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Good: I have free speech.
Bad: You have free speech.
I think that sums it up.
“Free speech” is neither good nor bad. Rather, it doesn’t exist. Speech, ie what is discussed in the court of public opinion, is dominated by whatever mechanisms and institutions that have power. In countries like the US, this means large megacorps and billionaires can flood the information space with articles flattering their positions. Companies like google can censor importabt but inconvenient information from searches, and more.
Speech is controlled by whichever class has control, be it bourgeois or proletarian, or even aristocrat.
It prevents others (the government, moderators, social media platforms, parents) controlling the narrative and allows challenging those in authority. It enables minority opinions to be put out and considered by the majority.
Any detriments are mainly ‘people are rude’, but that’s not reason enough to outlaw free speech, given the costs of doing so
There is no inherent arbiter of good or truth.
If the trust in expertise is tarnished, reshaping reality is left to the uninformed.
You can trust the uninformed to express their own will truthfully at least. (Unless they’re convinced to side with an authority). There’s a reliable truth there. I guess that’s the rock of democracy.
Good : It makes the conversation intelligent and sane.
Bad : People sometimes say bad things.
Free speech in no way makes a conversation intelligent or sane.
Free speech is necessary to prevent the government from censoring dissent.
The consequence is that there’s little to no legal repercussions to spreading lies and hate. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be repercussions.
Imagine a censor who thinks that all of his weird dogmatic opinions are pure golden truth picking over your conversations and rewriting or removing everything he doesn’t like. A rather stupid, sloppy censor who couldn’t get the point if it was underlined twice.
Imagine what your posts would convey then.
You can say what you want except when you get arrested for it because free speech is fake.
