(C) Alec Muffett's DropSafe blog.
Author Name: Alec Muffett
This story was originally published on allecmuffett.com. [1]
License: CC-BY-SA 3.0.[2]
Thought for the Day
2023-02-16 21:17:45+00:00
Just off a phone call with someone who proposed that the modern-day problem with “free speech” as espoused by the likes of JS Mill et al — that speech, even odious speech, should be aired so that falsehood can be shot down and so that truth can be found — the problem apparently is that social media acts as an amplifier, so that falsehood and hate can spread too quickly and prolifically for the truth to catch up.
I’m reasonably certain that this argument was also laid at the feet of the printing press, of pamphlets and newspapers, of the postal service, of telegrams, radios, televisions and fax machines, and so I reflexively dismiss it; but a new thought (to me) also crossed my mind this evening, which was this:
People who complain that the progress of technology has enabled us to utter speech with fewer boundaries and greater speed than ever before, have probably not really considered the equal or greater advancements in censorship, surveillance, and chilling of speech that new technology also affords.
The cheap and easy solution to fulfilling a state mandate for censorship filtering of public discourse, is massive over-blocking, and it is what Mill himself rails against.
But what we can do with tracking and surveillance and chilling of speech — chilling literary as well as physical freedom of association — would be the incomprehensible stuff of Mill’s nightmares.
[END]
[1] URL:
https://alecmuffett.com/article/34184
[2] URL:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
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