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Comment by shi314 | Hacker News Reader

Free speech is not about releasing every movie or TV show produced by entitled people. It's about free speech of common people. A person getting fired for a thing he/she commented a decade ago is not free speech. USA has lot to do with free speech which really matters.

USA was top country regarding free speech in maybe 1980s but now, it needs to change it's policies to be one.

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Free speech is a culture phenomenon in the US that goes well beyond the US constitution.

This argument that only the direct legal limitations is enforced is very naive and a much more modern take because social media companies have largely ignored the cultural and ethical implications. Yet plenty of people, organizations, policies, and general common sense have embraced free speech voluntarily (ie, companies refusing to try to control their employees speech and views pushed outside of the workplace).

You’ve made a common mistake - constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech means freedom from the government restricting you from or persecuting you for speech.

That does not mean citizens need to tolerate whatever you say. For example, a commenter on HN might break the rules and get banned by dang. Dang isn’t violating their constitutional rights, because dang/HN isn’t the government. [1]

Similarly, trump the private citizen was free to block people on Twitter. Trump the President was directed by courts to unblock a person because their ability to participate in public discourse had been curtailed by a government official. [2] When Trump is no longer president, he will be free to block anyone once more.

I understand where you’re coming from - you felt that back in the day you were free to say whatever you liked without fear of repercussions from private citizens. I agree but this could be because of a couple of changes

- we store everything that’s said. A passing comment from 10 years ago isn’t stored, but a tweet is.

- society changes what is acceptable to say. There were restrictions at that time as well (the n word could get you fired) but now society also frowns upon a broader range of transgressions.

This is fine, society is entitled to change its mind. 25 years ago only 25% of Americans were supportive of gay rights. Today it’s 67%. [3] You can see how a homophobic slur would be acceptable at that time but not in 2020.

[1] - or are they?! X-Files theme plays

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trump-twitter/u-s-asks-su...

[3] https://news.gallup.com/poll/311672/support-sex-marriage-mat...

The problem in the US is that you have labor laws that do not protect workers, so private citizens have all the free speech in the world, but they can't use it out of fear of being fired. And there's no free speech in the work place as the boss can fire you on the spot for whatever. Do you then have free speech when it does not extend to the work place where you spend 1/3 of your day?

I find it interesting how many seem so content with that constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech means freedom from the government restricting you.

At what point does that stop being useful, as corporations gain power over the government?

Some used to worry that private malls replacing public venues for people congregating caused an erosion of rights. Now the Internet is mostly private malls. Anyone can self host a blog, still, but most spend their virtual lives in the "online private malls".

It almost sounds like you're described freedom of speech as a right to be heard. That's a distinction of positive/negative freedoms as mentioned previously in this thread. You can host a blog and your speech won't be restricted (negative freedom), but if no one is viewing it, that's because no one cares to hear what you have to say. You don't have the right to be heard (positive freedom) because that would require people being forced to hear you.

If the problem is that you can't build an audience it's not because your freedom of speech is being restricted, it's because no one wants to listen to you.

Or it's because the town square is gone and you have the free speech corner somewhere off into the woods.

And one of the primary reasons why private speech is so heavily restricted by other private citizens because government cannot restrict you.

For the kinds of things people in America get fired, in European countries they get arrested for that.

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