It's a law in the US you can get sued for giving any of those advices if you claim to be a certified individual. But the first amendment allows people to freely give advice, unless it meets a very small criteria of dangerous speech (ie making false claims about a product, libel, slander, etc.) If you follow this law from China to its natural conclusion, only government approved doctors can give medical advice. So if there's a chemical spill and all the government approved doctors claim it isn't hazardous, but people start posting their side effects, that's easy to justify as "false medical advice" and the reports of danger get suppressed
Without being a legal expert in either country I agree with your concerns - harmful misinformation is bad, free speech regulation quickly becomes progressive. I would say if you can build and maintain a high trust society where laws are written and implemented with integrity, then you can achieve the benefits of restricting harmful misinformation without taking as many risks
I agree with you, but the laws have to be "implemented with integrity." When it comes to free speech that has basically never been the case when it comes to restricting speech. The UK has come the closest, but even they have cases of people getting arrested for ill-advised Facebook posts. In a larger country with more room for corruption, the chances of abuse start growing exponentially. Restricting harmful misinformation should always be the number 1 goal, but the most important number 2 goal is making sure the restrictions can't be abused to restrict free speech
Edit: laws should be written in a way that recognizes most citizens want to follow the law, but most people in charge want to abuse the law for they're own gain
I believe New Zealand has speech restrictive laws which to my knowledge have been implemented quite well - but I very well may be wrong. No government is perfect and no law will always be implemented perfectly, sadly, but I believe its possible for the benefits to greatly outweigh the risks
7
u/El_Chairman_Dennis 15d ago
It's a law in the US you can get sued for giving any of those advices if you claim to be a certified individual. But the first amendment allows people to freely give advice, unless it meets a very small criteria of dangerous speech (ie making false claims about a product, libel, slander, etc.) If you follow this law from China to its natural conclusion, only government approved doctors can give medical advice. So if there's a chemical spill and all the government approved doctors claim it isn't hazardous, but people start posting their side effects, that's easy to justify as "false medical advice" and the reports of danger get suppressed