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Comment by seansouthern | Hacker News Reader

I thought spending money to get your message across is free speech? Isn't the Wikimedia Foundation an American company?

Free speech is only protected from the government. To a certain extent companies and individuals are barred from some types of actions that would prevent your voice from being heard (in the literal or figurative sense). But no company is required to permit all speech via their forums or by any individual person. HN is hosted in the US, but actively attempts to block spam content. Is that hurting the "free speech" of the spammers? Sure, if you're into that sort of thing. But HN has no obligation to give them the opportunity.

I'm continually amazed at how people can't understand this. You have a right to not have your free speech stifled by the government, but that has nothing to do with what a private corporation decides to let you do with their product.

The Wikimedia Foundation isn't a government agency, if that's what you're asking.

Free speech is also a value held by many people, including much of the Wikimedia community, separate from the formal enumerations and guarantees that limit government oppression.

You can't really call yourself a reliable friend of 'free speech' if your only concern is government censorship. Other forms of power and retaliation also suppress valuable speech.

> Other forms of power and retaliation also suppress valuable speech.

Right, like covert, paid shilling, which is what is at issue here. If Coca-Cola got to write its own page, Wikipedia would be a lot less useful.

Covert and thus unchecked by other viewpoints is a problem.

But is muzzling the entity and its spokespeople the truth-and-utility-maximizing response? It's suppressing information from the discussion, of which free speech advocates can be rightly suspicious.

Lots of paid work, even by people with an interest in the outcome, is useful. Until Wikipedia, all encyclopedias had mostly-paid authors. Almost all of the reliable sources Wikipedia uses have paid authors, often with a stronger-than-"NPOV" perspective.

Encyclopedia authors were paid by the encyclopedia company, which had an interest in its own reputation. The accusation here seems to be that this person was hiring herself out by the hour to write whatever she was paid to, all the while being employed by the encyclopedia company.

If Coke wants to donate to Wikimedia foundation, or submit content to impartial editors, more power to them.

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