Comment by foxhill | Hacker News Reader

Comment by foxhill | Hacker News Reader

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> Uh, the US constitution and a few centuries of case law?

i'm sorry, i interpreted your point to broadly be "free speech with limits", which i understand to be at-odds with the constitutional definition.

> The one example host I gave has been around 20 years.

no offense intended to them when i say i don't recall ever hearing about them in any setting, controversial or otherwise, which would lead me to believe they haven't experienced significant pressure to remove anything.

> [...] their content is subject to algorithmic manipulation

yes, i agree. "the algorithm" makes astroturfing much easier to perform and be effective.

> In a perfect world [...]

well then there's a bit of a bootstrapping problem here, no? principles like free-speech were idealized and create in order to make the perfect world (for some values of "perfect"). hell, in the "perfect" world, free-speech wouldn't even need protection. i don't think it's sensible to mandate a principle after the fact.

> which I'm still not sure would be considered a non-fringe opinion in 2022

there is no scientific consensus yet - surprise surprise - but we are at least now talking about it[1].

> but the alternative is worse

i'm not sure i agree with you here.

[1]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/another-potential-covid-19-lab-...

> i'm sorry, i interpreted your point to broadly be "free speech with limits", which i understand to be at-odds with the constitutional definition.

Ugh, my main point is that the concept of "free speech" in the US is not relevant at all to the question of whether a private entity can remove you from their platform for saying something they don't like.

You can claim that in the colloquial sense, the phrase is used more liberally to mean any censorship whatsoever, and that may be true. But in my opinion that is conflating two concepts, and those doing so are either 1) confused or 2) being deliberately dishonest by trying to smuggle some sense of constitutional/government mandate into the conversation.

> Ugh, my main point is that the concept of "free speech" in the US is not relevant at all to the question of whether a private entity can remove you from their platform for saying something they don't like.

and i'm saying that you appear to treat social media and digital identity as some superfluous luxury that can be revoked without consequence from an individual as punishment (or for more dubious reasons), much like how republicans view health care and social welfare: with the notable exception of the US and one or two others, every country recognizes that private corporations must provide health care (or the means to it - i'm talking about the equipment, education, etc. being provided largely by non-governmental institutions), and citizens must be allowed to access to it regardless of who they are and what they've said, or even done.

yes, you are correct that the constitution does not prevent private corporations from removing content that they do not like, that is the point here. there is no question over the legality of such removals, and i don't think anyone here has tried to raise one.

i'm not trying to smuggle constitutional/government mandate, i'm explicitly trying to discuss the notion of whether or not it should exist.

> the concept of "free speech" in the US is not relevant at all to the question of whether a private entity can remove you from their platform for saying something they don't like.

You seem to be confusing "free speech", the concept, with "free speech", the legal right.

Most codifications of the legal right limit themselves to protecting against certain types of government interference.

However, the concept itself is absolutely not limited to contexts where censorship is imposed by a government. To try to impose this limitation is 1984-style thought policing that tries to remove existing language to control what can be said.

I'm not talking about some colloquial meaning, but the core meaning of the concept of "freedom of speech".

I think we are actually saying the same thing, and my language was imprecise, so I apologize.

My point is that in the US, the narrower legal/constitutional concept of free speech is often implied, inadvertently or deliberately, when people are actually only referring to it in the broader sense that you describe. For example, a banned Twitter user might say things like "Twitter is a disgrace to democracy"[0] which confuses others into thinking there is some constitutional or legal harm being done when in fact there is none.

I have no problem with having a debate about whether the core concept of free speech is a universal right that should be guaranteed everywhere (surprise: I don't think it should be a universal right and I think it's downright dangerous to society to force all private entities to respect it). But I see the two meanings get confused so much that I felt a need to call it out.

[0] https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-news-twitter-marjorie-...

> and I think it's downright dangerous to society to force all private entities to respect it.

I would whole heartdly agree with that, but only because you added "all".

I think just as there is a balance in placing limitations of corporate freedom of association just like placing limits on free speech.

I do think that free speech is valuable enough that we should carefully consider placing restrictions on how and why large, oligopolistic corporations can exercise their right to freedom of association.

I think a lot of this can be solved with a "user's bill of rights" that protects users from arbitrary and capricious enforcement of nebulous terms by service providers.

I think most of the rest of this would be ideally solved by narrowing or eliminating the types of moderation a corporation can engage in while maintaining liability protection under section 230. Possibly with language giving special exemptions to community run moderation.

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