(inb4 1st amendment is only for the gov - that is a selective truth. the principles of free speech exist outside of government.)
People couldn't manipulate millions of others as easily. You couldn't even REACH millions of people easily. And you had to be an actual authority figure to be given that power (perhaps a corrupt practice but still).
The communications landscape is quite different from 2000, remarkably different from 1980, extremely different from 1960, a world away from 1920, and bares very little resemblance to 1820.
How do things in the 1500s and 1600s say that thins aren't different?
You said thousands of years, how do the lessons of 2000 BC show us things haven't changed?
1) No strong sense of "norms" in the culture
2) Manipulation of "Free Speech" into "Equal Speech"
3) Manipulation of a populist movement entirely built on nostalgia, the-jews-backstabbed-the-kaiser mythology, and "Germany First" so that they were far enough from Hitler that he could claim to not control them directly, but everyone else feared touching him would start a nationwide riot.
4) Political violence was normalized
5) Everything (churches, tennis clubs) had political party variants (ex: the socialist democrat Protestant church vs a communist one)
6) Terrorist attack on the Reichstag was a huge opportunity and turning point
There's a world of difference between the Internet of 2017 and Germany of 1932 that I really do suggest keeping them apart, and pick up the book.
I'd love to see examples of unfettered free speech from the 1600s or much MUCH easier.
399BC - Socrates speaks to jury at his trial: 'If you offered to let me off this time on condition I am not any longer to speak my mind... I should say to you, "Men of Athens, I shall obey the Gods rather than you."'
1516 - The Education of a Christian Prince by Erasmus. 'In a free state, tongues too should be free.'
In the 1600s, Galileo was executed for mere speech.
Based on the post I was expecting examples of where free speech overcame the kind of 'there are my kind of lies so they must be true you liar' stuff we're seeing now.
Totalitarianism has emerged in societies lacking free speech as well. it's usually a lot more complicated than that.
Regulating free speech is indeed a slippery slope. But it might need to be regulated, I don't have no idea to be honest. A free market works best for the common good when it's regulated though, and I could see it being the same way for free speech. But a slippery slope it is.
But it clearly has. Only in the past 5 year did it become possible for one guy in Romania to pose as a small town Ohio news agency (or 4) and spread nonsense to millions of people.
Do you feel that academic journals violate the principle of free speech? If not, why is what facebook is doing any different?
And to be clear, what we mean by "fake news" are stories that are demonstrably false with incorrect information that's never corrected even when it's revealed to be false. We're _not_ talking about what Trump calls "fake news," by which he means any narrative that doesn't paint him in a positive light.
Irrelevant. Limiting speech doesn't solve that contradiction, it only guarantees the worse outcome. More speech solves your proposed "contradiction" just fine.
If so then yes I agree. Government censorship is unacceptable. But that's not really comparable to private entities censoring on their own private whims.
In what way is Facebook at all comparable to a government? Is there some social contract that all people are entered into with Facebook? If so, what are the rights and responsibilities of that contract? And do note here, I'm talking about an implied social contract, not an actual contract (like an EULA).
What large portion of the internet do they "govern"? As best as I can tell you're arguing that any sufficiently large entity is essentially a government. That's ridiculous. So please, please explain what you do mean.
They have written community rules (don't know the exact name) that members are expected to comply with.
> What large portion of the internet do they "govern"?
The Facebook website (duh). Which, for a surprising amount of people, is literally "the internet" (or at least the part of it that they most interact with).
> As best as I can tell you're arguing that any sufficiently large entity is essentially a government.
No. For instance, Toyota is not a government because it does not set rules under which I can use their cars. Facebook does set rules under which I can use their platform, and it enforces them (which is the entire point of the submission). Setting rules and enforcing them is governance.
In fact, every moderator on any public forum is in the governance business. Since Facebook is so large, I find it reasonable to liken it to a government in terms of influence of its governance.
Just to be clear, this definition also makes Walmart the government of all Walmart stores, and me the government of my bedroom. Neither of those are in any way related to how the President is (a part of) the government of the United States.
[1] Edit: Within the boundaries of the law. But if that were a problem with your definition of "governance", then state governments (which operate within the boundaries of federal law) would not be governing either.
Except they don't. You should have said "inb4 John Stuart Mill", one of the founders of free speech philosophy who said that that the harm principle trumps freedom of speech (i.e. if an expression causes harm, then that expression can be silenced).
This idea of freedom of speech "as a principle" being a blank check to express whatever you want without consequences, is a new development.
I know the 1st amendment protects Americans from the government but today's free speech advocates, warriors, or whatever they are called look a bunch of angry men.
But that's besides the point. Freedom of speech has always been an imperfect principle. At anytime we are and have been censored in any society. In the west we probably have fewer censorships, but still we censor child porn, financial cheating / insider trading as well as "hate speech". And that is good. Other societies such as china do exactly the same just that the goal post has shifted a little more.
The point is this: freedom of speech is a relative term and has changed between societies and in time. It's never been free in absolute terms.
It's also recently not revealed the truth and made us less just, which is what it's only real purpose is.
The goalpost needs changing to make it achieve that again.
'Origins of freedom of speech and expression' section found here suggests otherwise (unless you want to be particular about the term 'constitution', rather than what it represents):
Socrates was sentenced to death for "corrupting the youth" - an act of speech. Considered by some to be a final nail for ancient athens - who had adored free speech before so much as to name a warship after the concept.
The principle of free speech is that actors who are not exercising the monopoly, coercive power of government are free to choose which views to express or relay, and that persuasion not obligation (legal, moral, or otherwise) of some actors to neutrality will determine the success of ideas in spreading.
The concept of free speech does not involve some private actors being entitled to other private actors’ resources.
(There is a legitimate issue with some “private” actors being really public actors where the structure of property rights and natural features of the market for certain infrastructure creates monopolies or oligopolies on essential mechanisms of communication.)
You say this as if it isn't a perfectly valid point. You have the right guaranteed by law to express an opinion. No one, no matter what size corporation or platform, is expected to give you a podium from which to do so.
More to the point, freedom of speech has never been an absolute, not in the way most extremist activists would have you believe. There has always been exceptions, but the common theme of them is incitement, either incitement of panic that endangers safety (yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre), incitement of hatred against a group of people, or incitement of a riot, on and on. There are all kinds of ways the Government limits your speech.
Since your use of Facebook is effectively using their network to promote your speech, Facebook is basically speaking for you to a certain degree, that means Facebook has a vested interest to not speak hateful nonsense so it by itself does not become the subject of either lawsuits from the Government or public outcry, the latter of which has already happened, the former entirely in the scope of possibilities if they continue to act like the typical tech bro and try not to take sides in the name of "Free Speech" a.k.a maximum audience numbers.
Please read up on this concept. It does not mean what you think, and is so frequently voiced as part of a case advocating restrictions on speech, it's become something of a hot-button topic.
https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
Money quote:
After Holmes' opinions in the Schenck trilogy, the law of the United States
was this: you could be convicted and sentenced to prison under the Espionage
Act if you criticized the war, or conscription, in a way that "obstructed"
conscription, which might mean as little as convincing people to write and
march and petition against it. This is the context of the "fire in a theater"
quote that people so love to brandish to justify censorship.
You might even want to reconsider your position.
The intersection of people arguing that ISPs are common carriers and also that corporations can deny you a platform.
I definitely accept the need for that intersection for the USA at this point.
Facebook can absolutely kick out people who don't behave on their platform. Playing the freedom of speech card doesn't work when you actively try to oppress other's freedom of speech through tactical manipulation.
Punishing individuals and groups who willfully and knowingly engage in spreading information containing false facts concocted to support their intolerant views is absolutely necessary to protect freedom of speech.
Punishing people for spreading information you don't like in the name of protecting free speech is double speak
Thinking a group of people is lesser than you because of the arrangement of their skin color pigmentation, and crying freedom of speech is being attacked, is not going to get you a lot of sympathy, especially when you now try to actively shut people up who are calling you out on it.
> freedom of speech means freedom to mislead
sure, but don't get all up and mighty when you get called out and shut down.
If this is the world we're headed into, by treating free speech as an absolute and inviolate, then I'm not sure it's a world I want to live in.
When nazis start inciting riots against my friends and loved ones, and quislings defend that speech as ok to disseminate because free speech, is this the world I want to live in?
I'm lucky, I don't look like anyone who's a target for white supremacists. Most of my friends and loved ones aren't that lucky.
I have a little bit of a different perspective because of that--the violence is already coming to our door and no amount of talking is going to cool white supremacist or nazi heads when they're out there.
So, universal, absolute free speech...is this building a world I want to inhabit? Increasingly, no. And proponents of an absolute and inviolate principle of free speech have no answer to the violence that's coming.
I'd love to be able to say I supported that principle that thoroughly, so if you've got one besides "just talk them out of attacking your friends and loved ones," I'm all ears.
They're talking about social media and the definition of "fake news". As I've come to experience in my life a lot of people don't even realize how biased their points of view are.
Data and statistics can be manipulated to support certain points of view. Lots of fallacies are regularly exploited by articles of all types on both sides of the spectrum. If you leave a group of conservatives to define what is fake news and what is not, you'll get quite a different list than if you left a group of liberals to do the same.
There's a real slippery slope here. Free speech is as much a social convention as it is legal protection from the government. Facebook has a near monopoly on social media. Google has the same for search. If Facebook and Google get to be the arbiter of truth, then free speech is lost.