Hacker News Reader

Comment by doctor_eval | Hacker News Reader

All I see lately is people conflating the right to free speech with the right to be heard.

Free speech means that you can't be put in jail for something you say. That's it.

But nobody has an entitlement to be amplified. That's not a right. Nobody has the right to unfettered access to someone else's platform. That's never, ever been the case. You never had the right to edit the front page of a newspaper that you don't own, you don't have the right to set up a platform in the middle of some company's office to talk about your crazy ass theory, and you don't have the right to spew malicious, bad-faith shit into a twitter thread.

/rant

View on HN

You're only seeing a straw man version of the view opposing yours.

Claiming to have a right to use a telephone isn't a demand to be heard, it is a demand to let a person talk to people that want to hear them. People blocking a number because they don't want to hear from it is another story. While some people are demanding the right to speak, most defenders aren't demanding the right to be heard, those people are demanding the right to hear something.

Yes, the company may be facilitating communication is doesn't approve of, but it isn't amplifying it. The amplification with social media occurs because people that want to hear the message tell other people that want to hear the message about it and it is so easy to go out and hear the message. Telephone companies helped facilitate organization of all kinds of odious things, but rarely is it suggested that the phone companies should deny access.

Censorship is equivalent to the censor telling people, "Because we don't like the message, we won't let you hear this message."

The debate is on how necessary social media is to our communications and how reasonable it is to deny access. That is, how similar is it to a telephone or mail.

It’s not legal, and you don’t have the right, to threaten or harass or people over the phone. There are all sorts of laws about your conduct over a phone. Owning a phone isn’t a constitutional right. And a phone doesn’t amplify your voice - you can only call one person at a time.

I accept your point that people want to hear the message. But that’s irrelevant. There is no legal or historical basis for forcing a company to give someone a platform.

You might not agree with that in principal, but the legal argument is about the right to speak without being punished, not the right to be heard.

There are directly legal and historical bases for forcing companies to give someone a "platform" to speak, as I have already stated: telephones, mail, and public forums.

The debate is about how much social media resembles those communication media and how much of the philosophy of treatment in one situation is transferable from one context to another.

You cannot disentangle the right to speak from the right to listen, and that is why so many people are frustrated: their ability to listen to their chosen speaker was taken away from them. Which is my only point (having not given my opinion on where I stand): accusing opposition as demanding to be heard and have their voice amplified is uncharitable and misunderstands the extent of the debate.

Interesting. In India a comedian was arrested (still is) for making a joke which he didn't crack. Some people wanted to make a joke of the system by a false complaint and guess what, the police is supporting a false claim instead of letting the accused go. So much for free speech. Literally the guy didnt say something and he is being arrested for that

As I've said time and time again, people say "free speech" but what they mean is "consequence free speech".

Why would you say that more than once?

Freedom of speech, whatever your take on it, is by definition freedom from some consequences. The argument is over which consequences are acceptable.

Because people don't understand? Because people don't read? I don't know. Why would people keep failing to make the distinction between "free speech" and "consequence free speech"?

Free Speech is, in most societies considered to be a concept that applies to the government's ability to censor people's speech. This is well defined in the case of the US 1st amendment: it has zero implication on private entities.

Edit to add:

So in the example case, the US President has been banned from Twitter. People are claiming he's been "censored" by twitter. The government has done nothing to stop him saying whatever the fuck he wants, on national television even.

The hypocrisy on this topic by right wingers is pretty crazy when you think about it: Apparently a baker can refuse to make a cake because he can't sleep at night if two dudes kiss, but a social media platform can't stop someone from posting violence inciting messages on their website?

> Free Speech is, in most societies considered to be a concept that applies to the government's ability to censor people's speech.

While this is mostly technically true, unique aspects of the law in the US compared to other countries makes this false for practical purposes.

For example, labor protection laws in other countries protect employees from retaliation for their speech: a company is usually only allowed to fire employees for cause related to their employment. Private speech unrelated to my employer wouldn't suffice in the country I live in. Effectively, this means my employer cannot censor me.

A standard retaliatory consequence for disapproval of speech that people seek in the USA on the other hand is to have a person fired.

Your argument about employment falls down because the law doesn't prevent them from reacting to things you do.

If you go on TV and call the CEO a pig fucker, I guarantee you will face some consequences.

If you go on TV and call the President or Prime Minister a pig fucker, you may also face consequences from your employer, but the government (in countries where a concept of free speech applies) can't do shit about you saying that. They may decide to look more closely at your tax filings, or immigration status, or what have you.

You've missed the point.

The biggest chilling factor to speech in the USA is that your employer will fire you because a mob decides you said something wrong. This cannot happen in the country I live. That I could make my employment grievances public and this would give reason to my employer to terminate me with cause is irrelevant to the fact that my employer cannot fire me for wrongspeak on facebook.

Edit: of course I can still feel social consequences since my colleagues can make it very clear they disagree with me or find my view abominable.

That's an indication that the US needs to fix their laws about wrongful termination. It's unrelated to "censorship".

Of note, the current president and the party that nominated him, many of whom are complaining about this current situation, is in favour of "at will" hiring, whereby a person can be fired without reason.

I agree they need to fix their laws, but this is censorship.

Punishing people for their speech with the intention of suppressing other people from speaking is censorship and the people that do it are would-be censors. That is what the statement of chilling effect means. Instead of harassing librarians until the librarians burn books, the censors nowadays harass employers until they fire the speakers.

They're not making the distinction because there isn't one.

Speech can have all sorts of consequences, from losing a friendship to being imprisoned or executed. "Consequences" are a spectrum, and you're simply drawing the line in a different place to other people.

> Free Speech is, in most societies considered to be a concept that applies to the government's ability to censor people's speech.

This is a bold claim without any evidence. Certainly it's not the understanding that I grew up with, but I had the good fortune to have a history teacher who liked JS Mill.

I see open debate as part of a healthy society. I value the ability to hear perspectives other than my own. That's what "freedom of speech" means to me, not the narrow, American legal definition.

> The hypocrisy on this topic by right wingers is pretty crazy when you think about it.

I fully agree, and I'm not interested in emulating their hypocrisy.

> This is a bold claim without any evidence. Certainly it's not the understanding that I grew up with, but I had the good fortune to have a history teacher who liked JS Mill.

What are you talking about? It doesn’t matter who your history teacher is, the entire concept of free speech is about not locking people up for what they say.

That said, here in Australia we actually don’t even have a legally protected right to free speech. We don’t even have a bill of rights. And while I support the right to say anything without being punished by the government, I definitely don’t think that people should be able to broadcast a political message without doing the hard yards of actually, you know, telling the truth and formulating a reasonable argument.

Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. [1]

Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient."Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship

I am confident that my teacher was correct. Mill even shows up in the first article :)

> That said, here in Australia we actually don’t even have a legally protected right to free speech.

Yes, in countries that inherited the UK's common law system it is rarer for rights to be explicitly iterated. This only adds to the absurdity of claiming that "freedom of speech" is a purely legal concept, mind you.

> I see open debate as part of a healthy society. I value the ability to hear perspectives other than my own. That's what "freedom of speech" means to me

I don't think this open debate you're talking about actually happens much on social media. At least, outside of a few select Subreddits, I've very rarely seen it.

It's similar to when "human rights" is brought up.

There is no exact immutable universal definition, especially when it comes to edge cases and specifics. It varies across cultures, jurisdictions, and time.

Freedom from some consequences, yes, but it's secondary. The primary meaning is the ability to say things to the public.

In the Soviet bloc all media were state controlled and even xerox machines and typewriters were tightly controlled. It was non-trivial to even publish something (not to say there weren't consequences).

Free speech is an idea. It's also a law. Stop being pedantic over absolutely nothing.

I’m not being pedantic at all. Free speech - both the idea and the law - are about freedom to say what you like without interference from the government. That’s it.

I don’t know the name of the concept which says that companies should be forced by the government to let anyone use their platform to spread their lies, but it’s not “freedom of speech”.

Free speech the idea involves any censor, not just the government. What distinction did you have in mind, if it's not that one?

Assuming the person being censored is a liar helps your argument, but it doesn't really line up with reality at all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com