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Comment by snarf21 | Hacker News Reader

Free speech is freedom from the government not allowing citizens to publicly speak dissenting opinions. I'm not guaranteed the right to be on the front page of the NYTimes. We already legally restrict some speech: you can't yell "Fire" in a theater, you can't talk about bombs in the TSA line, we have laws against libel and slander (although it is hard to prosecute all the lies spewed on social media) that people could seek legal relief from. People don't want freedom of speech, they want freedom from repercussions of speech.

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> Free speech is freedom from the government not allowing citizens to publicly speak dissenting opinions.

This made sense a few years ago when realistically government was the only historical large consumer and regulator of speech.

Now that we have another large entity, we need to have a think about what to do. This isn't an endorsement or rebuke of current rules, just a statement that we need to have a debate about this that incorporates what we've learned.

Saying FB, Twitter, YouTube etc are arbitrators of free speech ignores all the other channels that are still available. Talk Radio, news letters, personal blogs, TV, newspapers, etc etc.

If we don’t want say Google delisting websites because their the arbitrators of true fine, but saying any and all channels need to have everything is excessive. Misinformation is always going to be more plentiful than the truth simply because their are vastly more ways to be wrong than correct. Traditional media filtered out a lot of crap and perhaps social media should as well. Truly open channels just end up looking like 4chan.

You are confusing the 1st amendment with free speech. Free speech is a broader concept than the 1st amendment. Free speech as a rule of exchanging ideas can exist in any private and public space.

Facebook and other big techs do not have to support free speech. They can openly say: we don't support free speech and people who disagree with our employees should just shut up! Of course they don't want to do that. They choose to support the general idea of free speech and they can define their terms. People can criticize them. They can also declare they ban everyone who criticize them, but of course they don't want to do that too.

Why all those complexity? Because the American public support the general idea of free speech. Some Facebook employees' wishful thinking that they can control the speech on the largest social media platform won't work.

Someone is already controlling that speech. The argument is about whether the way they are doing it is good for society or bad for society. Free speech isn’t even on the table here.

> The argument is about whether the way they are doing it is good for society or bad for society.

At least it's in an obvious way: to make the most money. For anything else we need to start defining "good" and "bad" which isn't so straightforward.

I feel like this argument only ever gets used in this specific situation. Americans are granted freedom of speech, if companies are large enough they are meaningfully infringing on that right we should do something about it.

>People don't want freedom of speech, they want freedom from repercussions of speech.

To use a pointed example, I'm pretty sure Trump just wants to be able to tweet again with all the repercussions that brings.

First Amendment violations are only in play when a government tries to compel or prevent free speech.

14th Amendment violations are only in play when a government tries to advantage or disadvantage based on sexual orientation and thus we have fully resolved the issue of if you have to make a cake for a gay wedding. You don't since you're not a government. Nice, simple easy, see my point?

Another person confusing free speech with first amendment protections.

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