OK Lawyers, how do we get a handle on....

[SqueakyClean]

....editing sound / video to promote a political agenda?

(Apologies for the long post to follow....)

We are all well aware of how social media (and even media in general) has been a detriment to society in some aspects, specifically in how false information is virally spread to people to affect their opinions.
So how do we put a stop to it?

Specifically, I am talking about what legal action can be taken currently (and/or what changes should we make if the current laws do not properly address the issue) to go after the Photoshop Warriors who have made a living off of altering photos for the purpose of promoting an agenda?

For example, in the Mar-A-Lago thread, the following picture was just added:

This is obviously an image that is considered satire and should be considered "safe" from any kind of prosecution. This firmly falls into the "freedom of speech" type of argument that I am fine with.

But let's look at another example. This is the image from David Perdue's (Georgia) campaign team back in 2020 where they "accidentally" increased the size of Ossoff's nose to "enhance" his Jewish features in order to make him less appealing.

Shouldn't this fall under a form of defamation or slander?

Same thing with edited video. There was a video posted a few days ago that was Desantis and Hannity talking about the Mar-A-Lago raid and it was a fake video that was edited from footage from a previous interview a year ago. It was found out to be fake and addressed accordingly, but it already added a little fuel to the fire that is already polarizing opinions. On the other side, there was a photo of the judge in the Mar-A-Lago raid that was edited from an old Epstein / Maxwell photo that was actually shown on Fox News and promoted as real. Proven fake thereafter, but still not helping matters.

So those are examples of people editing media in a manner that is in no way could be considered a parody or for entertainment purposes only. While "lying" is certainly not illegal in most cases, I would think that most of these types of media alteration could fall into the definition of defamation that could be proved in court.

Now, I am well aware of how difficult it would be to prove / hunt down the individuals who are responsible for most of these. I suspect that they alter the media and upload to social media which is then protected under the current content laws for that very reason.

However, I really do think that a decent chunk of the partisanship in this country is being fueled by altered media like this. Even when they are exposed as fake, often the damage has already been done and most of the people who read / received the original fake media never find out about it. It's not like their Facebook feeds offer a retraction to a post that you have received with the false media.

Also, things are only going to get worse. Deepfake technology is getting easier to create and make believable every day. It is not going to be long before we get to the point where it is nearly impossible to tell a fake from the real thing without specific training in that science. And let's face it, a lot of people are already very easily duped by this kind of thing because they want to believe it enough that they don't even question it anymore.

So what is the solution? I believe that the lack of prosecution of these kinds of changes has only emboldened people to keep doing it more and more. Is it a pipe dream to think that we can somehow go after these people due to a lack in technology to catch them, or are the penalties so light that it's not even worth the effort to try and convict? I imagine that the current penalty for prosecuting someone has to be tied to the damages that the targeted recipient suffers, but that is always fairly hard to prove. Is there a standard penalty that could be imposed (major fine? minor jail time) that we could put in place to send a message that this is no longer OK?

 

[anon_6hv78pr714xta]

....editing sound / video to promote a political agenda?

(Apologies for the long post to follow....)

We are all well aware of how social media (and even media in general) has been a detriment to society in some aspects, specifically in how false information is virally spread to people to affect their opinions.
So how do we put a stop to it?

Specifically, I am talking about what legal action can be taken currently (and/or what changes should we make if the current laws do not properly address the issue) to go after the Photoshop Warriors who have made a living off of altering photos for the purpose of promoting an agenda?

For example, in the Mar-A-Lago thread, the following picture was just added:

This is obviously an image that is considered satire and should be considered "safe" from any kind of prosecution. This firmly falls into the "freedom of speech" type of argument that I am fine with.

But let's look at another example. This is the image from David Perdue's (Georgia) campaign team back in 2020 where they "accidentally" increased the size of Ossoff's nose to "enhance" his Jewish features in order to make him less appealing.

Shouldn't this fall under a form of defamation or slander?

Same thing with edited video. There was a video posted a few days ago that was Desantis and Hannity talking about the Mar-A-Lago raid and it was a fake video that was edited from footage from a previous interview a year ago. It was found out to be fake and addressed accordingly, but it already added a little fuel to the fire that is already polarizing opinions. On the other side, there was a photo of the judge in the Mar-A-Lago raid that was edited from an old Epstein / Maxwell photo that was actually shown on Fox News and promoted as real. Proven fake thereafter, but still not helping matters.

So those are examples of people editing media in a manner that is in no way could be considered a parody or for entertainment purposes only. While "lying" is certainly not illegal in most cases, I would think that most of these types of media alteration could fall into the definition of defamation that could be proved in court.

Now, I am well aware of how difficult it would be to prove / hunt down the individuals who are responsible for most of these. I suspect that they alter the media and upload to social media which is then protected under the current content laws for that very reason.

However, I really do think that a decent chunk of the partisanship in this country is being fueled by altered media like this. Even when they are exposed as fake, often the damage has already been done and most of the people who read / received the original fake media never find out about it. It's not like their Facebook feeds offer a retraction to a post that you have received with the false media.

Also, things are only going to get worse. Deepfake technology is getting easier to create and make believable every day. It is not going to be long before we get to the point where it is nearly impossible to tell a fake from the real thing without specific training in that science. And let's face it, a lot of people are already very easily duped by this kind of thing because they want to believe it enough that they don't even question it anymore.

So what is the solution? I believe that the lack of prosecution of these kinds of changes has only emboldened people to keep doing it more and more. Is it a pipe dream to think that we can somehow go after these people due to a lack in technology to catch them, or are the penalties so light that it's not even worth the effort to try and convict? I imagine that the current penalty for prosecuting someone has to be tied to the damages that the targeted recipient suffers, but that is always fairly hard to prove. Is there a standard penalty that could be imposed (major fine? minor jail time) that we could put in place to send a message that this is no longer OK?

I agree with you that this is an ever growing problem that will become very, very difficult to manage with better tech (deepfakes scare me a lot).

But you are using words like "convict" and "fines" and "jail time." The current "penalty" for defamation is a civil suit, not a criminal one.

The solution in the political realm is to call out the lie and hopefully affect voters. I used the word "hopefully" to mean that will never happen but it would be nice if it did.

In the private realm, see Alex Jones case. You sue them into oblivion (civilly) and try to convince people not to listen to that type of person/organization because of their tactics.

I'm very, very wary of ever imposing criminal penalties for speech, even false speech that bears on the political. You never know who will be in office in the future and how they would use those rules to clamp down on speech you want to be heard.

 

[SqueakyClean]

In the private realm, see Alex Jones case. You sue them into oblivion (civilly) and try to convince people not to listen to that type of person/organization because of their tactics.

I'm very, very wary of ever imposing criminal penalties for speech, even false speech that bears on the political. You never know who will be in office in the future and how they would use those rules to clamp down on speech you want to be heard.

A) The Alex Jones case is easy because there is a known aggressor and a known victim. It is easy to prove the damages. That's the problem with doing this in a civil court is that you have to be able to prove damages.

B) And maybe this comes down to a question of free speech? I absolutely agree that this is a potential slippery slope to go down, but there is a difference between stumping on the pulpit for your ideals as a political candidate and knowingly altering media. Altering established media from it's existing form should not be considered free speech if the intent is to deceive (and that should apply to all situations, not just political ones). Is there ways that we could change the laws to at least establish a baseline for that? I would think it would be easy to create a law that sits in the middle of the spectrum between parody and lying so that the obvious cases could be trialed as such, and then the cases that fall right on the line could be debated at court with lawyers when required.

 

[anon_6hv78pr714xta]

A) The Alex Jones case is easy because there is a known aggressor and a known victim. It is easy to prove the damages. That's the problem with doing this in a civil court is that you have to be able to prove damages.

B) And maybe this comes down to a question of free speech? I absolutely agree that this is a potential slippery slope to go down, but there is a difference between stumping on the pulpit for your ideals as a political candidate and knowingly altering media. Altering established media from it's existing form should not be considered free speech if the intent is to deceive (and that should apply to all situations, not just political ones). Is there ways that we could change the laws to at least establish a baseline for that? I would think it would be easy to create a law that sits in the middle of the spectrum between parody and lying so that the obvious cases could be trialed as such, and then the cases that fall right on the line could be debated at court with lawyers when required.

As to (B), I understand where you're coming from and agree its a problem that we need to think about how to address. I just think creating the law in the middle of the spectrum is not as easy as you think it is. Defining these things is hard, and if you give enforcers discretion, that can lead to a lot of bad outcomes.

 

[Sope Creek]

I agree with you that this is an ever growing problem that will become very, very difficult to manage with better tech (deepfakes scare me a lot).

But you are using words like "convict" and "fines" and "jail time." The current "penalty" for defamation is a civil suit, not a criminal one.

The solution in the political realm is to call out the lie and hopefully affect voters. I used the word "hopefully" to mean that will never happen but it would be nice if it did.

In the private realm, see Alex Jones case. You sue them into oblivion (civilly) and try to convince people not to listen to that type of person/organization because of their tactics.

I'm very, very wary of ever imposing criminal penalties for speech, even false speech that bears on the political. You never know who will be in office in the future and how they would use those rules to clamp down on speech you want to be heard.

Agreed. This almost feels like a solution seeking out a problem . . . .

 

[SqueakyClean]

Agreed. This almost feels like a solution seeking out a problem . . . .

Don't get me wrong, I know this isn't a problem as large as gas prices and inflation (for example), but it seems to be something that is getting worse and worse lately. Seems like something that we should get in front of (be proactive instead of reactive).
In the old days, if you were caught doing something amoral, you were ostracized for it accordingly. With the anonymity of the internet, we seem to have lost that ability.

 

[Sope Creek]

Don't get me wrong, I know this isn't a problem as large as gas prices and inflation (for example), but it seems to be something that is getting worse and worse lately. Seems like something that we should get in front of (be proactive instead of reactive).
In the old days, if you were caught doing something amoral, you were ostracized for it accordingly. With the anonymity of the internet, we seem to have lost that ability.

Yeah . . . I don't know if the law is effective at this sort of thing. In the old days we knew what we could enforce legally and what we couldn't. I'm thinking we might find that legislating and enforcing this stuff really doesn't work.

 

[IU_Hickory]

I agree it is a major problem but definitely would have to be careful how it is done so it is not abused either.

It seems like something could be done to at least keep media outlets in better check, even it is just Alex Jonesing them.

But yea, a slippery slope that may not be capable of being addressed.

 

[UncleMark]

I agree it is a major problem but definitely would have to be careful how it is done so it is not abused either.

It seems like something could be done to at least keep media outlets in better check, even it is just Alex Jonesing them.

The Jones case might not have much of an effect, since he pretty much did that all on his own. The Dominion case might prove much more impactful.

Of course, neither directly address the OP's concern, but they still may have an effect on how widely some of this shit get disseminated.

 

[TMFT]

I don't think the Ossoff edit would be considered defamation. Certainly in poor taste, but defamation has to be more.

The judge for the MAL warrant I think would certainly have a claim. I imagine so did the FoxNews attorneys because the anchor made an on-air apology/clarification that it was not a real photo. Who knows if that will be enough?

I don't think we can effectively police lying, criminally or civilly. Defamation suits are a thing, but also from a practical perspective, you can't get water from a rock. If some broke person is defaming you, you only spend forever and a lot of money to keep them broke.

The deep fakes are a real issue to me. For example, Obama's infamous "57 states" gaffe. He's pretty clearly, IMO, going in the direction of saying he's been to all 50 states. But then catches him self mid thought and edits to 47 with one to go (Sorry Alaska & Hawaii) but didn't take bake the "fifty." In the zeitgeist though, it's been repeated so often as he doesn't know how many states there are. And taken at the specifics of what he said, he'd be thinking we had sixty states. It doesn't take a deep fake to convince people they saw something different than what happened. Similarly, the Trump "inject bleach" gaffe has be re-told, and believed, by his supporters as being something other than what it clearly was. Like a joke, or sarcasm, or something. When it was 100% clearly a rejoinder to the prior speaker at that briefing talking about how quickly surface disinfectants killed COVID. Deep fakes are only going to make it worse.

 

[TheOriginalHappyGoat]

As a general rule, we should be wary of expanding what qualifies as criminal speech. Even the few, very limited examples we already have can be misused.

That's not to say that our way of doing things is the only right way. I don't think it's unreasonable, for example, that some European nations outlaw Nazi symbolism, even if such a law would never pass muster here. I'm just skeptical of ever giving the authorities more cause for clamping down on what people say.

 

[Stuffshot]

....editing sound / video to promote a political agenda?

(Apologies for the long post to follow....)

We are all well aware of how social media (and even media in general) has been a detriment to society in some aspects, specifically in how false information is virally spread to people to affect their opinions.
So how do we put a stop to it?

Specifically, I am talking about what legal action can be taken currently (and/or what changes should we make if the current laws do not properly address the issue) to go after the Photoshop Warriors who have made a living off of altering photos for the purpose of promoting an agenda?

For example, in the Mar-A-Lago thread, the following picture was just added:

This is obviously an image that is considered satire and should be considered "safe" from any kind of prosecution. This firmly falls into the "freedom of speech" type of argument that I am fine with.

But let's look at another example. This is the image from David Perdue's (Georgia) campaign team back in 2020 where they "accidentally" increased the size of Ossoff's nose to "enhance" his Jewish features in order to make him less appealing.

Shouldn't this fall under a form of defamation or slander?

Same thing with edited video. There was a video posted a few days ago that was Desantis and Hannity talking about the Mar-A-Lago raid and it was a fake video that was edited from footage from a previous interview a year ago. It was found out to be fake and addressed accordingly, but it already added a little fuel to the fire that is already polarizing opinions. On the other side, there was a photo of the judge in the Mar-A-Lago raid that was edited from an old Epstein / Maxwell photo that was actually shown on Fox News and promoted as real. Proven fake thereafter, but still not helping matters.

So those are examples of people editing media in a manner that is in no way could be considered a parody or for entertainment purposes only. While "lying" is certainly not illegal in most cases, I would think that most of these types of media alteration could fall into the definition of defamation that could be proved in court.

Now, I am well aware of how difficult it would be to prove / hunt down the individuals who are responsible for most of these. I suspect that they alter the media and upload to social media which is then protected under the current content laws for that very reason.

However, I really do think that a decent chunk of the partisanship in this country is being fueled by altered media like this. Even when they are exposed as fake, often the damage has already been done and most of the people who read / received the original fake media never find out about it. It's not like their Facebook feeds offer a retraction to a post that you have received with the false media.

Also, things are only going to get worse. Deepfake technology is getting easier to create and make believable every day. It is not going to be long before we get to the point where it is nearly impossible to tell a fake from the real thing without specific training in that science. And let's face it, a lot of people are already very easily duped by this kind of thing because they want to believe it enough that they don't even question it anymore.

So what is the solution? I believe that the lack of prosecution of these kinds of changes has only emboldened people to keep doing it more and more. Is it a pipe dream to think that we can somehow go after these people due to a lack in technology to catch them, or are the penalties so light that it's not even worth the effort to try and convict? I imagine that the current penalty for prosecuting someone has to be tied to the damages that the targeted recipient suffers, but that is always fairly hard to prove. Is there a standard penalty that could be imposed (major fine? minor jail time) that we could put in place to send a message that this is no longer OK?

These are good points, but it may be hopeless to ask.

After all, if they can make dinosaurs look real how do we know Trump is real? Hair, skin color and behavior all counsel against it.

 

[Stuffshot]

As to (B), I understand where you're coming from and agree its a problem that we need to think about how to address. I just think creating the law in the middle of the spectrum is not as easy as you think it is. Defining these things is hard, and if you give enforcers discretion, that can lead to a lot of bad outcomes.

Fortunately, we don't need a political case to resolve this.

There is already a religion case to give us instruction (as religion thinks it is supposed to do):

Church Alters 'Hamilton' to Be About Jesus in 'Unauthorized' Show

Lin-Manuel Miranda has sent a cease and desist letter to a Texas megachurch over an alleged "illegal, unauthorized production" of the hit musical.

www.insideedition.com

 

[anon_6hv78pr714xta]

I don't think the Ossoff edit would be considered defamation. Certainly in poor taste, but defamation has to be more.

The judge for the MAL warrant I think would certainly have a claim. I imagine so did the FoxNews attorneys because the anchor made an on-air apology/clarification that it was not a real photo. Who knows if that will be enough?

I don't think we can effectively police lying, criminally or civilly. Defamation suits are a thing, but also from a practical perspective, you can't get water from a rock. If some broke person is defaming you, you only spend forever and a lot of money to keep them broke.

The deep fakes are a real issue to me. For example, Obama's infamous "57 states" gaffe. He's pretty clearly, IMO, going in the direction of saying he's been to all 50 states. But then catches him self mid thought and edits to 47 with one to go (Sorry Alaska & Hawaii) but didn't take bake the "fifty." In the zeitgeist though, it's been repeated so often as he doesn't know how many states there are. And taken at the specifics of what he said, he'd be thinking we had sixty states. It doesn't take a deep fake to convince people they saw something different than what happened. Similarly, the Trump "inject bleach" gaffe has be re-told, and believed, by his supporters as being something other than what it clearly was. Like a joke, or sarcasm, or something. When it was 100% clearly a rejoinder to the prior speaker at that briefing talking about how quickly surface disinfectants killed COVID. Deep fakes are only going to make it worse.

View embedded media

The big problems will come when someone starts doing deepfakes of the next prez candidate in what appears to be a sex orgy with little kids, or accepting bribes, or secretly telling someone he or she has a lot of sympathy for Stalin or Hitler or whoever. It will look so real and spread like wildfire over Twitter, etc. and many, many people will believe it, even if later shown to be of questionable origin.

It's not out of the realm of reason to foresee such things actually deciding elections. What do we do then?

 

[SqueakyClean]

The big problems will come when someone starts doing deepfakes of the next prez candidate in what appears to be a sex orgy with little kids, or accepting bribes, or secretly telling someone he or she has a lot of sympathy for Stalin or Hitler or whoever. It will look so real and spread like wildfire over Twitter, etc. and many, many people will believe it, even if later shown to be of questionable origin.

It's not out of the realm of reason to foresee such things actually deciding elections. What do we do then?

This is kinda my fear too.

If you think about it, we are sometimes pretty dumb with what forms our opinions of people. Think about how Democrats turned on Howard Dean for his simple "Yarrrr!" at a campaign rally. That was just a soundbite that sounded worse than when seen in the context of how it was made. There wasn't even any manipulation of the media in that case.

Even if we find out that the media that we saw was manipulated, does your opinion ever truly get reset back to the level it was at beforehand?

I'm also remembering the video of the CNN reporter (Acosta?) where he was asking a question to someone in the Trump admin and the intern tried to pull the microphone away from him and he kinda jerked it back. There was a video out there that someone altered where they sped up the video to make it look more of a violent action than what it was. Yes, it was proven to be altered, but I'm willing to bet that many people still had a worse opinion of Acosta after that ("Well, yeah, they sped it up, but he still shouldn't have done that"). We never find out about who is the person who altered the video. That person gets to sit back and laugh and go out and make another video afterward.

There's a couple of levels here. There is taking video and editing it to remove parts to imply different context (for example, there was Biden talking to the pope and telling a story about his interactions with a baseball player, and the video was edited to make it look like Biden was confusing the pope for that particular baseball player). That's kinda bad, but I'm not sure if it is worthy or rising to something of a level where it should be prosecuted. Heck, even Trump's "Good people on both sides" statement somewhat falls into that category. That's annoying, but that type of manipulation of information has been going on for centuries.

But the MAL judge / Epstein picture or the Hannity / DeSanis video? Absolutely. The intention there is to completely alter the original media for the purpose of deceiving. Not just selective editing, but changing the media / image. Is there really nothing that can be changed to fight this? Is the "what can you do" argument going to be be the fallback that just empowers people to do it more?

 

[SqueakyClean]

As a general rule, we should be wary of expanding what qualifies as criminal speech. Even the few, very limited examples we already have can be misused.

That's not to say that our way of doing things is the only right way. I don't think it's unreasonable, for example, that some European nations outlaw Nazi symbolism, even if such a law would never pass muster here. I'm just skeptical of ever giving the authorities more cause for clamping down on what people say.

I'm not having a problem with what people say. That is free speech.

I'm proposing authorities going after people for media manipulation. I get how it can be an immensely slippery slope, but even a minor penalty (50$ fine?) would be a step in the right direction.

 

[TheOriginalHappyGoat]

I'm not having a problem with what people say. That is free speech.

I'm proposing authorities going after people for media manipulation. I get how it can be an immensely slippery slope, but even a minor penalty (50$ fine?) would be a step in the right direction.

Okay, but going back to your OP, I'm not confident it will be possible to find that bright line between malicious manipulation and genuine satire. Some examples will be obvious, but as you get closer to the border, it will require some very difficult calls.

 

[Crayfish57]

We can go back to PUCK and political satire has always been around .The internet and photo shopping vs obvious cartoons in a printed publication have differences

 

[SqueakyClean]

Okay, but going back to your OP, I'm not confident it will be possible to find that bright line between malicious manipulation and genuine satire. Some examples will be obvious, but as you get closer to the border, it will require some very difficult calls.

That is completely fair and I agree.

 

[NPT]

I'm just skeptical of ever giving the authorities more cause for clamping down on what people say.

That kind of logic is the mostly the same logic I hear about banning a certain gun. In other words, people know that the government just gradually takes away stuff a lot of time. If you let them clamp down on some speech then later on it's a little more so the best offense is to fight it the first time they try to take something away.

 

[TheOriginalHappyGoat]

That kind of logic is the mostly the same logic I hear about banning a certain gun. In other words, people know that the government just gradually takes away stuff a lot of time. If you let them clamp down on some speech then later on it's a little more so the best offense is to fight it the first time they try to take something away.

Not really. The logic behind my concern has nothing to do with creeping erosion of rights. It has to do with regulation that would be easy to abuse and misuse. I.e., a work of valid satire under a Republican president becomes criminal false reporting under an angry Democratic president (or vice versa). Banning a certain weapon doesn't have that worry. It's easy to define what is and is not said weapon, and ban it for everyone, regardless of political affiliation.

In other words, regulating speech can require a very difficult human judgment call in a way that answering "Is this an AR-15?" doesn't.

 

[NPT]

Not really. The logic behind my concern has nothing to do with creeping erosion of rights. It has to do with regulation that would be easy to abuse and misuse. I.e., a work of valid satire under a Republican president becomes criminal false reporting under an angry Democratic president (or vice versa). Banning a certain weapon doesn't have that worry. It's easy to define what is and is not said weapon, and ban it for everyone, regardless of political affiliation.

In other words, regulating speech can require a very difficult human judgment call in a way that answering "Is this an AR-15?" doesn't.

I get your point but in a way it still validates what I said because all of a sudden something is declared a crime because it made someone mad and if a Republican done it first and it was declared a crime then when they get a chance they'll declare something the Democrats done a crime so it just keeps creeping. However, you bring up a very good point and that is how do you define what is criminal and what isn't.

 

[UncleMark]

That kind of logic is the mostly the same logic I hear about banning a certain gun. In other words, people know that the government just gradually takes away stuff a lot of time. If you let them clamp down on some speech then later on it's a little more so the best offense is to fight it the first time they try to take something away.

Slippery slope arguments arguments sound good but usually don't hold up under scrutiny. Sub machine guns have been banned since the 30s.

 

[TheOriginalHappyGoat]

I get your point but in a way it still validates what I said because all of a sudden something is declared a crime because it made someone mad and if a Republican done it first and it was declared a crime then when they get a chance they'll declare something the Democrats done a crime so it just keeps creeping. However, you bring up a very good point and that is how do you define what is criminal and what isn't.

Apologies, NPT, but it really doesn't. I'm not saying your point isn't valid. Only that it has nothing to do with my point.

 

[Stuffshot]

I get your point but in a way it still validates what I said because all of a sudden something is declared a crime because it made someone mad and if a Republican done it first and it was declared a crime then when they get a chance they'll declare something the Democrats done a crime so it just keeps creeping. However, you bring up a very good point and that is how do you define what is criminal and what isn't.

Maybe you don't need to call it "criminal."

Maybe it's enough to call it "a copyright violation."

Satire has its legal limits, especially if it's not labeled as satire.

 

[SqueakyClean]

And another one today....
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/poli...newsntp&cvid=251583706b5e4f8f98198d379331495b

Seriously. There's gotta be a way that we can start cracking down on these things.

 

[hoot1]

The political television ads and social media propaganda which I find most egregious often come from third parties. Countries such as Canada and the U.K. have passed laws concerning third party participation in elections, but here in America advertising by third parties…is almost entirely unregulated.

The result of this approach in the United States has been a poisoned political atmosphere which is inflamed by money from third party organisations that are immune from spending limits. Furthermore due to their arm’s‐ length relationship with candidates the public thinks the third party is simply serving the public interest and isn't unaware it is in cahoots with a party or politician.

 

[IU_Hickory]

The political television ads and social media propaganda which I find most egregious often come from third parties. Countries such as Canada and the U.K. have passed laws concerning third party participation in elections, but here in America advertising by third parties…is almost entirely unregulated.

The result of this approach in the United States has been a poisoned political atmosphere which is inflamed by money from third party organisations that are immune from spending limits. Furthermore due to their arm’s‐ length relationship with candidates the public thinks the third party is simply serving the public interest and isn't unaware it is in cahoots with a party or politician.

Never going to happen but I would prefer a bipartisan ran organization that had to approve any political advertisements first in order to verify that info given is factual and that they are staying above the belt (like not simulation shooting/killing the competition). They could also run a fact-checked website that contains policy positions and background on all of the candidates.

As previously mentioned, not going to happen but it could address a lot of issues with all of the false, negative campaigning that gets done these days and the below the belt depictions that can be dangerous to the target of the ad.

 

[anon_6hv78pr714xta]

Apropos this conversation:

In A War of Ideas, Censorship Is a Lousy One

The EU's ban on Russian propaganda doesn't serve democracy

time.com

 

[hoot1]

Apropos this conversation:

In A War of Ideas, Censorship Is a Lousy One

The EU's ban on Russian propaganda doesn't serve democracy

time.com

Brad, good find and pursuasive argument in favor of free speech and anti censorship.

Futhermore, the current Supreme Court majority probably sees Citizen United as one of the great decisions on behalf of free speech ever made. Putting any constraints on third party participation in our elections as a "bipartisan" election organization might do would certainly run contrary to Citizens in my uneducated legal opinion.

Free speech which is false or derogatory even with a biased political goal, is still free speech.