>"Here is a question: are you OK with hate speech on social media? If yes, then I don't think we can agree on much."
And now we circle back to the classic question, who determines what constitutes hate-speech and who is responsible for making the judgement? The kinds of people who end up as censors tend to be the most sensitive and the false-positive rate is very high. There is no shortage of partisan activists willing to indiscriminately label things as racist or hateful these days.
Additionally, what constitutes misinformation that costs lives? I remember back when claiming sanitizing surfaces did not reduce the spread of COVID was misinformation and grounds for a ban on social media platforms. Turns out, sanitizing surfaces really doesn't slow Covid at all. So much of what we know to be 'true' is actually in-flux and subject to change as more time and research goes on.
My point is, wanting to restrict hate-speech and misinformation is not a dangerous thing in and of itself, but it should be done with great caution and hesitancy because you run the risk of censoring true information and preventing people from expressing ideas that run against the orthodoxy of the censors. I hope that people don't view things as black and white as 'allow hate-speech, yes or no?'
And now we circle back to the classic question, who determines what constitutes hate-speech and who is responsible for making the judgement? The kinds of people who end up as censors tend to be the most sensitive and the false-positive rate is very high. There is no shortage of partisan activists willing to indiscriminately label things as racist or hateful these days.
Additionally, what constitutes misinformation that costs lives? I remember back when claiming sanitizing surfaces did not reduce the spread of COVID was misinformation and grounds for a ban on social media platforms. Turns out, sanitizing surfaces really doesn't slow Covid at all. So much of what we know to be 'true' is actually in-flux and subject to change as more time and research goes on.
My point is, wanting to restrict hate-speech and misinformation is not a dangerous thing in and of itself, but it should be done with great caution and hesitancy because you run the risk of censoring true information and preventing people from expressing ideas that run against the orthodoxy of the censors. I hope that people don't view things as black and white as 'allow hate-speech, yes or no?'