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Comment by dmwallin | Hacker News Reader

Having the government govern free speech doesn't get you free speech.

If the problem is social media companies that are so large they suck up all the air in the room then solve THAT problem and enforce existing anti-monopoly laws.

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> "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.-- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

We don't need the government to govern free speech, but defending our rights is the reason the United States government exists, according to the men who created it.

It’s also abundantly clear that the men that founded our government believed that some powers are reserved for individuals and not for governments. The ability to restrict speech is one of these.

> “ Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

You're saying people in power having the ability to censor free speech is free speech in itself? Uh, ok. Interesting.

It doesn't get you free speech but what it does give is power to the people to decide. Elections of those law makers. There is no avenue for the people in the current model.

I would be very wary of giving even more power to those who already have plenty of power. Also, there's no constitutional right to an audience. Everyone that gets kicked off of Twitter can continue to say anything they like, but they don't get to access the built-in audience that Twitter provides.

Says who? You? Me? Twitter? The board? The US government? The judges? The legislators? The executives? Potus?

> Having the government govern free speech doesn't get you free speech.

I've seen this assertion here several times, always without any evidence, so I don't even know how to begin arguing against it other then vaguely gesturing in the direction of the postal service and the supreme courts decision to enforce the first amendemnt in company towns.[1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama

I tend to agree with this sentiment.

Unfortunately, I think even outside the oligopolies of tech, we have another underlying issue where even in a competitive market, market consensus can arrive that runs counter to democratic ideals.

I'd be surprised if all the tech providers actively coordinated on this. I'd be more willing to believe they all saw Trump as a threat to business and an overhanging risk for their business they tackled at an opportune time. One or two set the stage for the market (Twitter and Facebook) and then the rest followed through based on observed market feedback from Twitter/Facebook's actions, arriving at a concensus to censor Trump.

To be very clear, I don’t like Trump whatsoever and think he has clearly manipulated masses of people for years. At the same time, I don't think Trump directly violated policies. He's largely acted in the questionable grey areas of culture and society to push his will and has been quite effective at it.

This really brings into question underlying foundational principles surrounding free speech limitations and free speech protections, privatized communications' role in modern political discussions (essential to democracy), how we protect against oligopies or natural market consensus that may be harmful to underlying foundations to democracy, and so forth.

In this case I think we saw the oligopies and market concensus actually help democracy by protecting against a ridiculous yet growing insurrection attempt. What happens if that control or market consensus shifts to help businesses over consumers or general citizens of the US? There's clearly a lot of unchecked power here that needs to be corralled.

The government of the United States itself is based on a separation of powers, with limited and specific ways for one branch to affect the other. You can see this in multiple ways, legislative, executive and judicial divisions, but also state vs federal. I would argue that government vs business vs the populace is another unstated but extremely important one. Given that the right of free speech is one of the primary tools both business and the populace use to regulate government I would argue that it's not worth loosening its protections. We already have plenty of tools to deal with excess business power already if we can get both government and the populace on board.

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