It's hilarious to me how every time this "free speech" "discussion" comes up, it inevitably leads to "people not wanting to associate with me or listen to me speak is denying my free speech".
Don't get me wrong, freedom cuts both ways; some hindrances to free speech are perfectly legal, and would ironically be violations of the First Amendment to prevent! But let's not pretend that these kinds of boycotts are simple discomfort or preference: they're an attempt to change what is permissible to say, because "won't somebody think of the children?"
From my perspective it is a very obvious double standard when people consider not wanting Spotify to air anti-trans rhetoric an attack on free speech, but calling the acceptance of trans people a sign of societal collapse is not a problem at all.
Is it not a form of censorship when someone tries every tactic in the book to discredit a group of people to an audience of millions?
> tries every tactic in the book to discredit a group of people
At the risk of taking the bait: this is clear evidence you've never listened to the show. If you want to take issue with his specific opinions on trans women in fighting sports, or specific choices of guests, fair enough; but the "guilt by association" and "indictment by meme" is exactly why we all benefit from free and open discourse, including being tolerant and charitable to opposing views. Witness the "cancellations" of trans-ally voices like ContraPoints or Lindsay Ellis (the latter of whom was so traumatized that she quit YouTube permanently).
If you want to draw a line somewhere, and withdraw your participation by boycott, or even ostracize other participants, that's your right; but don't pretend you're not attempting to influence societal discourse, and prevent third-party conversations and associations.
That's free speech. As long as no one is being coerced through violence, attempting to influence someone's opinion and convince them to associate or disassociate with someone is clearly free speech. Hell, it describes most political speech and a lot of journalism.
> That's free speech.
Yes, speaking to someone in an attempt to pressure them not to speak to someone else is indeed a form of speech. However, the things you are expressing (ie attempting to pressure them) is an active attempt to curtail someone else's speech. So you are using your speech in an attempt to curtail someone else's speech.
> As long as no one is being coerced through violence, attempting to influence someone's opinion and convince them to associate or disassociate with someone is clearly free speech.
No one claimed otherwise. It is clearly legal to do so. It is also clearly an anti free speech sort of thing to do.
No, it isn't merely a form of speech. It's free speech. It's just as free as any other kind of speech. Free speech allows for conflict with speech, and it doesn't guarantee all speech all possible platforms.
You don't get to decide that only the speech you agree with gets to be free, but speech that disagrees with that doesn't.
That's not a 'free speech issue,' that's free speech in action. Until the government is punishing someone for their speech, everyone has and is using free speech.
If you want to see actual free speech issues, look at the anti-BDS laws[1].
The US affords protections against the government infringing your speech, but not (generally) against private parties doing so.
To put it bluntly, cancel culture is anti free speech by definition.
Trying to duck consequences by crying 'cancel culture' is itself an attempt to stifle speech. When consumers protest a business, they're using speech, not 'pressure,' because in that context 'pressure' isn't a real thing. There's government action against a business, and there's plain old real world consequences.
This isn't true in the age of social media. A relatively small protest (i.e. not large enough to register on their financials) can create a disproportionate amount of bad press which can exert pressure on a company to act. Manipulating social media algorithms to surface your grievance to the top of the trending list is a kind of pressure.
I don't see how this different from a 'relatively small protest' in front of a company HQ getting into the traditional press. If your protest is enough to activate the 'hot' algorithm, so be it. That's not manipulating social media, that's just how social media works. Trying to stifle that kind of protest is the same kind of 'censorship' that's being complained about here.
Furthermore, if it's enough to cause a company to act, it's 100% because it's large enough to register on their financials in some form.
Social media makes it different. Social media turns intensity of belief into the appearance of large numbers. Networks of like-minded individuals are mobilized to present a consistent message to some entity. This gives the appearance of high motivation and a large representative sample, when in reality it is neither. Social media protests incur zero cost to participate and are non-representative. The engagement algorithms and the built-in network dynamics eliminates traditional barriers to protesting and do much of the work of creating these frequent uproars.
I used the term manipulation because the dynamic brought out through social media is fundamentally dependent on social media.
>Furthermore, if it's enough to cause a company to act, it's 100% because it's large enough to register on their financials in some form.
Being fearful of financial backlash doesn't entail that the actual real-world backlash would be significant. The fact that social media eliminates the cost to participate in these "protests" suggests that when participation has actual costs it will be greatly reduced.