It seems to me a repeating pattern that once freedom of thought, speech and expression is limited for essentially any reason, it will have unintended consequences.
Once the tools are in place, they will be used, abused and inevitably end up in the hands of someone you disagree with, regardless of whether the original implementer had good intentions.
As such I’m personally very averse to restrictions. I’ve thought about the question a fair bit – there isn’t a clear cut or obvious line to draw.
Please elaborate and motivate your answer. I’m genuinely curious about getting some fresh perspectives.
I think it’s disingenuous to group freedom of thought with speech and expression. Limiting the first is impossible, while every country on earth limits the other two to some degree.
My personal opinion is that you shouldn’t be able to hurt people in stupid, hateful, predictable ways.
They are tied, because the other two freedoms are intrinsically linked to the first. If a thought is not permitted to be expressed, then it is, for all intents and purposes, prohibited.
Consider how often you forget something. I write things down to remember them. If that thought, expressed, were considered criminal, then it becomes a limitation also on thought itself.
Can you define “hurt”. Do you mean physically or emotionally? If the latter then I think it is too restrictive.
In this context I pretty much mean advocating for genocide or fascism. That and I don’t think you should be able to lie out your ass and call it news.
Who gets to decide what “hurt” means? The person hurting or the person being hurt? And how do you get both of them to agree what hurt means?
It would be defined as part of the law, hopefully with something reasonable and robust.
Take genocide advocacy - it pretty clearly leads to people getting hurt even if we don’t know exactly who.
But what if the news rephrases everything as the opinion of an expert? They wouldn’t be lying, or at least not demonstratingly so. Yet they can claim pretty much anything.
They’d be lying if they present an „expert” who isn’t.
It just rubs me the wrong way that the only people with a claim against Fox News for the big lie was the voting machine company over lost profits. We can at least solve the standing issue.