3 ms·

How can Twitter be a free speech platform if you cant receive the speech for free?

• oliveshell 8y ago
  Hence the distinction between “free as in speech” and “free as in beer”.
  • daveguy 8y ago
    Just referring to the speech part... Is the speech free as in speech if it isn't free as in beer? If there is a gateway to prevent it from being freely distributed? With GNU the free as in speech is also free as in beer -- if all you want is the speech (aka code). If you want services around the code it will cost when companies are trying to make a business on it. Correct me if I'm wrong (and I probably am), but doesn't every additional dollar reduce free as in speech because of reduced access?
    • pas 8y ago
      GNU/FSF supports selling code for money. Twitter does the same with tweets. You can download your own tweets for free, or even tweets of someone else freely, just doing it for all someone elses costs money. So, with GNU usually you get both, but that's not necessary. And usually seen as completely meaningless, as if there would be a very useful GPL open source software that was not free to download and use, then a simple consortium of people could get together and buy one copy and then redistribute it for free. (Though they would need to do this for all future versions.) -- which is similar to what the author proposes with regards to forming a group of ~1 700 users/folks to brute force the firehose.
    • thinkloop 8y ago
      Free speech is about what you can say, not about who gets to hear it. If the newspaper doesn't print your speech, it doesn't mean they are limiting it. Free speech is about what is allowed to exit your mouth, how it travels is a different beast.
• dewey 8y ago
  Who said it’s a free speech platform? You have the right to free speech but not the right to a free platform.