But you should also expect the consequences if you spreading fake news and lies.
Free speech means that the gov can not put you in jail because of that but private people can punish you for spreading fake news. This is there freedom.
Yes you can cry then that this is cancel culture but every time someone cries about cancel culture usually its because the person said something stupid which people did not like and now want's to take away there freedom of speech.
Broadly agree. Freedom of speech definitely means that people may not want to associate with you any longer.
But 'cancel culture' wouldn't be an issue if that was all - if individual people simply chose to stop associating with the wrong-thinker. Not even if a lot of people did at once.
The problem is that when those people are not individual fellow citizens, but the "Trust & Safety Team" or the "Anti-Evil Team" at $Megacorporation, they don't just stop doing business with you - they can effectively cut you off from most of the rest of the world, whether or not the rest of the world wants it.
Simply put, the problem is that they have too much power. They have the same freedom of association as private citizens, but their ability to punish people is incomparably greater and isn't subject to the same restraint as the government's.
> but their ability to punish people is incomparably greater and isn't subject to the same restraint as the government's.
If Facebook/Google/Amazon/Cloudflare deny your their services you can still always find a new provider (see Gab).
If the government shuts you down, you need to emigrate to start back up.
Sure, its a PIA to re-setup a service meant for AWS not on AWS but that's really the core of AWS's offering. Big Tech is not the grocery store, you will live without twitter, you will not live without food.
The power a corperation has is governed by the Charter that was (now implicitly) granted by the State they're incorperated in. If you think they have too much power in their Charter complain to that state.
The problem with this framing is who decides what is "misinformation"? And is that party incorruptible? Why not let people speak and let the audience decide for themselves. Because they may not decide what you decide?
Fun fact: the 'fire in a crowded theater' example was originally used as an analogy to justify censoring pacifist opposition to the First World War and the military draft.
This doesn't make the example invalid, mind you. But I consider it a warning to be extremely careful and skeptical when equating 'dangerous' speech to immediate physical damage.
if the intention is to spread lies - then I would say no. Otherwise very much yes, because who would be the authority to determine the facts from the fake?
We abolished the power of the inquisition some centuries before, because of bad experience with the concept of holy truth or canon.
Science is an open process, where it is clear that some positions held today, will be abolished in the future, with new data.
Or is the concept to let only certified scientists speak up? Well, that opens up the question, who gets to decide who is one.
I think it is very dangerous to influence that process, with state authority declaring what is right and what is wrong.
And in this specific case it seems to be about an "official" scientist Dr. Malone(who was invited) who might have gone off the rails quite some time ago. But it is still important for people do decide on who to trust, than installing a government institution to do so. Because I do not know molecular biology - but I like to know, that one of the people involved with the invention of mRNA vaccines strongly advises against it. And I can read about it all and then decide for me it is likely mostly tinfoil hat area.
But if the government would activly suppress and censor his opinion - I might think, there is actually more behind.
