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Comment by lordnacho | Hacker News Reader

Seems to be a completely missed side of freedom-of-speech. We keep talking about being allowed to talk, but we rarely hear about who is talking.

"The best idea will win" is quaintly 18th-century enlightenment. They hadn't foreseen the media machines of the future.

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It has absolutely nothing to do with freedom of speech though

Sure it does. Freedom of speech has the side effect of wealthy people and organizations being able to purchase louder speech, and often mask that process.

This is the big problem with corporate personhood. If we ditch that concept, which seems nonsensical on its face to me, our individual free speech can remain better protected. Without corporate personhood those individual limits on campaign donations and lobbying might actually work.

So freedom of the press doesn’t apply to the corporation New York Times, Inc.?

Dedicated news organizations are protected separately by freedom of the press, no need to make Exxon and Apple "persons" with free speech rights to maintain freedom of the press.

There probably need to be additional restrictions on what constitutes a news organization though otherwise Google might start calling itself "the press" and partisan organizations will own the press. Things like not engaging in other forms of business or taking money from lobbyists and political campaigns.

It sounds nice, but "freedom of the press only for approved entities" tends not to work out that well.

It's not hard, really. Are you a corporation? If no, it doesn't concern your freedom.

This. The wealthy will always have loudest voice in a zero regulation speech environment.

Well, if the part of masking the process is a problem, you can simply unmask it.

And not having freedom of speech would magically do the opposite ?

Who espoused that opinion?

"Free speech as an idea is of limited value. Free speech as a set of material conditions from which we speak is worth fighting for."

Explored at incredible length here:

https://bearistotle.substack.com/p/bearistotle-solves-free-s...

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