This is something I think you need to unpack, at least if you want to convince me.
Prior to the last few years, Propaganda has always been acknowledged as detrimental to society, and a weapon yielded by authoritarian anti-democratic regimes and forces such as Nazism, Fascism, Communism and others.
It's nature is to deceive, misled, and discredit the truth, in order to gain political power.
It's seen as many as a way to repress speech, by shouting louder and more clearly then the voices of truth. It silences other messages by publishing large content to the contrary as well as direct attacks on the truth to discredit it.
From that angle, it seems to me Propaganda itself is a weapon against free speech.
In my opinion that means when you have a lot of propaganda in your media and social spheres, you automatically have less free speech.
Now I reckon that just having someone censor what they think is propaganda is giving that person, if they were the one behind the propaganda in the first place, all the cards, as they can now promote Propaganda and silence voices against it.
And that's not what I'm saying the solution should be, but for me to be satisfied, I need a solution that recognizes both these dimensions. And the solution of just allow all form of propaganda I also see as terrible, it's the second worst one after the other, just let people spread confusion and attacks to the truth in masse is almost as bad as letting them silence the truth.
I agree, but I just can't think what that would be. If you restrict propaganda; then you need to define propaganda. By doing that; you are perpetuating your or someone else's bias which would then be amplified by restricting everyone else from hearing of alternative ideas.
To be fair, you covered that; but I don't see how restricting speech does anything else.
Prior to the last few years, Propaganda has always been acknowledged as detrimental to society, and a weapon yielded by authoritarian anti-democratic regimes and forces such as Nazism, Fascism, Communism and others.
It's nature is to deceive, misled, and discredit the truth, in order to gain political power.
It's seen as many as a way to repress speech, by shouting louder and more clearly then the voices of truth. It silences other messages by publishing large content to the contrary as well as direct attacks on the truth to discredit it.
From that angle, it seems to me Propaganda itself is a weapon against free speech.
In my opinion that means when you have a lot of propaganda in your media and social spheres, you automatically have less free speech.
Now I reckon that just having someone censor what they think is propaganda is giving that person, if they were the one behind the propaganda in the first place, all the cards, as they can now promote Propaganda and silence voices against it.
And that's not what I'm saying the solution should be, but for me to be satisfied, I need a solution that recognizes both these dimensions. And the solution of just allow all form of propaganda I also see as terrible, it's the second worst one after the other, just let people spread confusion and attacks to the truth in masse is almost as bad as letting them silence the truth.
We need something better then that too.