This is an interesting time that we live in. I find myself in a position where I need to question my own values. I don’t do this lightly. I don’t pretend that my values have suddenly changed. It’s just that present circumstances put me at odds with my own beliefs around freedom of speech.
I am a strong believer in freedom of speech. I think that when a society sensors speech, they are on a dangerous path. I take this to an extreme. Except for slander, threats, and inciting violence, I think people have a right to say and believe what they want. I believe that taking away such freedom puts us on a perilous path where a select few get too much control, and can undermine our freedoms.
An example where I take this to the extreme would be agreeing with Noam Chomsky.
That has been my stance for a very long time. But the spread of misinformation on social media has me second guessing this. There is a fundamental difference between someone standing on a soap box in a town square, and a nut job with a massive audience spreading lies.
So now, even as an ardent defender of free speech, I find myself agreeing with YouTube’s decision to ban vaccine misinformation:
YouTube doesn’t allow content that poses a serious risk of egregious harm by spreading medical misinformation about currently administered vaccines that are approved and confirmed to be safe and effective by local health authorities and by the World Health Organization (WHO). This is limited to content that contradicts local health authorities’ or the WHO’s guidance on vaccine safety, efficacy, and ingredients.
Two, four, eight, or sixteen years ago when YouTube began, I would have screamed ‘Censorship!’ at the idea of a platform banning free speech. Even now it bothers me. But I think it is necessary. The first problem is that lies and misinformation are too easily shared, and spread too easily. The second problem is that the subject area is one where too many people do not have enough information to discern fact from fiction, science from pseudoscience. The third problem is that any authentic discussion about these topics is unevenly biased towards misinformation. This last point needs explanation.
If I wanted to argue with you that Zeus the Greek God produces lightning and thunder when he is angry, I think everyone today would say that I was stupid to think such a thing. However, if I was given an opportunity to debate a scientist on this in a public forum, what inadvertently happens is that my crazy idea now gets to have an equal amount of airtime with legitimate science. These two sides do not deserve equal airtime in a public, linkable, shareable format that appears to give my opinion an equal footing against scientific evidence.
Now when dealing with something as silly as believing in a thunder god is the topic, this isn’t a huge issue. But when it’s scientific sounding, persuading and fear mongering misinformation that can cause harm, that’s a totally different situation. When a single counter example, say for example a person having adverse effects from a vaccine, becomes a talking point, it’s hard to balance that in an argument with millions of people not having adverse effects and also drastically reducing their risk of a death the vaccine prevented. The one example, one data point, ends up being a scare tactic that works to convince some people hearing the argument that the millions of counter examples don’t matter. And when social media platforms feed similar, unbalanced but misleading information to people over and over again, and the social media algorithms share ‘similar’ next videos, or targeted misinformation, this actually gets dangerous. It threatens our ability to weigh fact from fiction, news from fake news, science from pseudoscience. It feeds and fosters ignorance.
I don’t know how else to fight this than to stop bad ideas from spreading by banning them?
This flies in the face of my beliefs about free speech, but I don’t know any alternative to prevent bad ideas from spreading faster than good ones. And so while I see censorship as inherently evil, it is a lesser evil to allowing ignorance to spread and go viral. And while it potentially opens a door to less freedom, and I have concerns about who makes the decision of what information should be banned, I’d rather see a ban like this attempted, than for us to continue to let really bad ideas spread.
I thought in this day and age common sense would prevail and there would be no need to censor most if not all free speech. However it seems that as a society, we just aren’t smart enough to discern truth from cleverly said fiction. So we need to stop the spread of bad ideas, even if that means less freedom to say anything we want.
The stronger the education system the freer the speech could be. If everyone had a deep understanding of the tenants of science then anyone speaking of Zeus would be recognized for what they are. By regulating free speech are we being paternalistic to those who have little understanding of science? I am thinking it’s much harder to build a stronger education system than it is to ban types of speech. Do we want the easy way out?
Greetings Dean,
Excellent point! With both of us being educators, I find it easy to agree with you about a stronger education system! The question though, is what is to be done right now? I’ve dug into the world of following pseudo-science links and websites, and I can tell you that there is a very high level of sophistication behind much of it. There are the crackpots, yes, but there are also some very convincing arguments peppered with half and misleading truths, that can easily influence opinion and quite frankly be dangerous.
So, for right now, do we fight the free speech battle or the misinformation battle? Because I don’t see a way to do both successfully… and a growing number of people are refuting science with ‘facts’ that to me fall under ‘harmful speech’ rather than free speech.
Why does YT only ban certain “misinformation” & not flat-earthers, etc.? Where do you draw the line?
In an ideal world there is no line… But for right now, vaccine misinformation is killing people. Believing in a flat earth is ignorant, but not deadly. I think it’s an easy distinction, and the policy outlined is pretty clear.
So you disagree with the Noam Chomsky clip you posted above?
Just wondering how you can both support & not support it at the same time? Free speech only applies when it’s for accepted topics? Or topics that don’t have real-world ramifications?
And what if I disagree with you? It’s okay for yoy to silence those who disagree?
What happens when you are the one being censored & silenced, for your opinions, thoughts or beliefs?
Who is the judge?
I agree with you. As my post said, I’ve been a staunch advocate of free speech for decades now. I just can’t deny the harm this is costing us with people intentionally spreading bad… and this is the key point: harmful ideas.
What’s the price of this?
In 15 years of blogging, I’ve deleted one comment that I deemed was a gross representation of what I was trying to say (details here: http://pairadimes.davidtruss.com/two-wolves/#comment-2513 ). That was tough for me, but I saw the comment as harmful without any upside.
If a person wants to believe in a flat earth, or Zeus, and share those ideas, I think they have a right to do so, no matter my thoughts on their ignorance or sanity. But if someone is preaching ‘Kill thy neighbour’ then I think that crosses a line. I also think anti-vaccine propaganda, and make no mistake it is propaganda, this too crosses a line.
That doesn’t negate your very legitimate concern of ‘Who is the judge?’ But I don’t think this is a time to have no judge, and while mistakes might be made, and a genuine concern can be posed by the question, ‘What’s the next thing that might be censored?’ I do think that something has to be done to crush the growing spread and influence of not just very bad, but actually harmful ideas.
Exactly. If a person wishes to believe thunderbolts come from Zeus, that is their business. So too with opinions on vacc!nes being helpful, or harmful, in my humble opinion.
We can agree or disagree on that point, but at least you did not delete or censor my comments, and is honourable on your part.
Is it not better to have a civil discussion on controversial topics rather than “crush” voices, even if they are incorrect?
I do not see how questioning anything, of any kind = “kill thy neighbour”
Thanks for engaging in civil discussion, & for not “crush”-ing this comment (if you allow it to be posted on your platform).
We will indeed agree to disagree on that point. And this conversation is valuable (and appreciated) to have in the open.
But some are not. Case in point: It’s one thing to personally believe vaccines are harmful, it is a completely different thing to disseminate fake or purposefully deceitful information to influence others to not take a vaccine during a global pandemic.
The evidence is clear that cleverly false and sensationalized information is traveling on social media faster than than factual information. This is the current situation we are in. I for one deem the spread of such falsities as harmful and dangerous. Especially when such information is given strength by social media platforms that have the potential to overspread these dangerous ideas.
Avoiding harm to others is one of the very, very few things that I believe should trump free speech. And when it comes to the decision YouTube has made, outlined in my post, I support the effort to undo the harmful spread of vaccine misinformation.
If the censorship is widened to less harmful things, I would be equally in support of freedom of speech rather than censorship, even if I disagreed with the opinions shared.
youtube.com/watch?v=HYUtOnOjkZA
I’m Canadian. I find it humorous that you would share a video clip of something the Alberta government is doing to somehow make a point. Their response to covid can only be described as botched. That their data is skewed is an expectation.
As I said in my post:
“The one example, one data point, ends up being a scare tactic that works to convince some people hearing the argument that the millions of counter examples don’t matter.”
What shouldn’t be skewed is the sad statistics of deaths and hospitalization of unvaccinated people compared to vaccinated people. But here’s the problem: Even that gets skewed because people don’t know how to do the math (or worse yet intentionally skew the math)… and these videos that anti-vaxers spread are dangerous because they are convincing and wrong.
Please don’t link to any anti-vax propaganda, or misleading ideas. I will delete the link because I refuse to have my blog feed into algorithms that increase the search-ability of bad ideas.