Unless either of us can find Randall explaining his intent somewhere (and even then; death of the author probably applies - how sytse used the comic is equally important) all we can do is go by it's working. The comic doesn't say "The First Amendment", it says "Freedom of Speech".
I won't say that the average netizen shouting freedom of speech is educated on the philosophy of liberty or has read JS Mill (I haven't, I need too). But when they say freedom of speech about forums. Freedom of Speech is still a human right, not a clause in the USA constitution. I still think it's a strawman to respond by pointing the limits of the First Amendment.
> Of course, Mill assumed that most people are capable of rational thought, and would generally move towards a more correct view of the world when exposed to a marketplace of ideas. The internet doesn't always work like that. However, the alternative to "free speech" is echo chambers, which is probably worse.
On Liberty was written in 1859. It's an indisputable fact that in all forms of social justice - sexual equality, racial equality, LGBT rights, and far far more - things have been improved enormously during the last 66 years. If Mills ideas have either influenced or reflected the political philosophies of the those 66 years then clearly he's onto something.
Even the internet doesn't change much, human nature is still human nature. Besides, to pick a date, the internet has only been influential since September 1993. Social justice has mostly gotten better since 1993 even if online discourse has gotten worse. It's premature to say we the world is too different to go by On Liberty.
After 66 years of liberty bringing progress we should only attempt to replace liberal ideas with the utmost care, thought and deliberation. And when I see people arguing to limit freedom of speech, I do not see that care and deliberation; if I did a comic saying that Freedom of Speech was merely a clause in one country's legal code would never have gotten popular.
> But I don't see why GitLab has any real responsibility to allow stuff that's not code (or is just joke code) - it's not a really a marketplace of ideas, it's a place to share code.
If they had a clearly written rule saying only code is aloud, or only code and documentation relating to code is aloud then that would be fine.
However once GitLab starts judging repositories based on the ideas they contain and deleting legal repositories they dislike then they have crossed the line.