That is a view which is entirely opposed to my own. I have no faith that there is some authoritative entity that could objectively determine what is a lie and what is the truth.
Well said. It surprises me so many people don't see the danger inherent in anointing 'fact checkers' who are supposed to adjudicate some objective "truth" around complex culture war issues along with the power to suppress other viewpoints.
Free speech isn't free. We pay for it by tolerating speech that's unpleasant, uncomfortable, wrong, insulting, offensive or hateful.
If you don't act against disinformation, you get a world that is spammed with so many statements that it's impossible for the average consumer to assess the truth of any of them.
That's great until it convinces them to make real-world decisions that affect the rest of us. For instance, vaccine misinformation talked a lot of people against getting safe (or at least safer than the illness), effective (not perfect, but effective) immunity shots for COVID. Those people are dead from being wrong.
I think someone's an idiot for denying the moon landings, but their ignorance doesn't directly affect my ability to stay alive and health. Some misinformation is worse than others.
Having the power to determine truth does not seem like a great way to run a society even if it gets you some easy wins on other fronts.
It might work at first and be effective for some time in the same way that a dictator can "get things done" but there is no free lunch.
Eventually you will get evil dictators, power hungry arbitrators of truth. It will bite you. It is only a question of when. It might be years or generations. The only winning move is not to play. Don't concentrate the power in the first place.
> I have no faith that there is some authoritative entity that could objectively determine what is a lie and what is the truth.
I read this as "it is impossible to determine truth". If there exists a well resourced entity who's entire purpose in life is to determine objective truth and they are unable to do so what chance do I have?
That's the problem though. Your judgement gets warped by the constant stream of lies. That's the fundamental concept behind propaganda. If you repeat a lie enough times it will be believed. Everybody thinks they're too smart to be taken in by propaganda, that's one of the reasons it works so well.
