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Comment by brigandish | Hacker News Reader

> Isn't this exactly the world that free speech / pro-liberty advocates want?

No. The main consequence of speech that is being opposed should be… speech, not action to get that speaker's speech curtailed, whether by speech or other means.

> I can also decide whether to patronize their business or not

These people didn't have to turn up to the talk. That's not the same as cancelling a talk because someone said they don't want it to happen.

> And their boss has the right to decide whether to employ them or not > … > But if I'm making my opinion known, and their boss agrees, isn't that the intended effect of discourse?

Did MIT change its decision to host the speaker because of a well-reasoned argument - as you point out, one of the intended consequences aimed for via free speech - or was it due to some other kind of pressure?

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This post, like many in this thread, misrepresents what free speech is. Free speech protects us from government retribution, nothing more. I agree that it's bad form to lobby the university directly, but it's their right to do so, and the university has a right to change which speakers it invites. Having it any other way would be an attack on free speech.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The purpose of free speech is to prevent the government from punishing people for their views. A similar imposition on citizens would violate their 1st amendment rights.

>This post, like many in this thread, misrepresents what free speech is. Free speech protects us from government retribution, nothing more

This may be the case de jure, but de facto, the spirit of the concept of free speech, and why it is important enough to enshrine in amendment, transcends the relationship between the government and the governed. A society where speech is effectively no longer free because of authoritarian-like control of discourse by non-governmental bodies requires the same protections that it would against the government to remain free from authoritarianism. Particularly when censorious or retributive measures by these ostensibly apolitical actors almost all tend to align with the machinations of one political party.

So the fact that social media platforms (and cloud hosts and credit card companies, etc) effectively collude to control the modern, digital public square to preferentially suppress the political views of about 50% of the country is just as much of a threat as government censorship, since the outcome is the same.

Free speech is an ideal where you are judged by what you do and not by what thoughts you express. USA named one of its laws after that ideal, but the American law isn't what the ideal is. The ideal would be that the first amendment applied to everyone, so nobody could punish anyone for views they express. But that is in no way enforceable so it doesn't exist.

It means that a guy can say X. Then twitter mobs can say that guy X is an idiot and should get fired. Both of those are fine. But firing the guy because he said X is where the free speech line is crossed. As long as it all just remains speech it is fine.

> What do I do about {contrived example X}?

What does the government do? The government does a ton of stuff, like hire people, fire people, run a lot of organizations etc. If they can do it without violating the ideal of free speech then so can you.

The government, by definition, holds the monopoly on legal violence. This is the fundamental difference. It isn't a big corporation.

But firing the guy because he said X is where the free speech line is crossed.

There are people who argue employers have the right to fire anyone for any reason because of their own rights. The current reality in the US is that people are routinely fired for even mentioning the concept of a union in the workplace. I agree that is against the ideal of free speech, but not the law as it exists.

The thing I have noticed over the past year is that many of the same people who think it's great to fire people for collective action suddenly get very imaginative about free speech when it happens to people they agree with.

I disagree that free speech is/ought to be free from other people judging you on the contents of that speech.

I openly and intentionally judge people based on their speech/thoughts they express. Say smart, curiosity-invoking things and I think more highly of you. Say closed-minded, racist things, and I think less highly of you. I find it hard to imagine that most other people don't do exactly the same thing (possibly with a different fitness function, but updating their opinion of someone based on thoughts expressed nonetheless).

If I say something that makes you think I'm an asshole, I think you should update your opinion of me in that direction without waiting for me to make some physical action to that effect.

There's free speech in legal term as coded in US constitution which have nothing to do with Non-US citizen like me. Then there's free speech as in universal value that every member of civilized modern society should uphold. I think GP is talking about the later.

I’m not American nor do I live in the US nor am I subject to US law - is free speech impossible for me and all the billions of others in the world who are also in this same group, or is it perhaps you that has misunderstood and misrepresented what free speech is by conflating it with a legal provision in one jurisdiction, designed to help protect it from one entity?

> "Free speech protects us from government retribution."

It is so embarrassing to hear fellow Americans quote the First Amendment as being the definition of freedom of speech when even a casual perusal of history points to the First Amendment being inspired from the more general principle of freedom of speech originating in the Enlightenment. We really need to have better education in this country.

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