A limit to freedom of speech? - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...

All general discussion about politics that doesn't belong in any of the other forums.

Moderator: PoFo Political Circus Mods

#15192124
Steve_American wrote:Sir, you need to totally rethink this post.
1st you are for totally free speech.
Then you are for allowing laws that restrict free speech.

So, which one wins out in your mind.


Both of course hence my post. :roll:

The point was you shouldn't restrict what someone can say however you can legislate against the consequences of it. Such as libel, slander, hate speech and public safety. None of those things restrict your choice to perform doing them in any case but the harm they cause is the crime instead. In other words it isn't the words that are punished but the consequences of those words which are.
#15192131
B0ycey wrote:The point was you shouldn't restrict what someone can say however you can legislate against the consequences of it. Such as libel, slander, hate speech and public safety.

All of these laws are fascist. The four pillars of freedom are:

1 Free Speech
2 Democracy
3 Private property and free markets
4 The rule of Law

Fascist constantly attack and seek to undermine those four pillars. It doesn't matter what flavour of fascism it is, whether its the Nazis, the Bolsheviks, the Muslims, pre modern Christians or our modern day Cultural Marxists. Now none of those four pillars can be absolutes. And to say something is fascist is not to say that it is a hundred percent bad or even the wrong thing in every circumstance. However libel, slander, hate speech and public safety restrictions or fines for expressing an opinion all massively restrict free speech. Paedophiles like Jimmy Saville, rapists like Bill Cosby and criminal business executives like Robert Maxwell have all used libel and slander laws to shield, protect and continue their criminal activities. And remember here we're talking about people who were eventually exposed, even if after they were dead. Goodness knows what has been got away with because of libel and slander laws that will ow never be exposed.
#15192135
The point of slander laws is to protect the innocent @Rich. Sure there will be people who get away with things because their isn't the evidence to back up a story, but for every Saville there is a Christopher Jefferies and really it is those people we should be protecting when deciding to makes laws in any case. We aren't beyond "innocent before proven guilty" and this isn't the Minority Report. But even so freedoms doesn't mean no responsibility and just like all freedoms, you don't have the right to infringe on others rights in any case. Which is why you can say what you like in a free society. It isn't the words that get you in trouble. It is the consequences of those words that do.
#15192292
B0ycey wrote:Both of course hence my post. :roll:

The point was you shouldn't restrict what someone can say however you can legislate against the consequences of it. Such as libel, slander, hate speech and public safety. None of those things restrict your choice to perform doing them in any case but the harm they cause is the crime instead. In other words it isn't the words that are punished but the consequences of those words which are.

So, we should let people rail against and call for the assassination of presidents, and wait until someone tries it, before we do anything about calling for killing our president?
I reject this.
.
#15192835
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58743252

    YouTube has said it will remove content that spreads misinformation about all approved vaccines, expanding a ban on false claims about Covid-19 jabs.

    Videos that say approved vaccines are dangerous and cause autism, cancer or infertility are among those that will be taken down, the company said.

    The policy includes the termination of accounts of anti-vaccine influencers.

    Tech giants have been criticised for not doing more to counter false health information on their sites.
    In July, US President Joe Biden said social media platforms were largely responsible for people's scepticism in getting vaccinated by spreading misinformation, and appealed for them to address the issue.

    YouTube, which is owned by Google, said 130,000 videos were removed from its platform since last year, when it implemented a ban on content spreading misinformation about Covid vaccines.

    In a blog post, the company said it had seen false claims about Covid jabs "spill over into misinformation about vaccines in general". The new policy covers long-approved vaccines, such as those against measles or hepatitis B.

    "We're expanding our medical misinformation policies on YouTube with new guidelines on currently administered vaccines that are approved and confirmed to be safe and effective by local health authorities and the WHO," the post said, referring to the World Health Organization.
#15193854
Getting back to the OP, ---

I think that new tech may be testing the original concept of freedom of speech in the US.

My point is that new tech allows the spread of dumb ideas that people want to believe. If they want to believe it enough, they will believe it and spread it further.

AND, (as of now) there is never, and can never be, any legal consequences for this.

Take for example, that reported fact that EXON around 1980 drafted an internal memo that showed that CO2 being added to the air would cause enough global warming that around 2020 there would be serious climate disasters. The officers of EXON hid the memo for decades, and instead began a program to spread disinformation that would undermine the credibility of others who came to the same conclusions. IF this summary of the facts is true, then IMHO, EXON should be held accountable for this. It knowingly spent millions to cause the current climate change crisis. The scale of the damage so far suffered by the people who live in the forests of Calif. and Aust. is enough to bankrupt EXON, if it had to pay for those damages.

[Begin snark]I propose that we copy the anti-abortion law recently passed in Texas, and have some state (State-S) pass a law that any adult human person anywhere on earth be allowed to sue in State-S's court system for a minimum of $100K of damages the corp. of EXON (or any such corp. or person). And EXON must in any case pay the legal bills of both parties to the suit, as well as reimburse State-S for its court costs on a week by week basis. The plaintiff will win if on discovery it is found the EXON or any corp. spent $1M or more to create and/or spread disinformation that turns out to have caused $200M or more of damage in total to the people of the earth.
[/snark]
This law will scare others from doing what EXON did going forward.

Actually, the US needs to do some such thing to hold accountable the major spreaders of disinformation for profit that can be shown to have been knowingly created and/or spread false disinformation to protect profits (or maintain power) and that they knew was false. The statute of limitations would be 50 years to give the world time to realize what was done and that it was, in fact, false information.



.

Pretty clear France will be taking a leading role […]

He is even less coherent than Alex Jones. My gu[…]

Yes, and it did not order a ceasefire. Did you ev[…]

Israel-Palestinian War 2023

A new film has been released destroying the offici[…]