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Comment by dmwallin | Hacker News Reader

Yes, we don’t let our government, with the tools of state violence and the exclusive right to imprison us, ban speech.

However, groups of private citizens, whose powers over the marketplace are/can be heavily limited through existing laws such as antitrust law, enforced by our democratically elected government have no requirement to carry speech they disagree with.

It’s surprising to me how quickly the Big Business/Small Government Republican Party switched as soon as they realized that big businesses don’t always have their interests in mind. I suggest looking over to the far left, as they have been discussing ways to curb power of large businesses for decades and also have a healthy respect of the dangers of giving the government too much power as the frequent target of said powers.

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Seems like the roles have switched...far left is now in bed with big corp and the right has drifted towards curbing restrictions on free speech by recent surge of big tech social platforms. Makes sense if you think about it. Secular shifts in society away from religion and traditional family structure are more acceptable to far left but less palatable to the right.

The center of the democratic party has been pro-business for decades now (see neo-liberal), albeit with republicans using stronger rhetoric. Another way of looking at it, the center of both parties have been extremelly pro-business, with both the far-left and far-right having some anti-corporate tendencies. Due to recent trends the centers of both parties have lost influence, even more so on the republican side due to a recent far-right presidency. It seems logical that there would be a shift in perception but I think it's really more of a shift in the Overton window.

I'm personally very pro free speech but the wrong way to go about it is to give the government more power to compel speech from third parties. Use the tools available to prevent mega corporations from sucking up all the air in the room, then create your own platforms to spread the speech you want to enable.

The easy approach of just trying to use government to compel these companies to carry your speech has too many dangerous second and third order effects to seriously consider, especially if your goal is free-speech.

Far right is 100% in bed with corporations as well. Free speech arguments by those in power on the right are mostly symbolic, and will never get close to _actually_ threatening capital in any way.

“100%” and “never” are quite unconvincing.

When we actually use antitrust laws to limit these massive private companies I may be more on board with letting them do as they please with censor. As it is right now, they’re the lifeline and public square for much of modern life. As you clearly point out, the government can and should hold these companies accountable for their size and actions.

The left has plenty of respect for the dangers of both private and public power, but our system doesn’t listen to them because it requires a reflection on the bad parts of capitalism.

Twitter and Facebook profit off of speech on their platforms, and actively drive users to content that increase engagement. Furthermore they have no accountability when they cancel people and businesses, which again, the left knows about. We can change the incentives and repercussions without encouraging them to censor speech they unilaterally don’t like.

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