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Comment by joyfulmantis | Hacker News Reader

Free speech is a concept even the west is struggling with -- Twitter hiding Donald Trump's tweets for example, or New Zealand banning the terrorists manifesto. If even the bastion of free speech is starting to have second doubts about it, how can you claim the moral high ground when a third country wants to restrict free speech?

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If you have a problem with twitter hiding trump's tweets and new zealand banning the christchurch shooter's manifesto, there's no inconsistency. There's also room for applying your own standard of free speech vs hate speed across international borders: I might say that the protestors in china were exercising free speech for political change, while trump's speech has no important theoretical or political content and is purely harassment. I might have to massage it to get to something fully agreeable, but I don't think this kind of position is necessarily inconsistent.

I think the parent is right in that free speech is not an absolute and has geographical restrictions. Most western nations restrict free speech mostly by broadly defining some forms of speech as hate. Saying hate speech laws and free speech are consistent with each other is disingenuous considering one exists to limit the other.

I can understand the argument that hate speech is a fair restriction, but one must concede that it is a restriction and other countries may add their own restrictions to it which you may disagree on.

I should clarify: most americans think everyone is entitled to some right called "free speech" but there are philosophical justifications of this that cut across the boundary between ideas and acts (kind of hard to summarize it) that exclude a lot of speech acts from "free speech" [0]. I was trying to say that it's not inconsistent to apply a single framework for free speech across national borders or despite companies like twitter blocking trump's tweets because there are theories of speech rights that work that way.

[0]: There is an interesting paper on this called 'A Theory of Freedom of Expression' by Thomas Scanlon that can do a better job of explaining it. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2264971?seq=1

As is brought up every time this is mentioned, freedom of speech is the freedom from suppression of speech, not the guarantee of universal availability of a specific platform for speech. The latter never has been and never should be enshrined in law.

Here I would disagree, freedom of speech is an ideal, and the constitutional amendment was based on that ideal. Universal platforms for speech are somewhat of a new concept, but there is still some precedent against de-platforming, for example with John Adams and his defense of the British soldiers in the Boston massacare[1], a precedent that still holds (held) with attorneys defending very unsavory characters not because they ideologically support them but because the basis of a healthy society depends upon it.

John F. Kennedy famously said "We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." [2]

The time has come when America is afraid of it's own citizenry.

[1] https://www.history.com/news/boston-massacre-trial-john-adam...

[2] https://americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkvoiceofamerica.htm

If you live in China you will quickly realise the restriction of freedom of speech is quite limited. It actually became a phenomenon very recently (2010 onwards in my opinion). Even on highly 'scrutinised' Wechat there are many posts and rumours with titles 'read before it (gets) taken down'. The "lack of political freedom" is mostly about the same old scandals. Yes I agree it would be great to have civilised 'free to express' platform but culture norms differ greatly.

Yes, absolutely, we should defend the right of people to say things that we don't want to hear, and we should say true things that others don't want to hear; but there is a difference between defending someone against the legal consequences of the exercise of freedom of speech, and using my voice to amplify their speech (as I am doing, implicitly, if I am a large corporation that presides over a platform with global reach). The former is not legally required, but perhaps is ethically required; I'd argue that the latter is not ethically required, and may even be ethically enjoined. Even if I am wrong in this ethical calculation, it is a fact that there is no constitutionally guaranteed right in the US that I, or any corporation, will protect your freedom of speech, only that the government will not infringe it.

This right here is why we should regulate twitter up to nationalization. If twitter does away with free speech and other human rights it becomes the new norm.

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