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Comment by confoundcofound | Hacker News Reader

This is what happens when free speech is not valued and defended throughout our culture. Politics is downstream from culture. When we are OK with, and often encouraging of, private censorship, we shift the Overton window and provide moral cover for politicians and government entities to further consolidate power. This story is a prime example.

People who peddle the argument that the 1st amendment only protects you from government censorship as a basis to invalidate the vigorous defense of free speech ideals in society, are either disingenuous or wildly narrow sighted.

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That argument is, of course, nonsense.

First, private and public censorship are fundamentally different due to power balances. The government is enjoined from censorship except in very carefully defined circumstances. Private entities are allowed to censor except in carefully defined circumstances.

Conflating the two is the thing that shifts the Overton Window.

Free speech doesn't mean free of consequences of your speech.

You can say whatever you want but if it offends your employer, don't be surprised if they fire you.

Not really, I wrote fired, not jailed.

Free speech doesn't mean that the others have to listen to you and agree with you, it means that you can say it and not have your freedom of movement restricted because of it. The exact opposite of what many dictators do.

There are no country on earth with "full" free speech because there are always limitations especially regarding threats to the safety of others.

everybody (to a first approximation) supports private censorship. If you come into my house and insult my family or friends, or start in on a racist tirade, I’m kicking you out. Are there people who really wouldn’t do this?

I think when we have the government having regular meetings with major social networks, instructing them who to ban and which topics to exclude from discussion, and when we have the pipeline from foreign security services through the US government to the all major social networks which allow them to ban anybody without as little as cursory review - we are way, way beyond "family and friends" situation here.

The owners of social networks have free speech rights too. They can take others suggestions as to who and what to block and decide for themselves. The constitutional law is settled on this question. I wouldn’t be so quick to infringe that.

"Suggestions". Right. Regular meetings and demands from the government to shut down speech is just mere "suggestions". How stupid you think your target audience is?

I don’t have a target audience. I’m just telling you the way it works. As far as I can tell the only place in the US that government is actually threatening private companies over their speech is Florida.

No, you are telling the way you'd like to pretend it works, because your partisan biases make you blind to facts. They way is actually works, as evident from Facebook executives themselves, is that they were constantly pressured by the government to censor, and attacked when the government felt they ate not censoring enough.

It's one thing to politely disagree with others, and it's another to pretend like they are "targeting an audience". Your comment is rude, disingenuous, and doesn't further reasonable discourse and a rethink of your approach would be wise for the benefit of the community.

Quoting email to Zuckerberg:

We are facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the White House and the press, to remove more Covid-19 vaccine discouraging content.

This is not "suggestion". This is government coercing private business.

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