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'Free speech' is a blunt instrument. Let's break it up

#1
C C Offline
https://aeon.co/ideas/free-speech-is-a-b...reak-it-up

EXCERPT: Free speech is important. It guards against governments’ dangerous tendency to repress certain kinds of communication, including protest, journalism, whistleblowing, academic research, and critical work in the arts. On the other hand, think of a doctor dispensing bogus medical advice, or someone making a contract that she plans to breach, or a defendant lying under oath in court. These all involve written or spoken statements, but they don’t seem to fall within the domain of free speech. They are what the legal theorist Frederick Schauer at the University of Virginia calls ‘patently uncovered speech’: communication that warrants no special protection against government regulation.

However, once we extrapolate beyond the clear-cut cases, the question of what counts as free speech gets rather tricky. A business whose website gets buried in pages of search results might argue that Google’s algorithm is anti-competitive – that it impedes fair competition between sellers in a marketplace. But Google has dodged liability by likening itself to a newspaper, and arguing that free speech protects it from having to modify its results. Is this a case of free speech doing its proper work, or an instance of free speech running amok, serving as cover for a libertarian agenda that unduly empowers major corporations?

To answer this question, we need a principled account of the types of communication covered by free speech. But attempts to provide such an account haven’t really succeeded. We can pick out cases on either side of the divide – ‘Protections for journalism and protest? Yes! For perjury and contracts? No’ – but there aren’t any obvious or natural criteria that separate bona fide speech from mere verbal conduct. On the contrary, as theorists have told us since the mid-20th century, all verbal communication should be understood as both speech and conduct.

Some authors see these definitional difficulties as a fatal problem for the very idea of free speech. [...] Instead of throwing out free speech entirely, a better response might be to keep the safeguards but make their sphere of application very broad...
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#2
Syne Offline
Nonsense. Contracts are mutual agreements, just like a purchase or a trade. The parties are trading on their word, in lieu of a current product or service. Enforcing contract law is equivalent to consumer protection. So are laws against bogus medical advice. These are not just speech. They are promissory, and explicitly advertise a responsibility and accountability on the part of those offering such, just like sworn testimony.

These differ greatly from opinion and private business doing what it will with it's own resources. Journalists and academics trade on their credibility. There's no enforcement necessary because these are already market-determined. You give people what they want and your voice is more loudly heard.
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#3
Ben the Donkey Offline
Free speech is an extremely sharp instrument utilised best by those who would seek it to further their own agenda.
Safeguards only serve to protect and defend majority rule.
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