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Comment by koolba | Hacker News Reader

> Do you think that fake news websites (websites that intentionally post falsehoods to drive traffic) should be allowed to post on social media with impunity?

Unless it's directly inciting violence, yes.

> How is that workable? Many people cannot distinguish fake news from legitimate sources of information.

The track record of restricting information from people because you feel like you're smarter than they are is not great. It's also impractically subjective.

> Increasing noise (disinformation) is just as damaging to free speech as decreasing the signal (censorship).

I consider your suggestion of encouraging clamping down on free speech too dangerous to discuss. By your logic should I be able to prevent you from expressing it?

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Unless it's directly inciting violence, yes.

By this standard, Facebook must allow everything that you can find on Pornhub and Liveleak. Plus much of the material published in Al Qaeda's magazine Inspire. Telling people "crusaders should die" and "here's how to make a bomb from over the counter materials" aren't direct incitements to violence. Reddit could never have banned r/WatchPeopleDie or r/jailbait. (Although it could be hard to spot any actual jailbait in r/jailbait once torrents of MLM schemes and cryptocurrency scams flood every subreddit.)

The First Amendment protects a lot. That's why back in 2014/2015 American legislators who were unhappy with Islamist terrorist propaganda circulating on social media called on social media companies to do something instead of passing a law. A law that says "it's illegal to publish photos of dead Americans or their allies with gloating commentary" wouldn't survive the First Amendment. But social platforms could and did deplatform groups cheering for ISIS, to bipartisan approval.

You may sincerely believe that only direct incitements to violence should be suppressed on social media. I don't think that there is legislative support for that state of affairs, though. Not even among the conservative legislators who are currently the most critical of social media moderation decisions. If legislators managed to pass a law that said "social media platforms cannot suppress anything that is legal to publish under the First Amendment," I think that they would regret that choice a month after seeing the consequences.

Incredibly well put. I do truly wish that education taught debate these days.

One of the things required in debate classes is to argue for the other sides position.

I have found that most people I meet these days have never learned this ability to see things with the shoes on the other feet.

I feel like freedom of speech is about opinions and freedom to criticize. Not freedom to poison society with fake information passed off as real. Why would our founding fathers... Or anyone, want that?

> I consider your suggestion of encouraging clamping down on free speech too dangerous to discuss. By your logic should I be able to prevent you from expressing it?

On your own website or forum, absolutely. It's your property. GP has no right to use it that you do not expressly grant.

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