I just want to clarify some stuff that many people mess up pretty badly. I expect to be misunderstood here as well, and for this thread to instigate civil war II. Free speech is the right to say anything at all without any repercussions at all. Completely unfettered. Free speech is an idea. It's never been achieved, and should never be achieved to a complete level. The 1st amendment to the US Constitution does not guarantee free speech. It stops the government passing laws that interfere with it, though, even then, there are recognised exceptions, such as for incitement to imminent lawless action, or for speech that is itself illegal under a law that the government has the constitutional power to enact, e.g. kiddy porn restrictions. The subset of free speech that's protected in the US generally limits the government from prior restraint, meaning almost anything can be said, without being stopped before it's said, even if everyone knows the speaker will commit a punishable crime by saying it. Lots of people say "free speech doesn't protect you from repercussions". The concept does, but the 1st amendment doesn't. Lots of people say "the 1st amendment doesn't apply to private companies," and they're right, but that's not the whole picture. Free speech is an ideal. If a company doesn't live up to that ideal, they have the right to fall short, but that doesn't act as a full defence against people's indignation. Free speech is an ideal that many people expect to be adhered to, independent of whether there's a law compelling it. Now, that said, further than what I've already stated, there are reasons to limit free speech, even to the level of prior restraint. And people have a broad spectrum of beliefs around how far along the spectrum the law or social pressure should draw a line. The most important type of restriction, outside of the already-mentioned incitement, is that the human right of free speech needs to be balanced against the human right to privacy. Even within that tension, there are a variety of opinions about where the balance should lie, dealing with topics like revenge porn or libel where the public interest is not being served, and where monetary damages won't be sufficient to rectify the wrong. Further down the spectrum, in my opinion, is the tension between the human right to free speech and the human right to dignity. Dignity is still extremely important to protect, but, again, in my opinion, not to the level where hate speech should be criminalised. It's become increasingly difficult to hold the line on this point, because there are increasingly horrible people expressing vile opinions online. The 1st amendment is clear on this, that hate speech is legal, but this is where the tension comes in with non-public platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Yes, those platforms have latitude to make content moderation decisions that don't adhere to absolute freedom of speech, and yes, they are not bound by the 1st amendment. I don't know about Facebook, but I have a decent amount of knowledge about Twitter's policies and operations. They actually have a pretty detailed transparency report every year. Twitter cops a lot of flak for censorship. Most of what they take down is legally mandated by non-US countries, and only has effect for users in those countries. Most of the rest is really crap that's factually inaccurate and damaging when scrupulous people believe it. That content tends to be around either covid, elections, or culture war issues. This rounding error of the world's discourse has reached a $44B head today, where Musk is going to "fix free speech". Freedom of speech isn't just an idea that stands alone. It's an idea that was developed because of the impact that occurs, i.e. totalitarianism, when it's absent. That's why freedom of speech is so important to protect – it's foundational to free society. As such, it's the really terrible, vile speech that needs the most protection, because the innocuous stuff doesn't upset the society's power structures. So Twitter can do better. They can allow the worst content to stay up, and impede its spread by putting the crap content in context – interstitials, fact checks, etc. They've even made lots of progress in that direction, but the work is never done, so they could do more. All this said, Musk is riding the resentment that's percolating in a small part of society about a rounding error of communication, to claim that he's going to be the saviour of free speech. He's a smart guy, and must also know that absolutism about free speech leads to compromises on other important human rights, as well as breaking actual laws. His rhetoric is about absolutism. Expect to see conservative tweaks to the status quo, because Twitter's already doing pretty well. If I'm wrong, and he really shakes things up, then Twitter's current critics won't be happier with the result.
Someone please give a TLDR.
Typical political post on blind. Not worth reading.
One thing you're missing: freedom of speech implies freedom of association, both legally and logically. You can't support free speech and also support forcing someone to listen to you.
Why not? Conservatives take that position all the time.
Yeah, and it's logically inconsistent as we can see. They didn't want to bake gay wedding cakes, but they don't want to be denied service for not wearing a mask. Freedom of speech is really hard because freedom of speech contradicts itself. Freedom of speech means freedom of association, which means forcing a business to serve you is anti-free-speech. How do we solve this? It's not logically possible without violating the foundational principle in some form.
Well said
On LinkedIn, I saw someone saying they'd even let death threats on Twitter. People are ignorant about even the 1st amendment not covering death threats.
Technically, that's not so clear. It depends on how feasible it is for the threat to be carried out, and the imminence of it were it to happen.
Of course, it's a gray area but credible death threats are a crime. Libel/defamation are also gray areas.
TLDR the op doesn’t understand at all what free speech is.
Care to explain what the OP doesn't understand?
agree with your explanations, and on tangent: the problem is section 230 for a company at the scale of FB or Twitter. If they do the same operation on papers, there will be 1000s of libel complaints against them.
I mean this in the most non-inflammatory way possible. What’s your point?
I don't think there is a single point. There are many points that OP made. Everyone is free to disagree with the points in the comments.
The point is to show that free speech is not just about the law that many bring up in those kind of discussions
This is dumb and wrong. Free speech is the right to say what you want. The constitution says the government can't stop you from saying most things - you don't have to pre-clear your speech. You absolutely can have consequences for it.
Thank you for missing the point that there's a distinction between freedom of speech and the 1st amendment. They're not the same thing. The 1st amendment is about freedom of speech, but is not exactly that concept.
There can be consequences of speech, but then that speech wasn't free in the absolutist sense. I'm distinguishing that from prior restraint.
So, this is where tech in general and social media in particular leaves a lot open for interpretation. Due to the nature of this domain, applying the principles and concepts that were put together for a non-tech based society and system becomes challenging. Without thoughtful and practical regulation, everything and everyone’s opinion about how to interpret/handle such a unique situation would be seen as the right answer. This isn’t going to be solved with traditional ways of how society has worked until now. This is literally a new era and perhaps the definition of first amendment would need an amendment to adapt to modern day and age. No immediate answer on this one but at least people are engaging in debate, and that’s a good thing in my personal opinion.
Tl;dr