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Comment by softcactus | Hacker News Reader

Exactly. Free speech does not mean freedom from the consequences of your speech. How do people not understand that?

"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."

First sentence of the definition on Wikipedia. What do you believe retaliation means in this context? If your consequence is a rebuttal or criticism, I have said nothing. Otherwise you are just wrong.

Retaliation by the government. Freedom of speech has nothing to do with private citizens censoring each other.

Very telling that you find more value in the hate speech than in the value of the victims ability to protect themselves. Especially when both are equally as much free speech.

It generally means freedom from government consequences. It also generally means that third parties won't actively prevent you from speaking to people who choose to listen to you.

Unless people decide to pressure the third party into de-platforming someone, which is their freedom of expression. I don't understand why the free speech absolutists on HN are incapable of understanding that private citizens pressuring a company to take action against a hate site is equally as much free speech as the hate site itself. By your own standards, nothing objectionable is occurring here. They just want to be contrarian.

There's pressure, but at some point, it can cross the line into extortion (which is not protected).

Let me know when it crosses that line then.

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