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Comment by KozmoNau7 | Hacker News Reader

You can say as many wrong things as you want, but you cannot expect that there will be no consequences.

Those consequences range from people not wishing to associate with you anymore at the mildest end, to actual fines and jail time, if your speech can be proven to have directly incited violence (the bar for which various according to country and jurisdiction).

You can't just claim that "I have no control over these words that are coming out of my mouth, and I take no responsibility for them", free speech doesn't work like that.

And if your strongest argument for saying something is "I have the right to say this", then maybe reconsider whether it's actually worth saying.

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If freedom of speech is so limited, does it even exist as a freedom anymore?

You could say I have the "freedom to take anything I want" except I mustn't take anything that belongs to somebody else. Do I really have any freedom with that restriction in place?

Personally I don't think we have freedom of speech (in the UK, certainly legally we do not). You have to be careful of what you say and who you say it to. Maybe that's OK, and free speech was a failed experiment. But to claim we have that freedom whilst restricting it thus is just wankery.

It is absolutely a freedom.

The really important thing here is that your freedom does not overrule the freedom of others. It's freedom of speech, not an obligation to listen to or agree with or condone what you say.

As always, if your greatest argument for saying something is that you have the right to say it, maybe reconsider what you're about to say.

So "freedom of speech" is where you can say what you want, except that if you say the wrong thing to the wrong person, then there are potentially serious repercussions, up to and including imprisonment.

I'm curious to know what not having freedom of speech would look like.

I'll repeat myself: "your freedom does not overrule the freedom of others."

Words can and do cause harm, just as actions can and do. You don't see very many people seriously arguing for "freedom of action", because that would be an utterly chaotic and brutal society, even worse than the extremes of feudalism or warlordism.

Actions have consequences, and words have consequences. Arguing that you cannot be held responsible for the words that come out of your mouth or text written by your hand, is completely ridiculous.

Often I see the very same people who argue fiercely for personal responsibility above all, turn around and argue for free speech absolutism, seemingly unaware of the absurd incompatibility of those two stances.

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