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Comment by sc68cal | Hacker News Reader

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Free speech only extends in dealings with the government. Free speech doesn’t grant you the right to interrupt business events without repercussions

While that is technically true, the extent to which that distinction matters is highly variable. There’s nothing fundamentally different about dissenting in a public or private space, it’s just a matter of degrees.

But I’ll grant you that every action has repercussions and absolutely no one should be surprised about the repercussions this employee faced.

Yep! And sure in the 1700's when kings ruled the world that was great! But in the 2000's when CEOs rule the world, we may need to think about extending free speech protections a bit.

Why should you have the right to disrupt a company meeting? Do I have the unmitigated right to come into your sprint planning and scream at you? Does no one have the right to choose not to associate with you if you make yourself unpleasant to be around, or do we all just have to suffer the biggest fool, always and all the time?

Why is your, or this engineer’s speech, more worth protecting than mine, my boss’s, or Nadella’s?

So tired of this nonsense. I don’t want to hear about your shitty politics at work. If you don’t like what your company is doing, quit and do something else.

You are highlighting the fundamental tension at the center of this continuing issue.

This isn’t unique to the genocide of Palestinians. This is happening repeatedly in multiple contexts across essentially all very large organizations.

It is, I submit, a manifestation of collectivist actions. Usually that doesn’t intersect politics inside a business, but as more and more horrific things are being perpetrated or aided by the businesses that employ politically interested people, it’s happening more and more.

Ineffective loners screaming at CEOs accomplishes nothing. These are a bunch of mash potato throwers, traffic blockers, and paint can dumpers.

These tantrums are garbage and the only defense is fake moralizing and weird obfuscated language like yours.

Meanwhile plain-spoken people think this behavior sucks.

The speech was free of government interference, the private consequences are the price of and necessity of moral courage. Otherwise, it wouldn't be courageous.

That's an American legal distinction.

Free Speech is a value

I posit that it’s also a choice. You can choose to curtail your speech or scream it from the rooftops, at any given time. You might sign some kind of agreement with a non-disparagement clause and then decide that you wish to speak out in ways that break that agreement.

To be fair, he had the freedom to say it just not the power to keep his job when he exercised it.

As someone who is incredibly sympathetic towards this issue, this person had to know they would be fired over this. I'm glad they (the protester) did it. More people should do this. It's not free speech though. It's civil disobedience.

The crackdown at universities is absolutely a free speech issue.

American workplaces don't have freedom of speech and never have, so there are two exceptions in play.

I am 100% sure you do this in ANY businesses in East Asia (small medium or big), you get the boot too. I know cases in Japan and South Korea doing this kind of stunts even if just posting to intetnal forums get one fired. China depends, they are more sensitive to anything related to government matters or potential customers lost.

I don't think this is exclusive to American workplaces, I would wager this is the norm in most of the world.

Can you share examples of a CEO’s public speech at a conference being disrupted with them being accused of being accessory to murder by an employee and the employee remaining in good standing?

Palantir, Anduril, Lockheed Martin, Apple, Amazon, Boeing - the list could go on. Many of them don't even deny it, they just try to distract with "look at our health products" and "we saved X amount of lives" rhetoric.

What happened to the employee who disrupted a meeting to level that accusations?

Depends on the company. In Palantir's case, the CEO was happy to accept the question at face-value without attacking the employee ad-hominem: https://youtu.be/0mhNLTy5pbQ

There is no amendment ensuring the right to disrupt others to focus attention on yourself nor is there anything anymore encoded into the Constitution that allows a different class of behavior because of wealth or class (so neither entitlement nor a sense of grandiosity are protected)

This isnt an exception to free speech. He is not being persecuted by the government. He is free to look for other employment if he disagrees with his current employers business practices.

The first amendment protects from government. Private enterprises are free to do as they please.

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