As people are seeking to place blame fort the outcome of #Election2024 why is everyone ignoring the elephant in the room? Russian disinformation and #trolling by Putin's minions were a huge part of the problem. Of course they were aided by corporate social media who were complicit in spreading the lies and #disinformation, but without the Russian troll farms actively working to destroy America from the inside there might have been far less contentiousness on those platforms.
If we tried to influence a Russian election the way they influenced ours I'm sure there would be hell to pay. But the worst part is that our government knew it was happening and could do little about it because, you know, freedom of speech and all that. I have thought for a long time that the "free speech absolutists" have their heads up their asses when it comes to how free speech should work, particularly in the days when everyone has a world-wide megaphone.
The problem is, how do you allow individuals to express their ideas and beliefs without letting huge corporations and even foreign entities have a MUCH BIGGER megaphone that actually stifles the individual free speech that the Bill of Rights attempted to protect? It doesn't do much good for an individual to have freedom of speech if a huge corporation can block or censor their posts, or a thousand trolls can shout at them that they are crazy and wrong. The writers of the Bill of Rights could never have anticipated a day like today, When I was a child the huge newspapers and broadcast networks already had something of a monopoly on speech but at least they weren't under the influence of foreign governments to the degree social media is today.
I think there was a time, even up to a decade ago, when we could have preserved freedom of speech for individuals, while still preventing foreign governments and huge corporations from drowning out the voice of the common person, but I don't see our current corrupt Supreme Court allowing the current situation to change. I wish the free speech absolutists would have been a little more open to the idea that maybe there really should be some limits on speech, particularly for foreign actors that are seeking to destabilize your country.
Russia, China, North Korea, and similar countries have no broblem limiting what their citizens can read, and no I am not saying we should emulate them, but is it really fair to allow nations like that to infulence our citizens while at the same time their citizens have a much harder time even getting factual information from the western nations, let alone being subjected to a constant barrage of lies and #propaganda ? And yes, I know many "free" nations also use propaganda, my point is we're not allowed to just constantly send it to their citizens via social media.
Just something to think about, if we somehow manage to survive the mess we're in now.
