No we don't. The meaning of free speech is clearly defined in the United States by the First Amendment. QED.
No, it isn't.
Here is the text of the First Amendment, verbatim:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom
of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably
to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress
of grievances.
It very deliberately excludes private parties - otherwise and random wacko could force the nyt or fox to publish whatever they wanted.
If I am forced to host your platform/speech/lewd gestures/etc. you're taking away my rights of free speech to not host your platform. No one is taking away access. What they are doing is kicking the drunk ass jerk out of the bar for harassing other people because they were warned to stop being such a dick and they continued on anyways. They can say whatever they want from someplace them own and no one is preventing access to them. They want a bar full of jerks, they can go right ahead and have no rules of decorum.
You're confusing unlimited speech with free speech. There has never been a right to access to all speech. Private conversations happen all the time and no one has a right to listen to those. So again, just because someone owns a billboard doesn't mean they are required to post your message. The courts have been pretty solid on this and it's why the baker won his case against the couple. You cannot force me to advocate for you if I don't believe in it.
This is the mentality of intellectual inquisitive people and needs to be promoted as it's currently under attack.
If I'm running a platform, I have the choice to make it a moderated platform or an unmoderated one. If I make it unmoderated, you can have your "free access to everything". [Edit: At the price of it becoming a cesspool that most people don't want to wallow in.] But if I make it moderated, you don't have the right to make me carry anything on it that I don't want to carry. You don't like it? Go run your own platform, and carry what you like.
And between all these different platforms - some unmoderated, and the moderated ones having a bunch of different standards of what they will and will not allow - people get to freely choose which ones they want to spend time on and contribute content to.
All that can work without the government forcing anybody to do anything.
It's weird you say this because it really seems more like the mentality of people who want a state sponsored megaphone to shout, "Debate me you cowards!" into.
You're welcome to it, but it seems tangential. I certainly am not interested in you telling me how to feel.
Also in plenty of small towns that is already the case - people in coal country get ruined if they complain about coal, or the mining companies. Which is considered legal.
But let’s put up a very simple example: if I rent out a billboard on a building I own, should I be required to post advertisements from a political candidate I disagree with? Your interpretation of free speech says yes I should have no choice, likewise if I get a pro-hitler or pro Stalin, pro genocide, or pornography, I have no choice I just display it.
Actually here’s a very American example: during elections people stick the little plastic political boards in their front yard, in doing so they’ve declared that their front yard is a space for political ads - should Someone then be allowed to put opposition ads there as well?
This is your definition of free speech: if you publish any speech, you are required to publish all
I didn't give a definition of free speech (neither its spirit nor the law establishing it). I merely gave an example illustrating how farcical it is to ignore all factors except the government, when evaluating the degree of freedom of speech that people enjoy.