Which of course is arguably the point. There's just another type of "bad faith actor" who is lurking in the shadows with these arguments: Someone who wants to leverage censorship against disfavored viewpoints regardless of their truth value.
Given the choice between "let everyone speak even if someone might be lying" and "let only approved speakers speak even if the approval process may be corrupt", I'll take the former pretty much every time.
While I tend to agree with this sentiment, it's worth noting that it takes orders of magnitude more effort to fight against lies and misinformation than it does to create them. As such, letting everyone say whatever they want and expecting the lies to be exposed/countered by the truthspeakers is destined to fail. We've seen this exact thing play out on every social network.
Alternatively worded, something about sunlight being the best disinfectant.
> It takes less effort to uncover a public lie than to uncover a hidden truth.
> Alternatively worded, something about sunlight being the best disinfectant.
That's a slogan, not a truth. For instance: what is "best"? The fastest? The most thorough? Something guaranteed to work, if given enough time?
Even if "best" means it's the "fastest" disinfectant, that doesn't mean it's fast enough to keep up with the infections the op describes.
There's also the question: if you prove something is a lie, will enough people pay attention? A 140 character lie could take pages to debunk. Given enough lies, that page count is going to build up to the point where no one has time for it. And the actual audience of the debunking is unlikely to be a superset of the audience of the lie.
How could this possibly be true. If that were the case then you could simply lie to a person until they accept a more reasonable position. Instead of using facts and evidence to support your position just lie to them and make stuff up. The fact that you cling to evidence in your arguments (I assume) means you don't really believe lying will sway people to your perspective.
> We've seen this exact thing play out on every social network.
We haven't. It may be true but that data is not available to us. These could be bots, they could be new converts (with the old ones de-converting), they could be paid propagandists, or trolls. It could just be the algorithm promoting people who create engagement. These people could be incredibly rare but incredibly prominent on the platform.
When are you going to be affected by this theory? Are you swayed by lies and misinformation? Do you cling to beliefs in the face of fact and evidence? Are you undeserving of the right to speak because of it? Why should you have been allowed to leave this comment? You have not been vetted to make these statements.
You want to get people to vote for your candidate. So you create social media posts saying the opponent voted against funds that would go to veterans. You don't need to look anything up, you just need to create the post. It's almost certainly true, because EVERY candidate has done this. However, it's extremely misleading...
Your opponent wants to make sure people understand the truth. The truth is that there were several bills that would fund veterans with a small amount of money, but they were all "add-ons" to other bills that did major things that the candidate did not approve of (for example, something like saying no state may provide a drivers license to anyone that is an ex-con). Now, in order make sure people understand the truth, you have to find the cases where the candidate in question voted against money for veterans, explain what the situation behind it was, and why there was "something bigger to consider" in each case.
Vs you, who only had to create a simple post.
The level of effort is in no way balanced.
> How could this possibly be true. If that were the case then you could simply lie to a person until they accept a more reasonable position. Instead of using facts and evidence to support your position just lie to them and make stuff up. The fact that you cling to evidence in your arguments (I assume) means you don't really believe lying will sway people to your perspective.
I think you're making the mistake of assuming that everyone is willing to play the same ends-justify-the-means game, where they're OK with shamelessly lying if it can momentarily get someone to align with their faction. What the GP describes is only a dilemma if you have a commitment to the truth.
Also what you describe (counter cheap lies with more cheap lies), would actually play into the hand of a disinformation actor. In many cases they're not looking to persuade anyone of of anything, just increase confusion, cynicism, and disengagement; which reduce their adversary's capacity for making decisions and taking action.
