No. Absolutely not. Never
They’re trying it again:
Elon Musk’s X and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta may have profited from spreading misinformation during last year’s Southport riots, MPs have said.
A report from the Commons Science and Technology committee, covering last year’s unrest, found that the business models of social media companies “incentivise the spread of content that is damaging and dangerous”.
It said the responses of companies including X, Meta, Google and TikTok “were inconsistent and inadequate, often enabling – if not encouraging – this viral spread”.
The MPs suggested companies should face fines for spreading misinformation, saying that existing online safety legislation fails to keep Britons safe.
The problem always comes down to what is the definition of misinformation? That lockdown isn’t a good cure? That a 2% wealth tax will work/will not? That the medical students are lying when they use RPI for their own wages, CPI for everyone elses’? That then morphs into who gets to define misinformation. Once we’ve a system that appoints people to do that defining then those who would control the public conversation - and thereby the society - will manoeuvre to be appointed to be those people who define what misinformation is. Is relative poverty really something to worry about? Is capitalism institutionally racist? You can carry on making your own list as you wish.
For there are people out there who believe in absolutely every idiocy. Who will compete to control that definition of what may be said to exclude any counterargument to their belief. Which is why we must never actually create that power base from which then can then abuse the rest of us.
The limits to speech are libel and incitement to immediate violence. Anything else - even the mere admission of “misinformation” as something that must be controlled - is to set up a censor for the entire society.
No. Absolutely not. Never.
Tim Worstall