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Comment by stcredzero | Hacker News Reader

Google can't stop you.

In 2019, the potent combination is virality/discovery+monetization. Google along with the rest of the SV CEOs and other people of equivalent status can indeed withhold that, despite the wishes of large numbers of people. Just "putting things online" is so 1990's. In 2019, the real power comes from that dynamite combination of virality/discovery+monetization. A 2019 formulation of Free Speech needs to account for that.

We saw this before in the 1980's with Manufacturing Consent. The western papers technically weren't censoring like Pravda. But in effect it amounted to the same thing.

The litmus test should be: Are there people who want to hear, yet a few are using infrastructure control to stop them? Then Free Speech is being blocked. Are there people who want to pay, yet a few using infrastructure control to stop them? Then Free Speech is being blocked.

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Again, you're conflating free speech with indexing. You're as entitled to be listed in a newpaper's classifieds as you are entitled to be indexed on a search engine or hosted on a private website. Freedom of speech is not freedom to be listed by someone else through force.

Again, you're conflating free speech with indexing.

In 2019, indexing gives you the capability to define reality. People riding on the coattails of giant SV corporations have been using this capability to basically put words into the mouths of people and ascribe positions to them that have no real bearing on the truth.

In 2019, indexing is part and parcel of Free Speech. In 2019, you don't have Freedom of Speech if you aren't indexed, and you can't trend. In 2019, trying to exercise Freedom of Speech like that is like giving a 19th century speech with a tracheotomy. It's not the same by literal orders of magnitude. It's as disingenuous as giving one man a club and your political crony a rifle, then declaring trial by combat and saying it's a fair fight.

And in 2019, Freedom of speech is not freedom to be listed by someone else through force. Reality is not the internet, cable tv, radio, or the printing press.

"No" and "No," then. "Strangers don't find out about my podcast" is nothing like "nobody can hear me." "PayPal won't middle-man my transaction" is nothing like "I can't get paid" (mailing checks or cash is a thing).

That's technically true in the same way that western media technically didn't censor news favorable to the Soviets. It did appear, but buried in the back, expressed in bland language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

The salient truth, is that corporate oligarchs are trying to game the system so that their own side has several orders of magnitude more voice, and everyone they don't like has several orders of magnitude less voice -- then try and claim it's "Free Speech" and "fair." No. The system is rigged, and the disingenuous arguments are made simply because the law and cultural norms haven't caught up with technical reality yet.

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