Most Americans say the U.S. government and technology companies should each take steps to restrict false information and extremely violent content online.
65% of Americans support tech companies moderating false information online and 55% support the U.S. government taking these steps. These shares have increased since 2018. Americans are even more supportive of tech companies (71%) and the U.S. government (60%) restricting extremely violent content online.
So… what? Are you arguing for an expansion of “punitive models”?
i mean yeah i very much am fine with the government saying “you can’t say this” because i’m not a free speech absolutist and there are inarguable harms caused by certain forms of content being allowed to fester online. i’d personally quite like it if my country didn’t make it legal to explicitly call for, plan for, and encourage people to exterminate all queer people—and i’d quite like it if corporations took that line as well. many countries have a line of this sort with no such problems, even though it is explicitly more punitive than the US model of “say whatever you want”.
I’m honestly shocked at the pushback for “Maybe we shouldn’t let people preach things like ‘X group of people needs to die because my God said so!’ because it leads to unmitigated violence against the X group 99% of the time.”
That’s why we have three branches of government, a constitution, and state rights. Literally any government in bad hands can be abused. It’s a senseless argument
That literally goes for anything. All systems are subject to risk of abuse. No system is perfect. It’s not as nihilistic as saying “why even have society at all if it’s not perfect?” but it’s approaching that.
Well, for one thing, avoid the comfortable idea that the mere form of government can of itself safeguard a nation against despotism. Germany under President Hindenburg was a republic. And yet in this republic, an aggressive despotism took root and flourished under Adolf Hitler.
When a competent observer looks for signs of despotism in a community, he looks beyond fine words and noble phrases.
The thrust of the film is, obviously, that despotism can happen anywhere, to any kind of government system or any kind of economic system. You’re no safer by saying “restrictions mean we can be restricted!”
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i mean yeah i very much am fine with the government saying “you can’t say this” because i’m not a free speech absolutist and there are inarguable harms caused by certain forms of content being allowed to fester online. i’d personally quite like it if my country didn’t make it legal to explicitly call for, plan for, and encourage people to exterminate all queer people—and i’d quite like it if corporations took that line as well. many countries have a line of this sort with no such problems, even though it is explicitly more punitive than the US model of “say whatever you want”.
I’m honestly shocked at the pushback for “Maybe we shouldn’t let people preach things like ‘X group of people needs to die because my God said so!’ because it leads to unmitigated violence against the X group 99% of the time.”
All of these well intentioned ideas put in place the infrastructure for abuse when a not so well intentioned person comes to control it.
That’s why we have three branches of government, a constitution, and state rights. Literally any government in bad hands can be abused. It’s a senseless argument
That literally goes for anything. All systems are subject to risk of abuse. No system is perfect. It’s not as nihilistic as saying “why even have society at all if it’s not perfect?” but it’s approaching that.
Here’s a film that might benefit you. This is an Encyclopedia Britannica film short from 1946 about despotism.
The thrust of the film is, obviously, that despotism can happen anywhere, to any kind of government system or any kind of economic system. You’re no safer by saying “restrictions mean we can be restricted!”
right? It’s pretty obvious for whom this argument is about theoretical free speech philosophizing, and for whom it is about actual survival.