in-advertising laws. You can’t make claims about a product that isn’t true.
Politics is just a product, being sold by a candidate. If that candidate lies about the product they “represent,” and the voters rely on those promised lies, the politician should be held responsible for that lie.
For instance, HitlerPig claimed for years that he had a first-rate health care plan that was two weeks away from release. Finally, during his debate with Harris, he admitted that all they had were “concepts” of a plan. Clearly, there was never a plan at all.
Politicians should be held accountable for their deliberate lies.
In practice I agree, but the crime of the left is being correct too early. I feel like that will play to our disadvantage when the media has cemented lies already that we’d be (I think) persecuted for correcting.
This is what happens when conspiracy theories and propaganda go wildly unchecked in our “free market.” You get a populace saturated with garbage information thinking they need to do insane stuff like this to “save America.” Right wing media is the worst aggregator of this crap.
Ya, we have the right of free speech, but hate-filled and verifiably false speech/statements should be punished or at least labeled with mandatory warnings that indicate them as such.
The problem with that kind of thing is always “who decides what’s hate-filled and false?” If there was a Federal government mechanism for that in the United States it would now be in the hands of Trump and the Republicans.
You’re both right which is the real conundrum. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that conspiracy theories and propaganda in our hyperconnected social media fueled internet are incredibly dangerous and rot the foundations of democracy. Democracy can not survive if these kinds of things are left unchecked. By the same token however any mechanism that immediately springs to mind to combat them is ripe for abuse and easily subverted by fascists and totalitarians. I honestly don’t know what the solution is, only that we desperately need one.
TL;DR: of that whole thing boils down to “the problem is too hard to solve and all the solutions are worse than the problem so don’t even try”. I don’t agree with the premise because if we accept it, then democracy is doomed.
We can not have a functioning society when we can’t even get a majority of the citizens to agree on basic aspects of reality and half the people are convinced the other half are lizard people that are putting mind control drugs in the water supply. A functioning democracy requires an informed and educated populace, and unchecked propaganda, disinformation, and conspiracy theories lead to the opposite of that, particularly when you have a wealthy group that profits from spreading it.
That’s a fair conclusion to draw, but that very well might mean you have to physically fight for the outcome you want.
Yes, but would things have gotten this far with a more reasonable information policy? I’d argue Trump would not have gotten elected (again).
As some of the other posters argued, this is a slippery slope to censorship by those in power, which does not allow for dissenting opinions to propogate.
Given that free speech doesn’t mean that anybody needs to listen, I feel that the problem (and solution) lies in the conduit for the free speech. I don’t understand the complexities of the laws but have wondered if adjusting the laws to hold entities accountable for their actions would have a positive effect. For example, an idiot shouting from the town square has a limited audience, but if a newspaper picks up the message and promotes it, aren’t they partially responsible for that message?
It gets tricky with opinion pieces, but we already have an established mechansm with newspapers’ opinion pages. One potential problem is that the current media companies enjoy no accountability, no content creation costs and profits from advertisers.
On that topic, I’d even go so far as to argue that advertisers share in the accountability of providing funds to organizations that support harmful messages.
There’s a lot more to this but would be interesting to see a country who has done it and if it had a net positive effect.
We have truth-in-advertising laws. You can’t make claims about a product that isn’t true.
Politics is just a product, being sold by a candidate. If that candidate lies about the product they “represent,” and the voters rely on those promised lies, the politician should be held responsible for that lie.
For instance, HitlerPig claimed for years that he had a first-rate health care plan that was two weeks away from release. Finally, during his debate with Harris, he admitted that all they had were “concepts” of a plan. Clearly, there was never a plan at all.
Politicians should be held accountable for their deliberate lies.
In practice I agree, but the crime of the left is being correct too early. I feel like that will play to our disadvantage when the media has cemented lies already that we’d be (I think) persecuted for correcting.