Hacker News Reader

Comment by Overtonwindow | Hacker News Reader

This has always been my view of speech. I believe that every human being has The right to speak their mind without fear of government reprisal.

I wish it also meant a right to speak your mind free from the judgment of your employer, or university, but that is a slippery slope. Just because I will defend a person's right to speak their mind no matter what, does not mean I have to listen to it, or agree with it.

I wrestle with this, because if I had an opinion, pick any social issue, I don't think an employer should be allowed to fire me because of that.

However, we have freedom of association, and a business may not want to associate with someone who has opinions counter to their own.

View on HN

> However, I understand we have freedom of association, and a business may not want to associate with someone who has opinions counter to their own.

That's really the heart of it, isn't it? Forget employer for a moment - if you said something really offensive to one of your friends, and they decided to stop being your friend, you'd be upset, but should they be allowed to no longer be your friend? Of course they should. People get to choose with whom they associate, and companies (who are not people, but that's a different post) get to choose who they hire, because those people are a reflection of them. Freedom of speech isn't freedom of consequences.

It is. There is no freedom from consequences, unless you are a politician maybe. I think if America continues on its current path, people will increase exclusive association into "us versus them."

I don't think that will help us in the long term.

There's also the freedom to criticize and choose not to associate with a company that fires people for expressing their opinion.

This is actually key, and I think the primary part here should be, as long as there is sufficient competition in the marketplace.

Look at Google. Now try to never ever touch code they touch, information they curated a bit, or anything they do. Good luck with that!

Try your best, you will be tainted. Somehow. Someway.

A key example? Try to email people, without Google/Gmail/Workplace bring the result often.

Google is the de facto monopoly of many things, and you are forced to touch them, even if you try not to.

So in such a case, well... I don't know. But there is no choice.

Funny how this is the only scenario where the right cares about anti-trust

> Freedom of speech isn't freedom of consequences.

Freedom from consequences is the only possible thing freedom of speech could be, other than not having your mouth sewn shut.

What you meant to say was, what we value is freedom of speech from government consequences, not private actors. And that is a value judgement, not definitional. The incorrect statement you used is spread by people trying to hide the former as the latter.

Well, in the US, "Freedom of speech" is often used in the context of the US constitution so, while it is indeed freedom from consequences, it's freedom from consequences in the narrow sense of freedom from the consequence of the government using its police power to imprison you for saying something.

ADDED: In other situations the degree of saying whatever you want is very context-dependent and also dependent on what consequences you're willing to suffer.

The problem comes when the very act of non-association with someone effectively silences them.

If everyone is allowed to speak through a megaphone, except people with certain ideologies because the megaphone maker refuses to do business with them, then you can argue that is a form of censorship, or at least, have the effect of censorship.

This can happen to anything and anyone, regardless of whether such ideologies are correct or not. What we would end up with are echo chambers. And I sincerely believe that those are the cause of many social issues right now.

Are all views valid and should be listened to? In order to ensure free speech do we all have to thoughtfully engage with white supremacists or pederasts? Seems to me free speech is my having a choice who I associate with as well.

Not all views is valid. And nobody should be forced to associate with someone they don't like.

But I don't consider corporations "people". And they should not have the prerogative to choose what views they will amplify.

That is what I meant by non-association can become censorship. A person can't do that. But a large corporation providing a public service can.

Ah, OK - I missed that you were talking about corporations. So can we rephrase this by saying that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube should be fine with white supremacists and people who argue for pederasty on their platforms? I struggle with this at the extremes.

There are hate speech laws they can follow. That should cover the extremes. And if they don't, then it is the failure of the legislation.

Just like how you can't go to walmart and insult everyone you see. It would actually be illegal to retaliate against those people. But call the cops and they can be dealt with.

At least with the laws, there is more checks and balances. It isn't perfect, but it is better than giving private entities massive power to control opinions.

If the law should cover it all, then what is their right to filter spam based upon?

>At least with the laws, there is more checks and balances.

I rather consent to regulations by an entity that I can influence and beholden to me (in principle) than one that is profit driven.

So, no spam filtering.

Freedom of speech is also the freedom to hear and read any viewpoint you'd like to hear or read.

The problem currently is that there is broad censorship for many views and even if you actively want to research an issue, you'll only be presented with one half of the story because large tech and media corporations work in concert to block certain points of view.

> want to research

Social media sites are not where research is done

How far do you take freedom of association though? Should a company be able to discriminate based on race? Refuse to hire women unless they have sex with the CEO? Etc…

> Should a company be able to discriminate based on race?

Question like these are pointless since they’re already solved. The American Law system already said no at the highest point possible.

But that's the point. Employers are already quite limited in how they can disassociate with employees.

You can divorce someone because they didn't want to have sex with you. And you can decide not to be friends with people of a certain race. But employers do not have those rights under US law.

So it would also seem fine if you also couldn't be fired due to political beliefs. We already have a framework for dealing with these issues.

I've always thought the whole 'protected categories' thing was made a little odd by the inclusion of religion, given the obvious nexus between religious beliefs and political positions, e.g. Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. Political opinions receiving protection iff colored by a religious belief is pretty asymmetric. To maintain logical consistency, either both or neither.

Just to be clear, the implications of what you're suggesting would be the immediate legalization of anti-Semitism in the workplace. Are you sure that's better?

No, you're right, it's a half-baked idea. There's got to be some way of slicing things such that freedom from discrimination is prioritized over the ability to use that freedom to implement discrimination, but I'm not seeing it yet.

It does bother me that the status quo enables straight-up discrimination on the basis of religion, though, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Guadalupe_School_v.... The whole broad application of the ministerial exemption thing is a perfect figleaf for arbitrary bullshit, laundered as inspired by faith.

e: s/religious discrimination/discrimination on the basis of religion

That whole "freedom of religion" thing is essentially freedom of speech and association in ritual trappings that allow it to go further than it could without them. There's no reason why it should be special-cased like that - we should either broaden these protections to all opinions, or treat religion same as any other opinion.

That's not true. There are a very small number of protected attributes that you cannot discriminate against as an employer. Everything else is fair game.

It didn't, though. It's perfectly legal to discriminate, just not in a public setting. Say, if you have a coffee shop, you can't just refuse to serve non-white customers. But if you have a private coffee club, its membership can be restricted to whites only - and the club can then have a coffee shop that serves only its members.

This seems like a reasonable compromise to me - accommodations are inclusive by default so you don't have to worry about whether a random store owner has a problem with your gender, race, religion etc. Yet people who want to exclude others from their spaces still have the ability to do so, subject only to social disapproval.

Of course we should not allow discrimination based on race, but there are other laws and protections in place to address that. And if a person of any race should start saying wild and discriminatory things, their employer should then be able to deal with it.

>Freedom of speech isn't freedom of consequences.

"There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech."

“Not free of consequences” is a cop out.

What are consequences?

Being ignored? Sure.

Being physically beaten? That’s a consequence too.

There are also assault and battery laws in place to deal with this.

> Freedom of speech isn't freedom of consequences.

How I hate the proliferation of this idiotic phrase.

Freedom of speech is a concept, an ideal. Not whatever the US constitution says. The idea is that powerful forces won’t punish you for speaking your mind.

If saying “I don’t like blue party” gets you fired, debanked and slandered in the media; it’s not really freedom of speech.

You also have “freedom to murder”, but you need to suffer the consequences.

A freedom like that is no freedom at all.

Question really is what counts as association?

Is being partnered and prominently showing branding for example such thing?

Or what about being able to buy things and services from?

Later is actually more critical point. Let's take some minority group. We generally think that discriminating against them for being member of group is wrong and should be illegal. But what if we took stance that we do not discriminate against the group, but against those that voice they should have equal rights? Entirely fine surely for many people now? Effect would be same, other one is just due to their speech.

>a business may not want to associate with someone who has opinions counter to their own

I'm not sure it's so much that exactly as businesses don't want employees who make a lot of other employees uncomfortable or who hold loud (whether deliberately or because social media made something go viral) opinions or make stupid jokes in public that get associated with the company and cause PR issues.

The fact is that if someone employs/sponsors/advertises with/etc. you they can and will cut ties fast if you embarrass them.

> However, we have freedom of association, and a business may not want to associate with someone who has opinions counter to their own.

I think this part is why there’s so much angst about this these days: businesses have captured a huge part of our commons and our support systems, pieces that might have been (or could be) the purview of government at other times. If we’re all paying dues to BigCorp in order to live, is it fair to say “businesses can choose to not associate with whomever they want”?

This line of thought always reminds me of Marsh v. Alabama: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama

> a state trespassing statute could not be used to prevent the distribution of religious materials on a town's sidewalk even though the sidewalk was part of a privately-owned company town

Are we at that point of broad-spectrum BigCo dominance yet? I'd say probably not, but sometimes it just seems like a matter of time.

What does it mean to speak your mind? Does lying count? Is it your right to lie under oath?

Yeah all too often people forget the first amendment applies to the government not to companies or ordinary people.

Freedom of speech is an ethic, the first amendment applies to political bodies.

> we have freedom of association, and a business may not want to associate with someone who has opinions counter to their own.

Yes and no. Take the Colorado baker who refused to bake a cake for a gay couple. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled in the baker's favor on the grounds that forcing him to bake the cake would violate his religious freedoms. I wonder, if the baker had refused purely as a personal preference not to do business with gay couples (freedom of association), would the court have ruled differently? As far as I know the Supreme Court has not yet weighed in on such a question.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com