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Comment by julianmarq | Hacker News Reader

> for those who support unbridled electronic speech amplification, are you prepared for it to fall in the hands of people who are bent on changing minds en masse to fill society with falsehoods, uncertainty, and violence?

You mean a society where the most charismatic/popular members get the attention of the masses, mostly by telling them what they want to hear? Yes, I think I'm prepared to live in such a society.

I think, in your attempt at making free speech look undesirable with your mention of "amplification", you forgot that this amplification is for everyone, including you and those who agree with you.

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We should clarify that "free speech" is unrelated to what Twitter and Facebook are doing. Free speech is a constitutional concept, protecting people from draconian government laws that suppress their speech, or discriminate them based on their speech.

What Facebook and Twitter are doing is providing a product that amplifies and places speech in front of particular eyeballs and ears. There are many, many issues with what Facebook and Twitter are doing, but they're all unrelated to the legally-protected constitutional free speech.

Some people have argued that "posting on Twitter/FB may as well be considered protected speech, since society depends on it so much" which is an interesting concept for sure, but has no basis in law yet.

Finally, to your last point, the amplification is not for everyone, and that's at the core of why people hate these companies right now. Users are subjectively amplified or suppressed, or kicked off. And this unequal treatment of users is at the very core of their business model: they make money by selectively amplifying content.

Free speech is not a "constitutional concept" whatever you mean by that. Free speech is a philosophical concept that has been embedded in the US Constitution as the 1st Amendment.

The US Founders thought that people must have the ability to speak their mind, to discuss and challenge each others ideas. They thought this ability was so important they enshrined it in law.

And what that means, practically speaking, is that unlike other places in the world, we can speak out against the government and not worry about going to prison for it. That was the intention of it, and we still have that. Whether content critical of the government converts well enough for a company to allow it to stay on their platform is a different question, and hate speech

  public speech that expresses     hate or encourages violence toward a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation

yet another separate question.

“Free speech” is about limiting government retaliation based on speech. So Uncle Sam can’t legally put you in prison because you spoke against Uncle Sam.

Free speech doesn’t mean you’re protected to speak whatever you want in any setting. Speech is subject to private property and common sense. If you are profane on my property I’ll kick you out and ban you. That is NOT a violation of your free speech.

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