Lydy's Anarchist Revival Meeting

If what I suspect is going on is actually going on, that is to say an attempt to control people, then there is a real benefit to the power structure to wash away the difference between malicious gossip and passing on useful information. By conflating the two situations, you help silence people. Since gossip, both positive and negative, are important ways that disempowered people affect their environment, there is a real need to stigmatize all such transactions. Also, people frequently try to distinguish between positive and negative gossip by drawing the line between positive and negative characterizations of people. However, it seems to me that the truth is a far more important distinguishing characteristic. If it is true that this person is abusing their spouse, then that information is important for the community to have. If it is not true that this person is always kind to dogs, then spreading that information is not a benefit to the community at large, and might lead someone to mistakenly allow said person to look after their dog. I think that is also often difficult to distinguish between positive, negative, and neutral information. Things that I think are relatively neutral may not be so when concatenated with other facts of which I am not aware, for instance. Gossip is part of how we build more complete pictures of our social environment.

The case of someone telling stories specifically designed to damage someone is a genuine problem. And whether these stories are true or false is only partly relevant. It is perfectly possible to smear someone's good name while sticking to carefully selected truths in carefully selected contexts. The cure for this seems to me to be the usual cure for most free speech: more speech. But that doesn't always work, either, of course.