Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Free speech, baby!

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Jimbo has a helluva buyout

Jimmy H. can easily be bought

Sure.  What's a little $11.7 mil.?

I get that, but the purposeful, misleading clickbait that's holding our online browsing hostage is akin to yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, no?  Nearly infinite bots flooding every page you view makes it impossible to extract the important truth from the avalanche of BS...by design. 


This is not okay. 

Let's start from the top (or bottom of the post). It's probably OK. Our airwaves are flooded with misleading commercials for all manner of garbage. We can't get a handle on that, so it seems unlikely we'll get a handle on billions of headlines.

How would we even do it. Can I sue over a headline I think is nonsense? Do we have a definition of clickbait? Like all headlines exist in some manner to draw your interest. Some draw you to garbage. Some to semi-accurate news. Some is borderline. I saw a football one where a coach said something offhand and it became a far more incendiary headline. It's accurate he said it, but maybe not in the spirit. I didn't like it and found it to be poor form, but I acknowledged it delivered that thing in the piece. 

We'll need to get legal definitions for purposeful and misleading, both which jive with our ability to speak freely. That'll be an impossible nightmare. Beyond that, use this simple rule. If a law is in place, imagine how it can be used in the most craven and self-serving way possible. This wouldn't go well.

Lastly, let's talk about fire in a crowded theatre. Do you know the history? It was an Oliver Wendell Holmes opinion. The actual text was "falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic." It's very evocative. It's also part of a case that found a person guilty of espionage because he was handing out fliers opposing the draft in WWI. Not only was that precedent overturned, but it's actually a pretty shameful suppression of speech. 

In short, this won't happen, shouldn't happen and if it did happen, would end either by being unworkable or leveraged in mostly bad ways. 

(Also, people's description of clickbait has expanded to mean anything they dislike on the internet. All because we can't control ourselves when we think someone we've never met somewhere is wrong)

And I wonder if this problem might be the impetus for the pendulum swinging back the other way, to people searching for their news from more traditional sources?  I'd like to think that a traditional medium purveyor, dedicated to solid and trustworthy journalism, might be able to develop a track record and find an audience among people that are tired of clickbait news and altered news and dare I say #fakenews, people that would create a groundswell of support for more trustworthy and legitimate sources?

You've got more faith in humanity than I... 

I'm okay with not steamrolling the bill of rights.

You're all underestimating the damning effects of the purposeful misinforming of the masses.  Do the laws against bomb threats, stalking, etc "steamroll the bill of rights"????

We can do without the dramatics, btw.



Now, if we had some other form of government, the purposeful misleading of the masses wouldn't be such a big deal.  But a democracy relies on an informed populace, and we don't have one.  So we can pretend the 1st amendment is more important than the sanctity of our country, and many would argue they're one-and-the-same....but they're not.  



News outlets and the internet as a whole aren't some separate, distinct thing from the real-world verbal, law-breaking acts that are illegal and yet don't steamroll our rights.  Sure, we could tell people to wise up and be more savvy......but we might as well suggest they fly to Neptune - it's as realistic.  




I'll say again, shrugging our shoulders and doing nothing is the wrong course of (in)action.  Obviously.  

Let's start from the top (or bottom of the post). It's probably OK. Our airwaves are flooded with misleading commercials for all manner of garbage. We can't get a handle on that, so it seems unlikely we'll get a handle on billions of headlines.

How would we even do it. Can I sue over a headline I think is nonsense? Do we have a definition of clickbait? Like all headlines exist in some manner to draw your interest. Some draw you to garbage. Some to semi-accurate news. Some is borderline. I saw a football one where a coach said something offhand and it became a far more incendiary headline. It's accurate he said it, but maybe not in the spirit. I didn't like it and found it to be poor form, but I acknowledged it delivered that thing in the piece.

We'll need to get legal definitions for purposeful and misleading, both which jive with our ability to speak freely. That'll be an impossible nightmare. Beyond that, use this simple rule. If a law is in place, imagine how it can be used in the most craven and self-serving way possible. This wouldn't go well.

Lastly, let's talk about fire in a crowded theatre. Do you know the history? It was an Oliver Wendell Holmes opinion. The actual text was "falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic." It's very evocative. It's also part of a case that found a person guilty of espionage because he was handing out fliers opposing the draft in WWI. Not only was that precedent overturned, but it's actually a pretty shameful suppression of speech.

In short, this won't happen, shouldn't happen and if it did happen, would end either by being unworkable or leveraged in mostly bad ways.

(Also, people's description of clickbait has expanded to mean anything they dislike on the internet. All because we can't control ourselves when we think someone we've never met somewhere is wrong)

Great analysis!
I meant to pick up on the "fire in a crowded theater" analogy earlier and failed to do so.
One tiny quibble.  Charles Schenck was convicted of sedition rather than espionage.

I'm not sure what entity I'd trust to oversee the Fifth Estate, other than the People.

Just because "we" are not doing a good job doesn't mean something else would.