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> You have a right to say whatever you want to whomever you want without fear of government retaliation, as long as it isn't "hate speech" in a fairly narrow legal sense. This is what "having free speech in society" has always meant

Wrong twice.

First of all, the United States doesn't have laws against hate speech. The US Supreme Court has said hate speech is protected by the first amendment. So, you're protected from government retaliation, even if it's hate speech.

Second of all, that's NOT what "having free speech in society" means. It's what the first amendment means. In American culture, writing op eds to a privately owned newspaper is a classic example of free speech, going all the way to revolutionary times (and actually predating the constitution). In the past (before the internet), prominent newspapers would brag that they would publish editorials from any significant public figure, even if they detested that public figure, because free speech was a good thing. That's why the NYTimes has published so many editorials from dictators.

And so have we proposed laws to regulate newspapers on what they should be and what they shouldn't be allowed to decline for publishing?

The article you are commenting on did not propose any new laws, nor did I in my comment. Did you mean to reply to somebody else or to comment on another article?

I don't think the government should require tech companies like Google to support free speech. I think Google should support free speech because it's the right thing to do. I believe the author of this article feels similarly, just as the editors of major American newspapers did from about 1600 to 2005.

> the United States doesn't have laws against hate speech

Interesting, thanks for enlightening me! Canada does have laws against hate speech and I'd mistakenly thought the US did as well. In any case, speech intended to incite lawbreaking, whether a hate crime or otherwise, is not protected under the first amendment. If you tell your Twitter followers to go burn down all the Jewish-owned business or whatever, and they do, your speech is illegal. So there are at least some limits.

And I agree that freedom of speech goes beyond the first amendment. But the "significant public figure" of that is important: not anyone could get published in the New York Times, you already had to have reach and notoriety. They wouldn't have published articles by some random basement crackpot moon conspiracist, because that person wouldn't have a chance to get famous in the first place. They probably also don't publish opinion pieces with easily-disproven counterfactual statements. YouTube's algorithm, by default, makes no distinction: any idiot can go viral and get tons of reach on a video loaded with outright lies. YouTube has provided a platform that makes the spread of misinformation much easier and in my opinion it's their responsibility to take action to correct that.

> In any case, speech intended to incite lawbreaking,

The standard is "imminent lawless action." You can in fact advocate lawbreaking, including violent lawbreaking (e.g. people advocating punching all Nazis are protected).

If a bunch of people went out and punched Nazis because you said to, then that meets the standard, right?

Only if they did so or were likely to do so right away.

I think the standard could change, considering that when that standard was set, such advocacy couldn't be effectively spread without a trail of publishers and broadcasters that would be vulnerable to direct retaliatory violence.

What happens when all megaphones are either government- or large-corporation-owned, and whenever you try to speak on your own, the nearest megaphone just yells over whatever you have to say?

It's a very good argument to support 1950's style anti-monopoly legislation, and as someone who defends platforms' rights to have some degree of moderation it follows that we should have as many platforms as needed to satisfy demand.

Absolutely. I don't think that private censorship per se is problematic - the problem, rather, is that it amounts to monopoly abuse in the present configuration of the market.

(Although I'd prefer an economic system that makes monopolies fundamentally impossible or very unlikely - i.e. one that constrains the ability to concentrate capital.)

Was that ever not the case? Was there a time when any person with any message could reach the whole country with their message?

The scarce resource here isn't freedom of speech, it's people's attention. As always, you can say whatever you want, and as always, it's hard to get people to listen to you. Before the internet, you basically needed an already-famous person to take an interest in you in order to get noticed. Now a message can go viral organically, without needing to involve any journalists or talk-show hosts, but the platforms are free to stop something from going viral if they don't like it. Facebook giveth and Facebook taketh away.

But to answer your question, I think breaking up the platforms would be a better solution than treating them as de-facto public services and trying to regulate them as such. Or appropriate them and make them into actual public services :)

It's a matter of relative power to spread the message, not absolute. So it's not a question of whether any single random person could reach the whole country, but rather how many people can that single random person reach, and how much can those who control the means of mass distribution of information can use that to reduce the reach of a single person.

Google/Facebook/Twitter have become monopolistic de-facto utilities. The you'll have to build your own megaphone argument is no longer valid. Especially when they're attempting to impact election results while cashing in on governmental protections that minimize their risk.

It used to be that the tech companies where champions of free speech, the ideal. It changed when generation woke entered their workforce. There has been a generational change brought on by changed values in American universities. That's what really is happening.

> We asked whether people believe that citizens should be able to make public statements that are offensive to minority groups, or whether the government should be able to prevent people from saying these things. Four-in-ten Millennials say the government should be able to prevent people publicly making statements that are offensive to minority groups, while 58% said such speech is OK. Even though a larger share of Millennials favor allowing offensive speech against minorities, the 40% who oppose it is striking given that only around a quarter of Gen Xers (27%) and Boomers (24%) and roughly one-in-ten Silents (12%) say the government should be able to prevent such speech.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/20/40-of-mille...

No, it changed when capitalism got involved and realized it was more profitable to centralize, close themselves off, and gain a monopoly.

Thats an interesting definition of capitalism that excludes the part where the capital was accumulated. Probably that's why the libertarians say "free market capitalism" in order to exclude the mixed market and autocratic versions.

Don't blame the children; they don't know any better.

What a retconning farce this is. 40 years ago you could not publicly endorse recreational drug use, atheism, or interracial marriages without a substancial block of society chastating you as an incorrectable heathen.

Values change, what people find acceptable and what they do not find acceptable changes.

I'm not sure what your point is? As we seem to agree values change.

I'm not 100% sure either. I think maybe GP is suggesting that rather than being stalwart champions of free speech as you implied, boomers are just more racist and want to be free to say racist things.

Fortunately for all of us, it's not the general population of millenials or boomers who decide what speech the government gets to prevent; it's experienced justices, who tend to take the constitution much more seriously than the average person.

The statistic that 40% of millenials want laws preventing statements offensive to minorities is kind of baffling to me. Do you think they just don't understand the constitution, or do they want it rewritten to allow this kind of law?

> Do you think they just don't understand the constitution, or do they want it rewritten to allow this kind of law?

There is some talk about changing or repealing the first amendement. A good article about how this shift in values happened: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-cod...

>What a retconning farce this is. 40 years ago you could not publicly endorse recreational drug use, atheism, or interracial marriages without a substancial block of society chastating you as an incorrectable heathen.

Imagine if the value that changed was that we treated people with different opinions with respect instead of changing the opinions that get you run out on a rail.

> "What you don't have a right to do is amplify your message using the massively powerful social-media megaphones which are created and owned by tech companies."

What makes anyone think that other groups won't be able to create their own social-media megaphones? The tech is well understood already and they're highly motivated and well funded. It's been tried a couple of times already and eventually they're going to succeed. And if the last two US presidential election results are any indication, they might grow as big (or bigger!) as any of the other social-media giants. What will we do then?

Whenever the other side tries something like this, they just end up with something resembling Voat.

Let the market sort it out. If the market is there, the competition will be good for everybody.