Comment by estebarb
1 year ago
Problem is: some people will demand their free speech rights are being violated. The legal system is a weak guarantee: just check how the legal system works in a dictatorship. Or if a political faction decide to throw a lot of money into fake news and opinion laundering.
It is baffling to me how "free speech" has come to mean "freedom to use mass broadcasting systems".
Of course anyone should be free to publicly say anything, however untrue it might be.
Should they be free to broadcast their nonsense to million of people?
I don't know, but I do feel these are two different things.
They are different: in the U.S. that's why "freedom of the press" is also written down in the First Amendment, and historically, that's exactly how the U.S. courts have interpreted the phrase "freedom of the press" - as a (pretty) general right for anyone to use any media technology they can access to spread any ideas they want. There are always some limits, but from the start "the press" meant "the printing press", not "institutionalized news organizations". It's a general technology-usage right, not a specialized right for a certain group. Everyone is allowed to do more than just talk, or even shout. People can have different opinions on how wise that right is, but in the US at least, you are indeed free to broadcast your nonsense to millions of people, if you have the resources.
> broadcast your nonsense to millions of people, if you have the resources
Spot on, today you can do that as close to free as possible. In the eras past that was not possible it was expensive so only few could do it and that served as a moderating influence, it was not easy for fringe beliefs to become mainstream. The gatekeeping had the downside of suppressing voices particularly minority and oppressed voices so it was not all rosy.
The only thing we know is we can no longer use the past as reference to model how the future of politics , governance or media will be, which institutions will survive and in what distorted versions in say even 10-30 years.
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