People tend to conflate freedom from persecution due to speech with freedom to say whatever, wherever. They are not the same.
It's funny how this mantra of "freedom of speech != freedom from consequences of speech" seemingly originated at precisely the same time that big tech corporations and social media mobs began punishing people en masse for lawful (but politically incorrect) speech.
It seems like doublespeak really. I.e.: "Welcome, no tresspassing"
Source: political science undergraduate
Of course you are welcome to form your own interpretation, but I feel it is a fairly clear distinction. Happy to further this discussion when I'm at a computer with more access to info.
Nowhere have I seen anything resembling "freedom of speech != freedom from consequences", except from the Church.
After all, heretics and blasphemers were indeed free to say what they wanted to say (they had larynxes, after all), but they were not free from the consequences of their speech.
Please do tell me what you think freedom of speech is, in your own words, when you are at a keyboard.
In my own words, freedom of speech is an ideal, like the ideal "that all men are created equal". This ideal seeks to liberate human kind from being systematically punished for expressing offensive ideas, because ever so many of the greatest human revelations were profoundly offensive to society at large at their inception.
"I cannot contemplate human affairs, without laughing or crying. I choose to laugh. When People talk of the Freedom of Writing Speaking or thinking, I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists: but I hope it will exist, But it must be hundreds of years after you and I Shall write and Speak no more."
-John Adams letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1817
TL;DR I believe we may be thinking of different ideas of "consequence" :)
It was not an existing law, but the ideal "that all men are created equal" which abolishonists and civil rights leaders pointed to in their quest for equality.
Likewise it is the ideal of freedom of expression which we are pointing to now that should protect humans from being banned from the digital town square for expressing offensive ideas.
Everyone in the world has the right to free speech because they can literally talk and say whatever they want, but if the society that speech is spoken in doesn’t agree to allow that speech to be spoken freely (as in beer) it’s not a truly progressive society. Apparently the brits have been struggling with this for years[0]
[0] https://sealedabstract.com/rants/re-xkcd-1357-free-speech/in...
Given that every government in history which has recognized the concept of "free speech", including the United States, has regulated and even outlawed some forms of speech, and given that "consequence" is a natural, emergent property of societies and the fact that humans are social, emotional animals who don't process speech as mere passive data, one must come to the conclusion that free speech has never existed at any point in space or time.
That being the case, one wonders why everyone is so concerned now about something that, clearly, humanity has never needed up until this point?
Every business and website since time immemorial has had the ability to choose with whom they do business, and what goods to stock and what not, and every publisher has had the right to choose which work to publish and which not. Despite common arguments, sites like Twitter are not the public commons, nor do they hold a monopoly on human communication, nor do they control public discourse.
Even Benjamin Franklin sometimes turned away people who wanted to publish slanderous material in his newspaper. Freedom of speech doesn't obligate all platforms to carry your speech - it never has. Twitter being able to moderate content and ban accounts - even the personal accounts of Presidents of the United States - does not violate freedom of speech.
This is false. As you said in your previous comment the government has always had a very heavy hand in regulating what people could and couldn't do, it's very much regulated who you can do business with and what you can stock and sell and to whom. This doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for a society that protects the rights of both the buyer and seller as much as possible.
Your two comments contradict each other in such a stark way it quite frankly makes my head spin.
There are many things that didn't exist and thus, were unnecessary for "modern" living and yet once they were invented and adopted it would be hard to go without them.