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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
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!
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.
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.
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.
... 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.
What, no link?
Actually, hate speech is free speech. Of course, there is no requirement that people listen to the speech.
The violence one is a bit tricky since far too many people are now equating disagreement with violence (words hurt campaign).
-- Will program for bandwidth
Fraud is an exception to free speech, and that's what these products are doing.
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.
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!
Trying to pass blasphemy laws? Shit son. Canada has had a law against blasphemy since 1892. And just this year the liberal govt has put forth bill C-51 which will act to repeal that law. But don't let that get in the way of a good screed.
Hopefully those who read your post will actually look to find out what M103 actually is and what it actually says rather than believing the garbage you wrote.
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.)
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
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
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.
Hmm, TATA Group, TCS is TATA Groups main moneymaker. And they make money by exploiting Indian IT worker and the H1B system.
Very charitable ...
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.
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.
What bills have been presented? Which of the bills that the commons is currently reading/debating since M103 passed (at the end of march) are the ones regarding blasphemy? Be specific.. include the numbers.
Here.. I'll help. here's the list of bills from the Liberals in the current session of parliament
https://www.parl.ca/LegisInfo/...
Please point them out. Since they're trying to pass laws that must mean there are already bills before the commons.. right?
And you're the one telling everyone that M-103 is having a chilling effect on free speech.. prove it. Show me the debates in the commons mentioning M103 specifically and using such to bolster up an anti-free speech agenda. You're making some bold assertions as if they are facts.. I trust you have some proof.