Historically free speech, often had editorial control, which helped moderate the point of views, and just ignore the wackos out there. Sure you can be a nutter standing in the middle of a street saying your manifesto, or handing out fliers about your crazy idea. However in general you were not taken seriously.
Social media, as opposed to the traditional media in the past. profits off of conflict. Where in the past if a newspaper posted something really out there, they would get a bunch of letters which was expensive for them to read and process, and often making them back track and redact their statement, if shown to be false. Social Media with a nutter stating something means more clicks and advertisement impressions. So more revenue, and because it is user generated content, they have no responsibility to redact or stop that post unless it goes into criminal territory.
However still, often the more extreme ideas fail to take traction outside the echo-chambers, because they often are worded and expressed in a way that shows the persons general unreasonable nature.
But if we can get someone with a stupid extreme idea to get an AI to generate a well written essay on the topic, with what seems to be real citations, and avoids a lot of the common logical facilities, and just will outright lie to make sure all the points are made. It becomes much harder to spot of the crazy from the actually new and researched idea that just may be opposite of the current point of view. and the actual researched POV may not be written as well, and it would be considered the fake.
However to the point, if a nutter asked ChatGPT to prove their point, is it really their free speech, as their free speech is an incoherent mess, while chatGPT just generated something that sounds logical.
And gasp... we might have to weigh opinions based on supporting arguments, and their rationality, as opposed to the way they're presented? The horror!
Also, I find it funny how you seem to think that everyone who thinks different than you is a blubbering frothing moron, incapable of producing anything other than spittle, and only ChatGPT will allow them to erm... "pass off" or something as normal. Here's a newsflash: people from the other side are perfectly capable of forming normal human speech, and if it seems otherwise it's because the things that are allowed to pass into your information bubble are just examples of "hey look what morons those people are". Actual, rational, reasonable discourse is just carefully kept outside of said bubble, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. So don't worry, your information bubble is perfectly safe, and its gatekeepers are just as capable of filtering ChatGPT-assited content that is dangerous to your worldview as normal.
The reason why there is division between the left and right is because each side is looking at different data points as facts and the media reinforces the division by painting the other side as "crazy and dilutional" and purposefully discrediting the other side's sources of data points as misinformation or discreditable.
I am a strong believer that A MAJORITY OF US would unify if we are looking at the same data points that we accept as facts.
America has been historically known as "The Land of Opportunity", if you work hard, you can have the comforts enjoyed by the middle class, or even establish yourself in luxury in the upper class.
The more people there are in the middle class of a nation, the more self reliant and less dependent on the government welfare programs and more opportunities for individuals born in poverty to get themselves out of poverty.
The more people that are in poverty in a nation, there is more government dependency for welfare programs (handouts from the government), and a lack of a strong middle class with small businesses creating more opportunities for individuals to break free of poverty, and a more exclusive upper class.
Early on in civilization the upper class had a monopoly of being in the "elite" because they could read and write and have wealth enough to go to institutions to learn additional skills that could keep their children on the path of staying in the upper class.
Early on in society, not knowing how to read or write or do math would limit individuals to a life of poverty along with their children.
Long ago, the people in poverty who wanted their children to break free of the poverty cycle could clearly see that it is necessary for their children to have the same basic skills as the children of the elite upper class. Read, Write, and Arithmetic. If a town could pool their money together they could afford hiring someone from the elite upper class that was educated to teach their children the basic skills. Once the children had basic education they could now try to get a job that could earn them more money and enter into the middle class.
How does all this relate to each other?
The "Left" and the "Right" are in conflict because both sides have lost touch of reality. Think about it, they fight about the government's involvement in all our lives, what it does for us, how it helps the poor, how it helps the sick, food and drug regulation, airport security on planes.
The US Government is $31 TRILLION dollars in debt with all of the government programs. It doesn't matter which side got us here, because the reality is that each side has flipped sides multiple times, so blaming one particular party makes no sense. You may not know this, but it was the democrats in the south that owned slaves and started the civil war to keep their slaves. So blaming any one party or saying one party is anything is ridiculous.
It's my opinion that the "elite" wealthy ruling class wants the middle class divided and in conflict with each other.
The reason I believe this is because I can sit down with anybody, on either the left or the right, and have a productive conversation about various issues, exchanging the data and rational we are for or against various government initiatives. Through this I have found the biggest problem is that one side or the other isn't aware of specific facts, and where the conflict persists is whether the other person believes the source of the facts is credible.
So that last point is the main point. Why doesn't the media focus on facts and showing both sides along with the facts that they are basing their opinions on? Instead the media is programming the viewer with a bias to discredit the crazy people on the other side. That way there is no debate, there is no discussion, there is no opportunity to have real unity as a nation.
The more the nation is divided, the easier it is for the ruling "elite" to pull the strings to make sure the system works for them.
The ruling elite don't care how much money the government spends on welfare programs, they only care that you vote for them.
When the US government collapses due to unsustainable debt, whatever reset happens, you can be sure that the wealthy "elite" ruling class will still have their wealth, their own fenced neighborhoods, security guards with guns and ice cream in their refrigerators. Each political party will blame each other, but I promise you that the leaders of both political parties will survive any major "reset" with their wealth.
So, we can keep fighting amongst ourselves about which party is more racist, or equitable, or inclusive, or which party can scream "my body my choice" louder (Democrats scream "my body my choice" advocating for abortions and Republicans scream "my body my choice" because they don't want to be forced to take the vaccine)
We can keep fighting between ourselves about which politician is more corrupt than the other one.
But all along the while, the government is getting bigger, the middle class is getting smaller, the "elite" are getting richer, the poor is not getting the basic education and taught skills to break out of poverty, all leading to eventually the system collapsing because we could not unite as a nation.
To change the trajectory we need to break these party walls that we have around us, stop letting the media get away with slander the other side and just report the news without bias (let us decide for ourselves), and defend our rights to speak our views without getting canceled.
We have a chance if we can look at each other as humans who want the best things for our selves, our families, our communities, our nation, and our planet.
We have no chance if we go further into any ideas that create division and degrade anybody for having a different opinion than your own.
