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Comment by nilkn | Hacker News Reader

I am advancing the notion that there may be a threshold beyond which sites like Twitter are in practice precisely digital public townsquares. I am aware of what the laws are right now -- we are discussing here a hypothetical change of precedent or law in the future to better reflect how Americans communicate in 2018 and beyond.

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No, you are wrong.

Using your own malformed analogy: The town square is the internet. Twitter is a private shop above subway station with a bunch of garbage that people like to buy. It's super busy. You can scream whatever you want in there, some people outside can hear you. You'll also probably get kicked out if you become obnoxious.

The “privatising public spaces” issue isn’t just limited to the internet. To understand the point better the above poster is making you might be interested in reading about how private malls became our de facto “public” spaces.

Legalese and dodgy analogies aside the above poster is focussing on the practical effects of these sites being so big and ‘default’.

On the other hand posting a dodgy opinion on facebook et al largely removes you from the social and physical consequences of saying things that are way outside of societal norms. When you're able to hide behind a screen the range of things you're willing to say increases as does your potential reach. I would argue it completely changes the context to which the ideas of free speech have been classically prescribed. Its worthy of discussion to question do the underlying ideals of free speech apply in this brave new world, or do we need to look at tweaking our ideals to fit the contexts in which we live. I don't have answers, nor would I ever suggest restricting free speech more, I'm just questioning does it make sense to apply it in this domain.

> On the other hand posting a dodgy opinion on facebook et al largely removes you from the social and physical consequences of saying things that are way outside of societal norms.

I get what you're saying here, but the sheer number of idiots "fired for saying X on facebook" makes me think it's not true. It lowers the barrier for saying something and increases your audience reach... but also lowers the mental barrier for saying the wrong thing or someone hypersensitive hearing it.

Have you ever investigated how speech is regulated in other countries? I'm Australian and we have a number of restrictions that make speech 'unfree' in the American sense. But I think they're appropriate and on the whole balanced well.

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