re: MSNBC guest says 1st ammendment makes US vulnerable, calls for common sense restrictions

Let me give you a bit of a different perspective. I know this board likes to trade in back and forth one upmanship but this is seriously something to think about.

The country I live in when in Europe is next door to Russia and has a population of 1.5 million.

Because of the oppression of free speech during USSR days the parliament passed laws that were so free speech, you might even think they were borderline crazy, like Porn allowed in the middle of the day on TV type stuff.

That was until about 10 years ago when the nation started to get bombarded, and I do mean it, hammered, pounded, assaulted, by Russian intelligence agents on social media. Even the most minor thing "Aspirin Prices to rise by five cents according to biggest pharmacy in town" was a reason to get four thousand posts slamming the country.

It clearly was not organic (real) posting. It was mostly paid propogandists and the first we saw of Artificial Intelligence type posting.

Then it expanded to the fact that you couldn't call any radio station because the radio's were getting calls from obvious robots (you would pick up the phone and a robot voice would just count up numbers, one, two, three, etc. creepy as hell). Newspaper sites were filled up so much that they couldn't take the bandwith and had to close (they found a way around it eventually but it took a while).

Point being, while we talk about Russia a lot on here (as we should they are a danger and a threat) I do not think anyone is considering what will happen if China decides to spend two billion dollars to frick up our internet. Imagine if all comments on twitter, youtube and even this message board were totally swamped with anti-Ameircan pro-China stuff.

Again, this is probably impossible for the average American to fathom, but if you are from a tiny country like I am, I am here to tell your - watch out.

Total free speech? Good in theory, in fact 100 percent I agree in theory, but be careful about what you wish for.