>The First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees free speech, explicitly does so in a political context ("Congress shall make no law [...] abridgin

>The First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees free speech, explicitly does so in a political context ("Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech"). Imzy is not the US Congress, they don't have jurisdiction over anything but their own little niche of the Internet (which absolutely nobody is forcing you to visit if you don't want to) - so why are you upset when they ask you, within the bounds of their community, to be nice? Yes, insofar as the law protects free speech, it does so only against the government. We as individual Americans, should, however, be wary of using privately-owned spaces as public spheres unless they provide broadly similar guarantees that different points of view can be expressed. This is becoming more important as the traditional public sphere is increasingly giving way to privately-run ones (e.g. Facebook and Reddit). >Why does free speech mean that we get to insult and demean each other, even going so far as to sending death threats? I think the German constitution (the Grundgesetz) has a point when it says in Article 5, §2 that the right of free speech is limited, amongst others, by every person's right of dignity ("Recht der persönlichen Ehre" - a hard to translate concept). No one is arguing for allowing death threats. This is a classic straw man used in just about every major online debate ever. The German constitution is flawed here. When German police can arrest people for having the wrong opinion, something is badly wrong. >On Reddit and like sites we see behaviour that we would never tolerate if we saw it in real life. Why do we not only tolerate it online, but suddenly elevate such antisocial behaviour of the extremest kind to a mystical status of "expression of free speech"? There is a reason we are taught "manners" as children: without a minimum of politeness, societies cannot function. Politeness and courtesy have to do with respecting another's person even if you don't share his (or her) opinions, with tolerating people who are different from you. And is that not the very epitome of freedom? The problem is the definition of politeness. The cultural powers have dictated that calling people racist and sexist for disagreeing with you is "polite", while fighting back against that madness is ghastly.