He is however allowing real people to have free speech as defined within the bounds of law (and the rules of the platform obviously), so that different viewpoints can be aired in the light of day.
I don’t blame the general public for not understanding what goes on in the world - the filtering of what information is shown to the public is effective.
I am an old guy (in my 70s) and I like to reflect back on all the things that have been labeled “conspiracy theories” in my life that were later to be shown to be true. Breathtaking in the scope of deception.
This little parenthetical destroys the rest of your claim.
I’m not sure I believe in free speech for everyone. I think some people are simply too powerful to be able to say whatever they want.
The implication of the above comment is that we cannot trust that any claim is misinformation, much less attempt to censor it, because cases of supposed misinformation in the past have turned out to be true. This is the same category of argument made in defense of conspiracy theories - MKUltra was real so how can you deny the possibility that ${CONSPIRACY} is also true?
Obviously this line of reasoning (although it's really a politically motivated argument,) is faulty. Actual disinformation and lies do exist, and it is possible to differentiate between them in most cases - even most controversial cases. That there is so much effort, in the name of "free speech," to muddy the waters and normalize fear of "truth itself" as the only real cognitive hazard is itself telling.
How? What do you say of the lab-leak hypothesis for COVID?
Also, while "lab leak theory" is often brought up as an example of "the truth" being censored (despite, AFAIK, there being no concrete evidence yet supporting it) it's worth noting that alternative COVID theories were never censored in any meaningful sense, even on mainstream social media. People discussed it, kept discussing it, and discuss it still. I will say I'm confident that when the facts come out one way or another, they will come from the scientific community, not randoms on the internet.
Even if this turns out to be a case of overcorrection by social media platforms (arguably an understandable case, given how much batshit insane stuff was going around back then) it's also a counter-argument to the premise that social media platforms or "Big Tech" control "the narrative" to any significant degree, or really act as the de facto "public square."
But to ignore that, of course authorities are going to label criticism as misinformation. Of course that's what happens. I was hoping we could tacitly assume that misinformation as denying clear vote outcomes, deliberately going against science and so on.
https://theintercept.com/2023/07/12/covid-documents-house-re...
The people who were asking for transparecy were to be dismissed by the team under the "conspiracy theorist" label.
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/why-proximal-origins-mu...
Ok, so the case is a pretty decent edge case. However, I wrote "deliberately going against science", which I don't see happening here. Here, people did more science disagreeing with other science (if you can call it that). In this case the first "research" seems to have an agenda and should indeed warrant criticism. And the criticism is good with data to back it up.
The same does not happen with climate denialists for example - just plain old misinformation with an agenda. They are free to publish papers, yet don't seem to be able to, at least with convincing results.
To put my point in short: I don't think we should call something that has data to back it up and the intention to get to the truth misinformation in the context of this discussion. Regardless how it's labelled by authorities.
It's hard to infer people's intention. Maybe I'm being naive but I think even flat earthers have the earnest intention of getting to the truth and use data and observations.
My algorithm to deal with untruth is engaging with everyone and asking for clarification/evidence. To me creating a blanket label for "people you should never listen to" is dangerous.
Before the Third Reich there was the Weimar Republic, which did have vigorous suppression of speech:
'As I explained in my review of Eric Berkowitz’s excellent book, “Dangerous Ideas: A Brief History of Censorship in the West, from the Ancients to Fake News,” Weimar Germany had laws banning hateful speech (particularly hateful speech directed at Jews), and top Nazis including Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch and Julius Streicher actually were sentenced to prison time for violating them. The efforts of the Weimar Republic to suppress the speech of the Nazis are so well known in academic circles that one professor has described the idea that speech restrictions would have stopped the Nazis as “the Weimar Fallacy.”'
'A 1922 law passed in response to violent political agitators such as the Nazis permitted Weimar authorities to censor press criticism of the government and advocacy of violence. This was followed by a number of emergency decrees expanding the power to censor newspapers. The Weimar Republic not only shut down hundreds of Nazi newspapers — in a two-year period, they shut down 99 in Prussia alone — but they accelerated that crackdown on speech as the Nazis ascended to power. Hitler himself was banned from speaking in several German states from 1925 until 1927.'
'Far from being an impediment to the spread of National Socialist ideology, Hitler and the Nazis used the attempts to suppress their speech as public relations coups. The party waved the ban like a bloody shirt to claim they were being targeted for exposing the international conspiracy to suppress “true” Germans.' [0]
[0] From: https://www.thefire.org/news/blogs/eternally-radical-idea/wo...
So your fears are exactly backward. It’s the suppression, not the expression, that is the problem.