We need to get it established that the right to express an opinion that the government doesn't like is protected.

And that lying is not.

If you can't prove who is right one way or another, then it's an opinion and it's protected.

If you, say, start a war with lies about the other side's capabilities and intentions, you never see daylight again.

they could be held liable for pulling things that are in fact not lies, that is probably still not enough protection of free speech, but the very fact that they are given cover to censor on this pretense is going to be bad, bad, bad.

Tamping down is never the answer. More daylight and better refutation is.

The refuters are never able to keep up with the liars. You can tell twenty lies in twenty places while the truth-tellers are trying to gather the evidence to put down the first one.

Then, the truth has very little chance of being broadcast the same way that the lie was.

And there's no penalty for those who are making shit up, so they can try and try and try again.

That's a formula for getting us into wars, getting Trump elected, getting all the help for the needy canceled because we "just don't have them money" (unless it's a sweetheart deal for a big corporation or the Pentagon).

Daylight and refutation will never catch up with the liars unless they are risking something every time they lie.

You might as well legalize bank robbery with the only penalty being that MAYBE they'll have to give the money back if they get caught.

worth the cost.

It isn't really that fake news on its own is a problem, it is that big outlets run with fake news, and make up their own. They are going to be very good at finding that legal fine line and staying on the right side of it, but they will be really really good at shutting down free speech for others.

Yours seems like an honorable way to lose everything, every time.

And that's just what's been happening.

"Worth the cost?"

What's it worth to still have a nation that knows what's true and what isn't?

"A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes"

-- various attributions

incredibly basic guidelines that it follows by removing anything that might not be currently vetted? Maybe content providers, in order to not get into hot water, will "innocently" make a policy that if something isn't first vetted and reported on by an AP source, we will assume it is fake news and remove it. They aren't going to use a long strenuous process to determine this with every single post or every single video, and they financially benefit from policing content, so long as the public doesn't boycott them for doing so in outrage.

Having the government basically demand that they regulate the truthfulness of things is going to be a disaster. The room for interpretation is huge, just read fact-checking sites on a regular basis, and that is clear.

As I said, I understand this is a huge problem. I was flippant in my answer to how to solve it by just saying "more daylight" but thinking the very kinds of corporations that bring us fox news and CNN, etc. are to be trusted with how they enact this kind of censorship, is really short sighted.

Propaganda will always attract more followers than truth.

Game over.

Yeah, actually it is. Sorry.

None whatsoever.

Liars always have the advantage and you want to protect them.

Thanks for nothing.

Enjoy the fascist nightmare.

There was no fox news, briebert, Alex Jones insanity etc.

Nazis and other racist haters thrived after its demise in the name of "free speech".

tool with which to curb unwanted messaging, and steer people to their own fake ass fucking news. This will be a way of cutting out all of the little guys based upon very loose metrics, in the name of "caution."

Youtube is already doing something similar to placate their advertisers, demonetizing content that is contentiously political or uses swear words, hate speech, etc. They are not doing it on an individual basis that has to do with intense review and responding to public outcry. They are doing it preemptively, loosely. This is a bad precedent already. So the government getting involved, and giving such behavior the cover of law, and legally penalizing for not doing this sort of purging is a horribly draconian policy that will shut down independent voices.

It will be enough to just suspect that something is fake news, and corps will be justified by that alone to pull it before it becomes a problem, and these corps will not have an interest in getting it right. Why would they? They can let the milquetoast stand and their own produced content of course, and basically cull the rest from the field, and at least in the short term, continue to pretend that they have an entirely open platform for voices.

Independents over on youtube have already lost huge chunks of their funding because of the demonetization and some will most certainly have to pack it up.

I fear for the future when this sort of thing happens in the supposedly democratic western world.

News Law."

I see it as an act of desperation by a government that find the very concept appalling, with "worse" being a country where the likes of Fox "News" and Breitbart control the message. So what if only a third of the people swallow it? That's the percentage that allowed Hitler to become Reichskanzler in the 1933 election.

The Germans also know that if a German Fox and/or Breitbart can control the news dialogue, then, if financed by someone like Putin, already schooled in financing the extremist left in Germany before the DDR dissolved, things can be brought to such a chaotic point that Putin won't need tanks to march in. He'll get a perfumed invitation.

I think the very fact that something so far-reaching is even being publicly considered of Germany threatening their own "nuclear option." They can tell America, "don't even THINK of trying that kind of shit here!" and then put this law on the books (or enforce it if the SUMMERTIME comes). At €50million a throw, it only takes 200 violations to get to a billion, and Fox tells that many lies by the time the first commercial break is cued. The Germans see Trumpistan-Republicanistan every day on their news, and they don't want to become it (again).

Especially when I get to decide what is a lie.