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Comment by phillipcarter | Hacker News Reader

> Large corporations policing free speech

Let me stop you right there. This is not a free speech issue. Please be precise with your terminology.

> This is not a free speech issue. Please be precise with your terminology.

Let me take a stab in the dark: you think "free speech" refers only to the United States' First Amendment, and not a universal principle, which:

* according to Wikipedia, 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"

* or, according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is the "freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

You're shifting goalposts.

No, you need to be more precise in your wording if you're not getting your intended message across.

There's really nothing else to say here other than, "no, you do".

Just stating the type of fallacy being made is not evidence the fallacy occurred.

You should qualify how the goalpost is being shifted. I don’t see any evidence to your claim.

That's not true. The concept of free speech, and what is specifically allowed and disallowed by the First Amendment of the USA, are two different things. Not least which is that the latter applies to a small fraction of the world's population.

Censorship of ideas by a private company is not a first amendment issue. It is a free speech issue.

And let me get you out the way so gp doesn't get sidetracked. Nobody needs pedantry when the subject under discussion is existentially important, and every normal person already knows what the problem is.

Firstly, this is not existentially important aside for the people whose lives are ruined (and will continue to be ruined) by Kiwi Farms. Secondly, "every normal person already knows..." doesn't mean anything, because (a) you don't get to declare what normal is, and (b) you don't know that.

It is a free speech issue. It is not a First Amendment (or equivalent in non-US jurisdictions) issue. Legal provisions that protect speech from government interference provide a minimum level of free expression; in a health society private citizens and organizations will generally go above and beyond that minimum.

Just a reminder that (lowercase) "free speech" always has a giant fucking asterisk after it. It has never been, and will never be, absolute.

"Freedom of speech and expression, therefore, may not be recognized as being absolute, and common limitations or boundaries to freedom of speech relate to libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting words, hate speech, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, food labeling, non-disclosure agreements, the right to privacy, dignity, the right to be forgotten, public security, and perjury. Justifications for such include the harm principle, proposed by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty, which suggests that 'the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others'." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech

Additionally, private companies can always throw you off their platform for any reason. No shirt, no shoes, no service.

"Free speech" for normal people means "the practical freedom to speak freely", not whatever nitpicking legalistic definition I infer you're using.

I don't think you know that this is what it means, nor do I think you know what "normal people" entails.

Takes some presumption to demand precision in terminology while being completely and totally incorrect.

Okay.

It's an American company hosting content for an American. The laws of America apply.

Precisely, they do! Which is why this isn't a free speech issue. Cloudflare is not a utility, nor are they a government entity.

As another commenter already pointed out, you’re treating first amendment and free speech as synonymous. If you request that others be precise with their language you should too.

This could be a free speech issue although not a first amendment issue. America does have a constitutional protection for citizens from their government in terms of free speech but we also place cultural value to it and laws that codify or restrict certain speech.

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