If you spread falsehoods online with the intent to harm (ex. vaccine misinformation has killed people), then you should have to defend it in court. Let a jury decide.
Thoughts?
Would you also extend this malicious prosecution to those who advocate for those with prior infections to get vaccines? That certainly is intent to harm if there is no provable benefit, and even a few VAERs reports.
The real issue is one of timing. Some people know, understand, internalize and regurgitate truths while others take years to catch up. I'm thinking government agencies. How dangerous would it be to start throwing people in jail for being ahead of established science?
How would you mind read someones comments and qualify them if they hold a dicotomy of views with varying probabilities in their head? Are they only allowed to profess what they believe to be true? What is most likely true? Do they have to present all 9 future possibilities and give them percentages and write a dissertation to back it up just to stay out of jail?
I have a better idea. Stop trying to be a hero, no one needs your saving, no one wants your saving. It's this kind of talk that makes people disengage, shut their mouths and become entrenched in their ways.
No longer is it about science, it's about resisting coercion.
And that's where we are today. Better some die today, to save us from tyranny of the crowd tomorrow.
I also didn't suggest "throwing people in jail"
Knowledge and correctness are time dependant was my main point. At what point does a theory become a fact? At what point does nuance overrule that previous "fact"?
For these reasons, I can't support any censorship at all.
What about (from Wikipedia):
Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, and commercial speech such as advertising. Defamation that causes harm to reputation is a tort and also an exception to free speech.
Lets go with the theory of evolution. At inception, how would the theory of evolution not be labeled misinformation in this context?
This is an utterly moronic view of the infallibility of our current state of knowledge about the world.