That actually makes me think. Can paid speech be defended as free speech?
I am a firm believer in free speech. The question is, practically speaking, what is considered free speech? Personally I think the Citizens United decision degrades speech and prioritized the speech of those with the most financial resources.
I have never really considered the question of ShareBlue and the like but now that I do I have to question if paid speech should even be legal. If you are paid to push the views of a corporation or a political party you are effectively negating the free speech of the individual who is not being paid to express their beliefs. In a way you could actually consider this to be the same kind of infringement on free speech as Citizens United.
You said something that deserves further thought;
>If you are paid to push the views of a corporation or a political party you are effectively negating the free speech of the individual who is not being paid to express their beliefs.
Human attention, individual and/or collective, is finite. Therefore, the competition for it is a zero sum game. This would suggest certain features that we see everyday with the media.
1). Advertising will only become more frequent and will fill the entire range; from overt obnoxious messaging to the smarmy, dishonest native advertising of "media influencers" and undisclosed paid promoters.
2). The targeting of increasingly specific demographics, for marketing purposes, will incentivize corporations and political parties to surveil us with increasing powerful technologies to pry into every aspect of our lives so that they can better predict our preferences and ultimately, our thoughts and behavior.
The first is merely a nuisance, the second represents an existential hazard to the republic.
It's a thinker as it is clearly unethical but also a slippery slope to enforce against.
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