3 ms·
> Either you have free speech for everyone > or you just don't have free speech. This would be a platitude except it's untrue, so it's more of an empty fa
by uniqueid 6y ago
> Either you have free speech for everyone
> or you just don't have free speech.
This would be a platitude except it's untrue, so it's more of an empty falsehood. American law already places restrictions on speech:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions
Aside from that, your comment implies that a private company should have no say over which people (and organizations, racist groups, terror cells, criminal gangs, etc) it bankrolls.
Even if I valued "free speech on the internet" as highly today as I did a decade ago, that speech includes the liberty of a company to choose its TOS and not pay to host content that goes against them.
Finally, my "high order bit" these days, when it comes to internet speech, is for humanity to survive. When Patrick Henry said "give me liberty or give me death!" the internet didn't even exist. My version is "give me liberty AFK or give me death!"
- pbhjpbhj 6y agoShould I surmise that you don't believe liberty in online engagements should be protected at all. Freedom to speak in the high-street (ie IRL/AFK public arenas) is all well and good but what if everyone else is speaking in the pseudo-public online spaces and a company has excluded you from those spaces. Don't we need a legal framework that respects cyberspace as more than just the domain of company mores, that allows democratic standards to govern principal online meeting spaces?
- koheripbal 6y agoThis is an oversimplification and not the point. I don't mind reasonable limitations on speech - the point is that I don't want an oligopoly of corporations to be the judges of what is allowed. It should be an elected body, or no restrictions at all. The only reason anyone thinks these censorship rulings are a good idea is because they haven't been censored themselves (yet).