Comment by wisty | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wisty | Hacker News Reader

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What do you want to ban?

There's a free speech issue to saying "you can't advertise your own opinions". Where is the line? Should every charity that "raises awareness" be banned? Should every sponsored Youtuber be forced out of political commentary? (I mean, I don't hate the idea completely ....)

There's the skeezy links behind organisations that support a political stance, and claim no real links to politicians. But we know that it's all kinda bs with strong links between the "nonaffiliated" "Political Action Committees" that claim to just represent causes and ideas, and the politicians who just happen to be close friends with the organisers. But it's rarely totally black and white.

> There's a free speech issue to saying "you can't advertise your own opinions".

There's a free speech issue to letting money make someone's speech be heard louder than others, making most other people's speech technically free, but inaudible.

Most countries have limitations on the broadcasting of political opinions and candidate support for periods before elections.

These laws don't work as well these days with the importance of social media (and it's mostly the same rich Americans that take advantage of this to meddle into European affairs) but at least the principle is there, while I think the fundamentalist way that the US interpret "free speech" prevents anything from being doable at all to curb the undue influence in politics that money can give.

The authors of the First Amendment were not ignorant of the “volume” afforded by expensive printing presses.

> These laws don't work as well these days with the importance of social media

Indeed, as the UK is finding out at the moment, the existing rules are insufficient and it's turning out that a rule is only a rule if it is enforced anyway.

I guess I'm saying I disagree with the Buckley v. Valeo ruling. Money isn't speech. Never has been.

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