That position, and this is true of many current discussion on free speech, is suited for the fights we fought and not the situation we face.

I do understand the challenge inherent in combatting inaccurate representations of facts.

This is a tactical issue, however the larger macro picture is very different from even the era of cable news.

So: > You can't ascertain what's true without free speech.

True, but the closer read is: > free speech is a critical component to a free, fair and competitive market place of ideas.

This is going back to the Abram’s dissent. The point of free speech was to ensure that a crucial tactic remained available for a competitive economy to exist.

The problem has since evolved, and the market place is no longer competitive.

This is for a variety of reasons, none of which go back to free speech.

For example:

1) The average person, is going up against content crafted by teams of people whose job it is to figure out how to convince or confuse them.

Individuals have free speech, but at scale the outcome will move in one direction.

You can argue that people can generate counter speech, however:

2) The velocity of content generation has increased: By the time content is debunked, a new crises can be brought up.

People have limited attention to use in a day, so its possible for the more resourced party to keep speaking and “flood the zone”.

3) Verification is hard, generation is easy: V/G - the more content we generate, the less the ratio of verified content is to generated content. This means that the average seek time for individuals goes up.

Free speech has been respected in all those cases, however the competitive exchange and evaluation of ideas has been hosed.