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.
I'm taking the conservative approach: If it's legal it's free speech. Otherwise the advertisers wouldn't risk posting said info.
I can't accept that "if it's free speech it's legal" approach. Otherwise speech promoting violence and hatred would be legal.
its the Wikipedia article on free speech it should cover internet speech as well. Seems that there has been some cases about lying about facts and false advertising in commercial speech.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions
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.
There can be no generalized answer to this question. Any particular case would have to be decided on its merits. As mentioned, the FDA could punish them for making unsupported claims about a cure. The FTC could come after them for false advertising. But in any case, "on the internet" has absolutely nothing to do with it. There are no special rules for any of this stuff that apply only to the internet.
And you're asking this about Miracle Berries?
There are much better, and more costly, examples of lying on the internet.
I agree. Its a great question.
So let's stick with berries and see where that takes us.
Yes, it's free speech, just as it's free speech to deliberately mislead people in print or when speaking. But just as with in-print or speaking, deliberately making false statements opens you to the backlash when you're fact-checked and proven to be knowingly lying to people, along with the possibility of being sued for libel or slander (since you're talking about deliberate untruths, the public-figure exception will be exceptionally hard to hide behind).
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
Speech as in âoetry this miracle cure, put hot sauce in your eyes to make you see betterâ is free speech.
A sale as in âoetry this miracle cure, itâ(TM)s $25 hot sauce you can put in your eyesâ is a sales contract. You promise a cure and you either deliver or you donâ(TM)t. If you donâ(TM)t, itâ(TM)s called swindling, false advertising and a number of other things.
You can say you have a miracle cure but when you exchange goods youâ(TM)re entering a legal contract.
And thus, if you pay for this shit, pay it using a refundable method, whether itâ(TM)s a signed contract or credit card. The people too stupid to pay for it are also too stupid to know they can just call their CC company to cancel the sale, thus itâ(TM)s just a stupid-tax.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
While in Russia, there was a different metric for free speech than I've seen in the United States. My Thai friends also see differences in Thailand. I see additional differences against conservative viewpoints in Western Europe, and Canada.
Which country are you using as the metric for "Free Speech?" You mention the FDA, so I assume you mean an American viewpoint, but that should likely be explicitly stated, rather than implied.
Once money is involved, it's no longer free speech, it becomes "commercial speech."
Commercial speech operates under a different set of rules, with significantly more restrictions.
"False or misleading" commercial speech is explicitly against the law.
There is some wiggle room for "puffery" (world's best hamburger.)
There is also some wiggle room as long as warnings or disclaimers are included.
Some warnings and disclaimers are what we'd call "compelled speech," because the government requires businesses to say them.
Compelled speech is pretty much the opposite of free speech.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
...why can't everyone else? The police, after all, enforce the rules of society so if lying is okay for them should be okay for everyone else.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
There are kinds of deception that are illegal, fraud & perjury both come to mind quickly. Making false medical claims can also run afoul of the FDA rules.
This is the kind of thing that depends on the circumstances of whatever is going on, not on merely whether or not someone said something that isn't true on the internet. Commercial speech, in particular, has more restrictions than other kinds, so there isn't just one answer that can sum up every case, you'd have to go through the law to see what does or does not apply to a particular case.
You're not likely to get any kind of useful answer out of Slashdot for a question like that.
Ad's do not fall under free speech protection (at least in most countries). Most countries have legal frameworks for what is and is not acceptable advertising. For instance here in Australia most of those Ads are actually completely illegal as they fall under false advertising... good luck pursuing them on that though given most are not based in country.
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.
isn't free speech, neither is deliberately misleading speech.
Let's face it, half of all people are of below average intelligence and those people are more likely to be fooled. It's BAD ENOUGH when there are "News" institutions whose adherence to proper journalistic standards (like vetting commentators and sources and getting independent confirmation) is weak.
It's DOWN RIGHT CRIMINAL when people (or governments! Russia I'm talking to you) deliberately mislead people for their own purposes. Those easily fooled people can be swayed into doing all sorts of things that are not in the public (or their own) self interest.
Short of genetic engineering (don't worry, that's my field, I'm working on it!), we're not going to be raising the average IQ of people very quickly. (And as far as getting more than half of all people to be better than average, you'd better talk to your local mathematician). However, what we COULD do is provide a better, BASIC education for all citizens which would be the first line of defense against unfounded, unverified claims. An ability to use critical thinking (perhaps with a dose of basic economics and science for living in this commercial technological age) should be a prerequisite for living in this modern world, too bad it would be politically impossible to make it a requirement for voting.
I have heard that the real downfall of American democracy began (sorry to say) with Reagan. Even though it can be claimed that some of his ideas were good and he was inspiring to millions, his de-regulation of the economy unfortunately (from what I have heard, I was too young to understand) extended to education.
His, "let competition reign" philosophy broke the covenant of the American educational system so that (again, from what I understand), schools became increasingly dependent on their local circumstances. Hence, schools in rich districts could hire good teachers and had good facilities whereas schools in poor and rural districts fell farther and farther behind (not that they were equal in the first place). In this way, the (I think) nationwide premise that all Americans be given a good basic education was shattered; this has resulted in the paradox of Americans leading the world in science and technology and Nobel prizes (with a healthy influx of immigrants of course) yet with abysmal high school graduation rates and scores when compared to other wealthy nations.
Unfortunately, I don't see an easy way out; as this last year has proven the "moron" (not my words, the Secretary of State said it!) having been elected by the under educated bottom half, is running the show. He (and they) will continue to put into place policies that will further widen the divide between the educated and the poorly educated; between the professional class and between people who don't understand the scientific principle. I'm not quite sure where this will end up; the educated "elite" (when did being "the best" become a dirty word?) still retains power and money but it is unclear if the under educated will ever be able to see past the lies the leaders they elected tell them. Even then, it'll likely take a generation to rebuild the damage the Reagan revolution has done and truly rebuild an America that is restored equal opportunity THROUGH EDUCATION to all.
Then again, as a Republican Senator just said, our duly elected leader might trigger "World War III". Well in that case, we won't even have to wait for climate change to do us in, I guess our civilization and maybe even species just wasn't meant to last.
Are our USA school systems so crappy that students and graduates don't understand what Free Speech means? The OP doesn't seem to know the distinction between Commercial Speech and Political Speech. Commercial Speech is highly regulated while Political Speech is highly unregulated. All the Governments in the USA strictly regulate Commercial Speech and no one thinks much of that practice. Even the Supreme Court agrees. Surprisingly, the OP is ignorant of this fact. (Which I initially learned about in the Government Schools.)
This question makes me sick
Americans sure have given up on freedom.
on free speech just "the internet" these days?
IANAL, however; They're never "carefully defined" they're judged by the court.
In a civil case you'd have to prove you're actually a complete blithering idiot and really believe goji berries can cure cancer.
In a criminal case, the prosecution would have to prove you knew you were going to hasten the deaths of all the other idiots that binged on your berries instead of chemo.
The civil case is winnable, but fruitless because the company has no assets. The criminal case is probably too difficult to make and doesn't have enough political will behind it.
So, it's lose/lose unless you're in China; https://www.businessinsider.co...
since language was invented. Perhaps before.
Before asking a question about free-speech on the internet, always take the internet out of the question.
Is yelling fire in a crowded space protected by free speech? No. Clearly, and we know why.
Is standing on a street corner telling people that the sky is falling protected speech? Yes, I think so. Please tell me if you disagree.
The thing is we know a lot about the person standing on the street corner spewing lies, but ironically - on the internet we often don't know much about the person feeding us fake news, or spreading false ideas, or otherwise lying. In reality we can see that they're probably half baked, or dressed up in religious garb, or otherwise giving off signs that we probably shouldn't trust them. Here on the internet, we have no idea.
The solution is better moderation tools. In a perfect world, when someone walks up to me and starts espousing a flat earth or harmful vaccines, I can or most people can filter out the random information from the good. I can even punch someone if they're trying to be a complete dick.
On the internet, various platforms have still refused to implement the 'punch poster in the nose' button, so it's really important we come up with alternate ways of negatively feeding back on poor behaviour.
We have ample evidence that regulatory agencies can be manipulated by political pressure / lobbying. Let's say the FDA becomes the final arbiter of what is "real treatment". If someone were to discover a simple and inexpensive cure for depression - to what lengths would the Pharmaceutical industry go to get it labeled "fake" and preserve their $14.5 billion industry?
Do we really want to be prevented from ever making a mistake in judgement? In this post-modern society who are you willing to trust to define what is Real and what is Fake?
"Truth" is bought and sold in the halls of power - who watches the watchmen?
Otherwise, it's morally deceptive at best and legally fraudulent at worst. That's the pithy answer.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Making false statements is against the law in the United States, it is not protected speech. Freedom of speech (originally freedom of the press) is meant to protect the freedom to express opinions, especially unpopular ones, or opinions contrary to government doctrine. The Constitution has never attempted to protect lying.
The US Supreme Court has long held that Commercial Speech (speech that proposes an economic transaction) has reduced 1st amendment protection, particularly when said speech is false, misleading or coercive.
Free speech isn't absolute, the concept is more about freedom from prior restraint than freedom from all possible consequences.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
The United States has maintained a propaganda "news service" since 1942, broadcast in dozens of languages around the world. Before American Exceptionalists want to whine about what they pretend other countries are doing - there's as much evidence to support that Russia did buttkiss last year as there is that Bill Clinton sent a hitman after Vince Foster - maybe you should cease the hypocrisy first?
As other posters have noted, take "The Internet" out of it. People are still in thrall of the digital sophistication of the Internet, though those of us in the technology business know how easy it is for anyone to put up a website and post what they want. It gives everyone a printing press, and most of those digital tabloids are worse than the Weekly World News, i.e. they are not merely idiotic, but also uninteresting.
People who believe Alex Jones are also the sort who would believe the Weekly World News. As the Internet becomes less dazzling and more mundane to the populace, they will more and more figure out what is true and what is not.
Do Alex Jones and Weekly World News knowingly disseminate false information? Of course. But if someone lets on they believe something because they saw it in a Facebook comment or in the Weekly World News, it's a cue to indicate their level of sophistication.
It is very simple and well established. You are allowed to lie for your own reasons however and whenever you wish. (and accept the social consequences of such behaviour) Except in a few well defined circumstances. The most common one being any time money is changing hands. If you come up with some hokum product that you claim increases penis size (a perennial favourite of the scammers), you can tell people you have done so. But if you tell me it works in order to sell it to me, that's fraud. If you are a doctor, free speech doesn't give you the right to gossip about my medical information. Another is libel and slander. If you knowingly spread false information about someone else and a reasonable third party might expect that person to be harmed by such lies, you are guilty of libel or slander. (depending on how you spread the info)
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
The WHOLE point of free speech is that you can say whatever the fuck you want -- and people can't censor you for that.
Whether it is _actually_ true or not, is beside the point.
Now this may be slander, but that is a different issue.
Agree, lying to authorities and/or lying to consumers is a crime in the developed world, it has nothing to do with "free speech".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, period." President Obama, speech to the American Medical Association, June 15, 2009
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
That is what the term slander (spoken) and libel (anything besides spoken) mean.
Also, free speech only means the government can't interfere with you saying something as long as it is not defamatory or recklessly endangering people's lives (shouting fire in a crowded room)
It does not mean:
1) Companies refusing to help you publish something.
2) People refusing to listen/obey you.
3) Refusing to pay taxes or otherwise refuse to abide by general government rules that are not targeted at your free speech. But the government can not treat you different from other people that do the same thing for other reasons.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The FTC has jurisdiction over this stuff. In general the FTC hasn't been as aggressive in pursuing this sort of thing. Maybe the false advertising part of the FTC could be broken out and made into its own agency?
It could be the equivalent of Britain's ASA, but run by the government and with actual power to levy fines etc.
... then in effect are asking for a definition of "free speech" after the fact. Logically, this doesn't make much sense. However, if you *do* start from the axiom "free speech is good" you need to either find or construct a definition that is consistent with that axiom. In the meantime assuming that axiom does allow you to examine whether individual cases can be covered as "free speech".
If you start with the axiom that free speech is *always* good, then unless you think selling fraudulent medicine is good then your definition of "free speech" needs to exclude that.
If you start with the axiom that free speech is only *sometimes* good, then your definition can encompass selling fraudulent medicine; however that also raises the possibility that you should *sometimes* oppose free speech.
There are some people who clearly believe that free speech entails complete freedom from legal consequences -- including for libel, or deliberate misinformation that predictably harms or even kills someone. However I suspect there's an element of sloppy thinking there. We've all been raised to regard "free speech" as inviolable, so adopting a broader concept of "free speech" is a handy way of sneaking other things into the tent.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
community moderation when it comes to free speech is the absolute WORST system, it engenders reader bias and the site pretty much becomes as you mentioned an echo chamber for views supported by the majority. you only have to look at comments called out as shills or downvoted to oblivion for when they legitimately comment something that differs from the group think (and by differ I mean a legitimate opinion or view not the scumbag trolls and real company shills).
you have clearly highlighted the problem by providing your own FUD about Microsoft which pretty much guarentees you will be modded up regardless of how infactual much of it is.
Supreme Court case United States v. Alvarez ruled the 2005 version of the Stolen Valor Act was unconstitutional, as lying -- however repugnant -- is protected first amendment speech.
Punishment for fraud however -- lying for tangible (e.g.financial) gain -- as in the revised Stolen Valor Act of 2013, IS constitutional.
So claiming you have a product which does A, B and C and costs $X is NOT free speech if the product can be show to not actually accomplish what it claims (i.e. if it can be shown to be a lie), as that is considered fraud (i.e. lying for financial (tangible) gain).
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.
Ref:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Alvarez
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Valor_Act_of_2005
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Valor_Act_of_2013
"Fish" (David B. Trout)
The legality of shouting "fire!" in a theatre are not as clear as people commonly think. Even the Supreme Court judge who used it in an example walked back his opinion on the subject.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
What, no link?
http://www.lawpublish.com/amen...
Advertising Is Protected by the First Amendment
The question is often asked: Does the First Amendment protect advertisements? Advertising is indeed protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. However, advertising or "commercial speech" enjoys somewhat less First Amendment protection from governmental encroachment than other types of speech. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), for example, may regulate speech that is found to be "deceptive."
The comparison was first involved to convict a man advocating against America's involvement in the First World War. His agitation against it was deemed analogous to yelling fire in the crowded theater.
Obviously, that precedent was undone in the 60-70ies, when being against a war became all the rage.
Speech is speech. Deal with it.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Misinformation and disinformation are 'speech'. 'Free speech' refers to an ideal, which is sometimes enshrined into law to varying degrees. If you're attempting to ask "should disinformation be protected as 'free speech'?" then we have an actual question. It's generally held that deterring/remedying fraud is one of the most valid reasons for the existence of government. The summary questions if fraud should be considered protected under 'free speech'. I'm gonna have to say no. Let's make fraud legal and watch how fast society collapses, won't that be fun! In China, they wouldn't even have prosocial behavior to fall back on, melamine contamination for everyone!
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
But are other things the equivalent of yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theatre?
The "shouting fire in a crowded theater" is a bullshit statement from a bullshit case because of a bullshit law.
Holmes used his statement to justify the imprisonment of draft dissenters during world war one in clear contradiction of the first amendment which even he admitted, eventually. I will say it again, this is bad law, and anyone who wants to have a serious discussion about free speak should not utter it in polite company.
That being said, yeah the quality of advertising and accuracy of advertisers statements is something to look at. It does seem like many sites allow these snake oil salesmen to set up shop on their doorstep through frames or whatever. And they want to keep their reputation while blaming the advertisers without admitting responsibility for letting them in. Shame on them, they own the site, police the content.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
Is deliberately misleading people free speech? Absolutely.
Is speech whose primary purpose is to solicit a commercial transaction generally accepted as an exception to free speech? Yes.
Is fraud speech? No, but misleading speech is just one element of fraud.
Now all you have to do is come up with enough evidence to get charges brought and a conviction. Plus. You need to figure out who has juristiction. If they were just telling stories or giving out information, that would be free speech. These guys are asking for money under false pretenses, this makes it fraud.
Consumers in most industrial countries have the right to recompense from false advertising, regardless of the channel used. With respect to the political angle seized upon by others here, largely that is all irrelevant, and otherwise that is the product of misunderstanding on your parts. Idealism isn't productive, neither is naivety. Just because you want things to be a certain way doesn't make them that way, and there are well established mechanisms for redress in law.
It's the same standard from what I can tell. If you are free to make incorrect statements in journal submissions, you should be free to make them in Internet posts. It's the same principle. Both are vetted through a review by the peers of the poster. Both are susceptible to clusterfuck. It's as free as speech gets. Anything attempt to regulate it makes speech less free and increases instances of regulators' priorities leaking into the information stream to drive an agenda.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
It's called FRAUD you genius , this already limits what you can/cannot say... also, USE YOUR FUCKING BRAIN and do the research... remember the old saying, if it seems too good to be true it probably is.
Yes people are free to say absurd and evil things. That in no way implies that they can not be severely punished for those lies. For example spouting nonsense about Obama not being an American citizen should have resulted in severe fines and long stays in prisons. The sad truth i that so many Americans are criminals that we have no way to afford arresting and convicting millions more even when their crimes are blatant and revealed to all the public. We still have idiots insisting that Hillary is guilty of hundreds of felonies. And here i am so ignorant that i believe one is guilty when a trial judge says you are guilty. If a court finds you innocent the reality is that you are innocent.
you only have to look at comments called out as shills or downvoted to oblivion for when they legitimately comment something that differs from the group think
I completely agree, people use moderation to silence dissenting opinions. This is why I opted out of the moderation thing a long time ago.
As for people being called shills, it always has been a ludicrous accusation; even if it's obvious that some readers or even editors have agendas (like Beauhd and his endless pro-Apple propaganda) it's pretty clear that they're doing it out of misguided loyalty to a brand that they think make them look cool rather than for some form of monetary reward.
lucm, indeed.
"The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations."
- Adam Smith
lucm, indeed.
Not normally. But it is if any of the following apply:
- Elon Musk says it.
- It uses blockchains.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You mean I can put hot sauce in my eyes when I'm reading Slashdot and I'll see punctuation where I see gibberish? Shut up and take my money!
You're presuming that truth = good, falsehood = bad.
Telling the truth can be bad. Lying can be good. Say you're at a mini-mart and an upset woman runs up to you saying her husband is trying to kill her, then runs into the bathroom. Then an angry man runs in holding a knife screaming, "where is that bitch, I'm gonna kill her." Do you tell him the truth? Or do you deliberately mislead him by lying, and say she ran out the back door?
Speaking the truth or lying does not necessarily correlate to good/bad. Your intent in saying what you say does - whether you're trying to help or harm. Unfortunately, intent is something internal to your mind. You can guess what another person's intent probably is, and in rare cases you can eliminate any other possibility and infer their true intent. But most of the time you can't be sure. And basing legality or punishment on something that most of the time you can't be sure of is just setting up your system for all kinds of trouble.
Take the anti-vaccination movement for example. It's based on statistical error (emphasizing single anecdotes over overall trends) or logical error (believing the testimony of a famous celebrity unskilled in the field over the testimony of a non-famous expert in the field). I would dearly love to ban it from the Internet. But if we set that precedent, what if some time in the future the conspiracy theory becomes true and the government is pacifying the population with mind-altering drugs under the guise of vaccination? Your well-intentioned ban in favor of the truth has then set a precedent allowing a misleading falsehood to be presented as the truth, and the actual truth suppressed.
The more I think about it, the more strongly I feel that banning is not the answer. Educating the populace is, so most of them will not make the aforementioned errors. Yeah we're never going to convince 100% of the people that vaccines are good. But 99% should be good enough for most purposes. And I really don't think the tradeoff in future potential abuse is worth it just to get that final 1% to comply.
The fundamental premise behind Democracy is that The People are on average smart enough to usually make the right decision. If you feel we need policies which deprive The People of the right to make those decisions, then you're basically admitting The People aren't smart enough to make the right decision, and thus Democracy doesn't work. (I can actually seen an argument for a benevolent oligarchy being better than democracy. But if you're going to argue for that, then don't even bother with the pretense of pretending to support freedom of speech.)
Speech is free if the authorities will not censure the speaker.
False advertising is sometimes censured, so it is either not free (conservative) or partially free (risky).
A better question is, should false advertising be free?
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.
That's the wrong question - because any claim that there is ANY subset of speech that is NOT free speech pitches you over the cliff and onto the slippery slope:
* If there is a non-free subset of speech it's allegedly OK to restrict it.
* But that opens the can of worms: How - and by whom - is this subset defined?
* Answer to that is, of course, government. But government has an incentive to suppress speech that is inconvenient for it.
* The most inconvenient speech for government, of course, is speech that exposes wrongdoing by its officials, exposes systematic abuses of power, and organizes opposition to those in power - either the individuals or the system itself.
* So the arbiters of what is non-free speech suppress THAT. And suppressing THAT is what the whole prohibition on interfering with speech is supposed to prevent.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Truth in advertising and publishing is a different issue to tax avoidance. Certainly both are motivated by self interest however taxation is already defined in legalisation.
Your reference to "companies do so everyday by actively evading paying their fair share of taxes" isn't (illegal) tax evasion but your opinion. To resolve (legal) tax avoidance you need to (1) write simpler laws which (2) levy tax on corporate income without (3) penalising saving and investment. Finally (4) either (a) employ extra-jurdisial taxation (as the US does with their citizens living overseas) or (b) eliminate the tax havens zero tax policies (through negotiation, mutual treaties or a trade embargo).
What is your opinion.
Regards Sinesurfer A Nerd is someone who lives for technology, A Geek is someone who lives for technology and loves it
But are other things the equivalent of yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theatre?
Did you know that the "(falsely) cry fire in a crowded theatre" argument was coined by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. - in a Supreme Court opinion (for Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919)) that it was legal to suppress such speech?
Did you know the speech in question was printing and distributing pamphlets opposing the draft for WW I?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Free speech does not mean that anyone can say anything at anytime. It means that the government cannot suppress some forms of speech sometimes. Some forms of speech are definitely banned like hate speech, incitation to crime, divulgation of intellectual property, and many others. Peddlers of false cures are not protected by free speech but could be brought to justice under the heading of Truth in Advertising. See Tina.org
I ...
I have no idea if this is an extremely serendipitous random spam post, or expert tongue-in-cheek humor.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
That's like trying to argue that because some people use guns to commit crimes, that guns should be banned.
Hotel rooms are used to commit mass murder. We should ban hotel rooms.
"His name was James Damore."
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.
This isn't unique to Microsoft though, and is seen throughout the industry not as 'nefariousness' just what makes good business strategy at any point in time.
When you're the underdog, you want people to switch to your offering, and as such software compatibility makes that easy. If you're successful and become top dog, you want to stop people leaving which you can do by ensuring your software compatibility is as hard as possible to replicate elsewhere.
Microsoft is certainly guilty of this, but imo its just the way business is. You don't give your competitors a level playing field unless someone makes you.
Next question.
Deception is fraud, and last I checked this is not protected by free speech.
you only have to look at comments called out as shills or downvoted to oblivion for when they legitimately comment something that differs from the group think
It's called Confirmation Bias. Most people will mod up what confirms their beliefs and mod down what doesn't. Such is human nature. In order for people to be objective, they would have to be able to consider the idea that their beliefs might be wrong. I would call that: Optimism Bias :P
We'll make great pets
"The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations." - Adam Smith
While I think that is true to some extent, it ignores the larger picture. Adam Smith tried to make this free enterprise system appear to be a noble crusade. Let's be frank, it's not. It arose out of necessity. We live and have always lived with scarcity. Resource scarcity and now in modern times, economic scarcity. The system we have today's sole purpose it to manage scarcity. It is not noble, it's just a necessity based on circumstance. Having said that, it's the best thing we've conceived to date to deal with the problem but we should be attempting to move to a system in which this is either highly mitigated or completely unnecessary. While the left and the right continue to spout quotes like this essentially demonizing each other, we are making ZERO progress towards the goal we ought to be collectively pursuing. That is the real TRAGEDY.
We'll make great pets
I’m sorry, this just isn’t true. Companies may work against society as a side effect of doing what is best for the company, but they do not “actively work against society”. They do not have the destruction of society as a business plan. They have making money as a business plan.
Did you ever notice that movies are actually fiction, that they don’t really reflect reality all that well?
If a company can make more money by poisoning the local water table that it's own employees drink from. Then that is exactly what it will do.
History shows that to be true 100% of the time. Only by introducing regulations and laws to make it more expensive to be dirty rather than clean have companies started doing the right thing. If you need proof of what the do a does had how it affects you that is it. Take a look at any picture of the major us cities in the 1970s vs today. Look at the sky. That foggy scene is air pollution and 40 yards of do a forcing companies to clean up their act has had dramatic improvements to air quality. Let alone water and soil.
100% of companies do not plan to fully clean up after they close down. Not even nuclear power plants whi cu do not have any where near the funds to safely shut down the reactors
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Want to know what happens when you have or create laws without enforcement or punishment?
A perfect example would be the actions not taken to control, prohibit, or regulate Greed N. Corruption from causing another economic disaster driven by the Banking Industrial Complex. There's nothing to prevent 2008 from happening again.
More laws are fucking worthless without enforcement and punishment. If you don't want to do that, then don't fucking bother wasting time drafting and passing laws and regulations.
what about tesla?
Electric chair.
No. it was "invented" by Thomas Edison as part of his efforts to stop the spread of AC.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Commercial speech is not protected. That can be redefined so that 'commercial' includes clickbait, fake news, and the like.
The problem is definition and enforcement. All news outlets are commercial these days save for maybe NPR/Public Television. CNN published some whoppers last election cycle that were not true, how do you punish them? Fines when articles are proven untrue? OK, but how untrue is untrue? What if they got one small bit of a larger true story wrong? How sensationalistic can headlines be before running afoul? Do 'satire' sites like Onion or HardTimes get a pass?
Once 'defined' then how do you enforce it? Is it criminal or civil? Do we now enlist an army of 'truth police?'
It's a thorny issue...
Here’s one for ya: is deliberately misleading people on national news free speech?
The FDA is not in the game is regulating if only safe and effective products can be on the market. Look at psych drugs for example. The companies market the drugs in a very similar fashion as the TC has seen products not FDA approved marketed. What I have noticed about the medical industry is it's all snake oils and magic bullets, for profit. When I was a child they showed videos in elementary school on this issue, highlighting medicine in the 1800s, which consistent of people marketing hocus pocus. Alleged doctors would go around looking for "sick" people to cure, they might only dose the person with some morphine or other deadly chemical cocktail, the previously bedridden individual would then be shown as up and walking and the doctor proclaimed he was "cured." Then days later, the kid drops dead, highlighting the snake oil/magic bullet industry. Other techniques included performing surgeries that actually seriously harmed the individual, leaving them in veggie state and whatnot, ie cutting nerves or brain up (lobotomy). The individual would be a walking zombie of their performer self, proclaimed as cured, then deaths often ensued. Removal of organs and other abuses also occurred.
Today the industry funnily operates the exact same way. Companies look for chemicals or surgeries they can market as cures, and they train themselves to perform those "treatments" but in reality, most of the treatments don't work and aren't treatment. A handful are, such as bacterial killing agents, fungus killing agents, virus killing agents, but others such as "heart burn treatments" do more harm than good. Pain relief are prescribed to people who have only minor pain and don't need any chemical for it. A person might have a surgery to remove an organ or tissue that was healthy, to treat a specific problem, which then leads to other disabilities and malfunctions because the person actually really needed that organ or tissue even if there was some underlining disorder the doctor had attributed to the organ or tissue. I read a dreaded case of this happening to a women in UK recently.
Back to the case of psych drugs - the largest snake oil/magic bullet farce industry around with purely fictional marketing for every drug on the market, they market the drugs as treating schizophrenia/anxiety/bipolar/depression, however the industries own studies prove the drugs don't even begin to treat these issues, kill over 500,000+ elderly annually, reduce 25 years average from the persons life, kill 1 in 2 to 1 in 3, reduce recovery rates from 80% for none drug users to 5% to drug users, induce 75,000 heart attacks annually and prevent survival during those attacks, cause 15 times more suicide than reported by the industry, cause severe brain damage/vein swelling/scar tissue build up in the brain/fluid build up in the brain/etc, induce violence and suicides, are nothing but petroleum byproducts being spun as treatments, etc. The studies going back decades prove that alternative none drug based treatments work better, such as psychotherapy, or even giving the person money to procure housing and other basic needs. Doctors in the mental health field typically diagnose mental illness falsely, when in reality the person is suffering from other issues like poverty and political matters that have caused them
Is deliberately misleading people on the internet free speech? Just because something happens on the internet does not make it a new phenomenon. It's still advertising, just like that in everything from billboards to bus benches, glossy magazines to the newspaper classified ads. Learn not to be a sucker. How do you learn not to be a sucker? Either by being one or watching someone else be one. Hopefully you won't stay one.
Talking about the old democrats and the new democrats without mentionning the southern shift, is very disengenuous. It's almost as if you were actively trying to misinform people...
Not just in taxes and politics, marketing is at its core influencing, and influencing is deception. If influencing were not deception, it would be the fair and balanced presentation of all known facts, backed up by diligent and unbiased thorough research. While much marketing takes on the appearance of a fair and balanced presentation of all known facts, the fact is: those "facts" and their presentation are biased to the benefit of the employer, if they're not, the marketers are not doing their job (serving the share holders) to the best of their ability. Marketers are retained based on performance, and the marketers who perform the best are the ones who influence customers to the benefit of the company.
Free market + free speech = freedom to deceive.
Is Deliberately Misleading People On the Internet Free Speech?
Yes .... but I might be misleading you
People like to wax poetic about free speech and freedom of speech, but most people don't understand it nor have ever researched what it is, and how it differs from anarchy and chaos.
First of all, there is no free speech in private spaces. Whenever you are using a social media service, blog commenting system, internet forum, webpage hosted by a provider, among several other spaces on the Internet your speech is limited to what has been stipulated on terms of services, policies and other contracts that you agreed to when you opened an account.
It's always been this way, and this won't change. If you think you have some right to free speech in some service you are using on the Internet, you are wrong.
The concept of Freedom of Speech was created for, and applies strictly to public spaces. It was created to preserve the rights of people and journalists to criticize the government, period. It is in good standards for democratic societies in general, and private companies in these societies tries to follow the idea as close as possible, but it is not guaranteed.
On the other hand, a whole metric ton of laws were made involving speech to bar everything from human rights violations to general prejudice, hatred, targeting, unjust enrichment, among others. In fact, most democratic countries in the world today have specific laws against racism, prejudice against minorities, symbols related to parties and ideologies with historial ties to hatred and prejudice, incitation to hatred, among others. US is kind of an outlier in this because there are grey areas in law, but a white supremacist in most countries would end up in jail depending on their public attitude.
Particularly for ads and offers of products and services the law is already there. False advertising applies to miracle cures and diets. The problem is on monitoring and application of the law, as well as exploitation of loopholes in law.
It is impossible to monitor and punish everyone that comes up with bullshit on the Internet, the solution for that is critical reasoning and a society that is better educated and better apt to detect bullshit and better select their sources. The problem here is not what is permissible in society as a whole, the problem is people who keeps promoting, reading content, and using sources that has blatantly lied in the past, continues spewing crap without any basis, build their discourse on bullshit, and keeps being supported by ignorant masses who cannot take minutes of their time to properly research what they are swallowing whole.
We cannot expect every social network to monitor and classify everything their users put up on a daily basis. It's not humanly possible. I don't think people realize how many posts, videos and photos are uploaded every minute on these social networks... here's an approximation from 4 years ago:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...
We're talking about hundreds of thousands of posts every minute on Facebook. Close to 100 hours of video on YouTube. 300 blog posts on Wordpress alone. 500 new websites. Every minute of every single day.
There are not enough people in the world to curate all this, so these companies need to use algorithms, which will never be perfect for the job. In fact, for them to be even close to good they'd need to be running on a computational level close to a human brain, which we are still far far faaaaar away from achieving.
The rush against fake news, spam, neo nazis, hate speech, and all the stuff that has been sensationalized just recently has always been there on some level. It's the whole problem of having few news sources that can be heavily scrutinized and monitored versus everyone being a potential source of information.
And all the stuff social network companies have been doing recently is all welcome, but it's also at most a stop gap solution. No matter how much
Long-time Slashdot reader apraetor counters, "But how do you determine what is 'true'?"
Red flag! Post-truth nonsense! We have science and live in an objective reality.
But are other things the equivalent of yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theatre?
You mean completely legal speech?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Yes motherfuckers, it is. Same on the internet. It ain't pretty, but humanity never was. The results of freedom are not just a function of freedom, but the total sum of people exercising it. News at 11.
Please stop referencing the it's illegal to yell fire in a crowded theater out of date BS. http://civil-liberties.yoexper..."fire"-in-a-crowded-theater-19421.html
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
Hmm, TATA Group, TCS is TATA Groups main moneymaker. And they make money by exploiting Indian IT worker and the H1B system.
Very charitable ...
I believe you failed to mention the theft of intellectual property when Microsoft hired David Cutler and his VMS team to write critical parts of Windows NT. That theft was part of the downfall of DEC. It was coupled with the wholesale theft of their hardware designs to create the Pentium chip.
Wrong. Without Microsoft we would have some other software to do those things. We might even have multiples, like in the 90s, with people complaining about multiple formats, etc. Inefficient? Relatively maybe. Though it was better for employment. Actual competition always is.
The interests of society and most people, are not equivalent to the goals of most companies. Especially Tech companies.
There interest often our, to
a) make money
b) increase market share
c) appease stock-holders
If there's any aspect of the interests of society, or most people, it is often a requirement born from regulation.
I won't deny, tech companies often do try and 'guide' technology so as to benefit society and themselves, but I'm not kidding myself that ANY of them have societies best interests moving forward, with regard to any specific topic of tech.
As someone who is pro-Capitalism, and recognize that America does NOT invest fully in Capitalist behavior, there is quite a bit of irony stating there is any sort of altruism going on, when it comes to Tech companies in the US.
What you're referring to, in that specific regard, is VERY GOOD marketing!
The question is, do you recognize it as that? It would appear not.
what about tesla?
Electric chair.
No. it was "invented" by Thomas Edison as part of his efforts to stop the spread of AC.
A harsh but fair way of dealing with Anonymous Cowards.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
If Microsoft software was high quality, bug-free, security-hole-free...
Please cite any software more complicated than "hello world" that meets those criteria.
Also, why doesn't literally every other software maker have to meet those requirements.
I'm sorry, but you're just making this up based on your beliefs. You feel these statements must be true, so they are to you.
As for your "proof" being hazy skies, let me tell you, they're waay better than they were back in the 50's and 60's. I remember driving around L.A. as a kid with my eyes burning and tears running down my face because of the smog. Sure, there's still smog, but it's nothing like then - proving your "proof" to be wrong.
I keep hearing this drivel from 'murcans. What is the problem with yelling "fire" is a crowded theater? However else are you supposed to notify everyone that there is a fire in the crowded theater?
You've expressed half of the example, and gotten the result you wanted. The problem is yelling "fire" in a crowded theater... that isn't on fire. From anything false, anything follows.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
I am still not convinced that scoped, noise reduced, non bumpstocked version wouldn't be deadlier. The bump stock versions are definitely more terror inducing.
God: "I don't leave footprints!"
He might be but I'm not. I have first hand experience with a corporation that chose to pollute and take the fine rather than do the right thing. It was cheaper for them to just pay the fine.
What can you really expect. We haven't held corporations to civilized standards for DECADES. We expect and encourage them to SCREW EVERYONE except the almighty stockholder. This isn't just a matter of shareholder lawsuits, it's a prevailing cultural expectation.
THAT ship sailed a long time ago and it shows no sign of coming back into port.
These days you pretty much have to threaten a lawsuit just to get them to do what they promised or what they're expected to do by law.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Plenty of businesses have ditched Microsoft's particular brand of spreadsheet and word processor. There is nothing special about either. Microsoft didn't invent either one or even make a terribly good one.
The idea that you "need" their brand of a 30 year old solved problem is support for the basic destructiveness of the modern corporation.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Yeah, it sounds nice but it's like rainbow unicorn ponies. It's a myth. The problem with capitalism is humanity. You can't impose some sort of alternative "monopoly" without having all of the problems the "evils of capitalism".
If anything, things will be worse due to the failures of centralization, the inability of all systems to scale, and the vulnerability of human systems to corruption.
Capitalism suffers when it gets too centralized. None of the proposed alternatives avoid this. They typically embrace it instead.
"I burned my hand on the stove. Why don't I set the rest of myself on fire."
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
As CEO of Facebook has said (I paraphrase): "It's income; why should I bother vetting is as to source or truthfulness???"
etalentnetwork.com they are good at misleading.
Whenever income can be increased irrespective of the harm done to the customer, Capitalism shows its' darkest side. We need Federal agencies like CFPB and FDA (among others) to have even stronger rules and enforcement powers...which will never happen so long as those businesses consider their income more important than citizens' and customers' needs and satisfaction. (Yea, I'm lookin' at YOU, Wells Fargo, and the NRA.),
AC, indeed; only a Coward would respond with such an idiotic idiom
To scared to own your own pathetic attempt at humor?
So I guess you should be required to study medicine from now on before buying medicine? And I better am a qualified car mechanic to make sure the car I'm about to buy isn't going to kill me next time I am on the freeway? Maybe a degree in chemistry, botany and biology to make sure the pesticides on my food and residual medical stuff they pumped into the pig isn't going to kill me if I eat that steak? And maybe I should take my testing kit with me next time I order a mushroom soup to make sure they didn't just dump anything they found in the woods without checking for poisonous specimens?
Because if it does, it's just my own fault, right? If I'm stupid enough to buy it without knowing how to check for those perils, it's my own damn fault.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I've read through some of the comments (but not all) and this may have been covered somewhere else. I think in order to discuss the concept of free speech it would be helpful to understand the official definition from the courts. So I found this, http://www.uscourts.gov/about-....
tl;dnr
Free speech does not mean you get to say anything you want without consequences. It also doesn't mean you can't get fired for speaking freely. What it does mean is "Congress shall make no law...abridging freedom of speech". If a company makes false claims then you as the consumer have the right to sue them. If they claim medical benefits that are unsubstantiated they must declare them noticeably. For example if you buy an herbal supplement from the store it usually says something to the effect of "not validated by the FDA". If they don't say that then they must be held accountable. The same thing goes for politicians, they must be held accountable.
I would be very careful with this.
What I think we could agree on is this: If I make a claim about a product, the product has to fulfill that claim or I shall be liable for false advertising or even worse. E.g. if I claim that I have the cure for cancer here but only if you forgo conventional therapy, I sell it to you with this premise and you rely on my product exclusively, then die and it can be shown in court that not only my product is complete bunk but you would have had a sensible chance of survival or at least a longer life, I should be in for at the very least manslaughter.
Personally, I'd call it murder.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
... because freedom of speech is that you get to say something and the federal government can't arrest you.
Perhaps a better headline would be: "Ask Slashdot: Is Deliberately Misleading People On the Internet Deceptive Practice?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Am I the only one who remembers this?
Religious leaders sure hope that it won't change, else it would be illegal to promote any religion (how can any religion be right, if they are all distincts?). And then, if it's not legal on the internet, why should it be anywhere else ?
The problem with the" Free Enterprise system" is that almost all of its proponents/defenders are working hard to prevent competition. Free Enterprise has come to mean monopolistic/duopolistic abuses, often achieved by governmental license such as in telecommunications. Yes, I'm all for true Free Enterprise, I'd like to see it in the US. But unchecked, unregulated, predatory capitalism has nothing to do with real Free Enterprise.
Just because the "Free Enterprise system" isn't as free as you'd prefer doesn't mean that wasn't the intention. And like I said, it is quite flawed. Even Milton Friedman admitted that. But it's better than any other system in history in terms of results even reducing poverty. That's a fact. If you want to dispute this claim, by all means provide the evidence. If you don't like it, you build a better system. If it were THAT easy to arrive at utopia, don't you think we'd already be there? We're iterating. You are part of human progress. It is a torch that is passed from generation to generation. To think that the world was supposed to be your oyster is quite naive. We all learn this eventually.
We'll make great pets
It's just someone who wants to check whether his DDoS protection is working.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
tl/dr:
We've had since September to come up with one and still ain't figured it out. So, let's start with you.
----------------------
There oughta be a law against clickbait? Which is legally defined as...?
OK, so what does that get you? Let's say it (clickbait) is "distracting and not true". Let's assume we can legally define those things. That means that government (at least the one where I live) now can make a law "...abridging..." it. Completely absurd assumptions, but that's the 'discussion' you asked for, so fine, then--what if there was a law?
How 'bout we start with agents provocateur that drag up an endlessly discussed topic without adding *anything new* and invite the community to "leave your best thoughts". It does run up the numbers. So your plan goes like this, does it? "Let's threaten our readership--who let's face it--tends to think of ourselves as intellectually independent with an authority that will tell them what they can read. Push their buttons; watch them feed the ratings."
So, yeah--if you think there oughta be a law, let's start with you. Delete your clickbait topic. It ain't news, it ain't for nerds, and it doesn't matter.
I also don't like clickbait, but I'm feeding the troll here--even by calling him out as a troll.
My decision certainly looks stupid or hypocritical at least one other person. It may look stupid to someone else called me-1-day-from-now.
But...it is *my* decision.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
And the point here is that sometimes it's not the seller that's making the claims. They use all sorts of subterfuge and hire people to make fake blogs talking about how great it is. Thus they can claim they never advertised it fraudulently. If you can't trace the money trail back to the company, then the "blogger" should be liable. Of course they would be free to turn on the company that hired them - which would be better justice than going after the writer.
Not companies.... Everybody does, and without exception, there isn't a person who won't.
These days you pretty much have to threaten a lawsuit just to get them to do what they promised or what they're expected to do by law.
And even when you do, good luck with that.
To say nothing of the "reputable" medical journals you linked to, I'll just say that most modern chemical products are "petroleum byproducts" simply petroleum refinement provides convenient building blocks in great abundance.
Either we regulate it, or we are doomed to repeat history.
Most people expect to read real information without many distractions and without critically thinking about it. 10 years ago, when the Washington Post had a story, people took it as the gospel. They were held to very high standards by the government. The 'click-bait-ad-revenue' + the internet, changed everything. Tabloid papers were just that, tabloids. People knew when they read them to take everything with a grain of salt, knew it was gossipy crap, and kept it there. The majority of people (95%) didn't believe purple aliens were living inside people.
Today, all of this is mixed. People don't have time to separate it all, and people are getting taken for a ride non-stop. There is so much fiction, and questioning of reality, that most folks are ingesting 50% tabloid news.
This is clearly not good for us as a society. We do not need to drag ourselves through the same exercises we have done over and over since the beginning of writing. We know the outcome. War on every level.
At a minimum we need vetted information, and those news sites need to be certifiable news cites with real news. The editors need to be held accountable, and so do the outlets. There needs to be oversight committees on this. Yes, this system will get abused, but that abuse will be much less than the abuse we are all subject to daily. Its tiring reading the internet anymore.
So what exactly are you proposing? I haven't seen anyone on this thread advocate anything other than applying regulations where needed. As best I can tell, your post is in reply to a figure of straw who advocated for Soviet-style Communism.
If the powers that be can make you think the only two options are communism and anarcho-capitalism, that works out very well for them. I did see you advocate for regulation elsewhere in this thread, but why did you first feel the need to write the Capitalist Manifesto at the mere mention of corporate irresponsibility? I'm sensing a touch of cognitive dissonance bubbling up under that ideological inflexibility.
I don't believe that all speech is equal. In particular, any form of paid speech is, by definition, subject to forces that extend well beyond the focus, intent, and nature of the speech itself.
Personally, I don't believe that freedom of speech protections should apply to any form of advertisement or paid political announcements. Any entity endorsed or sponsored by any other entity should not, IMHO, be under freedom of speech protections regards any speech involving the sponsor or original source of funding.
I work for Hapco. Therefore, any speech I make regards Hapco should be subject to reduced protections, IMHO.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Careful. Real facts can be interpreted many different ways. However, while free enterprise certainly has resulted in economic growth, it is difficult to know if it was simply "better" than other potential options. Consider that Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations stated that any capitalist system would need regulation or it would spin wildly out of control. We allow corporations to shield investors from liability on the principle that this encourages economic growth. We allow the concept of the corporation to promote the general welfare of society. If you're going to wade into a debate about corporations, let's make sure we're honest about the debate.
and get thrown in jail.
Satire is free speech. But if reputable news groups fabricate information, that should be punishable. News groups can destroy lives with false reporting.
Bad User. No biscuit!
Basically, it will cause people to get trampled, possible killed. That is why it is dangerous.
Bad User. No biscuit!
What do you propose as a better solution?
It would be nice if we could impose a rule saying "no remuneration for moderation", but that would require quite intrusive collection of information. I can't think of any other improvement that doesn't horrendously complicate things. If that weren't a problem, then I'd like each tag to be a score in a separate dimension, and for people to be able to select for things like:
order by funny * 5 + interest *4 + insightful * 9 - disagree * 1 AND omit if troll > 3 or flamebait > 1
The thing is, while that might be better, in some ways, it would be a lot more complex, and not necessarily any more likely to yield true results.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I’m sure this is true, and I’m sure it’s not an isolated case. However, that is a long way from “every corporation is actively working against the interests of society”.
There's no standard definition of "free speech". Morally speaking, it means whatever you want it to. Everyone gets to claim they're exercising free speech, and everyone else gets to disagree with them, and no one is right. But legally speaking, laws and courts in different countries have defined it different ways, and those definitions almost never come down to, "the right to say anything you want, in any context, without restriction." It's not that yelling fire in a crowded theater is a form of free speech we restrict. It simply is not an exercise of free speech. Freedom of speech does not include the right to harm people by saying things you know are false. When the government punishes you for doing it, they aren't limiting your freedom of speech in any way. They're punishing you for doing something that (according to the law) is not free speech.
Here's how Webster defines freedom of speech: "the legal right to express one's opinions freely". dictionary.com calls it: "the right of people to express their opinions publicly without governmental interference, subject to the laws against libel, incitement to violence or rebellion, etc." According to Wikipedia it means: "the right to articulate one's opinions and ideas without fear of government retaliation or censorship, or societal sanction." Notice what all of those have in common. Freedom of speech is the right to express your opinions (and ideas and beliefs). If you honestly believe something, you have the right to say it (though we sometimes might restrict that right if it conflicts with other rights). But if you don't believe something and you intentionally lie to hurt someone or con them out of their money, that's not free speech.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
The case of yelling fire in a crowded theater is an example, showing that there are other principles that may override the protections of free speech.
Consumer protection laws agains misleading advertisements are another example, quite relevant to the OP.
Laws against incitement to crime, and laws agains sedition, are other examples.
So, the freedom of speech is not absolute, and will likely never be. The issue then, is how to draw the line.
There is no substitute for common sense. Especially, no body of rules will do.
Here is a little heuristic to use when looking at claims online (regardless of content):
If it's too good to be true, assume that it is not true.
Be skeptical about anything important to you - but more importantly seek out the truth for those things that you care about. And I'm talking about objective scientific truth - not what your cousin down the street told you, because he has a friend of a friend who works in the top secret facility where they are making the Soylent Green....
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
That city haze didn't come from corporation polluting. It came from cars...driven by everyday citizens. Stop blaming companies for things they have no over.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Condition the reader by presenting them with a biased into to the poll, then expect the kind of answers you were polling for.
Done all the time. The most recent outstanding example were the polls predicting that Hillary had 90% of the vote locked up.
Speech is not free if someone else can tell you what you can and cannot say and back it up with the authority ot punish you for violating THEIR rules.
"
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an (1) establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or (2) abridging the freedom of speech, or (3) of the press; or the right of the people (4) peaceably to assemble, and to (5) petition the government for a redress of grievances."
Remember, the 1st Amendment enumerates FIVE freedoms. If free speech isn't free then neither are the other four.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
We used to have additional modifiers to add/remove points based on the category, so people would do things like make Funny posts -5 points so they could skip the jokes.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
If you know it's a lie, then it's not an exercise of free speech. For consumer issues, it's a crime. For personal issues, there's no law aganst being a dick, but hopefully people will see that for what it is and, as XKCD stated, "Showing [them] the door."
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
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...
Dude, ALL advertising is built upon the basis of misleading bullshit and a sack of lies built with the goal of separating you from your money. There is no need to add the little quantifier of "on the internet".
Is deliberately misleading people Free Speech? Annoyingly yes. Because if the powers that be deem your speech to be "Not True"(tm) then they can silence whomever they wish. And THAT leads to sociological issues. The sort where it all burns down.
The concept of "bu bu but people COULD DIE" isn't nearly convincing enough to override* sovereignty issues. People poison and kill themselves through ignorance all the time. That's not a reason to take away people's ability to participate in civic duties.
*I wish I could use the term "trump" as a verb, but sadly the term has been... overridden.
. . . And what is this comment-bait doing on slashdot?
The courts have, in the past, allowed Fox to lie like a rug over the airwaves.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
And there's a moderation system here, theoretically designed to judge the quality of speech without actually restricting it
They subverted the /. moderation system just fine during the election.
As near as I can tell, they had hordes of new-ish user accounts that had just enough rep to randomly get access to the moderation system. The non-mod accounts posted pro-Putin (and incidentally Trump) propaganda (almost all from suspiciously high UIDs), and the mod accounts upvoted them and downvoted anybody saying anything else. The only way I knew our typical posters were talking about the Russians at all is from the upvoted posts from new users ridiculing the idea.
The moderation system here I think works pretty good, when not attacked by state-level actors.
Complain to the /. editors about UTF-8 support. It's 2017, even Perl has had UTF-8 support for a few decades.
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But pushing on your point, any blogger can say anything they want about any product. You can't have a company liable for third party speech, good or bad, it would be too easy to punish anyone you want simply by having a third party say good things and then suing them for false advertising. All you can do about that is educate better so that people can assess the veracity of a claim.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Depending on how meta-moderation is used, it could be a valuable check on abuse of community moderation. Already on slashdot, you don't get moderator points unless you've established sufficient "karma" for yourself somehow, and you don't have moderator points all the time. If "unfair moderation" votes aren't an automatic karma-killer, but are a flag for someone to look at how that individual is moderating, and maybe nuke their karma if they're moderating abusively, or at least set a "This person never gets to moderate" flag, that might help reduce the problem. (Modulo the ever-present "quis custodiet..." problem, of course. I suppose there's no way to avoid that entirely,.)
But we're specifically talking about cases where it's clear that someone who stands to gain paid for the third-party speech. This is no different than paying an ad agency to run a TV commercial for you. Whatever the ad agency produces and runs counts as your own advertising.
People have been misleading other people since people have existed. Newspapers, radio, magazines, television have all mislead people (sometimes intentionally). And let's not even start with politicians and their lies. It's all free speech, even if a lot of it is bullshit or offensive. Just grow up already!!!!
I gotta leave my computer now and order something I just saw on television - one of those "As Seen On TV" thingies. I bet it works just as advertised!!
"When did this shift happen?"
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Southern+...
Religions don't have a good track record when it comes to "not being easily disprovable".
Ezekiel 23:20
you only have to look at comments called out as shills or downvoted to oblivion for when they legitimately comment something that differs from the group think
I completely agree, people use moderation to silence dissenting opinions. This is why I opted out of the moderation thing a long time ago.
This does not compute. Is the cause for your opting out:
-cynicism?
-not wanting to participate in evil?
-an acknowledgement that you would do it too?
I opted out because moderation doesn't work on Slashdot. Instead of using it to fight spam and actual trolls, people use moderation to punish people they disagree with.
Browsing at -1 solves the problem. In fact, there are always interesting comments that are scored 0 or 1, and often they are labeled "Troll" of "Flamebait" although they merely raise issues with the mainstream narrative.
There is no value in the moderation system, it's just a popularity contest that rewards people who submit to peer pressure. It's like listening to FM radio with people calling to request the same songs as everyone else.
lucm, indeed.
The problem with capitalism is humanity. You can't impose some sort of alternative "monopoly" without having all of the problems the "evils of capitalism".
This always reminds me of that story about the copier factory in USSR. I don't remember the exact numbers but the factory had something like 500 workers and manufactured a total of 3 copiers per year, of which usually only 1 or 2 worked. And those workers who did such a splendid job wondered why the central heating at home didn't work or why they had to wait in line to buy stale bread.
Capitalism works because people are rewarded for hard work and talent. The reason why the system is fucked lately is not because of flaws in capitalism; it's because the government has become a monster and is letting idiot savants play sorcerer's apprentice with monetary policy and social programs from their ivory towers.
lucm, indeed.
I’m sure this is true, and I’m sure it’s not an isolated case. However, that is a long way from “every corporation is actively working against the interests of society”.
That's not what the person you responded to said. He said every corporation that can make a buck by working against the interests of society, will.
Now, I don't agree with that statement, but you do need to address what he actually said.
I think that there are many corporations where the executive officers are not amoral sociopaths, however, if even one competitor in their field is, then the public will probably be screwed. Even worse, if screwing the public is economically beneficial, then the companies led by people with morals will compete less effectively in the marketplace and they are likely to be replaced by their less ethical competitors. So in many ways, unregulated capitalism ends up as a race to the least ethical, most exploitative behaviour possible.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
They generate jobs and employment, as well as put out products that are useful. Think about running a business without Excel for spreadsheet work, or Word for documents? Without Microsoft, we would be still using pencils and doing double-entry bookkeeping on ledgers.
I'd rather be using pencils and double-entry bookkeeping on ledgers than Excel and Word.
Having said that, Microsoft was not first to market with either spreadsheet software or word processing. In fact, without Microsoft killing investment in both product types, we'd likely have better spreadsheet and word processing software than we do now.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Is Deliberately Misleading People On the Internet Free Speech? -- If it is, then you'd have to do something about almost every salesman and corporation lying about the quality of their products, etc in the country. (and I'm not against making them tell the truth) But I'm afraid it is free speech. And I also seem to hold the radical opinion (these days) that opinions that aren't currently popular are also free speech. Nazi assholes, white supremacists, Antifa, have as much right to share their opinions as anyone else, as long as they are not directed specifically at one person, and NOT accompanied by violence. Sorry, you can't have free speech for only the majority or only the people with who you agree.
Otherwise the Title would start with: Slashdot is ...
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
That's why the Supreme Court has pretty consistently decided that the government has no business interfering with political speech. False advertising for commercial purposes is illegal. False advertising for political purposes is legal (or there'd be a lot of Republican candidates behind bars).
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
And the only reason that your tirade is legal is free speech. You don't cite any reputable journals. You make statements that I know to be false. Now, it's good in a sense that you talk nonsense about depression (something I do have experience with), and I wouldn't wish you to find out otherwise yourself, but that doesn't make what you say true.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
In boxing a foul is a foul. Whether it is intentional or accidental the penalty remains the same. there are numerous people with absurd beliefs who try like crazy to get others to adopt their belief system. usually they are just plain wrong but sometimes they really seek money or power. There is simply no way to sort them all out. Sometimes people seek power as they feel they are the only one who can set things straight. They may justify all manor of wrong behavior trying to acquire enough power to accomplish their goal. so let the wrong headed speak and then denounce them as the idiots they are instead of gagging them before they get their message out. Even the manifestos of some notorious criminals have held bits of information that the public needs to consider. even from a prison cell let them speak out.
It's "fake news"!