A lot of potentially harmful political speech on social media seems to avoid actual incitement, though. If there is a kind of speech such that the intent is to cause harm, and the effect is to cause harm, but its form allows it to be categorized as “free exchange of ideas”, I’m not sure how I can support this kind of view.
Oh for sure, but I think you and Mill might not be too far off:
“The example Mill uses is in reference to corn dealers: he suggests that it is acceptable to claim that corn dealers starve the poor if such a view is expressed in print. It is not acceptable to make such statements to an angry mob, ready to explode, that has gathered outside the house of the corn dealer. The difference between the two is that the latter is an expression “such as to constitute…a positive instigation to some mischievous act,” namely, to place the rights, and possibly the life, of the corn dealer in danger.”
I just don’t think philosophers back then realized our society was going to become so polarized, with global reach. His views do presuppose a progressive society to be able to host this speech, so it’s possible we’re no longer a progressive society. (re: more and more “opinion” speech winding up being harmful to others, both left wing overzealousness, and right wing opinions inciting harm)
Yeah, I think we're not too far off in principle, you rightly guess that the key difference for me is how society has changed since that time.
Now, you can make these kinds of claims about the corn dealer on television, on twitter, in dark-money facebook ads, to angry mobs gathered anywhere but the corn dealer's house, all while knowing that online forums are circulating rumors of the corn dealer running a pedophilia ring, and still be afforded plausible deniability when violence results.
I don't have a solution, because if the corn dealer _is_ starving the poor, we should be able to discuss that openly, and I don't think I want to give the State the power to make such a discernment, because it would be too easy to abuse.
Mill is wrong. because he ignores the extremely strong negative effects of sustained disinformation campaigns, and immediate and obvious harm should not be the bar. Society could never handle that, it just thought it could.
Such an attempt to force feed any and all uninformed or malicious opinions down society's proverbial throat, plays right into the hand of the very active disinformation campaigns that are quite actively reshaping politics and opinion in countries around the world.
And an un-nuanced promotion of supposed 'free speech' in the context of such clear and widespread societal harm that is currently occurring, including as the backdrop for real wars with people dying, does not at all resemble a sincere effort at improving the state of affairs. At all. It frankly stinks of yet another billionaire attempting to make sure this simple, malicious, gaming of public opinion remains easy in the near future.
