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Are you sure you're not thinking of "the first amendment" rather than "free speech"?

Of course I'm talking about the first amendment, the only protection of free speech that exists in the USA. Any time someone brings up free speech and it's involving non-government entitites is just kidding themselves that they believe they have a "right" to express their views however they want.

So, because of the first amendment, we do have a "right" to express our views however we want. Because of the freedom of association, people and companies have the right to refuse to associate with us.

Irrespective of the first amendment, any given individual or company is free to respect the principle of free speech as much or as little as they like. I choose to respect the principle more than you. Thanks to free speech, we both have the express our disagreement. Because YCombinator respects free speech to some extent, they have furnish us a platform that allows us to publish these opinions.

Treating speech as a boolean is naive. There are a range of protections ranging from popular opinion, free speech devotees, all the way up to the first amendment.

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