Should the Govt Shut Down Free Speech?

A new survey has found two thirds of Kiwis are worried about the extent of misinformation being peddled online.

Is it time for Parliament to stop pretending deliberate and provably wrong disinformation is legitimate free speech and instead recognise it as harmful and take action against it?

Stuff

** The below article is Stuart Smith’s response to the above leading and highly biased question that was posed to him by Stuff.

In retrospect, it was inevitable that with the rise of technology, the internet and social media there would be consequences to the way news and information is spread.

Some are positive, we can easily access thousands of news sources all over the world and virtually endless amounts of information on any topic with a quick search on the internet.

That can come at a cost though as misinformation is ripe on the internet, however, if Parliament were ever going to step in with laws to deter it, we would need to act with some caution.

In 1633, Galileo Galilei was placed under arrest for heresy by Pope Urban XII for actively promoting Copernicus’s theory that the earth orbited the sun. Copernicus’s theory is known now as a simple fact, but in the 17th century, it was declared misinformation and Galileo was punished by spending the rest of his life under house arrest.

He was lucky, as others were burnt at the stake for so-called misinformation. How much did Galileo’s house arrest hold back the advancement of science? Quite a lot I suspect, and all in the name of protecting a political position.

We cannot allow the same to happen here.

We need to be very careful how we treat misinformation in today’s world. Social media giants Facebook and Instagram have warnings on any posts which contain information on Covid-19 and vaccines so that people are aware there could be misinformation.

What recourse do we have if a social media post is inappropriately deemed misinformation? It turns out to be incredibly difficult and unfair as algorithms identify the supposed breach and getting it overturned is a slow and uncertain process.

Who determines what misinformation is? Your view and mine might be completely different. It is dangerous territory to allow a politician to be the source of truth, this has had disastrous consequences through history. Despots such as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao all controlled their so-called ‘truth’.

New Zealanders have the right to express their views and others can decide for themselves if they want to accept them or not.

Free speech is one of the greatest freedoms we have in western democracies, and any move to limit it should be vigorously opposed. Those that are calling the loudest for silencing contrary views clearly lack confidence in the strength of their argument, and think that silencing others is their only option.

It is neither free nor fair to attempt to protect people from misinformation by unduly censoring free speech. We should learn from history and avoid silencing a modern-day Galileo.