The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation
Given how much the issue of free speech comes up here on HN -- especially regarding Twitter, Facebook, and politics -- I think this is a really important article for people to read.<p>It&#x27;s long, but is extremely nuanced and shows that the issue is far more complex than just &quot;the solution to offensive speech is more speech&quot;.<p>One key takeaway is in the middle:<p>&gt; <i>[Free speech is] a fundamentally optimistic vision: Good ideas win. The better argument will prove persuasive. There’s a countertradition, however. It’s alert to the ways in which demagogic leaders or movements can use propaganda, an older term that can be synonymous with disinformation. A crude authoritarian censors free speech. A clever one invokes it to play a trick, twisting facts to turn a mob on a subordinated group and, in the end, silence as well as endanger its members. Looking back at the rise of fascism and the Holocaust in her 1951 book “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” the political philosopher Hannah Arendt focused on the use of propaganda to “make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism.”</i><p>&gt; <i>In other words, good ideas do not necessarily triumph in the marketplace of ideas. “Free speech threatens democracy as much as it also provides for its flourishing,” the philosopher Jason Stanley and the linguist David Beaver argue in their forthcoming book, “The Politics of Language.”</i><p>But most of all the article shows that the history of free speech in the US is not simple at all -- and that our current view of it is very different from the period of 1949-1987 when broadcasters were subject to the &quot;fairness doctrine&quot;, which I think most people today aren&#x27;t even aware of.