"it should remain on the App Store as a matter of free speech"
Free speech is a matter for the government, not for private business decisions... If you as an employee are pushing back against your employer because of "free speech", you're going to have a bad time (i.e. risk losing the job, as it happened).
That said, I'm curious about this Guo Media, and the first thing I found when looking that up is:
https://huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/steve-bannon-guo-wengui-g...
"Free speech" is often used as a fig leaf for the alt right, so this is unfortunately unsurprising :/
I wish good luck to Trieu Pham, even if personally I wouldn't have picked Guo Media as the hill to die on
If this is allowed, then what would prevent the US government from telling Apple to fire everyone who they do not like? If the gov commits a free speech prohibited action itself, or directs a company to do it for them, does not and must not make a difference. Else, the protection of a citizen would be worthless.
The difference here to my example is that is was the CCP instead of the USG that induced the action. But does that make it any better?
The reviewer works for Apple, and has to follow Apples rules, not make up their own. I also dislike that Apple kowtows to the CCP, but that is their choice and given the large revenues involved, I understand it. I won’t tell Apple Shareholders to leave a legal market and give up a quarter of their share value, just in order to meet my ethical standards.
You may enjoy walking around your home wearing no pants. That’s your right. But when you go to a work place, it’s your employers right to tell you to put your pants back on.
American dems are definitely less hostile than conservatives towards China so it feels natural than a wanted fugitive in China would work with conservatives.
I agree free speech doesn't apply here, given Apple it's a private company, but it definitely aligns Apple with Facebook, Twitter, Google and whatever other Big Tech company that censures whatever they don't like (applying their own policies only when they want).
It's also interesting to see who's lining up with China.
There is no right to not face consequences from other private citizens for bad behavior.
I used to believe free speech was a virtue. I no longer believe that because universally everyone who cares strongly about it is actually using it as cover for pushing opinions they don't like out of public discourse. If that's the result of free speech advocacy, then I don't see how I can conclude that it's good for society.
How about the ACLU? Are they fascist?
Perhaps you're only seeing alt-right associated with because of the particular filter bubble(s) in which you are located.
I strongly encourage you to dig a little deeper, reflect a little more, and think a little harder on this topic.
Free speech is the font from which all other rights spring and are defended. It is sacrosanct. Thus, folks like the ACLU try to defend it everywhere for everyone, not just the folks that pass purity tests.
https://www.vox.com/2017/8/20/16167870/aclu-hate-speech-nazi...
Again, I have thought and reflected and dug. I donated to the ACLU for many years. I used to believe that they engaged in a noble cause of protecting the right of people with unpopular opinions to express their unpopular opinions. I used to believe that protecting the rights of the Nazis in Skokie protected all our rights. I now believe that it primarily protects the rights of the alt-right in Charlottesville to demonstrate and to kill, and I now believe that the ACLU's free speech advocacy, however well-intentioned, isn't good for society and leaves us all less free. And the last time they called me to ask if I'd "resume" my membership, I told them they have blood on their hands.
If the lawsuit the ACLU filed (Kessler v. Charlottesvile) hadn't happened, the fascists would still have been equally able to express their opinions. The city just wanted the rally in a different spot to reduce the risk of violence. In retrospect, the city was right, the ACLU was wrong, and Kessler got the violence he wanted.
I don't think there is any genuine danger (especially thanks to modern communications technology) to the ability of fascists to advocate for fascism, to make sure that the policy proposals of fascism remain known to the general public. What remains is a genuine danger to the ability of fascists to actually engage in fascism, which they call "exercising free speech," and they dupe organizations like the ACLU into helping them with it.
(Note I'm not claiming the ACLU is intentionally fascist. Outside of free speech advocacy, they do a lot of effective work to oppose fascism. But on this particular issue, their effect, regardless of intent, is to support fascism, and their notable work is supporting fascists who think their right of "free speech" has been violated.)
I intentionally keep my filter bubble quite broad. I read far-right forums and they love free speech. I read centrists and they think free speech is a great idea and will some day defend the. And I see far-left activists who gain nothing from the concept.
If you have an example of the font of free speech actually serving to protect any rights beyond the right to enact fascism, I'd be very curious. My position could certainly evolve further, but this is where it is now.
(BTW, it took me a long time to reply because HN blocked me with the "You're posting too fast. Please slow down." message, because I got downvoted too much in the last few minutes. If you think free speech is a virtue, please email the moderators and tell them that they should remove that feature and also stop greying out downvoted comments - downvoting for disagreement is explicitly permitted on HN, and the last thing an advocate of free speech would want is unpopular ideas to be literally unreadable! But the fact remains that HN is a better forum than e.g. 4chan because of its censorship mechanisms, and that's in fact one of the things that makes me believe free speech is not a virtue - even though I'm frequently one of the targets of that censorship because I frequently post unpopular ideas. I genuinely believe this community's ability to censor me makes it better.)
(Of course the left proper has never cared much for actual communists and anarchists either, except as linguistic props. I suppose deciding to fully embrace that shouldn't be surprising.)
I see no hope of rights-oriented politics surviving except as some side's puppet - we have reached our stop, and must get off - so which dynamic will win out?
(Though I doubt the idea that the ACLU isn't intentionally fascist will persist. "If three people sit down at the table with a Nazi, you have four Nazis sitting at the table" after all.)
Ponder, for instance, the proud boy chant of "Jews will not replace us." Are you going to let that one slide because, well, those folks are just making demands for their rights?
I'm genuinely confused on what your position is. Why do you have an association with freedom and the alt-right? Implicit in that position is that the Democratic left is somehow anti-rights. How can you simultaneously believe that:
1) the alt right champions rights / freedoms. 2) this makes the alt right fascist / authoritarian. 3) your party / alignment / position opposes the alt right, and therefore opposes the freedoms they advocate for. 4) by opposing freedom and human rights, your party is anti fascist.
I'm genuinely confused. And why the connection with free speech in particular? The alt right also stages protests alot, do you think protesting is bad?
In 20th century America, between approximately Schenck v. United States and Brandenburg v. Ohio, those “people with unpopular opinions that tend to face censorship” tended to be the ones on the far left—socialists, communists, draft resisters—who fell victim to sedition and anti-syndicalism laws. As of 2021, there is no realistic threat of the far left being censored, but there are calls to censor the far right, many of which are based on the exact same arguments that once justified those sedition and anti-syndicalism laws. This has caused the far left to abandon the cause of free speech (since it is no longer tactically useful for them) and the far right to take it up (because it is tactically useful for them).
This is entirely inaccurate, as most discussions about labeling AntiFa a 'terrorist organization' will show, and the huge investment many large companies make for preventing unionization. It is true that some people on the far left believe this, but they are entirely wrong.
In any case, your examples seem to have more to do with freedom of association than freedom of expression, which is also important but not what I was talking about.
As an example of how "extreme"-left information is kept out, have you seen even one piece of news in the US or Europe in January 2020 or since about the largest organized strike in human history? An estimated 200 million people strike in India.
The laws from 20th-century America are still on the books and are still being enforced. I have literally heard of people who, today, cannot advocate for their far-left political views because it imperils their immigration status. Here is a reminder from the USCIS as of two months ago that membership in any Communist party causes you to be ineligible to become a permanent resident: https://www.uscis.gov/news/alerts/uscis-issues-policy-guidan...
Meanwhile, in the court of public opinion, here is someone self-censoring their left-but-nowhere-near-far-left position (a fairly mainstream position) and being attacked for their beliefs by a right-wing media outlet that, ordinarily, claims to support free speech: https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/30/wannabe-jeopardy-host-k...
That sounds pretty bad. It sounds to me like laws that attack human rights and speech are often used to hurt many people on all different sides of an issue.
And it sounds like if we want to stop those bad things that you brought up from happening, that we need to ensure that our laws do a better job of protecting free speech.
Your response to a group trying to protect certain rights that are related but not exactly the same as another set of rights, should not be you trying to fight against attempts to protect those rights.
Instead, what you should be doing is fight in favor of more protections for these rights, instead of fighting to have less protections.
More protections for humans rights are better. You should advocate for people to go even further than they are currently doing now, instead of concluding that you don't want these human rights to exist at all.
Many of them were ruled unconstitutional by Brandenburg v. Ohio. Legal conditions for immigration and naturalization are an interesting legal problem though.
Steve Bannon is strongly associated with the alt right. See https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounders/steve-bannon-fiv... for a list of reasons why, including his own statements on the matter.
That said the friendship of the two seems to be a case of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". With their common enemy being the Chinese government.
Steve Bannon opposes China because he believes in a cyclical view of history, and the next cycle, the "fourth turning", is likely to feature a war with the Middle East and/or China.
Guo Wengui opposes China because he thinks they will kill him for corruption. To be fair, you don't get as successful as he did in a corrupt environment without being corrupt yourself, so China probably has reason to kill him. But it is also a bit of a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
No, it isn't. Free speech is a moral principle, and a matter for philosophers, liberals, and all thinking people generally. The first amendment is a specific codification of the moral principle. It's the first amendment that is a matter for government.
While I agree with you that employees aren't in a good position to advocate for free speech, consumers are - and we should all be holding Apple to the standard Trieu Pham tried to hold Apple to - not because of this or that law, but because free speech is the right thing to do.
Actually, in california, your statement is not true.
Califorinia has numerous labor protections, that fall within the category of "free speech", and that prevent private businesses from retaliating against employees for certain reasons.
To give an extreme example, although it might be federally legal for a private company to interrogate and fire all democrats, it would absolutely not be legal in California.
So it is absolutely relevant to bring up california law regarding this specific case.