The bottom line with this whole debate is, when is comes to information, there should be no arbiter of truth.
If you have an arbiter of truth, then you have taken the path to tyranny.
Therefore free speech on all platforms must be upheld.
The exception to free speech is calls to violence, which is not opinion or information.
When I first read this, my gut reaction was to counter the statements but I did not want to act reflexively. I acknowledge that there has been some thread drift.
After thinking about it for a while, I am responding, with the qualification that I know that I don’t have the answers. So many of us want Free Speech as the ideal and in the USA (and so many other countries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country), it is a treasured ideal.
In my younger days, I would have agreed with your “tyranny” and your “arbiter of truth” conclusions. I may not even have included the one exception that you included. But, I have changed over time, whether I like to admit it or not.
In the US, the arbiters of truth are certainly not the scientists or engineers; they are the judicial branch of government.
To illustrate, I looked at the exceptions to freedom of speech in the US:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptionsI pretty much want every one of those exceptions to be in place. I don’t want to see kiddie porn all over the place, crime scene gore all over the place, people stealing other people’s works, violence incitement and threats, and yes, false statements. I don’t even want people to be allowed to scream (as a right), “active shooter” (replacing “fire”) in a crowded area, when there is none.
What I am saying is simply that I believe in Freedom of Speech and I also believe in a whole lot of restrictions.
What I am also saying is that I believe in a community standard and I do so knowing that, to some degree, those standards are both dynamic and subjective (e.g., poorly defined). We had some good discussion about this earlier
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/the-future-of-online-discussion-how-do-you-see-it/msg2899818/#msg2899818Who gets to decide on those restrictions? I’m ok with the SCOTUS, as long as I agree and yes, I know what I just typed.
But, what happens when we are talking about an international venue rather than a national one? We have not worked all that out yet and it may end up with the national restrictions in place for that place, or multinational restrictions in place through agreement.
Like I said, I don’t have the answers, but I am asking different questions now than I used to and, for better or worse, ageing [for me] has a way of turning the philosophical into the practical.