So if it was technically possible to filter and find the information, and voters elected governments who said they were prepared to pay for it, would that make it a better idea?
No, but at least it would make it an honest proposal instead of a scam.
There is a difference between something like chemotherapy, which has drastic negative side effects but can save the body, and fake cancer drugs, which might have little to no side effects(or massive ones!) but you die either way, enriching the scam artist on your way out.
It sounds like you are trying to use the foot-in-the-door technique. But you are looking at just one concern being very hypothetically alleviated, when there are many many other reasons that have been repeatedly discussed for years. So in practice, the answer to your question is no, and there is no reasonably considered theory where the answer would be yes.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. The risk of saying "we shouldn't do this because it won't work" is that it only has to work a little bit for the argument against it to fail. And it will certainly work a little bit at reducing one type of terrorism, just not enough to outweigh all the other negative effects.
That said, I would also like to see more discussion of alternatives instead of just saying "it'll never work".
The alternatives I want to see discussed all involve cultural changes. Sometimes when I try to discuss these with people they get fixated on shifting 100% of blame onto the attackers and 0% onto culture/society/foreign policy/poverty/whatever, but assigning blame is a completely pointless activity and the question needs to be what will actually work, not what will feel good to our primitive instincts for vengeance.
Some hypothetical approaches for discussion:
- Convincing violent groups to be less violent; demonstrating that they can get more of what they want by participating in society than by attacking it (a multi-generational issue)
- Finding a place for the "lone wolf" types to feel like their needs and concerns are addressed, including mental health
- Getting first-world powers to stop purposely destabilizing other countries
- Accepting what remains of the problem as if it's a natural disaster (e.g. just as people accept or ignore the 1000x worse problem of traffic deaths)
- Convincing violent groups to be less violent; demonstrating that they can get more of what they want by participating in society than by attacking it (a multi-generational issue)
I do think that this is going to be the correct path for us as a society, long term. There are a lot of obstacles though; convincing people their theological beliefs have been manipulated, fixing the havoc created around the world from globalization, and the profits gained by some (powerful) people.
- Finding a place for the "lone wolf" types to feel like their needs and concerns are addressed, including mental health
Mental health availability in the US needs to improve immediately.
- Getting first-world powers to stop purposely destabilizing other countries
