>This post, like many in this thread, misrepresents what free speech is. Free speech protects us from government retribution, nothing more This may be the case

>This post, like many in this thread, misrepresents what free speech is. Free speech protects us from government retribution, nothing more This may be the case de jure, but de facto, the spirit of the concept of free speech, and why it is important enough to enshrine in amendment, transcends the relationship between the government and the governed. A society where speech is effectively no longer free because of authoritarian-like control of discourse by non-governmental bodies requires the same protections that it would against the government to remain free from authoritarianism. Particularly when censorious or retributive measures by these ostensibly apolitical actors almost all tend to align with the machinations of one political party. So the fact that social media platforms (and cloud hosts and credit card companies, etc) effectively collude to control the modern, digital public square to preferentially suppress the political views of about 50% of the country is just as much of a threat as government censorship, since the outcome is the same.