Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Is Deliberately Misleading People On the Internet Free Speech?
Slashdot reader dryriver writes:
Before anyone cries "free speech must always be free," let me qualify the question. Under a myriad of different internet sites and blogs are these click-through adverts that promise quick "miracle cures" for everything from toenail fungus to hair loss to tinnitus to age-related skin wrinkles to cancer. A lot of the ads begin with copy that reads "This one weird trick cures....." Most of the "cures" on offer are complete and utter crap designed to lift a few dollars from the credit cards of hundreds of thousands of gullible internet users. The IQ boosting pills that supposedly give you "amazing mental focus after just 2 weeks" don't work at all. Neither do any of the anti-ageing or anti-wrinkle creams, regardless of which "miracle berry" extract they put in them this year. And if you try to cure your cancer with an Internet remedy rather than seeing a doctor, you may actually wind up dead.
So the question -- is peddling this stuff online really "free speech"? You are promising something grandiose in exchange for hard cash that you know doesn't deliver any benefits at all.
Long-time Slashdot reader apraetor counters, "But how do you determine what is 'true'?" And Slashdot reader ToTheStars argues "It's already established that making claims about medicine is subject to scrutiny by the FDA (or the relevant authority in your jurisdiction)." But are other things the equivalent of yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theatre? Leave your best thoughts in the comments. Is deliberately misleading people on the internet free speech?
So the question -- is peddling this stuff online really "free speech"? You are promising something grandiose in exchange for hard cash that you know doesn't deliver any benefits at all.
Long-time Slashdot reader apraetor counters, "But how do you determine what is 'true'?" And Slashdot reader ToTheStars argues "It's already established that making claims about medicine is subject to scrutiny by the FDA (or the relevant authority in your jurisdiction)." But are other things the equivalent of yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theatre? Leave your best thoughts in the comments. Is deliberately misleading people on the internet free speech?
Making it a free speech issue is taking it too far, it's always really just been about whether it's false advertising / fair trade / fraud / etc. We already have a lot of laws that govern what businesses can and cannot say to customers in their efforts to sell them things. None of them are free speech violations, they're consumer protection limits. Enforcement is the real problem.
then stop with the FUD that portrays those companies as actively working against the interests of society and most people.
All companies will actively work against the interests of society and most people if it is within their own interests to do so. Microsoft & the rest of the big tech companies do so everyday by actively evading paying their fair share of taxes.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
The new problem is this:
For most of the past, free speech has come with the practical limitation that the person making the speech was associated to it, and had some burden of personal accountability. So, whether out of shame, counter-arguments, not being able to hide behind a fictitious agent, etc., people making demonstrably false statements would have limits to the quantity and quality of their speech. And, by the way, people's gullibility of it.
Now we have this new channel where everyone, including fake names and anonymous agents, are equal. In your Facebook feed, everyone has an equal voice, which contrary to some people's original idea of the internet, doesn't now make it possible for the best and most thoughtful opinions to be spread, but rather the worst. And not everyone is smart enough to tell the difference, or even has the time.
Newspapers, journalists, universities, governments, etc. previously served the role as our filter of what was "high quality". For good and bad, of course, because they're not always right.
But now we took off the filter. How do we get some of it back without taking away the parts we like?
Freedom leads to mistakes in the short term; critical thought and independence in the long term.
Censorship leads to safety in the short term; naivete and dependence in the long term.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
And there's a moderation system here, theoretically designed to judge the quality of speech without actually restricting it. Granted, as any forum can become something of an echo-chamber then perhaps it is not perfect, but usually poor-quality comments get moderated down and high-quality comments moderated up.
As to the FUD about Microsoft in particular, Microsoft's history since its inception has been fraught with nefariousness. MS-DOS was essentially a clone of CP/M, at least as far as the particulars of the user interface are concerned. At one point Microsoft used an OEM licensing model that essentially froze-out competing OSes because the OEM had to pay for Microsoft for all personal computers sold whether or not Microsoft's OSes were wanted by the end-customer. Microsoft over the years has attempted to freeze-out competition through writing their own function-alike software and then once it becomes popular, writing proprietary components into it and pushing for those proprietary components to be widely implemented such that competitors' software is unable to work.
If Microsoft software was high quality, bug-free, security-hole-free, then perhaps there wouldn't be so much anger at Microsoft's business practices, but Microsoft's software has historically been both bug-riddled and terribly insecure and open for exploitation. Entire industries have been built to attempt to make up for mediocre software. It's no surprise when a new target-for-compatiblity becomes concerned, as history has demonstrated that by introducing compatibility, Microsoft will break that compatibility when it feels the time is right to get customers to migrate to Microsoft off of whatever previous software they used, and the cycle repeats.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
All speech should be legal, full stop. Free speech should always be an absolute right. The consequences of that speech should be what is punished, not the speech itself. The whole "shouting fire" thing is actually 100% legal in and of itself. Doing so and causing a stampede that results in serious injuries? Punish for the panic and injuries, not the shouting.
"Hate speech" is a bullshit term used to mean "speech I find unsavory" and therefore should not hold any weight.
This is a mess. How does lying to an armed hostile compare to lying to the American (or any) people in any logical fashion? Your scenario about the anti-vaxer's is also founded on the peculiar assertion that we would ban Anti-Vaccine Speech in specific instead of *False* speech. Truth is already an absolute defense to libel and slander laws (at least in the US, usual not-a-lawyer disclaimer), and of course fraud laws. If in the event of actual government conspiracy, the whistle blowers should be presenting proof of some form anyway.
And your last paragraph is the worst of all. The people can ONLY be smart enough to make the right decision if they have valid information to decide on. Garbage in, garbage out works just as well for people as it does for computers. Blatantly permitting outright false propaganda, or even worse hamstringing attempts to reveal the truth and forcing outlets to carry the propaganda alongside the truth constitutes blatantly tipping the scales for the liars side.
What does it say about your ideology when you have to lie to the people to make them support you?
Hmm, TATA Group, TCS is TATA Groups main moneymaker. And they make money by exploiting Indian IT worker and the H1B system.
Very charitable ...