Trump supporters, how do you square this?

[PCHawk]

In principle, I think most would agree that in the day and age of social media, gross misinformation is a real concern, primarily because people who can't or don't make an effort to critically evaluate what they are reading often make dangerous decisions based upon what they see.

The problem is, how is "misinformation" defined, and who defines it?

From a political perspective, 1st amendment rights were repeatedly violated over the past few years under the guise of suppressing what was deemed misinformation. Posts about the true efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines, the validity of Hunter Biden's laptop, Joe Biden's mental acuity (accusations that the media was altering videos), Hillary Clinton's wiping of mass emails and involvement in the Russian collusion hoax, etc., etc.) were all suppressed at some point. Some would argue that several of those accusations were later retracted and the information allowed, but that's the whole point, the suppression of TRUE misinformation would never require later retraction.

And, where does it stop?

Giving the State authority to determine what is a lie and what is not and the power to suppress it is a huge slippery slope. Obviously, the right to free speech is not absolute - hate speech, yelling "fire!" in a crowded venue, verbal threats, etc., are crimes for obvious reasons, but adding subjective interpretation of posted information with the possibility of censorship and/or punishment ultimately could be more egregious than the consequences of the potential spread of what was deemed misinformation in the first place.

This is exactly right. There are two ways to combat misinformation. One is to suppress it and the other is to give more information. If you suppress it, what you just said comes into play. Whoever is in charge gets to decide what's true and what's not. That's all fine and dandy when your "team" is in charge. But would the people who love suppressing information now still be ok with it when Trump and his team get to decide what info to suppress?

The only way that works is to add information to what you deem misinformation. That's how X works. Both with community notes and in comments. Probably 5 times a day I see something on X and think "is that really true?". So I click the comments and by the time I read five of them I almost always have more info that either makes me completely diiss what I previously read, or makes me question which side is actually true. In those instances I simply decide to not give any credit to either side and pretty much wipe it all out of my brain.

People like to belittle X because Musk supports Trump now. But it's by far the best way to get all the info. At least for me. I get how some people think too much info just makes things confusing. But at least I see everything so I don't end up like Fry and speak on a subject I have no info on other than a gut feeling. Over the course of all the political topics on this board I haven't seen a single new bit of info I haven't already seen and considered. You can really only say that if you scroll X.