I agree and never said anything to the contrary. I’m not sure where you’re getting that from.
Campaign finance reform is an inherently different sort of regulatory arena than social manipulation via speech. We can make laws about donations, and I support those efforts - but making laws restricting the types of speech people can employ is a rather onerous task, and legal precedent sides with allowing speech rather than restricting it.
If we were talking about other manipulation tactics, we could have a much more useful ethical conversation, but our options are significantly more limited when we’re dealing with people making words at each other.
That’s the context of my entire comment - I am operating under the assumption that the primary tools of effective response to these tactics would be legal ones, and since legal options for restricting speech are severely limited, they’re not options here.
If we want to talk about slippery slopes, what about the slope we embark on when trying to legally restrict people’s ability to communicate with one another?
It falls apart, yes, because I generally do not apply broad principles to all situations. Context matters a lot to me. I have some touchstone philosophies, but in general my view of ethics and morality is a messy confluence of opinions in countless different situations.
In this case, again, I see few useful options because of the sheer difficulty of restricting speech in this country, as I said above.
Were I the sole despot in charge of the USA it might work differently, because I actually personally believe in a need to restrict free speech. I’ve talked about this several times before, but I continually go back to the anti-vax movement as my example of disinformation speech that literally kills people, and that had I the ability I would legally bar that kind of speech in the US.
But I’m not in charge of the US and we’re likely better for it, so instead I assess the tools that we are likely to employ.
If you want to poke holes in my argument, you don’t need to erroneously extrapolate it. Instead, it begs a question - my assumption is that our only useful recourse here is legal restriction of speech, and I have rejected that as effectively impossible without actually discussing the merits of it. I don’t see other tools but I also don’t want to see other tools.
You want to talk about whether or not these tactics are right, and I’m saying that the question of “right” is irrelevant because we don’t have options. When deprived of choice, ethics is a non-issue.
So, what are the choices? How can we effectively limit the use of these tactics without also eradicating swaths of free speech?