It seems to me a repeating pattern that once freedom of thought, speech and expression is limited for essentially any reason, it will have unintended consequences.
Once the tools are in place, they will be used, abused and inevitably end up in the hands of someone you disagree with, regardless of whether the original implementer had good intentions.
As such I’m personally very averse to restrictions. I’ve thought about the question a fair bit – there isn’t a clear cut or obvious line to draw.
Please elaborate and motivate your answer. I’m genuinely curious about getting some fresh perspectives.
In terms of public speech, specifically:
Proving works only if everyone agrees on the underlying definitions. If a group defines fire as being cold, there is no proving anything.
Science wouldn’t function by this metric. We aren’t in a universe where opinion shifts reality, we can make very solid axioms that are broadly true and testable.
It’s why science relies on the test of disproof. If a premise survives the test of disproof, it graduates to a hypothesis because it is seen as a reasonably accurate description of reality, in that nothing else comes as close.
News sources should be required to publish their truthfulness rating, a graded system agreed upon by the public which measures the source’s adherence to standards of journalism.