{"id":15029,"date":"2024-11-28T00:30:43","date_gmt":"2024-11-27T13:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/?p=15029"},"modified":"2024-11-28T00:30:43","modified_gmt":"2024-11-27T13:30:43","slug":"why-regulating-speech-is-an-ethical-minefield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/28\/why-regulating-speech-is-an-ethical-minefield\/","title":{"rendered":"Why regulating speech is an ethical minefield"},"content":{"rendered":"

Misinformation and disinformation are\u00a0major concerns<\/a>\u00a0worldwide. The federal government\u2019s\u00a0misinformation bill<\/a>\u00a0aimed to respond to the threats posed by false, misleading and harmful information. The bill met\u00a0strong opposition in the senate<\/a>\u00a0and has just been\u00a0withdrawn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Legal efforts to suppress misinformation are ongoing. Around the world,\u00a0many countries<\/a>\u00a0are considering\u00a0legislation<\/a>\u00a0to suppress specific types of misinformation or\u00a0require online platforms to suppress it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Such laws are always controversial. They encounter some well-known practical and ethical problems \u2013 and some surprising ones.<\/p>\n

Most obviously, censorship restricts people\u2019s right to free speech \u2013 an important natural freedom protected in the\u00a0Universal Declaration of Human Rights<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0international law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Prohibiting speech is additionally concerning in democracies, because citizens have a\u00a0civic responsibility<\/a>\u00a0to engage in debate about the laws that collectively bind us.<\/p>\n

Free speech also has many beneficial \u201cutilitarian<\/a>\u201d consequences. It can allow truths that were once thought false to be reconsidered and accepted. It allows for existing truths to be better understood. As John Stuart Mill\u00a0famously argued<\/a>: \u201cHe who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Powers of censorship can also be abused to\u00a0suppress political dissent<\/a>. Even if we trust the existing government to be judicious in suppressing speech, we might be nervous about the way future governments could employ such powers.<\/p>\n

Finally, restrictions on speech can be difficult to target precisely. Even if the wording of a law is narrowly specified, it might\u00a0chill<\/a>\u00a0speech. The threat of legal sanctions can encourage people and organisations to avoid speech anywhere near the legally specified boundary.<\/p>\n

These are all important ethical concerns \u2013 and many of them\u00a0were<\/a>\u00a0raised<\/a>\u00a0by<\/a>\u00a0critics<\/a>\u00a0of the government\u2019s withdrawn misinformation bill.<\/p>\n

Such concerns are not definitive, because prohibiting speech can also have socially desirable consequences. Laws against incitement to violence, prohibiting defamation, and even protecting things like copyright are all widely accepted limitations on our ability to speak freely.<\/p>\n

Yet if we want to understand how legal attempts to suppress misinformation might be counterproductive, it is not the restriction on\u00a0what we say<\/em>\u00a0that matters, but the consequences for\u00a0what we can hear<\/em>. Suppression regimes can, perversely, undermine confidence in the very beliefs they wish to protect.<\/p>\n

The problem of misinformation is easy to overestimate. It is intuitive to think that misinformed people will make bad personal or political decisions and be led to adopt worrying values.<\/p>\n

But as cognitive psychologist\u00a0Hugo Mercier<\/a>\u00a0has\u00a0argued<\/a>, people often believe and share misinformation because of values they already hold and the actions they want to perform. In such cases, the misinformation may be a symptom as much as cause, and suppressing it will not change the underlying concern.<\/p>\n

Our cognitive biases also tempt us to overplay the significance of misinformation.\u00a0Confirmation bias<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0self-serving bias<\/a>\u00a0encourage us to believe that those with different values and beliefs are manipulated, credulous and misguided. This is a much more comfortable belief than the disquieting alternative that our opponents are reasonable people with legitimate concerns.<\/p>\n

Misinformation suppression regimes can cause more \u2013 not fewer \u2013 false beliefs. Consider any important belief that you are confident is true. Think for a moment about why you believe that fact. The answer is probably that you have heard plausible evidence from credible sources supporting it. And you figure that, if there were substantial things to be said against your view, you would have heard about them.<\/p>\n

But suppose I were to tell you there was no way you could have heard about conflicting evidence, because you have lived for years under a misinformation suppression regime. Should you now rethink your confidence in that belief?<\/p>\n

Yes. The earlier grounds for your belief no longer apply. You can no longer justify your belief by appealing to the fact that you have heard what may be said for and against it. You are like a scientist who trusted the results of an experiment, but then discovers that any data that might have disproved the hypothesis has been systematically excluded.<\/p>\n

Despite this change in the grounds for your belief, you might not change your mind. After all, a government body \u2013 no doubt informed by experts \u2013 has judged the supporting facts to be true. If you trust the government body, both in its capacity to provide true information (its\u00a0accuracy<\/em>) and in its intention to suppress only disinformation (its\u00a0sincerity<\/em>), then you have a new reason to accept your belief.<\/p>\n

Confirmation bias and self-serving bias encourage us to believe that those with different values and beliefs are manipulated, credulous and misguided. This is a much more comfortable belief than the disquieting alternative that our opponents are reasonable people with legitimate concerns.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But here\u2019s the problem. You need to\u00a0really<\/em>\u00a0trust the government body. This is not the type of trust you might ordinarily put in, say, news networks or scientific experts. You might be willing to give those sources the benefit of the doubt, but remain open to the possibility their information might turn out to be false or misleading.<\/p>\n

In an information environment where there are many different sources of information, you don\u2019t need\u00a0absolute<\/em>\u00a0trust in any single source. You can weigh things up for yourself, working out which sources make sense and will likely prove reliable.<\/p>\n

But when a single body curates the entire information environment, you need near-absolute trust in that body, because its role involves actively suppressing evidence that is wrong. If you don\u2019t have that level of trust, then the regime has removed your good reasons for accepting a true belief, without replacing them with something equally compelling.<\/p>\n

Perversely then, the rational response to a misinformation suppression regime can drive distrust.<\/p>\n

This concern applies even to to perfectly rational beings. But for imperfectly rational beings, the response to suppression can be even more dramatic.<\/p>\n

This is because the people who are most vulnerable to misinformation about important issues are those who are\u00a0already<\/em>\u00a0sceptical about experts and government authorities. Once these sceptics realise that these untrusted authorities are\u00a0in charge<\/em>\u00a0of suppressing information, they will feel like they have additional reason never to trust anything the authorities say.<\/p>\n

Efforts to suppress misinformation imply that the critical goal is to ensure widespread true beliefs, at least about important issues. But true belief isn\u2019t the only knowledge-related (\u201cepistemic\u201d) goal individuals and societies might have.<\/p>\n

Another goal is\u00a0understanding<\/em>. Someone might have a true belief, but only because they have uncritically adopted it, without any understanding of the evidence for or against it. A misinformation suppression regime might encourage sufficient trust that people accept its pronouncements. But if people do so based on faith, they do not understand their beliefs; they are not developing their\u00a0critical and cognitive faculties<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In this way, a system that achieves desirable initial outcomes might set the scene for worrying long-term results, as faith in authorities undermines genuine understanding and critical interrogation. Government bodies are exactly the type of institution that democratic citizens must be vigilant in appraising. It is a civic responsibility to try and sort out when and where authorities speak honestly and accurately \u2013 and to vote and act accordingly.<\/p>\n

We cannot fulfil this responsibility for misinformation suppression regimes, because they suppress information that could cause us to doubt its determinations. They require us to abdicate our civic responsibility to think for ourselves.<\/p>\n

Having right or wrong beliefs isn\u2019t all that matters to people. They also care about how they came to have those beliefs. In particular, they care about whether they have made up their own mind. Being in charge of our beliefs is a necessary part of being autonomous \u2013 a self-governing agent, able to set one\u2019s own goals. As John Locke\u00a0argued<\/a>: \u201che is certainly the most subjected, the most enslaved, who is so in his understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n

A misinformation suppression regime pays no heed to this source of respect. Every piece of information comes with the invisible but omnipresent qualification:\u00a0You are not getting the full story, because you cannot be trusted with the full story<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Suppressing misinformation in this way will be seen as\u00a0insulting and manipulative<\/a>\u00a0to those deemed at risk of forming dangerously wrong beliefs. If our concern is with people who are vulnerable to misinformation because they make up their minds on the basis of emotion rather than reason, the last thing we should do is to insult them and treat them condescendingly and paternalistically.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to think that if we successfully suppress some information, it\u2019s like that misinformation never existed. This is a mistake. The\u00a0action<\/em>\u00a0of suppressing information itself has effects.<\/p>\n

The action has\u00a0moral<\/em>\u00a0consequences: it disrespects people\u2019s ability to make up their own minds, make their own mistakes and take responsibility for their beliefs.<\/p>\n

The action has\u00a0democratic<\/em>\u00a0consequences: it weakens the civic responsibilities of citizens by demanding uncritical faith.<\/p>\n

Most perversely of all, the action has\u00a0epistemic<\/em>\u00a0consequences: it undermines confidence in the very beliefs it hopes to safeguard.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published in<\/em> The Conversation<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Photo by Juliana Rom\u00e3o<\/a> on Unsplash.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Misinformation and disinformation are\u00a0major concerns\u00a0worldwide. The federal government\u2019s\u00a0misinformation bill\u00a0aimed to respond to the threats posed by false, misleading and harmful<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":488,"featured_media":15033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[366,499,417,365],"coauthors":[202],"class_list":["post-15029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-law-politics","tag-disinformation","tag-ethics","tag-freedom-of-speech","tag-misinformation"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/488"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15029"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15034,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15029\/revisions\/15034"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15029"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=15029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}