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Comment by big_curses | Hacker News Reader

> This is a distinction without a difference.

I disagree, there is an extreme difference there. Freedom of speech is specifically in regards to the government giving you the negative right of being able to say whatever you want without government prosecution (aside from some edge cases like direct threats and the like, which are closer to actual violence). What they do not do is guarantee you a platform. You are free to say whatever you like, but you are not owed the right to be listened to. Removing someone from a platform is not silencing them. A private company does not owe you anything, let alone service.

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No. The first amendment is about the government. The concept of freedom of speech is broader. If in a pandemic I can only legally communicate via digital tools, and the billionaires running the digital tools all decide to ban me, I am silenced.

It is not true that you can only legally communicate via digital tools. The US still has a post office

You're right, but the reality is that physical mail is no longer an effective form of communication relative to the speed of online platforms in most cases.

>the billionaires running the digital tools all decide to ban me, I am silenced.

How so? Are you incapable of using non-digital media to communicate? Are you incapable of creating your own digital platforms for communication or using alternative, less popular means to do so? Are you prevented from going to city hall, council meetings, political rallies, or voting? Your speech as it relates to your rights granted in the constitution remains completely intact. Your rights are unaffected by your access to certain digital platforms.

If you are on the no fly list of an airline, aren’t you free to buy your own B787, get a pilot license, get the relevant airport slots and authorisations and go fly by yourself anywhere you want? I mean in theory yes.

precisely. A better way to look at it is that you are free to travel by other means. The burden is convenience.

I support banning Parler, but this argument becomes more transparently untrue by the day. The internet is speech now. Visiting city halls and council meetings doesn't affect elections or policies, voting is useless without being part of an organized bloc, which can no longer happen without the internet, and Parler was one of several alt-right attempts to make their own platform--control of the internet is centralized enough that making a platform for non-technical users against the will of the megacorporations is not possible.

If you don't believe free speech absolutism should be allowed, say so, but free speech and this level of corporate dominance are not compatible.

I agree that corporations should be curtailed in both their size and power. This would resolve the paradox of speech being free, but it's platforms being controlled by a few large organizations. However, to say that free speech is absolute is absurd, because absolute free speech in this context would require the limitation of rights of organizations and owners too.

> However, to say that free speech is absolute is absurd, because absolute free speech in this context would require the limitation of rights of organizations and owners too.

I agree, but that's a common position here.

>Visiting city halls and council meetings doesn't affect elections or policies,

Oh how I wish this were actually true sometimes. Try going to any zoning board meeting.

If the first amendment and your concept of freedom of speech don't line up, then one or the other need to change I would think. If a right is not recognized by others/the government, then it effectively doesn't exist. That's not to say it's not right or that you couldn't rationally defend it though.

>If in a pandemic I can only legally communicate via digital tools

I see the conflict you're bringing up, it's in effect illegal to communicate in person a lot of the time due to the pandemic, so digital tools are very useful for you to be able to communicate, but if you are somehow banned from those you have few options, if any. I think the thing that is incorrect here is actually the government making it illegal to communicate via non-digital tools, even if a lot of times it is in an individual's best interest to stay inside. And once again, no one owes you a platform. You are, in your words, silenced, but I don't think that that is an issue that requires government action.

I think it could require government action: I could argue that it was government inaction in allowing a monopoly/oligopoly over the conduits of free speech that is now depriving me of my rights.

For what reason are we considering these platforms "conduits of free speech"? They are simply private services, private property. In the same way you can legally remove people from your home that you don't want in there, they can bar you from their service. They also didn't always exist. At what point in their existence would you argue that being banned from being able to use them was depriving you of some right? Can they have a monopoly over all of the "conduits of free speech" if all the old methods of communication still exist? If those alternatives exist, could they really be called a monopoly? (Although for things like Twitter, they're definitely not a monopoly, but if we're talking about govt backed ISPs, which can be a monopoly, then that is indeed a different story, but I would argue that ISPs should be divorced from any government regulation/subsidies).

"In the same way you can legally remove people from your home that you don't want in there" -> I agree with you in principle, but this is the type of thing where the principle doesn't generalize at every level of scale, and at a big enough scale it becomes problematic.

Let's consider the other extreme with a fictional corporation "MEGA INC", which suppose owns all web hosting, all ISPs. Let's also throw in that they have a monopoly over paper production and publishing. Now, do you think your argument that "this private entity can do whatever it wants" is problematic? I should hope so.

I'm not making the case that it's black/white and that this situation with Big Tech is equivalent to MEGA INC. But, it's not that our free speech rights are binary. My point is simply that we're somewhere along the spectrum spanning "private home" <-> "MEGA INC", and at this point rights are actually being diminished because of the oligopolistic nature of a significant corner where discourse happens.

So, unfortunately, I think it's a nuanced situation that's not easily reduced to a simplistic principle such as what you've stated. We have clear principles to reason about the extremes, but it's hard to make an argument in the hairy middle because both can be made to apply.

There's no shortage of conduits for free speech you have a right to use, on and off the internet.

The oligopoly only concerns distribution to the widest possible audience, whether it's social media or broadcast media. And even a First Amendment constrained government is allowed to pick and choose which speech it distributes

> What they do not do is guarantee you a platform.

I think this is a really important point. How I have framed this to others is: "the 6 o'clock news isn't required to give you airtime."

In the past, you could write articles to the newspaper, or contact the news and hope they picked up your story. There was not a right to be heard.

That said, I'm still not sure how I feel about what has transpired in the last week. Freedom of speech (as a principle, not in the US legal sense) has always felt like a core principle of the Internet.

I agree that nobody's first amendment rights were violated. I maintain that big tech is controlling _acceptable speech_. All the major platforms are working together to decide what kind of speech society gets to hear, which is dangerous.

First amendment rights are orthogonal.

PG&E is a private company, and I’m pretty sure they owe me service as long as I pay my bill. I could be totally wrong. Who even knows anymore.

Utility companies are for all intents and purposes, governmental. Regulating social networks like utilities is one possible course of action our society could choose. But it is not how we do it today.

That is my point.

PG&E is a utility monopoly and regulated differently than a typical private business for that reason.

PG&E is a government-granted monopoly and is close to being part of the government itself (in that the government gets to decide how much profit the company is allowed to make, and insists they service every individual).

I can see the argument that basic Internet access should be similarly regulated, especially as it uses either public frequencies (e.g. 5G) or public land (sidewalks etc) to provide the service.

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