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Comment by bosswipe | Hacker News Reader

There's a disconnect that keeps running through a lot of the arguments from the conservative side which I don't understand. The examples given in this piece are a) the right of street protesters to be heard without being attacked by government officers vs b) the right of people to not get fired for what they say by private organizations like the New York Times.

This disconnect keeps coming up, and it's extra weird because conservatives have traditionally been the bigger proponents of corporate freedom to fire whoever they want. But now many conservatives seem to want some kind of new labor protection laws.

Maybe what is going on is not really about free speech but more about quickly changing cultural norms. It used to be OK to make blatant racist and sexist jokes in an office setting but at some point that changed and now you can easily get fired over it. That's not a change in free speech restrictions, it's a change in what is considered culturally acceptable behavior between private actors. But changing cultural norms aren't something that should be somehow regulated by the government.

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The disconnect goes away if we see person opinions as something people are rather than something which people say.

This happens also to be a common thread in the disagreement between left and right. When something becomes a voluntary chosen action it can be controlled, limited and stopped by the government. When something is a personal trait it should be protected and given status as a right.

To take the example of a street protestor. Should companies be allowed to fire political activists? When we see it as a personal trait a lot of people find the answer as no. Should companies be allowed to fire people who choosed to say bad things? Many say yes. The issue becomes how people frame the question and what values get attached to it.

Yes. Person with Tourette should not be fired for saying things that others don't.

(discussing norms, not free speech as legal rights below)

The norms in private organizations (companies, universities, associations) are different for different people.

1) If you are representative of an organization, what you say in private reflects your organization and it's reputation. It's established norm that personal values and opinions publicly expressed can't deviate from that of the organization. This includes many low level customer service jobs.

2) Low level managers, teachers and coaches are in position of authority and their whole identity is involved. Leader can shout their mouth about their political opinions and people working under them are not in position to talk back. That's not proper position to be politically opinionated. There are some norms limiting to their self expression in private, but it's usually context dependent.

3) Low level workers without public position or responsibilities over other should get most leeway to be whatever they are outside the job. When I was working in the floor level warehouse, the coffee break was the most politically diverse environment. Anarchist and far-right guy sitting next to each other debating angrily about women's rights, unions, Jews, holocaust. Nobody considered taking it upstairs because it was offensive. Only cases of bullying were considered out of line.

True, but by the same token, there is a clear distinction between these two opinions:

1) I believe the government should outlaw firing people based on what they say in the office

2) I believe that companies should not fire people based on what they say in the office.

Believing in small government doesn't mean you have no opinion on cultural norms. It just means you don't think the government should enforce them.

But you're also right that many modern "conservatives" don't grasp the distinction.

it is not just conservatives that do not grasp that

The 2 statements are the difference between a liberty minded person and the authority minded person

Liberty mined (or libertarian) can easily separate their personal beliefs on what is "proper" but still allow that other people may view differently and as long as they are not harming them (or anyone else) should be allowed to live their life in the manner they deem "proper"

Authority minded people (or Authoritarian) can not do this, they believe their worldview is the "right" or "correct" world view and that must be imposed upon everyone, by force if necessary.

These 2 mindsets exist in both "Left" and "Right" political orthodoxy

The world is not this simple. There are some speech that should be protected and some that maybe should be banned. (Eg. criticism of the workplace [see also calls for forming a labor union], whistle-blowing of illegal activities ... and on the other end, maybe abusing and harassing people based on their skin color, voice, and other elements of one's "phenotype", and maybe there should be some very basic beliefs that ought to be protected.)

Both of these absolutes (full libertari[ani]sm and full authoritarianism) are doomed to fail, and even throwing them out as some nice first principles to start from seems to be borderline useless. (At least it seems the last 10+ years of politics is throwing memes at each other that have been reduced to absurdity.)

And yet the 'liberty minded' person in this case is the one imposing a government restriction upon what individuals and businesses might otherwise choose to do.

Since virtually nobody agrees that no form of speech or other expression should ever be a fireable offence, the debate actually comes down to discussion of which types of speech should and should have protections in the sphere of employment. You'll find a large set of people with a general presumption in favour of protecting political speech including some which they find disagreeable, but even involves debating where to draw the line, because speech which is ostensibly political can to differing degrees also be abusive, damaging to staff relations, bringing the company into disrepute, contrary to professional ethics, directly undermining the organization's position etc. And of course who should be given stronger-than-average protections is also a matter of some debate, and you'll usually find plenty of people arguing for government protections on the freedom of conscience for racists but not homosexuals and vice versa. Some people believe in restricting employers with more general presumptions in favour of speech than others, but assessing which ones and why is more useful than simply claiming the other side is more authoritarian, especially when those arguing for fire-at-will for any reason also consider themselves to be doing so on libertarian grounds.

Genuine question here from someone who is the "virtually nobody" that you describe in terms of being a complete free speech absolutist and seeing attempts to shut that down as perhaps the worst thing happening in the world today pretty much guaranteed to end in complete disaster, and simultaneously not seeing what the issue is in terms of "while you're at work" limits on sensitive discussions.

It's one thing to tell the employee what they can say on the job to their colleagues or customers when they're not hired to talk to colleagues and customers about sensitive topics (this doesn't even need to be an explicit prohibition, it can take the form of "that's not what you're being paid to do, and while you're doing it you're not doing what you are being paid to do, so please shut up and do your job"), and an entirely different thing to tell them what they can't say period in any context at any time on penalty of being fired for wrongthink, which frankly is just a modern take on the time honoured and previously much bloodier purge process updated for modern non-violent sensibilities, which still taken to its logical conclusion has the exact same results.

Mark my words; this batshit insanity has ended badly already and it will continue to escalate into a continuous spire of catastrophic idiotic badness as long as it is tolerated.

> It's one thing to tell the employee what they can say on the job to their colleagues or customers when they're not hired to talk to colleagues and customers about sensitive topics (this doesn't even need to be an explicit prohibition, it can take the form of "that's not what you're being paid to do, and while you're doing it you're not doing what you are being paid to do, so please shut up and do your job"), and an entirely different thing to tell them what they can't say period in any context at any time on penalty of being fired for wrongthink, which frankly is just a modern take on the time honoured and previously much bloodier purge process updated for modern non-violent sensibilities, which still taken to its logical conclusion has the exact same results.

It's still a matter of degree [and which jobs, and which views, and what constitutes 'outside work'] though. It's certainly possible for someone to do an awful lot more damage to their company by views or actions taken outside work than stuff that you as a self-described free speech absolutist are comfortable tone policing inside work

Insisting that someone stick to doing their actual job, while they're at their actual job, isn't tone policing. And the fact that they could do damage to their company by their speech outside the context of their employment is nothing wrong with the employee, it's symptomatic of the cancerous state of modern western society (and as an expat, I can tell you it's mercifully absent outside the west) and the idiotic cancel culture nonsense, currently in the process of ending extremely badly.

> And the fact that they could do damage to their company by their speech outside the context of their employment is nothing wrong with the employee, it's symptomatic of the cancerous state of modern western society (and as an expat, I can tell you it's mercifully absent outside the west)

I can assure you that there are no shortage of people on the receiving end of non-Western boycott threats for making comments deemed to offend, say, religious sensitivities in India or support calls for democracy in Hong Kong. The idea the rest of the world is some paragon of free speech or labour relations is not one well supported by reality.

And needless to say there's no shortage of things that can be said or done outside work which call into question one's suitability for the role or commitment to actually helping the company succeed which have nothing to do with 'cancel culture'.

> I can assure you that there are no shortage of people on the receiving end of non-Western boycott threats for making comments deemed to offend, say, religious sensitivities in India or support calls for democracy in Hong Kong.

The best defense that can be mustered is that the worst authoritarian and theocratic dictatorships of the world do the same thing so it's no big deal? To be fair to you I guess the truth of the matter is that really is the best defense. It just happens to be terrible.

> And needless to say there's no shortage of things that can be said or done outside work which call into question one's suitability for the role or commitment to actually helping the company succeed which have nothing to do with 'cancel culture'.

It's just a coincidence that what we actually hear month in and month out year after year is professional offense taking victims out to collect scalps on behalf of their cancerous idiotic ideology, right?

> The best defense that can be mustered is that the worst authoritarian and theocratic dictatorships of the world do the same thing so it's no big deal? To be fair to you I guess the truth of the matter is that really is the best defense. It just happens to be terrible.

It's not a 'defence' but a simple refutation of your claim that companies coming under pressure from some quarters to fire employees for sentiments they have expressed is a uniquely Western thing (Bit of a stretch to suggest India has been amongst the 'worst authoritarian and theocratic dictatorships' since its independence too...). Just because local populations in much of the world are seldom bothered by comments perceived as insulting to black or gay people doesn't mean they all extend the same tolerance towards people they perceive as insulting their national pride, family values, religion, behavioural norms, officials they need to curry favour with etc.

> It's just a coincidence that what we actually hear month in and month out year after year is professional offense taking victims out to collect scalps on behalf of their cancerous idiotic ideology, right?

For someone who claims to be averse to 'professional offence taking', you're trying remarkably hard to find an angle sufficiently obtuse for you to drag my bland statement that companies think all sorts of different behaviour outside working hours gives them cause to fire people into your culture war...

> It's not a 'defence' but a simple refutation of your claim that companies coming under pressure from some quarters to fire employees for sentiments they have expressed is a uniquely Western thing

And it's not a refutation at all, because the examples you cite are themselves restricted to particular jurisdictions (and I'm sure of this because I spent the past ten years travelling the entire world and never saw anything of the magnitude I've seen coming from the west during that period), and the incidents are far more excessive breaches of the local cultural etiquette in incidents where they do end up causing outrage, whereas in the west you can be legally hounded by professional victims for not using their pretend pronouns, and people make art forms out of misinterpreting things to be as offended as possible for no reason at all obviously because it gives them power whilst those who would like to pretend it's not the fatal problem it clearly is choose to continuously ignore or minimise it, even while cadres of the discussed movements in question are out burning down cities, looting, and other typical obvious indicators that things have gone seriously wrong, this discussion itself being a perfect case in point.

> (Bit of a stretch to suggest India has been amongst the 'worst authoritarian and theocratic dictatorships' since its independence too...).

Pointing out that the worst authoritarian and theocratic dictatorships are the nearest analogs to the "me-too"-ism you cite doesn't imply that applies to India in particular, my reference to theocratic dictatorships was mostly regarding middle eastern jurisdictions at any rate.

> you're trying remarkably hard to find an angle sufficiently obtuse for you to drag my bland statement that companies think all sorts of different behaviour outside working hours gives them cause to fire people into your culture war...

Not at all, I'm not even disagreeing with that statement. I'm simply pointing out it's symptomatic of a disease rather than a positive or neutral thing that should just be accepted.

> And it's not a refutation at all, because the examples you cite are themselves restricted to particular jurisdictions (and I'm sure of this because I spent the past ten years travelling the entire world and never saw anything of the magnitude I've seen coming from the west during that period), and the incidents are far more excessive breaches of the local cultural etiquette in incidents where they do end up causing outrage

I've travelled the world too, but with my eyes open :) In that time I've visited countries where literal lynch mobs hunt people accused of participating in the beef trade or having sex before marriage, countries where the mildest of perceived criticisms of royalty will earn you a minimum three year jail term in addition to the lasting enmity of locals, and countries with excruciatingly forced politeness and elaborate systems of honorifics which are a lot harder to grasp than she/her. Those are the nominal democracies, not the ones with supreme leaders or religious absolutists. And there's still well over a quarter of the world where homosexuality isn't merely grounds for firing and shaming your family, but also a criminal offence. Perhaps you believe these cultural norms are more intrinsically worth defending than politeness towards transpeople, but it's safe to say that culture warriors who've been no-platformed by the side of the 'trans debate' they want to silence are raking in donations rather than languishing in jails.

So I'm afraid I find it laughable to hear that people who espouse illiberal views on minorities in the West are unique in the magnitude of their victimhood because they might attract so much attention their book becomes a bestseller or they become elected President of the United States.

One of the consequences of greater levels of free speech is greater exposure to criticism, justified and otherwise.

> I've travelled the world too, but with my eyes open :)

Clearly not, since exactly as I already said, the examples you cite are restricted to specific jurisdictions it's quite easy to avoid, although the one you go to with the example of "excruciatingly forced politeness" has me scratching my head about the problem, frankly.

> Perhaps you believe these cultural norms are more intrinsically worth defending than politeness towards transpeople

I don't really care about any of those cultural norms frankly, and the position of free speech absolutists has nothing whatsoever to do with "politeness towards transpeople". Being able to describe reality without censoring the truth is an essential function of analysis and thus improvement of that reality. Prohibiting or policing it inevitably results in the degradation of that reality because the problems you're not allowed to discuss can't be addressed, either. This is the fundamental reason for free speech absolutism, not concerns about "lol it's fun to trigger the transpeople / leftists / marxists / religious conservatives" or whatever other juvenile nonsense passes muster for the straw man you're trying to present it as.

> but it's safe to say that culture warriors who've been no-platformed by the side of the 'trans debate' they want to silence are raking in donations rather than languishing in jails.

And what exactly does that position have to do with saying it's not a big deal that free speech is being continuously eroded in the jurisdictions where it's traditionally been taken for granted and the idea of that erosion was seen as absurd not two decades ago? You cite another group of people who'd like to erode it in the other direction and you think you've actually made an argument as to why it should be eroded? Because almost everybody has gone mad, or has always in fact been mad and it has simply become more obvious as time progresses and social media displays their madness for all to directly observe?

> people who espouse illiberal views on minorities in the West are unique in the magnitude of their victimhood because they might attract so much attention their book becomes a bestseller or they become elected President of the United States.

I honestly can't even parse this sentence into something that has a relationship to material reality, do you think people defending free speech have a problem with minorities and that's baked into the position or something and you're just jumping to that conclusion immediately without actually examining it at all?

> One of the consequences of greater levels of free speech is greater exposure to criticism, justified and otherwise.

And that'd be just grand, because those trying to restrict that speech are in desperate need of greater criticism, and it is entirely justified.

> Clearly not, since exactly as I already said, the examples you cite are restricted to specific jurisdictions it's quite easy to avoid

Please, enlighten me. Name me a state which conforms to your ideals of 'free speech absolutism', where people are free to say whatever they like on any topic without any risk of public outcry or legal repercussions. I'll wait.

> do you think people defending free speech have a problem with minorities and that's baked into the position or something and you're just jumping to that conclusion immediately without actually examining it at all?

No, I believe that your display of visceral hostility towards the speech of 'professional offence takers' and insinuation that being asked to use particular pronouns is a burden to which all other requests/demands to comply with cultural norms pale in comparison is an indication of a type of speech you value over others, in this case the speech of the person offending the minority group over the speech of the offended party. People actually defending freedom of expression as a general principle don't tend to argue that the most uniquely horrible threat to freedom of speech worldwide comes from those using their own speech to argue that a particular person is a bigot their company or university shouldn't host. Partly because they care about securing people's right to advocate boycotts even if they don't agree with boycotts, and partly because much of the rest of the world is entirely comfortable with jailing people for wrongthink.

> Please, enlighten me. Name me a state which conforms to your ideals of 'free speech absolutism'

My point wasn't that there was, it was that the things you were pointing out were easily avoided by not going to the jurisdictions in which they were prevalent. Ironically, the answer to your question not that long ago would have been what is considered western countries.

> No, I believe that your display of visceral hostility towards the speech of 'professional offence takers' and insinuation that being asked to use particular pronouns is a burden to which all other requests/demands to comply with cultural norms pale in comparison is an indication of a type of speech you value over others

Well, you're wrong once again. I don't care if objections to free speech are rooted in leftist marxist arguments for subversion, snowflake tier nonsense about feelings protection, or brutalist fascist arguments for protecting the prestige of the state, they're all equally as bad as each other and I do not value any particular objection any higher than the other. The simple fact is though the ones that actually are eroding free speech in the western world today are very firmly on the emotional and leftist side of the political spectrum, which is why those are the ones I'm attacking directly in this discussion. All other forms of infringement on free speech pale in comparison to those.

> in this case the speech of the person offending the minority group over the speech of the offended party.

Once again, complete nonsense, if you're preferencing a right to free speech of special interest group A over group B, then you're by definition not a free speech absolutist. My view is that stupid people ought to be able to say stupid things without being silenced by other stupid people, and you analyse the trainwreck at the end to figure out where the actual truth lies, and without that process you never get to figure out the truth to begin with.

> People actually defending freedom of expression don't tend to argue that the most uniquely horrible threat to freedom of speech worldwide comes from those using their own speech to argue that a particular person is a bigot their company or university shouldn't host.

This is completely false, this is typically the exact kind of people that other free speech absolutists including myself are ringing alarm bells about precisely because they are the ones most effectively eroding free speech in the modern world, and having people like you come to their defense despite the magnitude of harm their idiocy entails.

> Partly because they care about securing people's right to advocate boycotts even if they don't agree with boycotts

Which has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion at all, but for what it's worth I'm completely comfortable with the idea that people ought to be able to boycott whoever they please for whatever reason they please and that has nothing to do with freedom of speech, unless of course you're mandating the global boycott of party x in order to impose a chilling effect on their freedom of speech as party y, which is abhorrent, yes.

> and partly because much of the rest of the world is entirely comfortable with jailing people for wrongthink.

Which is why it's such a great tragedy that the last vestiges of the place where this was not the case has now vigorously reversed course on that state now means by magnitude, the modern west is one of the least free places in terms of speech. That is utterly horrific.

So in a world in which the President of the United States openly expresses envy of how Kim Il Sung is treated by his compatriots, calls the free press 'the enemy of the people', sees reversing Section 230 as a pre-election priority and even feels the need to wade into stuff as trivial as NFL to insist they use firings to chill protest, you are trying to argue the only things free speech absolutists should be concerned about come from people with comparatively little power on the left of the political spectrum saying they are offended by things. Right.

The allegedly much worse examples you've cited of the left eroding free speech are the 'me too' movement involving women talking about their experiences of sexual harassment [an exercise of freedom of speech you found so abhorrent you compared it to Middle Eastern state and cultural oppression of women] and transpeople requesting people use pronouns you apparently disapprove of.

I think we both know that we are not going to reach agreement here, but one thing we both have in common is that clearly neither of us are free speech absolutists.

> So in a world in which the President of the United States openly expresses envy of how Kim Il Sung is treated

The fact that a politician is narcissistic is as unsurprising as it is irrelevant to the discussion topic at hand.

> calls the free press 'the enemy of the people'

To be fair, the attacks on the modern "free press" pulling them up for their transparent lying on a great deal of issues are frequently perfectly justified, and the fact that they are called out for lying isn't restricting their free speech, it's pointing out that they're full of shit. If they were restricted from speaking to begin with there would be no need to point out when they were lying and being manipulative after the fact.

As much as they are full of shit, lie through their teeth, and constantly push narratives that don't hold up to the slightest scrutiny, I still don't believe they should be silenced. That's what free speech absolutism actually means.

> you are trying to argue the only things free speech absolutists should be concerned about come from people with comparatively little power on the left of the political spectrum saying they are offended by things. Right.

I'm not arguing that at all, being a free speech absolutist is arguing that all infringement on free speech is abhorrent. It's simply a point of indisputable fact that the majority of modern infringement on free speech comes from the left and their associated cancel culture cancerous nonsense, the fact you can't even accept this is frankly baffling, but likely emblematic of your observation that it will be impossible for anybody who is aware of that blatant indisputable fact to come to agreement with you.

> The allegedly much worse examples you've cited of the left eroding free speech are the 'me too' movement

Completely incorrect once again, my previous reference to me-too'ism was regarding your defense of the erosion of free speech in the western world being ok because there are other complete shitholes in the world that erode it in a different way, it had nothing to do with the movement you misinterpreted it as.

> but one thing we both have in common is that clearly neither of us are free speech absolutists.

Your confusion is dizzying.

I will leave it to anyone uninvolved unfortunate enough to still be reading this to judge whether your rush to insist that it's perfectly normal for presidents to enthuse about how North Korea does political discourse and that the increase in rhetorical, legislative and physical attacks on the 'enemy' in the media by the right in recent years is 'frequently perfectly justified' is the argument of someone sincerely worried about chilling effects on all speech.

Once again, that simply has nothing to do with free speech, politicians being narcissistic amoral psychopaths is basically in the job description, some of them more obviously than others, but basically all of them. I don't like or approve of any politicians, so your attempts to paint me as some kind of political follower of what you perceive as "the enemy" is frankly just funny.

But whatever you have to do to get yourself past the fact that you're desperately defending some of the most reprehensible conduct in the world today overturning a long standing commitment to what used to be a highly functional and useful set of norms for social communication I guess. If I were in your shoes trying to demonize anybody that disagreed with me would probability be the card I'd be reaching for also.

>>And yet the 'liberty minded' person in this case is the one imposing a government restriction upon what individuals and businesses might otherwise choose to do.

Where do you draw this conclusion from? What government restrictions do you believe liberty minded people are calling for?

>>Since virtually nobody agrees that no form of speech or other expression should ever be a fireable offence the debate actually comes down to discussion of which types of speech should and should have protections.

I am not sure what this is even referencing. I have read this line a few times and I am not sure what you are trying to convey

It sounds like this is a restatement of the grandparent ,you are talking about what a company should or should not do, vs what a government should or should not prohibit with the force of law.

A company choosing to fire someone for X speech is vastly different than a government protecting an employee from being fired, or forcing a company to fire someone for said speech

Government action is authoritarian by its very nature. I do not believe people should be fired from their jobs for their speech but at the same time I do not support government intervention in the free association of those businesses, that would have far worse consequences

>And of course who should be given stronger-than-average protections is also a matter of some debate

It should not be a debate at all, Equality under the law should be universal. This is one of the core problems today is we keep trying to fix past injustice with more injustice under the law

The only way to break the cycle is to make every individual the exact same under the law.

> Some people believe in restricting employers

Yes and those people are called Authoritarians

> What government restrictions do you believe liberty minded people are calling for?

People claiming that people shouldn't be sacked for expressing certain views also claim their actions are motivated by the imperative of protecting freedom of conscience and individuals' essential liberty. People firing people for expressing those views are often openly stating the belief those views are 'incorrect' and that enforcement action must be taken against those with incorrect views.

Hence my contention that reducing the debate to libertarian vs authoritarian is unhelpful, particularly when it leads to the position that everyone not equally committed to both upholding universities' rights to censor speech and abolishing Civil Rights Acts is authoritarian with a capital A.

>>People firing people for expressing those views are often openly stating the belief those views are 'incorrect' and that enforcement action must be taken against those with incorrect views.

No that is absolutely not the case, companies today are responding to the Mob not their own self determination on the issue.

Which is what I and others have a problem with, not the a company on their own, of their own free will choose to fire someone but because the mob demanded it or their head

I have to admit I'm even further from understanding your position now: companies should have the right to enforce absolute conformity on their employees and fire them for whatever arbitrary reason they want to, but consumers absolutely shouldn't have the right to boycott in the event they find extremely objectionable?

No no, they should have the right to, we as a society should just discourage people from exercising their agency in that regard.

That way no one needs to make laws to enforce conformity. It's just enforced by social norms. It's the speech version of Jordan Peterson's "enforced monogomy" concept.

Granted even in this sardonic explanation, I'm not sure how deep the rabbit hole is supposed to go. Using your agency to protest <a bad act> is discouraged so we should use our agency to discourage the discouragement. But then we're just deciding that discouraging <a bad act> is itself a bad act. And so the whole thing is self-contradictory.

You're exactly right and I think it's important to consider that the LA Times' position as a sort of authority figure when it comes to speech (being a major news source/ media entity) may be an underlying interest in how the arguments made in this article are put forward. I imagine a whole lot of editors of the last few newspapers that are independently owned had some very interesting thoughts when the workers at New York Times pushed out some of it's leadership over an article Tom Cotton could have just as easily put on his website.

I agree that it's about cultural norms but I think the cultural norms are the cost and limiting factors of free expression being greatly reduced. I imagine an entity like the LA Times has an interest in defining how free speech works in the news room and subsequently the readers of that news source. I also imagine that idea of free speech would protect leadership in the newsroom from subordinates if everything published has to go through said leadership.

> idea of free speech would protect leadership in the newsroom from subordinates

If protecting the management from the workers is your goal, typically you invoke the right of the owners to dictate how work is organised, I'm not sure how you make that into a "free speech" issue.

As the work of the editor is explicitly to direct and reshape the speech of the employees under them, why would "free speech" protect the ones doing the censoring?

That's the point it wouldn't. It's not a question of free speech but rather the assurance that periodical's leadership can be protected from their workers or general criticism about poor direction that their periodicals are taking or are being forced to take due to changes in the media landscape.

Put more succinctly, imagine someone blaming the failure of their news organization on their readers opinions of free speech as opposed to their own shoddy workmanship, or an inability to compete with more modern forms of media.

And I was specifically referring to the ideas of free speech that the news outlet is striving to defend or at least define.

The disconnect is, that there are some opinions that are protected (religion, and recently also gender identity) but there are other opinions that aren't (political views or anything roughly correlated with any political party). (I use "opinion" in a broad sense here, as "something you choose" as opposed to "something you're born with" such as sex and race) There are obvious downsides of firing people for any such opinion that (1) people feel extremely passionately about, but is (2) ultimately irrelevant to the job at hand.

I would go even further than acceptable behavior. Today we know for sure racism and sexism are dangerous beliefs. If I own a company I don't want that people around. So unless there's a law that forbids me to fire someone for being openly racist or sexist, I will fire their asses without thinking twice.

Isn't there an inherently coercive/disruptive nature to street protesting, especially wrt large partisan groups?

e.g. extinction rebellion holding up bus/rail services, BLM protesters wearing masks, chanting and large groups showing up at sensitive places, such as the white-house, or police-officers homes.

Yeah, but this is to some extent just an interesting side-note. At least I know several people who are liberals but don't agree with lacking "political correctness" being sufficient cause for "canceling."

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