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My guess is that the reason why freedom of speech only protects you from being made to shut up by govt through prosecution, and not being made to shut up by a p

My guess is that the reason why freedom of speech only protects you from being made to shut up by govt through prosecution, and not being made to shut up by a private company due to the space it occupies in the world's technology and information zeitgeist, is because when the freedom of speech laws were formulated, the govt threat to your speech is the only major threat that existed. A Google kind of threat to freedom of speech didn't exist. The question then becomes, is Google stifling freedom of speech? Can their impact on your freedom of speech by deleting your blog or posts be compared to the govt's impact on your freedom of speech through prosecution? I say yes. Freedom of speech and similar laws seek to give you an immunity against govt, not because govt is evil, but because govt is powerful, and you are not. Google is powerful, and they were alive to just how powerful they were going to be when they came out with that don't be evil admonition. Whereas Google took it upon themselves to not be evil, the writers of freedom of speech and similar laws tool it upon themselves to tell govt to not be evil. Should our societies protect individuals against entities who have power beyond some kind of threshhold? I'd say yes.

dalke 10y ago
If you make the argument that a private company, by shutting down a user's account, is like government restriction on free speech, then how do you determine the balance between the right of free speech and the right of free association? Remember, freedom of speech is only one part of the First Amendment. Those same writers also included the freedom of association. An organization like Google, Fox News, Amazon, or the Wall Street Journal is not obligated to associate with everyone. We can change things. We can pass laws which mandate that certain things are public spaces. For example, the rise of the malls means that the migration from public shopping streets to private shopping areas, where mall owners like the Mall of the Americas can shut down protest much more readily than the police could do in a truly public area. We can pass laws which force malls to be public areas. The Supreme Court decided that in Pruneyard v. Robins. But only a handful of states have done so. We can similarly pass laws which say that any content hosting site must be content neutral. Eg, if you want to use Stack Overflow to post your diatribes against whale hunting, SO cannot shut you down. That doesn't make sense. Okay, so we only require that of "powerful" sites, which you suggest. Which is defined as .... what? Who gets to decide? Who gets to challenge that? If Yahoo was once powerful but is no longer so, who gets to decide when the transition occurs? One possibility is to set up a common carrier status, where a company offers its services without discrimination to the general public. This is how the phone system works. But why would a company want to do this?
- DavidWanjiru 10y ago
  Does using Google products qualify my relationship with them as an association? In the same way that me buying you a cup of coffee is association? I realize that I'm suggesting calls that are difficult to make, but my wider contention is that the current status quo, legal and valid as it is, is missing something that we are going to have to address at some point.
  - dalke 10y ago
    Yes. Though they are different associations. They are subject to federal and state laws which don't affect personal transactions. For example, they are available to the general public so are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of sex, race, and several other protected classes. California and other states place even more restrictions on their ability to discriminate. On the other hand, you are free to discriminate as you wish. (Though not without risk of criticism; such is free speech.) There's another difference in your example. Google provides services to the general public. You use their services. However, I do not provide a drinking-coffee service. I don't even like the taste of coffee. There is no reason I need to accept your offer to give me a cup of coffee any more than I need to accept a flyer from someone in the street. But if I were a company which provided coffee consumption services, then I would have less ability to turn you down than I do as a private person. My wider contention is that we have plenty of historical examples of public/private space which help us understand what's going on. For example, can a company town prevent someone from coming to town to distribute religious materials? Decided in Marsh v. Alabama. Are AOL email addresses "public", so AOL cannot block spammers? Decided in Cyber Promotions v. America Online.
jasode 10y ago
>My guess is that the reason why freedom of speech only protects you from being made to shut up by govt through prosecution, and not being made to shut up by a private company ... is because when the freedom of speech laws were formulated, the govt threat to your speech is the only major threat that existed. That's not the framework to use. What's happening is that the government can allow "free speech" to criticize the government because they can just leave you alone. They don't have to spend money to leave you alone. Arresting everybody that criticizes the government means spending money for agents to round up citizens and also spending more money on prisons to hold dissenters. The other form of "free speech with zero negative consequences from private entities" is impossible for a government or a society to provide for you. I'm not being hyperbolic -- it literally is impossible to give you that type of freedom. That type of of "commercial free speech" has a cost and other citizens are not going to pay for it. This leads into my response to your other statement... >Does using Google products qualify my relationship with them as an association? In the same way that me buying you a cup of coffee is association? You are misunderstanding how Freedom of Association affects "freedom of speech in a private business". Using Facebook as an example, consider that some of their biggest advertisers are Coca-Cola, Proctor Gamble, and Samsung. Let's say you want a law that forces Facebook to host posts (text not photos) espousing the benefits pedophilia. Pedophilia text is legal. Facebook user is happy that his legal viewpoint isn't deleted. This is now "free speech in private space" nirvana right? Not really. What the proponents of free-speech-on-private-platforms didn't consider is that there's no parallel law that forces Coca-Cola, ProctorGamble, Samsung to keep paying Facebook for ads. If Coca-Cola marketers say, "we don't want to run ads on Facebook that has child sex posts", they are free to abandon that platform and spend their ad dollars elsewhere. (Freedom of Association). The so-called "private treated as public space" that people wanted to spread alternative and marginalized viewpoints won't exist because nobody else wants to pay for it. ((The users of Facebook is also an "association" and if they freely leave the platform because they don't want their profiles intermingling with pedophiliacs, that will further erode Facebook's value.) Freedom of speech on private platforms has a cost and this is why the society can't give it to you. Society doesn't want to pay for all viewpoints. Some may think the obvious answer to the paradox of Freedom-of-Association vs Freedom-of-Speech is to collect taxes for a government-sponsored "public social network". Such a platform wouldn't be dependent on voluntary advertisers and their discretionary dollars. Unfortunately, that won't solve the problem for free speech either. If you think it through beyond the surface level appeal of such a platform, you'll see why it won't work.
stinkytaco 10y ago
I feel like the logical outgrowth of an argument like this is that we could compel companies to allow certain types of speech and not others. This seems like a pretty clear violation of both free association and freedom of the press. You would never think to compel a newspaper to publish a certain type of news or a certain columnist, why should Google be compelled to publish anything it doesn't like?
macspoofing 10y ago
>My guess is that the reason why freedom of speech only protects you from being made to shut up by govt through prosecution... is because when the freedom of speech laws were formulated, the govt threat to your speech is the only major threat that existed No. I think it would be hard to write a policy that sought to prevent censorship on private property. How would something like Reddit (or Hacker News) work in such a world? How do you deal with spam? Or off-topic posts? Or hateful and incendiary comments? All those things are protected speech today, but that doesn't mean the relevant service wants to have them on their network.

dalke 10y ago

If you make the argument that a private company, by shutting down a user's account, is like government restriction on free speech, then how do you determine the balance between the right of free speech and the right of free association? Remember, freedom of speech is only one part of the First Amendment. Those same writers also included the freedom of association. An organization like Google, Fox News, Amazon, or the Wall Street Journal is not obligated to associate with everyone. We can change things. We can pass laws which mandate that certain things are public spaces. For example, the rise of the malls means that the migration from public shopping streets to private shopping areas, where mall owners like the Mall of the Americas can shut down protest much more readily than the police could do in a truly public area. We can pass laws which force malls to be public areas. The Supreme Court decided that in Pruneyard v. Robins. But only a handful of states have done so. We can similarly pass laws which say that any content hosting site must be content neutral. Eg, if you want to use Stack Overflow to post your diatribes against whale hunting, SO cannot shut you down. That doesn't make sense. Okay, so we only require that of "powerful" sites, which you suggest. Which is defined as .... what? Who gets to decide? Who gets to challenge that? If Yahoo was once powerful but is no longer so, who gets to decide when the transition occurs? One possibility is to set up a common carrier status, where a company offers its services without discrimination to the general public. This is how the phone system works. But why would a company want to do this?

DavidWanjiru 10y ago
Does using Google products qualify my relationship with them as an association? In the same way that me buying you a cup of coffee is association? I realize that I'm suggesting calls that are difficult to make, but my wider contention is that the current status quo, legal and valid as it is, is missing something that we are going to have to address at some point.
- dalke 10y ago
  Yes. Though they are different associations. They are subject to federal and state laws which don't affect personal transactions. For example, they are available to the general public so are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of sex, race, and several other protected classes. California and other states place even more restrictions on their ability to discriminate. On the other hand, you are free to discriminate as you wish. (Though not without risk of criticism; such is free speech.) There's another difference in your example. Google provides services to the general public. You use their services. However, I do not provide a drinking-coffee service. I don't even like the taste of coffee. There is no reason I need to accept your offer to give me a cup of coffee any more than I need to accept a flyer from someone in the street. But if I were a company which provided coffee consumption services, then I would have less ability to turn you down than I do as a private person. My wider contention is that we have plenty of historical examples of public/private space which help us understand what's going on. For example, can a company town prevent someone from coming to town to distribute religious materials? Decided in Marsh v. Alabama. Are AOL email addresses "public", so AOL cannot block spammers? Decided in Cyber Promotions v. America Online.

jasode 10y ago

>My guess is that the reason why freedom of speech only protects you from being made to shut up by govt through prosecution, and not being made to shut up by a private company ... is because when the freedom of speech laws were formulated, the govt threat to your speech is the only major threat that existed. That's not the framework to use. What's happening is that the government can allow "free speech" to criticize the government because they can just leave you alone. They don't have to spend money to leave you alone. Arresting everybody that criticizes the government means spending money for agents to round up citizens and also spending more money on prisons to hold dissenters. The other form of "free speech with zero negative consequences from private entities" is impossible for a government or a society to provide for you. I'm not being hyperbolic -- it literally is impossible to give you that type of freedom. That type of of "commercial free speech" has a cost and other citizens are not going to pay for it. This leads into my response to your other statement... >Does using Google products qualify my relationship with them as an association? In the same way that me buying you a cup of coffee is association? You are misunderstanding how Freedom of Association affects "freedom of speech in a private business". Using Facebook as an example, consider that some of their biggest advertisers are Coca-Cola, Proctor Gamble, and Samsung. Let's say you want a law that forces Facebook to host posts (text not photos) espousing the benefits pedophilia. Pedophilia text is legal. Facebook user is happy that his legal viewpoint isn't deleted. This is now "free speech in private space" nirvana right? Not really. What the proponents of free-speech-on-private-platforms didn't consider is that there's no parallel law that forces Coca-Cola, ProctorGamble, Samsung to keep paying Facebook for ads. If Coca-Cola marketers say, "we don't want to run ads on Facebook that has child sex posts", they are free to abandon that platform and spend their ad dollars elsewhere. (Freedom of Association). The so-called "private treated as public space" that people wanted to spread alternative and marginalized viewpoints won't exist because nobody else wants to pay for it. ((The users of Facebook is also an "association" and if they freely leave the platform because they don't want their profiles intermingling with pedophiliacs, that will further erode Facebook's value.) Freedom of speech on private platforms has a cost and this is why the society can't give it to you. Society doesn't want to pay for all viewpoints. Some may think the obvious answer to the paradox of Freedom-of-Association vs Freedom-of-Speech is to collect taxes for a government-sponsored "public social network". Such a platform wouldn't be dependent on voluntary advertisers and their discretionary dollars. Unfortunately, that won't solve the problem for free speech either. If you think it through beyond the surface level appeal of such a platform, you'll see why it won't work.

stinkytaco 10y ago

I feel like the logical outgrowth of an argument like this is that we could compel companies to allow certain types of speech and not others. This seems like a pretty clear violation of both free association and freedom of the press. You would never think to compel a newspaper to publish a certain type of news or a certain columnist, why should Google be compelled to publish anything it doesn't like?

macspoofing 10y ago

>My guess is that the reason why freedom of speech only protects you from being made to shut up by govt through prosecution... is because when the freedom of speech laws were formulated, the govt threat to your speech is the only major threat that existed No. I think it would be hard to write a policy that sought to prevent censorship on private property. How would something like Reddit (or Hacker News) work in such a world? How do you deal with spam? Or off-topic posts? Or hateful and incendiary comments? All those things are protected speech today, but that doesn't mean the relevant service wants to have them on their network.