"Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is a popular analogy for speech or actions whose principal purpose is to create panic, and in particular for speech or actions which may for that reason be thought to be outside the scope of free speech protections.
It was first used against a man in 1917 for giving an anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio. It was later popularized to charge people handing out anti-war flyers opposing the WWI draft with sedition.
It was later overturned in 1969, in which the Supreme Court held that "the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."
The fact that people still cite this analogy to argue for the abridgment of free speech 100 years later is truly disturbing.
I'm not ignorant of the history I merely disagree.
I think promoting what every educated person knows are provable falsehoods liable to cause the death of thousands during a public emergency ought to fall outside of free speech. There isn't some controversy about whether covid vaccines change your DNA or whether horse paste is an effective treatment that obviates the need to vaccinate. These are lies and every promoter of such lies has heard them denounced as such a hundred times thus it is willfully promoting what they reasonably ought to know are lies that they reasonably ought to know will lead to deaths. If they were promoting it during the pandemic they were doing so during a public health emergency.
That said the government isn't trying to prosecute they are trying to advise social media companies to stop boosting lies and hosting it. Let the dissenters get a mastodon if they want to share such.
It was first used against a man in 1917 for giving an anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio. It was later popularized to charge people handing out anti-war flyers opposing the WWI draft with sedition.
It was later overturned in 1969, in which the Supreme Court held that "the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."
The fact that people still cite this analogy to argue for the abridgment of free speech 100 years later is truly disturbing.