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Comment by ronsor | Hacker News Reader

Because this is always brought up, I will remark that I believe what the majority of commenters likely mean by free speech is the principle itself, and not the restrictions imposed on the government by the First Amendment. First and foremost, free speech is a moral principle.

Secondly, while private companies can do what they want, that does not mean they should. Private companies like Apple can avoid taxes, yet many here would not say they should. Morals and ethics are often divorced from what the law requires.

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> First and foremost, free speech is a moral principle.

Entirely.

But... man I’m not so sure as many people believe this as they should. Can we not ignore that as soon as these tech companies get monopoly status, they close their fists in more every day? Something has to give.

We would (should) not accept that someone with “wrong” views be denied a bank account or to shop at a grocery store. Why does government need to step in and whitelist which services are protected?

When are we going to be honest that none of this is about protecting people, but protecting ideas? The idea my political wedge issue is correct, so I’ll ban anyone that disagrees. The idea that I should be allowed to run a monopoly, eating and smashing any potential competitors?

None of this is about Black Lives or Covid or Elections. That’s the cover to get the thing they really want. Agreement with ideas you have or that keep you in power.

> We would (should) not accept that someone with “wrong” views be denied a bank account or to shop at a grocery store.

Why? I am fine with banks and grocery stores having freedom of association, just as any other business or person should.

Being a KKK member is not a protected class, and discriminating against KKK members in hiring and in the provision of goods or services is entirely in-bounds.

You're fine with preventing KKK members from buying food? You would literally have them starve to death? And you're fine with private corporations making decisions on who has the right to live and who doesn't?

Personally, I value human rights. I think even KKK members have the right to live.

No, I'm fine with any individual who sells food (or any other thing) being able to opt to not do business with anyone they like. That's a big difference from what you claimed.

That's actually already true now (outside of protected classes). Any restaurant can ask KKK members to leave if they so desire. Same with any supermarket.

Any individual proprietor having freedom of association is a long long way from "specific types of customers should be barred from buying food from anyone and should literally starve to death". That's a strawman position that you invented.

How do you draw a line between religion (protected class) and other ideologies/oragnizations/beliefs that you don't want protection for? Where do, eg Scientologists, Pastafarians, and cult members fit? Is it right to be able to exclude Islamists (political ideology) despite them being Muslims (religion)?

The state has already drawn those lines, and does not recognize KKK membership as a religion.

The legal lines for what is or isn't protected are fairly well defined, by people other than me.

My own personal opinions and beliefs on the matter don't count for anything.

> The state has already drawn those lines,

And surely the state is never one or two elections from redrawing those lines to include you right? That would be impossible right? You have all the “correct” ideas... and I’m sure those KKK spectres don’t think the same damn thing.

You’re right; let’s not be good, just, or ethical to anyone the state doesn’t force us to. ESP when their only crime is thinking the wrong thing. That’s a really good system that would surely never bite the wrong people in the ass.

I'm interested in what you believe, not what the law says. I think you're using appeal to the law as a way of avoiding having to defend your stated beliefs. If you don't understand what you believe or why, then it's a good chance to think about it enough to make a cohesive statement. Maybe your belief is simply "whatever the law says, I agree". That's fine but also the end of any productive attempt to work out what's right and wrong.

Large enough quantitative differences create qualitative differences. If your hypothetical KKK member gets banned from a supermarket or two for preaching there, they can still go elsewhere. If your hypothetical KKK member tries preaching at one supermarket, and gets put on an industry-wide blacklist shared by all supermarkets out of an abundance of caution, then that collusion constitutes de facto government despite being administered by "private" companies.

Also keep in mind that in this hypothetical scenario, no grocery store has to ban this KKK member outright to punish the problematic behavior. They can allow them to still shop there while notifying them that any future preaching will be grounds for trespass charges. This is the right solution when the market isn't big enough for meaningful choice between supermarkets.

And to expand...

When Twitch and Facebook and Twitter ban you... well, there is always another supermarket unless there isn’t.

Fortunately there are still millions of different websites and thousands of web hosts.

Being banned from the big and popular ones in the top 20 is at the moment only an inconvenience.

> No, I'm fine with any individual who sells food (or any other thing) being able to opt to not do business with anyone they like ... That's actually already true now (outside of protected classes).

Man, the U.S. is a weird place. In Finland, for example, banks are forced to provide basic banking services to everyone, because access to basic banking services is considered to be more important than freedom of association. (I tried to look up if we have a similar law that prevents grocery stores from blacklisting customers, but I didn't find anything.)

> Any individual proprietor having freedom of association is a long long way from "specific types of customers should be barred from buying food from anyone and should literally starve to death". That's a strawman position that you invented.

In Finland there are 3 large grocery chains. If you were banned from all three, it would be difficult for you to access food. Could you still ask a friend to buy food for you? Sure. Could you still access food by stealing it? Sure. But on a spectrum between "buy food from the supermarket" and "starve to death", this position is closer to the "starve" end of the spectrum.

There are cities in the US with more people in them than all of Finland; I am not sure a direct comparison of the situations makes sense.

When you only have 6 million people in the whole country, a handful of banks, and 3 supermarkets, it might make sense to set the lever differently, although even that is open for some debate.

I think both Finland and the US are weird places. :)

A KKK member could presumably still buy food if banned from a grocery store for preaching hate speech at the grocery store, they would just have to hire someone to do the shopping for them.

In America there is no right to food or shelter so I don't know why this concern is raised in a discussion of free speech?

> In America there is no right to food or shelter

Yes, there definitely is. Food and shelter are vital to life. I seem to recall something about life liberty and happiness in some obscure little read part of the constitution. Let me know if you see it on a re-read.

(Please don’t go off and try and claim that rights are things anyone else has to provide)

Aside from the obvious issues with banning someone from buying food for having the wrong thoughts - which I should just be able to end right there because how insane is that!? - there are points to be made about:

- protected classes and not needing them all enumerated before you are forced to treat people well even if they are mean

- ethically not being a fascist that would block people from buying food for disagreeing with them, and congrats, this is actual fascism

- generally just minding your own fucking business about how wrong someone is and being able to separate even awful beliefs from participation in other aspects of society

- and most importantly not short-sightedly canceling people because tomorrow it might be you that has the unpopular idea, as unbelievable as I’m sure you could find that

> Yes, there definitely is. Food and shelter are vital to life. I seem to recall something about life liberty and happiness in some obscure little read part of the constitution. Let me know if you see it on a re-read.

You are mistaken, and have confused the US declaration of independence (not a legal document, more of a philosophical one) with the US constitution (a binding legal document).

I did a re-read to be sure, as you suggested. I saw it in the declaration, not the constitution.

GP is right, however: you have a right to life, but nowhere in there do you have a right to not be kicked out of grocery stores and restaurants, or to be provided food by any second party.

I think perhaps you should tone down the condescension in your comment. :(

There's no right to life in the constitution, either. If there was, the U.S. would not be able to execute criminals.

The declaration makes the foundational claim that the right to life (et c) is inherent in mankind regardless of the existence or opinions of the state or the written law.

It's a shame the constitution didn't incorporate it by reference, but the declaration clearly claims (philosophical) superiority over the (legal) constitution.

It still doesn't say anything about food vendors. :)

Did you really just state "Please don’t go off and try and claim that rights are things anyone else has to provide" while arguing a supermarket has to provide food and Twitch has to provide a platform to everyone? Huh?

U.S. citizens do not have a right to food.

At first I thought the problem was not understanding the legal system, but your misunderstanding is not even consistent, suggesting your just making things up ad hoc.

Free speech is several principles. One is that you should be free to express yourself. Another is that others should not be able to coerce you into forced speech. Many commenters on HN like to forget that 2nd part because most of their 'solutions" to the first principle violate the 2nd.

So if I say bad things on Twitch OR ELSEWHERE, that this is “their speech”? I disagree, but what you are saying is Twitch is a publisher, not a platform?

If Twitch can’t be compelled to publish my unpopular comments, then any comments they do publish should be legally theirs, and if illegal be held liable for them? Something tells me you aren’t on board anymore.

Are you trying to have it all-the-ways? That Citizens United is wrong and companies don’t have free speech, but also that companies don’t need to recognize free speech but can retain their platform status (when convenient), then also Citizen’s United is right and companies have any speech they want if it means restricting yours?

Quick question... socially, what do we do when I’m banned from Twitch for saying something NOT ON TWITCH that was at the time unpopular but eventually proven correct? Or similarly let’s say I quote the CDC website but am banned because the data is unpopular. Or lastly I quote something that was true at the time according to “official sources” (sarcasm detectable) but later incorrect and I’m retro actively banned?

Instead of all this shifting convenience and liquid enforceability... maybe we just stick to free speech and take the small bad with the giant good? Seems morally just and logically reasonable to me.

There are already narrowly-defined exceptions to the freedom of association in the form of anti-discrimination laws. There is clearly a question of balance to be made.

Indeed. Unfortunately there's no governmental protection in the US of "political discrimination". Political view differences are not a protected class at the moment.

The fundamental problem always will be that a company running a large and popular platform on the internet has operating costs and wants to make money. The only reasonable way to do that right now is via advertising, and these advertisers only want safe, family friendly content to not tarnish their brand.

I would love it if there was a similar platform with a monthly fee free of advertiser influence, but it's impossible to get a critical mass of people to pay for it.

I work for a company whose primary source is direct revenue from users and it's edging towards this dystopian direction. Advertising revenue certainly doesn't help, but it's not a pre-requisite for this problem to exist.

We only call it "speech" because speech is the lowest-latency and highest-bandwidth method us humans have to exchange ideas. I tend to distrust people who are pro-eumemics the same as I would distrust a person who is pro-eugenics.

"Terrorist activities, child sexual exploitation, violent extremism, credible threats of mass violence, carrying out or deliberately acting as an accomplice to sexual assault"

This does not fall under free speech.

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