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Comment by joshfraser | Hacker News Reader

The strength of your convictions are only tested at the extremes. You can't say you believe in free speech if that only includes speech you like.

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This is a weak argument. It is possible to both believe in free speech – that is, the right for anybody to publish whatever views they want – while simultaneously deciding that you do not want to publish those views yourself, nor support the publishing of them.

That is certainly true but it uncovers the issue of whether we consider free speech a value or not. Google is saying that it isn't.

It's going to get very problematic. When big players squeeze the Overton Window it becomes an Overton Bubble. We'll be blindsided by more electoral decisions that are puzzling due to preference falsification.

The US extremist version of free speech isn't shared anywhere else in the world. Most countries are happy with their limited version of free speech.

And even the US has limits on what you can publish - see for example the Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act 2010. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Crush_Video_Prohibition...

It's interesting that some consider the notion of freedom as extremism, with all the attached implications.

Here lies individualist-collectivist divide.

Not really. There are very few people who consider 'freedom' in that sense to be an absolute right; the argument is merely about which restrictions are acceptable, and which are not.

>Most countries are happy with the lack of free speech.

There, fixed it for you. There are a lot of human rights "most countries" have historically opposed.

I'm sure the writers of the constitution didn't imagine how much power the commerce clause would give the federal government.

> The US extremist version of free speech isn't shared anywhere else in the world.

It's not law anywhere else in the world, but many people share it, myself included.

Do not confuse law with ideals - after all, google acting as a censor is perfectly legal even in the 'free speech extremist' US.

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