I value free speech -- everyone is free to share their opinions. But speech isn't distributed evenly. It used to be that only the very wealthy or the very organized could widely distribute their speech. Now it's very wealthy and anyone with far too much time on their hands. This is not a better situation.
People can now wield speech as a weapon -- not by spreading better ideas -- but by simply using so much that it drowns everyone else out. Your own speech online is literally worth less because you're not willing to spend hours every day posting it.
Well, your premise is that people are too ignorant, at least sometimes. You don't blame them for being ignorant, instead you blame bad actors for creating the ignorance, but regardless liberal democracy still rests on the assumption that the populace is qualified enough to make important decisions.
To put it another way, maybe we're overconfident. Maybe the citizens, at least in aggregate, are well enough informed, but they just value things differently. To be more specific to the case at hand, maybe citizens are mature enough to handle tobacco ads on the internet.
Citizen: "Let me see those cigar ads."
Censor: "I can't let you do that. You'll just buy cigars!"
I value free speech -- everyone is free to share their opinions. But speech isn't distributed evenly. It used to be that only the very wealthy or the very organized could widely distribute their speech. Now it's very wealthy and anyone with far too much time on their hands. This is not a better situation.
People can now wield speech as a weapon -- not by spreading better ideas -- but by simply using so much that it drowns everyone else out. Your own speech online is literally worth less because you're not willing to spend hours every day posting it.