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Comment by jknoepfler | Hacker News Reader

This is laughably false. The press in the United States is and remains free to publish (virtually) whatever it wants about federal, state, and local government. We're free even to suggest that the electoral college is a terrible way to implement democratic election of representatives, to suggest that the current voting system undermines the legitimacy of the government, to propose and debate alternatives in the open air, to stage protests at the capitol if we care to.

What in the heck are you talking about? No one is jumping ship on these values anytime soon.

The actions of corporations trying to make money in countries that don't share those values are subject to open criticism in the press and wherever one cares to air them. If you want to punish companies that seem to be undermining those values (such as Activision/Blizzard in this case), you remain free to do that.

The backlash against Blizzard is an example of that happening.

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So, I don't think it's as big a leap as it may seem. Bear with me a moment:

Modern communication between individuals relies on the internet. Even the government has acknowledged this, insisting that all of their services are available online.

All spaces for communication on the internet (including elements as low as DNS and hosting) rely on private companies.

Private companies can and do take censorious actions based on values that, at best, are layered upon the values of the country that the company operates in. However, at worst, the company's values need not have any relation to those of the countries they operate in.

Thus, the individual's freedom to express their thoughts relies on their thoughts not being censored by private companies. If one of the many companies that you depend upon for communication decides to not let you express that thought, you are unable to express that thought.

Of course, this applies to the internet and not government-owned meat-space, but government-managed meat-space is not where this communication is occurring. Particularly around the incident in Hong Kong.

The "private property" argument was always a bit iffy outside urban areas with ample centrally-located parkland or large public buildings with plenty of sidewalk space. Anywhere else, if you're protesting, you're protesting on somebody's property. Sure you can stand and march in the street, but there are issues with that too.

Ideally 1A protections would be seen as something of a bare minimum, rather than the highest level of protection people could ever dream of enjoying.

> The press in the United States is and remains free to publish (virtually) whatever it wants about federal, state, and local government.

This doesn’t mean much if they don’t use this power and instead publish random bullshit. The western way has never been censorship, it’s been straight up lying.

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