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  At what point will it be universally understood that "free speech" is only legally binding when a person is speaking with the government.

Well this isn't the case. I'm writing this comment and directing it at you and other non-governmental actors who use HN. So I am not 'speaking with the government'. But the law protects my speech from interference by the government.

Given how little the US invests in public education, probably never

>Given how little the US invests in public education, probably never

While I understand the sentiment, this isn't factually true: from figures I've seen, the US actually spends more per student in pre-college schooling than any other nation.

It's a lot like the US healthcare system: the US spends (much) more per-capita, but gets much worse results overall. The problem isn't the level of funding, but how it's used and who runs it.

Another factor is US education is that the funding is largely from local sources and locally controlled, so if you live in a wealthy county, you might have (relatively) very good schools, while kids in poor counties will have poorly-funded schools. This is mostly a problem unique to the US because it loves keeping power at local levels so much.

'Invests' doesn't necessarily have to mean about money, like you assume.

> The problem isn't the level of funding, but how it's used and who runs it

aka rent-seeking behavior from entrenched corporations and interests.

> private corporation like Twitter/X, Facebook, and now Bluesky can implement any moderation policies they want, and it will never violate "free speech" laws

Simply not true in the state of California where most of these companies are based.

According to the CA supreme Court, you have a right to free speech on private property that is regularly available for public use.

By that metric all of these companies are blatantly violating the constitution of their home state.

> According to the CA supreme Court, you have a right to free speech on private property that is regularly available for public use.

According to both sides of the aisle on the US Supreme Court, a social media site is not a public forum [1].

[1] Supreme Court Signals Loud And Clear That Social Media Sites Are Not Public Forums That Have To Allow All Speech https://www.techdirt.com/2019/06/18/supreme-court-signals-lo...

This would be the CA Supreme Court. The CA constitution has explicit protections for public speech on private property, per the CA Supreme Court.

How broad is that CA Supreme Court ruling? The CA Constitution can't override the First Amendment rights that social media sites have to decide what user content to remove from their servers [1].

[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2024/02/22/social-media-isnt-a-shop...

Absolutely they can and do. Many malls have been forced to allow demonstrators due to it.

California's constitution would apply to California companies hosting people in their spaces.

It would absolutely apply between California users and Californian companies

> California's constitution would apply to California companies hosting people in their spaces.

> It would absolutely apply between California users and Californian companies

According to the Supremacy Clause, the Constitution of the United States (which includes its own First Amendment) overrides any state constitution.

> Many malls have been forced to allow demonstrators due to it.

The article I linked [1] in my previous comment explains why a shopping mall could be forced to host peaceful demonstrations but a social media site can't be forced to host similar speech:

> As AELP admits, the Supreme Court’s 1974 Miami Herald opinion held that the First Amendment prohibited Florida from requiring a newspaper to print a political candidate’s reply to a critical article. According to AELP, PruneYard distinguished Miami Herald by holding that “open-access laws do not present the same First Amendment concerns as right-to-reply laws.” That is false. The Supreme Court didn’t say anything about open-access laws. It said that Miami Herald “rests on the principle that the State cannot tell a newspaper what it might print.”

> AELP tries to salvage its imaginary distinction between open-access and right-to-reply laws by insisting that “the Miami Herald newspaper did not hold its pages open to all members of the public.” That is also false. Yes, newspapers exercise “editorial discretion” over which articles they print. But newspapers don’t just publish articles, they also publish ads. And they’re generally happy to publish advertisements by anyone willing to pay. AELP insists that “Newspapers are exclusive publications; the public cannot, at any moment, publish their views in the New York Times.” Yes, they can. All they have to do is buy an ad. So, newspapers are, in fact, “open to all members of the public” willing to pay for the privilege. In AELP’s terms, newspapers are and always have been “open-access.”

> That’s fatal to AELP’s argument. According to AELP, the First Amendment allows states to prohibit social media companies from censoring users, because social media websites are “open-access.” But newspapers are also “open-access,” because anyone can buy an advertisement. So, AELP’s argument necessarily implies that the First Amendment also allows states to prohibit newspapers from censoring advertisers.

> Wrong. The Supreme Court explicitly said the opposite in PruneYard itself. And if the First Amendment means anything, it means that the government can’t tell newspapers what to print.

> What’s the real difference between Miami Herald and PruneYard? It’s simple. Newspapers are in the speech business and shopping malls aren’t. The First Amendment says the government can’t force you to share someone else’s speech, but sometimes it can require you to tolerate speech you dislike. And which is social media more like? The business that is in the speech business, or a shopping mall where speech has nothing to do with its business?

[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2024/02/22/social-media-isnt-a-shop...

  Bluesky can implement any moderation policies they want, and it will never violate "free speech" laws.

What if Bluesky were to set up a hotline which the federal government can call to have any post censored, and makes it known to government actors that it will act promptly if they want anything removed?

Would that be legal for Bluesky, assuming no coercion from any government actors?

> What if Bluesky were to set up a hotline which the federal government can call to have any post censored, and makes it known to government actors that it will act promptly if they want anything removed?

> Would that be legal for Bluesky, assuming no coercion from any government actors?

Under your assumption of no coercion, yes, it would generally be within Bluesky's First Amendment right of association (by which I mean, association to the content, not to the government) for Bluesky to voluntarily remove content from its servers (or refuse to relay content from other servers) brought to its notice by the federal government for no compensation.

There are other ways for governments to meddle that would make specific instances of "call to have any post censored" unconstitutional. If a government official were to secretly pay or otherwise compensate Bluesky for removing posts, then the benefit to the government official of having the posts removed would violate the Emoluments Clause if the official is a member of Congress, might violate a corruption law, and might violate the oath of office if there was one (but I don't know an oath of office has any legal weight). Also, in practice, such a secret payment scheme would create a power imbalance favoring the government official in a way that would make achieving "no coercion" very difficult if not impossible.

> At what point will it be universally understood that "free speech" is only legally binding when a person is speaking with the government

That is not what "free speech" means, that is what current US free speech laws does. Free speech itself include all censorship from big organizations, regardless if it is a government or not, the important part is if you have large organized censoring then its against free speech.

So it is totally valid to say you want to protect free speech by limiting the ability for large corporations to censor people.

Free speech is a legal term.

We all know there is a push to invent some new definition that says jerks must be heard, but if you look at the migration out of Twitter, you can see that a lot of people aren't interested in that new definition.

If you come to Bluesky, your actions dictate your following.