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Comment by ilikehurdles | Hacker News Reader

No. I'm specifically calling out that the government is not impeding. Other private actors are sharing bad things you did and exercising their Freedom of Association to disassociate from you. They shouldn't be forced to carry you around. That's it. It's the free market deciding.

All speech has consequences. You, the free speech enthusiast, not being prepared to pay those consequences is not cause for a government bailout or arrests of website hosts.

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> No. I'm specifically calling out that the government is not impeding.

Ah, you are making the same claim (and thus mistake) as another commenter in another thread I responded to. Freedom of speech is not just a law, it is also a social more. It's basis is first in philosophy, and then in law stemming from that. Just because the government has not violated your First Amendment civil rights, does not mean your freedom of speech has not been violated in some other way.

If all speech has consequences, and there's nothing wrong with putting consequences to speech, what's wrong with the government doing so?

Well you can't reasonably opt-in or opt-out of a government, and you can't do much to change it if your saying you want a change lands you in jail for criminal speech. You can't freely associate to spread your message or convince others. If on the other hand, the government protects your speech from its own intervention, and you have a popular view that is unwelcome on some website like twitter, you're still able to freely associate with other sympathetic people, build an audience, and discuss your views elsewhere. The consequence in one scenario is jail and in the other is having to use or build Gab.

But is there anything morally wrong with it? Does it inhibit freedom of speech to execute people for criticizing the government? If so, how?

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