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I have not heard any group calling for free speech to be blocked. Who is calling for people to be arrested for what they say? Or to be blocked from being able t

I have not heard any group calling for free speech to be blocked. Who is calling for people to be arrested for what they say? Or to be blocked from being able to say it out loud? I think what you mean is that people are calling for internet platforms to kick out certain groups. This is in no way a call against freedom of speech. I am not sure why people suddenly believe that being for 'free speech' means that other people have to provide private infrastructure for those people to spread their speech. Did people complain that newspapers wouldn't allow the KKK to print opinion essays whenever they wanted? Did they get upset when a convention hall wouldn't let certain groups rent out their space? Free Speech was never about requiring private citizens to provide a platform for any speech someone wanted to make. It is about not using the law to stop the speech. That belief is still strong in the United States.

rmatt2000 4y ago
You should spend some time on a college campus. Shouting down speakers and deplatforming non-progressives is more common than one might think.
- xenospn 4y ago
  Maybe if they’d done so sooner we wouldn’t have had the KKK.
- coeneedell 4y ago
  I don’t see how this is inconsistent with what they’re saying. These people are asking their colleges to not provide a platform, not that the speakers should not be allowed to speak anywhere.
  - OrangeMonkey 4y ago
    Colleges are public locations that have historically allowed free speech. Court cases have been tried and lost trying to restrict this free speech. I think then you see the issue - "These people are asking their colleges to break the law and restrict the speech of others." You can argue that the laws should be changed to stop the current concept of free speech though.
    - whimsicalism 4y ago
      > Colleges are public locations This is not my experience for the indoors of the college.
- citizenkeen 4y ago
  That is perfectly in line with freedom of speech. Is the government showing up and arresting the speakers? No? Then freedom of speech is intact.
  - mc32 4y ago
    It’s not. If another form of government were to take over and decide that progressivism is dirty and society takes the cue, that’s not freedom of speech. It’s insidious censorship none the less
  - hackinthebochs 4y ago
    There really ought to be a copypasta to respond to this "free speech = 1st amendemnt" trope.
  - glerk 4y ago
    I’m so tired of this argument. Who cares if it’s the government, private business, or other citizens who do the censorship? The result is the same: censorship. Next you’re gonna tell me to go build my own university/social media platform/payment processor/ISP/etc. if I don’t like it.
    - ethanbond 4y ago
      Who cares who does it? Well, ermmm, the entire legal construct of free speech cares? The government requiring Person A to platform Person B’s speech is a violation of person A’s rights.
      - LudwigNagasena 4y ago
        Who cares about the legal construct you talk about? Legal constructs are not something absolute and apriori.
      - dmitrygr 4y ago
        How about requiring person A to bake a cake for person B? (Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission)
- ModernMech 4y ago
  Isn’t shouting an exercise of speech?
  - cies 4y ago
    Exactly, not being able to put a giant sound system in the city center blasting rave is hampering my freedom of expression! So there are many rules that have always limited expression.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  This also has to do with platforming. And it's not just about progressives, my university (Harvard) disinvited a progressive speaker after pressure from the CIA.
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    Who was it?
    - whimsicalism 4y ago
      Chelsea Manning
- slg 4y ago
  People on HN and in this thread in particular have such a one sided view of this issue. For some reason people here only think the left is attacking free speech when the truth is that free speech is under attack from both the left and right. One of those two has been much more effective translating these attacks into laws which I would expect to be the most concerning for proponents of free speech and yet it is always "what is happening on college campuses" that scares people more than "what is happening in state legislatures".
  - lettergram 4y ago
    While I agree-ish, I can list a litany of people deplatformed. All of them are on the right. It could just be only the left has power at the moment. A common question is why the Ayatollah is on Twitter (and I think Facebook) calling for death, but Alex Jones isn’t allowed to question events. We can argue both are reprehensible, but only one is banned. Beyond that I haven’t seen anyone on the right truly call for limitation of speech. I’ve only seen them get upset when something is particularly targeting them (say the push for LGBT in elementary schools)
    - uoaei 4y ago
      I can list a litany of people deplatformed. All of them are on the left. Selection bias does not a good argument make.
      - lettergram 4y ago
        Who? I’d like to read / listen to them.
        uoaei 4y ago
        Chris Hedges and John Kiriakou both have a lot to say about many important things
    - hirsin 4y ago
      Book banning is the right's equivalent of deplatforming, with the bonus that they are getting the government to do it, not just a private company. They do take it further though, with banning of talking about how to get an abortion, banning of talking about LGBT topics in school. I can't say that allowing those topics, or even pushing them, is targeting the right. By definition it's about some other group being supported. Maybe you meant triggering them, not targeting them?
- uoaei 4y ago
  What you describe is people exercising their free speech.
- cortesoft 4y ago
  Isn’t shouting down speakers just another person exercising their free speech?
  - 1270018080 4y ago
    Yes.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
MichaelCollins 4y ago
> I have not heard any group calling for free speech to be blocked. Who is calling for people to be arrested for what they say? The way it works is: "Sure I support free speech, but saying X is not free speech and saying it should be against the law because its offensive and might incite violence or something." If you object, they trot out Popper quotes about tolerating intolerance.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dev-3892 4y ago
  that's interesting, 'saying X should be against the law' is precisely not what I'm hearing. instead I'm hearing 'there shouldn't be a law that requires a private entity to broadcast X' and 'you really shouldn't say X, and I would strongly suggest that you do not say X' and 'if you say X, there may not be legal consequences, but legal consequences are not the only kind of consequences' so i don't agree that 'the way it works is ... saying it should be against the law' I disagree, and in no way am i trotting out Popper quotes. I am questioning your willingness to actually listen to people.
  - bandyaboot 4y ago
    Oops, it appears your comment has been marked as wrong speech by the hn free speech society.
    - dev-3892 4y ago
      oh no... anyway
  - renlo 4y ago
    Yea! Why should phone companies be forced to carry conversations they don’t want you to have over their networks? Why should ISPs be forced to serve content they don’t want you to see? If you want to call the competitor of ATT to switch your service, well you need to do it using a competitor’s line, and, if you want to view competing plans over Comcast’s internet, well you need to do that at the library or on someone else’s network! Obvious \s, the issue is that these “broadcast companies” are used by everyone, and should be treated as a utility.
californiadreem 4y ago
We've always been at war with Net Neutrality. "The ability to organize grassroots movements, whether locally or across the globe, is made possible by an open Internet. Since its creation, the Internet has become the world’s megaphone for free speech, protected by the principles of Net Neutrality, which require internet service providers (ISPs) to give everyone equal access to everything you use the internet for -- email, watching videos, listening to music, or signing petitions on Change.org. Without Net Neutrality, ISPs can choose what you see online, favoring some sources or blocking others. For example, if someone launched a petition on Change.org against a company like Verizon, Net Neutrality prevents Verizon from blocking or slowing their customers’ access to our site."
gruez 4y ago
> I have not heard any group calling for free speech to be blocked. Who is calling for people to be arrested for what they say? Or to be blocked from being able to say it out loud? That sounds like the logic behind "free speech zones". Yeah, we're not blocking protests, or arresting legal protesters. You just have to protest in a designated area 5 miles away where it won't disrupt everyone.
- jimbob45 4y ago
  There has to be some reason behind protesting or we end up wasting resources arresting everyone and trying to fight over who gets to protest in prime space at prime time. It’s better for everyone if we’re civilized about it.
  - bheadmaster 4y ago
    > There has to be some reason behind protesting or we end up wasting resources arresting everyone and trying to fight over who gets to protest in prime space at prime time. The fact that there are people out there wasting their own time and their own resources standing on the street for days and protesting is proof enough that there is something wrong. Why would anyone protest if there wasn't something (that they thought was) seriously wrong going on? > It’s better for everyone if we’re civilized about it. It's certainly better for the status quo, because "civilized" protest actually requires the other side to want to change things. In reality, it often does not, and "civilized" protests end up being exercises in futility. That's why protests happen - it's a form of pressure.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - ls15 4y ago
    So the French should have refrained from storming the Bastille in 1789 and later executing the king, and instead should have brought the issues with liberty, equality and fraternity to Louis XVI's and the clergy's attention in a non-aggressive tone?
    - 4y ago
mc32 4y ago
One think that different is activism acting as censorship. If big corp doesn’t censor whatever the issue of the day is, you have groups who influence these media to censor. You have registrars who take it upon themselves to decide what’s acceptable and not. That’s like pac bell refusing to print someone’s phone number in an old phone book because they disagreed with them.
slavik81 4y ago
> Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant—society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it—its means of tyrannising are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. > Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism. ~ John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
- michaelmrose 4y ago
  Persuasive and well written. It certainly seems applicable for example to the anticommunist fervor that the US dealt with in decades past for example. On the other hand that passage seems uniquely inapplicable to our modern times which are more free of societal oppression than almost any time previously. Neonazis, communists, would be anarchists, followers of 1000 cults and political groups many mutually offensive to one another can all be heard at least by millions of like minded individuals even if the rest of society isn't interested. You can even maintain a presence on public social media while advocating for evil and crime so long as you maintain a public face where you keep within bounds and talk about the obvious illegality in private. It is the lack of societal suppression indeed that is so disturbing to conservatives that they agitate for the large scale restructuring of society to restore the "proper order" greatly to the disadvantage of many. Their speech is dangerous. It's not a given that they will be defeated. Establishing some standards on platforms to deny them a mass audience while still keeping the wide open internet free for anyone to use seems virtuous.
scythe 4y ago
>I think what you mean is that people are calling for internet platforms to kick out certain groups. This is in no way a call against freedom of speech. Right, that would be freedom of the press. >Did people complain that newspapers wouldn't allow the KKK to print opinion essays whenever they wanted? Did they get upset when a convention hall wouldn't let certain groups rent out their space? Did people demand that typewriters and printers be beyond the reach of the badly opinionated? Did people demand the Post Office refuse to mail their newsletters? Did people demand that they should be denied phone service or that spammers should be allowed to tie up their lines to prevent them receiving calls?
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  > Did people demand that typewriters and printers be beyond the reach of the badly opinionated? the owner of the shop selling those items could refuse to sell them for any reason. > Did people demand the Post Office refuse to mail their newsletters? Did people demand that they should be denied phone service those are public utilities. but it happens all the time. people in jail can't send mail through the post office or make a call whenever they want. there are limitations in place already. nobody is denying the right to use the internet to anybody. internet connection is the equivalent of a phone line or the post office.
Tenobrus 4y ago
You're talking the US first amendment and how freedom of speech relates to governments, but that's only a limited subset of the general concept of free speech. Obviously discussions around platforms involve more complexity, but for example if AT&T started refusing to send my texts based on what kinds of ideas I was arguing for then this is a serious attempt to limit speech and discussion which is morally incorrect, regardless of legalities.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- 29083011397778 4y ago
  Looking back, I've had issues with Facebook not sending some messages. One attempt with a torrent site, and one sending a .exe file. The difference with your example is AT&T is America-only, while Facebook is a behemoth that enforces their morals world-wide. Can .exe files be dangerous? Yes. So inform or warn users, instead of silently failing.
  - stjohnswarts 4y ago
    I believe such actions are to let robots think they have succeeded. If you want to send an exe you can 7zip it up and put a password on it. Sure it's a little inconvenient but it's an option.
- throwayyy479087 4y ago
  This keeps getting forgotten - Freedom of Speech is a principle and not just an amendment.
krrrh 4y ago
There are two factors at play when we talk about free speech. 1. The legal protections which are currently very strong in the US 2. The culture of free speech As much as we like to think of law as impartial, the legal regime is downstream of, and lags the cultural milieu. If we degrade free speech culture then the legal protections become weaker after a couple of decades. You can see this at FIRE which successfully overturned college speech codes in the nineties and aughts. The return of new forms of speech codes, and new attempts at bad laws attempting to stifle protected speech (Florida's STOP WOKE act). They'll get overturned for now, but we may have seen the high point of legal protections for speech as younger legal theorists who don't prize free speech progress in their careers. [1] [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/24/yale-law-school-silberman-protest/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/24/yale-law-...
BurningFrog 4y ago
In 2022, most speech happens on the internet, so if that's outside the ever shrinking "free speech zone", free speech is practically dying. Also, it's easy to be smug about this when it's only nazis and other despicables from "the other side" being silenced. But once these tools exist, whoever is in power will gleefully use them against those who cheered when they were being "deplatformed".
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  > In 2022, most speech happens on the internet, anybody can use the internet to communicate. social media companies are not the internet.
  - sejje 4y ago
    Domain registrars and webhosts are canceling accounts based on content, so no, not anyone can use the internet to communicate.
    - abathur 4y ago
      There's a substitution, here. The GP's statement is still roughly correct: approximately anyone can use the internet to communicate. Everyone using other people's infrastructure to communicate on the internet is to some degree subject to content restrictions.
      - sejje 4y ago
        "The internet" has "other people's infrastructure" built in to its very fabric. You cannot have the internet without other people's infrastructure, whether in 1995 or 2022.
        abathur 4y ago
        Fiddling with semantics in order to ignore the point: Approximately everyone can use it to communicate--they just can't use it to communicate every thing.
causality0 4y ago
I have not heard any group calling for free speech to be blocked. Who is calling for people to be arrested for what they say? Or to be blocked from being able to say it out loud? I think you'll find a significant portion of the HN userbase supports the idea of the police arresting people for saying racist things on the internet. Mostly Europeans who live in places where that's already the law, but Americans as well. Unfortunately even in the US the people defending your right to be a big meanie are also the same ones who want the police to arrest teachers for telling kids that transgenderism and systemic racism exist. Those of us who think freedom of speech applies even to people and opinions we despise are a shrinking minority.
- d23 4y ago
  > I think you'll find a significant portion of the HN userbase supports the idea of the police arresting people for saying racist things on the internet. I genuinely can't wrap my head around how someone could possibly think this is true.
  - causality0 4y ago
    You can do a search for "hate speech" in the HN archive and find plenty of examples. Going down the first page of results, it's about half supporting hate speech as free speech and half against, although the supporting comments have much higher scores. You could make the argument those people think something should be illegal without thinking you should be arrested for doing it, but that's calling them a pack of ignoramuses who don't understand how laws work.
    - michaelmrose 4y ago
      Literally every covid thread has someone how thinks its not real. They post extensively on every thread that brings up their trigger topic unless actually banned. This isn't a good way to discern public sentiment among hacker news readers. Punishing people for "free speech" is a complex topic not a binary decision. Plenty of hateful speech that threatens or harasses could already be deemed a crime if its specific enough. I have no problem with punishing people for saying the same damn things about groups of people. If you say kill all the jews, straight to jail. If you say kill all the Texans likewise straight to jail. It's fundamentally dangerous to leave that unpunished because from like minded people reinforcing each others hate and violence is born both the crazies that pop off and do it and the societal movements which ultimately enact hate on a grand scale. Everyone has a line. We just disagree where to draw it.
throwawayacc2 4y ago
> Or to be blocked from being able to say it out loud Proponents of hate speech laws and their silent enablers would be one answer. Certainly not the only one. > I think what you mean is that people are calling for internet platforms to kick out certain groups. This is in no way a call against freedom of speech. You keep telling yourself self that. Especially when social values will change again as they always do and you will find your self shut off from society. You just keep telling yourself that’s not a loss of free speech. > I am not sure why people suddenly believe that being for 'free speech' means that other people have to provide private infrastructure for those people to spread their speech. I am not sure why people suddenly believe that being for ‘equality between the races' means that other people have to provide private shops for those black people to shop in - Someone with your thinking not that far away in the past Tell me, should shop owners be allowed to ban the blacks from their shops? Or is it just the backers that have to make cakes for the gays? Or perhaps it’s the age old “one rule for thee and another for me”? > Free Speech was never about requiring private citizens to provide a platform Then why are there laws like ADA or title VII of the Civil Rights Act? Give me a break. You can’t have it both ways. Just admit it, drop the pretence, be honest. Just say it out loud. You believe there are undesirable groups in society and those groups should not enjoy the same rights and opportunities as the rest. And once you admit to your self that is what you actually believe, reflect for just one second and understand in whose philosophical company you find yourself in.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  Those laws were made to protect specific groups and their basic human rights to operate in a society. You have you no right to force me to host your opinion however. Especially when that are dozens (hundreds?) of hosts that will pretty much allow anything if they will allow Gab, Stormfront, 4chan, etc.
  - throwawayacc2 4y ago
    You cannot have it both ways. We agreed as a society business are not allowed to discriminate. If businesses cannot discriminate, then your business should indeed be forced to host whatever content I put there, no matter how repulsive you may find it, as long as it is within the boundaries of the law. Close the door to this and the door to discrimination will open. For now, it will be in your favour. At some point, societal values will change again. And you will find yourself on the “wrong side of history”. That is why we made anti discrimination laws and that is why we should stick to this.
wyager 4y ago
"Freedom of speech" does not mean "the cathedral is allowed to do anything short of putting you in jail to censor and punish your speech". "Freedom of speech" does not just refer to a specific narrowly-defined legal doctrine.
- timdev2 4y ago
  I'm curious when that happened. I hear people say it all the time. But I'm old enough to have grown up before the commercial internet, and I don't remember there being any widespread conception of "free speech" apart from limitations on state censorship. For instance, I suspect if some antisemitic nuts in say, the 1960s, had wanted to buy a full page ad in the NYT with some elders-of-zion type conspiracy ad, complete with hook-nosed caricature of a jewish banker, and the NYT refused to run the ad, nobody would have raised any objection on "free speech" grounds. Can you think of any examples of extra-legal "free speech as a popular concept", pre-Internet?
  - wyager 4y ago
    > limitations on state censorship That's still what we're talking about. The state has just gotten better at outsourcing the work, so people who aren't paying close attention don't even recognize it as such. Hence my invocation of "the cathedral", as opposed to narrowly "the government".
    - timdev2 4y ago
      I read "cathedral" as being exclusive of the state. Reading it as inclusive confuses me even more, I think. If the state outsourcing censorship, then the state alone is culpable. I think we can have some legitimate and interesting arguments about where the line ought to be drawn. For instance, if a private entity asks the state for guidance about content moderation, is it (or ought it be) legal for the state to provide it? But that entire discussion falls well within the contours of the established legal framework. So I'm not sure what concept you were referring to originally.
      - 4y ago
rgrieselhuber 4y ago
This is the “if you don’t like it, go build your own multi-billion dollar monopoly internet service” argument. And then it’s just one more step to call for public-private partnerships in combatting “misinformation.”
- michaelmrose 4y ago
  It's literally trivial to have your own twitter/facebook/youtube analog. You can in turn spread information about its existence through exciting means like email. You aren't entitled to an audience of hundreds of millions and indeed have never in the history of free speech been entitled to such.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
    When taxpayer-funded officials are telling private companies what to censor, your argument falls on its face. It has nothing to do with how hard it is to build a website.
    - michaelmrose 4y ago
      I'm not aware of anything being censored other than spam and other obvious breaches of TOS. Not being algorithmically promoted to like minded weirdos isn't the same as being censored. You have no legal right to an exact placement in search results or in people's feeds. Censored means your content is obviated, deleted, removed.
  - Levitz 4y ago
    And then one day your CDN drops you, another day your hosting service does, Google stops indexing you... You get the idea. Justifiable or not, tales of those such as 8chan or now Kiwifarms do show that anyone wanting to host a website depends on companies.
houstonn 4y ago
There is an ongoing campaign to get a legal forum completely removed from the internet. A twitch and twitter mob managed to pressure parts of internet infrastructure like Cloudflare and hCaptcha to drop them mere days after the campaign began. Even Archive.org reneged on their core mission and have removed all records. Archive.today is now under intense pressure to do the same because they still have a record of the thread that kicked off the whole campaign: https://archive.ph/uLpNt https://archive.ph/uLpNt The next step is pressuring ISPs. Do we still believe in net neutrality? At what point has this gone too far?
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  do you mind sharing what the legal forum is? Also the internet is privately run (at least in the USA) and there is nothing keeping people from setting up a host and running their own forum there. If Gab can Truth social can stay up with all their calls-to-arms and domestic terrorism posts calling it "freedom of speech" I'm sure this forum can find a similar hosting service that allows anything.
  - shitlord 4y ago
    They're probably talking about The Kiwi Farms, a site which has a lot of trouble finding a host or an ISP willing to tolerate them. They also have people petitioning foreign governments to seize their IP addresses.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
falcolas 4y ago
Free speech is, in most countries in the UN, a human right, not a restriction on government action. So, yes, I believe that private companies (which effectively make up the whole of the internet) are morally responsible for helping to provide platforms for legal speech. Especially if they want to claim free speech protections for themselves.
WalterBright 4y ago
The Biden administration has pressured social media to remove certain posts. https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-the-feds-coordinate-with-facebook-twitter-white-house-social-media-emails-covid-instagram-11662761613 https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-the-feds-coordinate-with-fa...
Bud 4y ago
You might have failed to notice what Florida's governor is doing, then, with the recent "Don't Say Gay" law.
- wyager 4y ago
  What is your understanding of the "Don't Say Gay" (so named by its opponents) law? Are you under the impression it prevents people from saying "Gay", for example?
betwixthewires 4y ago
Never? You must not get out much then. Just the other day, less than a week ago, there was a horde of people on this very site saying things like "words can be violence" in response to some internet drama being discussed. There are groups of people who want some utterances to be punishable under law, and they're ironically very vocal about it.
FooBarWidget 4y ago
There are lots of such people on social media, if you know where to look. The trick is that none of them are directly calling for arrest for what people say. Instead they masquerade that under an accusation that attacks your person, e.g. they accuse you of harassment, of spreading propaganda, or of some crime. With the goal of silencing your views — all without ever engaging with the arguments that you provide. This is especially noticeable if you look at topics that are non-mainstream-acceptable.
- tstrimple 4y ago
  So they are using their own freedom of speech and you don’t like it? What should you suggest is done about it?
  - FooBarWidget 4y ago
    So you call silencing tactics a form of freedom of speech as long as it's not by the government? I find this a really shortsighted way of looking at freedom. According to the original Enlightenment ideals, during which the idea of freedom of speech was created, freedom of speech is valuable not because it is inherently so, but because it's supposed to improve society. It creates a Marketplace of Ideas, and through rational debate, the best idea wins. During the French Revolution, Liberté was supposed to be equally important as Egalité and Fraternité, i.e. societal responsibility mattered just as much as freedom. What is the point if freedom of speech is used to destroy the Marketplace, and if freedom of speech devolves into a form where everybody shouts but nobody listens to each other (i.e. the post-truth society)? What is the point of shouting on an island, instead of reconciling differences?
csa 4y ago
> I have not heard any group calling for free speech to be blocked. Who is calling for people to be arrested for what they say? Or to be blocked from being able to say it out loud? 1. Conservatives regarding LlGBTQ issues, especially in schools, especially towards younger people, especially regarding books. 2. Liberals regarding some conservative thought that is most definitely not illegal to say (e.g.(it’s not a direct call to violence). Very common on US college campuses. 3. NFL (and other orgs) regarding peaceful symbolic of police violence during the national anthem. See Kaepernick and his torched career due to the direct and indirect prohibitions. 4. Olympics. 5. Lots of topics where folks may advocate for policies that existed in the past regarding things like rights for women, rights for various ethnicities, rights (or even acknowledgement) of non-cis people. Those policies are considered regressive by most modern day liberals and moderate conservatives, but are harbored (often somewhat secretly) by a not small number of people. Determining who is allowed to marry is a sample theme. > Did people complain that newspapers wouldn't allow the KKK to print opinion essays whenever they wanted? Did they get upset when a convention hall wouldn't let certain groups rent out their space? Yes and yes. You either don’t know these peoples or don’t have access to their personal thoughts. As an example, I live in California, and I’m white, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard casual conversation about the imminent (all-white) state of Jefferson that will secede from CA. It’s bonkers. > Free Speech was never about requiring private citizens to provide a platform for any speech someone wanted to make. It is about not using the law to stop the speech. That belief is still strong in the United States. Largely true, but some only mildly controversial speech is being restricted by orgs that get federal and state funding. That’s an issue that really needs to be addressed and resolved.

rmatt2000 4y ago

You should spend some time on a college campus. Shouting down speakers and deplatforming non-progressives is more common than one might think.

xenospn 4y ago
Maybe if they’d done so sooner we wouldn’t have had the KKK.
coeneedell 4y ago
I don’t see how this is inconsistent with what they’re saying. These people are asking their colleges to not provide a platform, not that the speakers should not be allowed to speak anywhere.
- OrangeMonkey 4y ago
  Colleges are public locations that have historically allowed free speech. Court cases have been tried and lost trying to restrict this free speech. I think then you see the issue - "These people are asking their colleges to break the law and restrict the speech of others." You can argue that the laws should be changed to stop the current concept of free speech though.
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    > Colleges are public locations This is not my experience for the indoors of the college.
citizenkeen 4y ago
That is perfectly in line with freedom of speech. Is the government showing up and arresting the speakers? No? Then freedom of speech is intact.
- mc32 4y ago
  It’s not. If another form of government were to take over and decide that progressivism is dirty and society takes the cue, that’s not freedom of speech. It’s insidious censorship none the less
- hackinthebochs 4y ago
  There really ought to be a copypasta to respond to this "free speech = 1st amendemnt" trope.
- glerk 4y ago
  I’m so tired of this argument. Who cares if it’s the government, private business, or other citizens who do the censorship? The result is the same: censorship. Next you’re gonna tell me to go build my own university/social media platform/payment processor/ISP/etc. if I don’t like it.
  - ethanbond 4y ago
    Who cares who does it? Well, ermmm, the entire legal construct of free speech cares? The government requiring Person A to platform Person B’s speech is a violation of person A’s rights.
    - LudwigNagasena 4y ago
      Who cares about the legal construct you talk about? Legal constructs are not something absolute and apriori.
    - dmitrygr 4y ago
      How about requiring person A to bake a cake for person B? (Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission)
ModernMech 4y ago
Isn’t shouting an exercise of speech?
- cies 4y ago
  Exactly, not being able to put a giant sound system in the city center blasting rave is hampering my freedom of expression! So there are many rules that have always limited expression.
whimsicalism 4y ago
This also has to do with platforming. And it's not just about progressives, my university (Harvard) disinvited a progressive speaker after pressure from the CIA.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  Who was it?
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    Chelsea Manning
slg 4y ago
People on HN and in this thread in particular have such a one sided view of this issue. For some reason people here only think the left is attacking free speech when the truth is that free speech is under attack from both the left and right. One of those two has been much more effective translating these attacks into laws which I would expect to be the most concerning for proponents of free speech and yet it is always "what is happening on college campuses" that scares people more than "what is happening in state legislatures".
- lettergram 4y ago
  While I agree-ish, I can list a litany of people deplatformed. All of them are on the right. It could just be only the left has power at the moment. A common question is why the Ayatollah is on Twitter (and I think Facebook) calling for death, but Alex Jones isn’t allowed to question events. We can argue both are reprehensible, but only one is banned. Beyond that I haven’t seen anyone on the right truly call for limitation of speech. I’ve only seen them get upset when something is particularly targeting them (say the push for LGBT in elementary schools)
  - uoaei 4y ago
    I can list a litany of people deplatformed. All of them are on the left. Selection bias does not a good argument make.
    - lettergram 4y ago
      Who? I’d like to read / listen to them.
      - uoaei 4y ago
        Chris Hedges and John Kiriakou both have a lot to say about many important things
  - hirsin 4y ago
    Book banning is the right's equivalent of deplatforming, with the bonus that they are getting the government to do it, not just a private company. They do take it further though, with banning of talking about how to get an abortion, banning of talking about LGBT topics in school. I can't say that allowing those topics, or even pushing them, is targeting the right. By definition it's about some other group being supported. Maybe you meant triggering them, not targeting them?
uoaei 4y ago
What you describe is people exercising their free speech.
cortesoft 4y ago
Isn’t shouting down speakers just another person exercising their free speech?
- 1270018080 4y ago
  Yes.
deleted 4y ago
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MichaelCollins 4y ago

> I have not heard any group calling for free speech to be blocked. Who is calling for people to be arrested for what they say? The way it works is: "Sure I support free speech, but saying X is not free speech and saying it should be against the law because its offensive and might incite violence or something." If you object, they trot out Popper quotes about tolerating intolerance.

deleted 4y ago
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dev-3892 4y ago
that's interesting, 'saying X should be against the law' is precisely not what I'm hearing. instead I'm hearing 'there shouldn't be a law that requires a private entity to broadcast X' and 'you really shouldn't say X, and I would strongly suggest that you do not say X' and 'if you say X, there may not be legal consequences, but legal consequences are not the only kind of consequences' so i don't agree that 'the way it works is ... saying it should be against the law' I disagree, and in no way am i trotting out Popper quotes. I am questioning your willingness to actually listen to people.
- bandyaboot 4y ago
  Oops, it appears your comment has been marked as wrong speech by the hn free speech society.
  - dev-3892 4y ago
    oh no... anyway
- renlo 4y ago
  Yea! Why should phone companies be forced to carry conversations they don’t want you to have over their networks? Why should ISPs be forced to serve content they don’t want you to see? If you want to call the competitor of ATT to switch your service, well you need to do it using a competitor’s line, and, if you want to view competing plans over Comcast’s internet, well you need to do that at the library or on someone else’s network! Obvious \s, the issue is that these “broadcast companies” are used by everyone, and should be treated as a utility.

californiadreem 4y ago

We've always been at war with Net Neutrality. "The ability to organize grassroots movements, whether locally or across the globe, is made possible by an open Internet. Since its creation, the Internet has become the world’s megaphone for free speech, protected by the principles of Net Neutrality, which require internet service providers (ISPs) to give everyone equal access to everything you use the internet for -- email, watching videos, listening to music, or signing petitions on Change.org. Without Net Neutrality, ISPs can choose what you see online, favoring some sources or blocking others. For example, if someone launched a petition on Change.org against a company like Verizon, Net Neutrality prevents Verizon from blocking or slowing their customers’ access to our site."

gruez 4y ago

> I have not heard any group calling for free speech to be blocked. Who is calling for people to be arrested for what they say? Or to be blocked from being able to say it out loud? That sounds like the logic behind "free speech zones". Yeah, we're not blocking protests, or arresting legal protesters. You just have to protest in a designated area 5 miles away where it won't disrupt everyone.

jimbob45 4y ago
There has to be some reason behind protesting or we end up wasting resources arresting everyone and trying to fight over who gets to protest in prime space at prime time. It’s better for everyone if we’re civilized about it.
- bheadmaster 4y ago
  > There has to be some reason behind protesting or we end up wasting resources arresting everyone and trying to fight over who gets to protest in prime space at prime time. The fact that there are people out there wasting their own time and their own resources standing on the street for days and protesting is proof enough that there is something wrong. Why would anyone protest if there wasn't something (that they thought was) seriously wrong going on? > It’s better for everyone if we’re civilized about it. It's certainly better for the status quo, because "civilized" protest actually requires the other side to want to change things. In reality, it often does not, and "civilized" protests end up being exercises in futility. That's why protests happen - it's a form of pressure.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ls15 4y ago
  So the French should have refrained from storming the Bastille in 1789 and later executing the king, and instead should have brought the issues with liberty, equality and fraternity to Louis XVI's and the clergy's attention in a non-aggressive tone?
  - 4y ago

mc32 4y ago

One think that different is activism acting as censorship. If big corp doesn’t censor whatever the issue of the day is, you have groups who influence these media to censor. You have registrars who take it upon themselves to decide what’s acceptable and not. That’s like pac bell refusing to print someone’s phone number in an old phone book because they disagreed with them.

slavik81 4y ago

> Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant—society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it—its means of tyrannising are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. > Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism. ~ John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

michaelmrose 4y ago
Persuasive and well written. It certainly seems applicable for example to the anticommunist fervor that the US dealt with in decades past for example. On the other hand that passage seems uniquely inapplicable to our modern times which are more free of societal oppression than almost any time previously. Neonazis, communists, would be anarchists, followers of 1000 cults and political groups many mutually offensive to one another can all be heard at least by millions of like minded individuals even if the rest of society isn't interested. You can even maintain a presence on public social media while advocating for evil and crime so long as you maintain a public face where you keep within bounds and talk about the obvious illegality in private. It is the lack of societal suppression indeed that is so disturbing to conservatives that they agitate for the large scale restructuring of society to restore the "proper order" greatly to the disadvantage of many. Their speech is dangerous. It's not a given that they will be defeated. Establishing some standards on platforms to deny them a mass audience while still keeping the wide open internet free for anyone to use seems virtuous.

scythe 4y ago

>I think what you mean is that people are calling for internet platforms to kick out certain groups. This is in no way a call against freedom of speech. Right, that would be freedom of the press. >Did people complain that newspapers wouldn't allow the KKK to print opinion essays whenever they wanted? Did they get upset when a convention hall wouldn't let certain groups rent out their space? Did people demand that typewriters and printers be beyond the reach of the badly opinionated? Did people demand the Post Office refuse to mail their newsletters? Did people demand that they should be denied phone service or that spammers should be allowed to tie up their lines to prevent them receiving calls?

peoplefromibiza 4y ago
> Did people demand that typewriters and printers be beyond the reach of the badly opinionated? the owner of the shop selling those items could refuse to sell them for any reason. > Did people demand the Post Office refuse to mail their newsletters? Did people demand that they should be denied phone service those are public utilities. but it happens all the time. people in jail can't send mail through the post office or make a call whenever they want. there are limitations in place already. nobody is denying the right to use the internet to anybody. internet connection is the equivalent of a phone line or the post office.

Tenobrus 4y ago

You're talking the US first amendment and how freedom of speech relates to governments, but that's only a limited subset of the general concept of free speech. Obviously discussions around platforms involve more complexity, but for example if AT&T started refusing to send my texts based on what kinds of ideas I was arguing for then this is a serious attempt to limit speech and discussion which is morally incorrect, regardless of legalities.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
29083011397778 4y ago
Looking back, I've had issues with Facebook not sending some messages. One attempt with a torrent site, and one sending a .exe file. The difference with your example is AT&T is America-only, while Facebook is a behemoth that enforces their morals world-wide. Can .exe files be dangerous? Yes. So inform or warn users, instead of silently failing.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  I believe such actions are to let robots think they have succeeded. If you want to send an exe you can 7zip it up and put a password on it. Sure it's a little inconvenient but it's an option.
throwayyy479087 4y ago
This keeps getting forgotten - Freedom of Speech is a principle and not just an amendment.

krrrh 4y ago

There are two factors at play when we talk about free speech. 1. The legal protections which are currently very strong in the US 2. The culture of free speech As much as we like to think of law as impartial, the legal regime is downstream of, and lags the cultural milieu. If we degrade free speech culture then the legal protections become weaker after a couple of decades. You can see this at FIRE which successfully overturned college speech codes in the nineties and aughts. The return of new forms of speech codes, and new attempts at bad laws attempting to stifle protected speech (Florida's STOP WOKE act). They'll get overturned for now, but we may have seen the high point of legal protections for speech as younger legal theorists who don't prize free speech progress in their careers. [1] [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/24/yale-law-school-silberman-protest/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/24/yale-law-...

BurningFrog 4y ago

In 2022, most speech happens on the internet, so if that's outside the ever shrinking "free speech zone", free speech is practically dying. Also, it's easy to be smug about this when it's only nazis and other despicables from "the other side" being silenced. But once these tools exist, whoever is in power will gleefully use them against those who cheered when they were being "deplatformed".

peoplefromibiza 4y ago
> In 2022, most speech happens on the internet, anybody can use the internet to communicate. social media companies are not the internet.
- sejje 4y ago
  Domain registrars and webhosts are canceling accounts based on content, so no, not anyone can use the internet to communicate.
  - abathur 4y ago
    There's a substitution, here. The GP's statement is still roughly correct: approximately anyone can use the internet to communicate. Everyone using other people's infrastructure to communicate on the internet is to some degree subject to content restrictions.
    - sejje 4y ago
      "The internet" has "other people's infrastructure" built in to its very fabric. You cannot have the internet without other people's infrastructure, whether in 1995 or 2022.
      - abathur 4y ago
        Fiddling with semantics in order to ignore the point: Approximately everyone can use it to communicate--they just can't use it to communicate every thing.

causality0 4y ago

I have not heard any group calling for free speech to be blocked. Who is calling for people to be arrested for what they say? Or to be blocked from being able to say it out loud? I think you'll find a significant portion of the HN userbase supports the idea of the police arresting people for saying racist things on the internet. Mostly Europeans who live in places where that's already the law, but Americans as well. Unfortunately even in the US the people defending your right to be a big meanie are also the same ones who want the police to arrest teachers for telling kids that transgenderism and systemic racism exist. Those of us who think freedom of speech applies even to people and opinions we despise are a shrinking minority.

d23 4y ago
> I think you'll find a significant portion of the HN userbase supports the idea of the police arresting people for saying racist things on the internet. I genuinely can't wrap my head around how someone could possibly think this is true.
- causality0 4y ago
  You can do a search for "hate speech" in the HN archive and find plenty of examples. Going down the first page of results, it's about half supporting hate speech as free speech and half against, although the supporting comments have much higher scores. You could make the argument those people think something should be illegal without thinking you should be arrested for doing it, but that's calling them a pack of ignoramuses who don't understand how laws work.
  - michaelmrose 4y ago
    Literally every covid thread has someone how thinks its not real. They post extensively on every thread that brings up their trigger topic unless actually banned. This isn't a good way to discern public sentiment among hacker news readers. Punishing people for "free speech" is a complex topic not a binary decision. Plenty of hateful speech that threatens or harasses could already be deemed a crime if its specific enough. I have no problem with punishing people for saying the same damn things about groups of people. If you say kill all the jews, straight to jail. If you say kill all the Texans likewise straight to jail. It's fundamentally dangerous to leave that unpunished because from like minded people reinforcing each others hate and violence is born both the crazies that pop off and do it and the societal movements which ultimately enact hate on a grand scale. Everyone has a line. We just disagree where to draw it.

throwawayacc2 4y ago

> Or to be blocked from being able to say it out loud Proponents of hate speech laws and their silent enablers would be one answer. Certainly not the only one. > I think what you mean is that people are calling for internet platforms to kick out certain groups. This is in no way a call against freedom of speech. You keep telling yourself self that. Especially when social values will change again as they always do and you will find your self shut off from society. You just keep telling yourself that’s not a loss of free speech. > I am not sure why people suddenly believe that being for 'free speech' means that other people have to provide private infrastructure for those people to spread their speech. I am not sure why people suddenly believe that being for ‘equality between the races' means that other people have to provide private shops for those black people to shop in - Someone with your thinking not that far away in the past Tell me, should shop owners be allowed to ban the blacks from their shops? Or is it just the backers that have to make cakes for the gays? Or perhaps it’s the age old “one rule for thee and another for me”? > Free Speech was never about requiring private citizens to provide a platform Then why are there laws like ADA or title VII of the Civil Rights Act? Give me a break. You can’t have it both ways. Just admit it, drop the pretence, be honest. Just say it out loud. You believe there are undesirable groups in society and those groups should not enjoy the same rights and opportunities as the rest. And once you admit to your self that is what you actually believe, reflect for just one second and understand in whose philosophical company you find yourself in.

stjohnswarts 4y ago
Those laws were made to protect specific groups and their basic human rights to operate in a society. You have you no right to force me to host your opinion however. Especially when that are dozens (hundreds?) of hosts that will pretty much allow anything if they will allow Gab, Stormfront, 4chan, etc.
- throwawayacc2 4y ago
  You cannot have it both ways. We agreed as a society business are not allowed to discriminate. If businesses cannot discriminate, then your business should indeed be forced to host whatever content I put there, no matter how repulsive you may find it, as long as it is within the boundaries of the law. Close the door to this and the door to discrimination will open. For now, it will be in your favour. At some point, societal values will change again. And you will find yourself on the “wrong side of history”. That is why we made anti discrimination laws and that is why we should stick to this.

wyager 4y ago

"Freedom of speech" does not mean "the cathedral is allowed to do anything short of putting you in jail to censor and punish your speech". "Freedom of speech" does not just refer to a specific narrowly-defined legal doctrine.

timdev2 4y ago
I'm curious when that happened. I hear people say it all the time. But I'm old enough to have grown up before the commercial internet, and I don't remember there being any widespread conception of "free speech" apart from limitations on state censorship. For instance, I suspect if some antisemitic nuts in say, the 1960s, had wanted to buy a full page ad in the NYT with some elders-of-zion type conspiracy ad, complete with hook-nosed caricature of a jewish banker, and the NYT refused to run the ad, nobody would have raised any objection on "free speech" grounds. Can you think of any examples of extra-legal "free speech as a popular concept", pre-Internet?
- wyager 4y ago
  > limitations on state censorship That's still what we're talking about. The state has just gotten better at outsourcing the work, so people who aren't paying close attention don't even recognize it as such. Hence my invocation of "the cathedral", as opposed to narrowly "the government".
  - timdev2 4y ago
    I read "cathedral" as being exclusive of the state. Reading it as inclusive confuses me even more, I think. If the state outsourcing censorship, then the state alone is culpable. I think we can have some legitimate and interesting arguments about where the line ought to be drawn. For instance, if a private entity asks the state for guidance about content moderation, is it (or ought it be) legal for the state to provide it? But that entire discussion falls well within the contours of the established legal framework. So I'm not sure what concept you were referring to originally.
    - 4y ago

rgrieselhuber 4y ago

This is the “if you don’t like it, go build your own multi-billion dollar monopoly internet service” argument. And then it’s just one more step to call for public-private partnerships in combatting “misinformation.”

michaelmrose 4y ago
It's literally trivial to have your own twitter/facebook/youtube analog. You can in turn spread information about its existence through exciting means like email. You aren't entitled to an audience of hundreds of millions and indeed have never in the history of free speech been entitled to such.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- rgrieselhuber 4y ago
  When taxpayer-funded officials are telling private companies what to censor, your argument falls on its face. It has nothing to do with how hard it is to build a website.
  - michaelmrose 4y ago
    I'm not aware of anything being censored other than spam and other obvious breaches of TOS. Not being algorithmically promoted to like minded weirdos isn't the same as being censored. You have no legal right to an exact placement in search results or in people's feeds. Censored means your content is obviated, deleted, removed.
- Levitz 4y ago
  And then one day your CDN drops you, another day your hosting service does, Google stops indexing you... You get the idea. Justifiable or not, tales of those such as 8chan or now Kiwifarms do show that anyone wanting to host a website depends on companies.

houstonn 4y ago

There is an ongoing campaign to get a legal forum completely removed from the internet. A twitch and twitter mob managed to pressure parts of internet infrastructure like Cloudflare and hCaptcha to drop them mere days after the campaign began. Even Archive.org reneged on their core mission and have removed all records. Archive.today is now under intense pressure to do the same because they still have a record of the thread that kicked off the whole campaign: https://archive.ph/uLpNt https://archive.ph/uLpNt The next step is pressuring ISPs. Do we still believe in net neutrality? At what point has this gone too far?

stjohnswarts 4y ago
do you mind sharing what the legal forum is? Also the internet is privately run (at least in the USA) and there is nothing keeping people from setting up a host and running their own forum there. If Gab can Truth social can stay up with all their calls-to-arms and domestic terrorism posts calling it "freedom of speech" I'm sure this forum can find a similar hosting service that allows anything.
- shitlord 4y ago
  They're probably talking about The Kiwi Farms, a site which has a lot of trouble finding a host or an ISP willing to tolerate them. They also have people petitioning foreign governments to seize their IP addresses.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

falcolas 4y ago

Free speech is, in most countries in the UN, a human right, not a restriction on government action. So, yes, I believe that private companies (which effectively make up the whole of the internet) are morally responsible for helping to provide platforms for legal speech. Especially if they want to claim free speech protections for themselves.

WalterBright 4y ago

The Biden administration has pressured social media to remove certain posts. https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-the-feds-coordinate-with-facebook-twitter-white-house-social-media-emails-covid-instagram-11662761613 https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-the-feds-coordinate-with-fa...

Bud 4y ago

You might have failed to notice what Florida's governor is doing, then, with the recent "Don't Say Gay" law.

wyager 4y ago
What is your understanding of the "Don't Say Gay" (so named by its opponents) law? Are you under the impression it prevents people from saying "Gay", for example?

betwixthewires 4y ago

Never? You must not get out much then. Just the other day, less than a week ago, there was a horde of people on this very site saying things like "words can be violence" in response to some internet drama being discussed. There are groups of people who want some utterances to be punishable under law, and they're ironically very vocal about it.

FooBarWidget 4y ago

There are lots of such people on social media, if you know where to look. The trick is that none of them are directly calling for arrest for what people say. Instead they masquerade that under an accusation that attacks your person, e.g. they accuse you of harassment, of spreading propaganda, or of some crime. With the goal of silencing your views — all without ever engaging with the arguments that you provide. This is especially noticeable if you look at topics that are non-mainstream-acceptable.

tstrimple 4y ago
So they are using their own freedom of speech and you don’t like it? What should you suggest is done about it?
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  So you call silencing tactics a form of freedom of speech as long as it's not by the government? I find this a really shortsighted way of looking at freedom. According to the original Enlightenment ideals, during which the idea of freedom of speech was created, freedom of speech is valuable not because it is inherently so, but because it's supposed to improve society. It creates a Marketplace of Ideas, and through rational debate, the best idea wins. During the French Revolution, Liberté was supposed to be equally important as Egalité and Fraternité, i.e. societal responsibility mattered just as much as freedom. What is the point if freedom of speech is used to destroy the Marketplace, and if freedom of speech devolves into a form where everybody shouts but nobody listens to each other (i.e. the post-truth society)? What is the point of shouting on an island, instead of reconciling differences?

csa 4y ago

> I have not heard any group calling for free speech to be blocked. Who is calling for people to be arrested for what they say? Or to be blocked from being able to say it out loud? 1. Conservatives regarding LlGBTQ issues, especially in schools, especially towards younger people, especially regarding books. 2. Liberals regarding some conservative thought that is most definitely not illegal to say (e.g.(it’s not a direct call to violence). Very common on US college campuses. 3. NFL (and other orgs) regarding peaceful symbolic of police violence during the national anthem. See Kaepernick and his torched career due to the direct and indirect prohibitions. 4. Olympics. 5. Lots of topics where folks may advocate for policies that existed in the past regarding things like rights for women, rights for various ethnicities, rights (or even acknowledgement) of non-cis people. Those policies are considered regressive by most modern day liberals and moderate conservatives, but are harbored (often somewhat secretly) by a not small number of people. Determining who is allowed to marry is a sample theme. > Did people complain that newspapers wouldn't allow the KKK to print opinion essays whenever they wanted? Did they get upset when a convention hall wouldn't let certain groups rent out their space? Yes and yes. You either don’t know these peoples or don’t have access to their personal thoughts. As an example, I live in California, and I’m white, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard casual conversation about the imminent (all-white) state of Jefferson that will secede from CA. It’s bonkers. > Free Speech was never about requiring private citizens to provide a platform for any speech someone wanted to make. It is about not using the law to stop the speech. That belief is still strong in the United States. Largely true, but some only mildly controversial speech is being restricted by orgs that get federal and state funding. That’s an issue that really needs to be addressed and resolved.