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Comment by abraxas | Hacker News Reader

Elmo's "radical free speech" on full display.

Doxing someone is not free speech. Documents aren't just 'hacked documents' when they include private information.

The thing about free speech is that everyone has their own criteria of what should or should not be included into it.

When someone talks about "free speech absolutist", one expects they will include everything. No exceptions. After all, that's what the "absolutist" is supposed to be doing here.

If you want to add exceptions to free speech, then you're not an absolutist. You just have the same lame relativist free speech definition as everyone else. Except your criteria is different than the others. Which, I mean, no problem, but at least be honest.

If you believe that is free speech, post your SSN, phone number, and address here right now, or would you be fine if i posted them for you?

I talked about what I believe the definition of absolute free speech is. I didn't said I agree with it, or that it is what society should aim for.

Fun fact: I do agree, but I haven't said that in my previous comment.

As for my data, you're free to post it. I'm not going to sue you or anything. Maybe the HN staff wouldn't like it, but that's out of my control.

Documents obtained via hacks don't qualify under "free speech" and should be blocked, just like you'd block a list of people's social security numbers obtained via hacking, or secretly-recorded nude/pornographic material (without the subject's knowledge or consent).

Yet more definitions of free speech that some agree with and some disagree with.

That’s fine, block whatever you want. Just don’t whine that others have a different view on what “free speech” means.

Well, numerous jurisdictions have passed laws against "revenge porn", so they seem to agree with my suggestion. I will agree that information gathered via hacking can be seen both ways (much of Wikileaks was gathered somewhat nefariously) but the idea of blocking should not automatically be considered a suppression of free speech.

"Whining about other people having different views" accounts for pretty much all political speech, and I don't understand why you're saying it shouldn't happen on this topic.

If you believe 1st Amendment protections extend to prevent censorship from private parties, as Elon et al claim to, then banning this material is unambiguously a violation of free speech.

If you don’t believe that’s what free speech is, then that’s fine too (and you’re right), but then stop using that as a cultural cudgel.

The First Amendment most certainly does not apply to private parties.

Correct. Which is why the right wing moaning about free speech with regard to content moderation is juvenile and, as OP illustrates, completely hypocritical.

I do agree that this is unambiguously a violation of free speech, though the first amendment doesn't enter into it. What I don't get is the last bit, which you've only restated- why shouldn't people be allowed to invoke free speech on the basis of their opinions on what it means?

Because at least in America “free speech” refers to 1st Amendment protections, which this does not violate.

“Free speech” does not mean “carte blanche protection from any repercussions from anything I say, everyone is still obligated to like me and be nice to me and do business with me.”

So when the first amendment says congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech, that's self-referential and does not refer to an underlying basic human right? Or are you saying that Americans just don't care about why the bill of rights exists anymore because the constitution is now their sole source of morality?

For 33-45% Americans, the only source of morality is what the Orange Dear Leader says. That's why they are fine with supporting a candidate who openly calls for jailing people who criticize the Supreme Court judges and wanted to shoot protesters in legs.

Crux of the problem:

> everyone is still obligated to like me and be nice to me and do business with me.

That takes force. You can't ask the government to protect you from the consequences of your speech, because that violates the free association of others.

Correct^ In fact, even more philosophically, the marketplace of ideas needs ways to select ideas. The bad way to apply selection pressure is with the state (thus the 1st Amendment). The good way to apply selection pressure is to have other people tell you you are an absolute fucking moron and refuse to associate with you. That's what free speech really looks like.

I'm really just addressing

>Because at least in America “free speech” refers to 1st Amendment protection

Which I took to be the part that tried to answer why 'whining that others have a different view on what “free speech” means' is somehow bad behavior in a way that other political speech isn't.

I really had no intention of discussing my position on free speech, but briefly: It is morally good for an entity to permit freedom of speech and it is morally bad for them to suppress it, but I don't think the government has any business pushing them in either direction.

I think it’s better if we don’t mix your preference for people to be nice to you with our hard-won guaranteed right from government oppression.

Maybe pick a different term?

“This content moderation is a violation of my personal content preferences!” has a nice ring to it, and won’t delude people into misunderstanding how our society works.

Or you could use "first amendment" to refer to the first amendment and I can continue using the term that predates it and is referred to within it to mean what it means.

I really do not get why "it's okay if a corporation takes away our rights" is such an important point to you that you are enforcing your vocabulary in service of it. It doesn't cohere for me when you suggest it's a right worth fighting for, but if anybody other than the government takes it away from you it's just a preference.

Ridiculous. He's a VP candidate so these things are definitely in the public's interest and reporters report on ill-gotten documents all the damn time.

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/read-the-jd-vance-dossier

His home address and social security number are not material nor part of the "public interest" and a legitimate reporter would have excluded them.

So why did Elon complained when Twitter censored the Laptop Biden leak? This was the same policy, documents obtained via hacks.

That's what I'm wondering, isn't his behavior now pretty much exactly what the whole Twitter Files thing was about? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files

Yeah, he updated the ToS when he took over to allow the Hunter Biden material.

It's almost as if he's not a good faith actor.

Are you talking about Hunter Biden's laptop? It wasn't hacked, he left it at a computer shop and never picked it up.

You don't get to rummage through someone's computer just because it's in your possession. That's not how the law or property works in the US. The shop owner made an illegal copy of Hunter's hard drive and then went forward and shared it with a bunch of people.

He tried to get Hunter to pay for the repairs several times, and then took possession of the laptop as payment for services after a year or more. That is legal in the US.

Given how public this story was, if what he did was illegal, local DA would have prosecuted him.

Hunter Biden abandoned the laptop. The Intel agencies and the corp media tried to cover it up.

It seems like you do, in certain situations, this being one of them. Otherwise someone would have been prosecuted for making an illegal copy, as you say. Further, such evidence would be considered "illegal search and seizure" and inadmissible in court as evidence against Hunter Biden. But that isn't happening, the laptop information is/was absolutely used as evidence.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/22/politics/hunter-biden-laptop-...

Him "leaving" it a computer shop was never credibly, regardless what a bizarre line in the sand.

Except the indisputable public interest in having information about the person sitting on deck for the most powerful position in the world, as opposed to the prurient interests in seeing leaked nudes.

How is the vice presidential candidates social security number, phone number, and home address in the public interest?

So that if we see his SSN released in a future hack we can be sure to text him a warning to freeze his credit, and he can apply for two months of free credit monitoring.

It’s not, but the rest of the content is.

Is SSN, phone, and home address repeated for ~200 pages? Seems like there's more to it than just that data.

You mean like the nude photos of hunter biden, stolen from his personal laptop, and shared across twitter without any changes? That sort of free speech?

As always, it is MOST improper on this website to actually read the article, but this is addressed in the article; Musk was upset when old-Twitter blocked an article containing hacked data. Appears to be a case of ‘free speech’ for me but not for thee.

The personal information is blacked out... and Elmo still seem to block people for 12 hours when you share the link.

Do they qualify under "free speech absolutist"?

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