"They argued no one should be prosecuted for sharing truthful information, even when it is frightening."
Those academics are tightening the ratchet of expectations. What happened to freedom to share false information? Gone?
Those academics are tightening the ratchet of expectations. What happened to freedom to share false information? Gone?
In today's interconnected world, it's a very dangerous right that has resulted in deaths - be it Rohingya people in Myanmar, or even Samuel Paty in France, just to name two recent examples of the top of my head.
A good discussion needs to be had on the limits we ( per country) want to have on that right. Too many people today can't disseminate truth from bullshit, and many bullshiters, on a small or big ( e.g. Alex Jones or Fox News or Boris Johnson) scale profit from this with serious consequences for the health of people ( death, mental health for people thinking they're always under attack by X) and societies. What good is a freedom when society is falling apart because everyone hates/is afraid of each other and nobody can agree on anything?
3000 people also die a year from asprin. Everything in life is a trade off.
And genocides happened, why prevent another one?
As they say, "one death is a tragedy, a million deaths merely a statistic". Don't fall into this trap.
Stalin didn't try to protect the populace from misinformation. He tried to stay in power whatever the cost, industrialise the country and make it more powerful ( economically and militarily) and united ( aka destroy ethnic groups). People died due to those things, his stubbornness and refusal to accept reality ( industrialisation impact, Germany), his paranoia ( Great Purges, among other things), and his genocidal tendencies (poles and others) , not because they were murdered for spreading misinformation about the NEP or whatever.