Sure, Twitter could be a free speech venue. Or it could be a venue with content standards that apply equally. Either of those has a kind of fairness.
But it chooses instead to be a proaganda outlet that lets everyone participate, but select politicians participate on a preferential bases with greater latitude, reinforcing the power of the already powerful and further marginalizing the already marginalized.
There are famous public safety exceptions to free speech that we all agree on. We don't allow people to yell "fire" in a theater for example. The current discussion is about if nuclear posturing threatens public safety.
> We don't allow people to yell "fire" in a theater for example.
Can we stop using ungrounded dicta from a since-overturned decision suppressing core political speech as if it were an uncontroversial statement of an established valid limit on free speech?
It seems that every time someone mentions the dreaded three word phrase "freedom of speech", someone else pipes up with this thoughtless pre-canned response: "It's not government!! It's not government!!" (or that XKCD comic)
Has it ever occurred to anyone parroting this that you can discuss the actual concept of freedom of speech outside of the sphere of influence the government has on it?
It does seem to have become a bit of a meme, someone says free speech and a line of replies show up with variations of "That only applies to blah blah".
It would be nice if instead there was a discussion about the intrinsic value of free speech in society, and how the open marketplace of ideas has a pretty impressive track record.
I agree, and you can even disagree in that discussion.
But to not have the discussion in the first place because of this meme of free speech solely being a citizen/government issue and not a concept in itself is a damn shame.
My problem with the discussion of free speech as a societal issue and not a governance one is that free speech will be an effect of a more fundamental shift in society, namely thoughtful consideration of another's talking points.
If you want free speech, you must foster a society in which it can exist without being exploited to coerce masses of people to think in the way you want them to by deceptive means.
So in this way, crying free speech in the streets is useless until people start preventing themselves from falling under the corrosive spells of populists.
You fix deception (edit: originally used 'populism' here in the sense of manipulating the concerns of the average citizen) with more free speech. More and more to shed light on lies before it can become something nasty.
I think you're getting it backwards, you can't reverse engineer a perfect society to cradle free speech, the society advances and becomes less violent through more speech.
Going back to the original point though, I think that it's totally fair to discuss freedom of speech alongside twitter as the company has in the past used it in their PR for positive gain. I actually agree that twitter is private and can enforce or ban what they like. What I don't agree with is thought-terminating cliches like not being able to discuss it because of the narrow view that freedom of speech is solely a citizen/government relationship.
In saying that, thank you for expanding on your thoughts.
There is a certain threshold of gullibility that can swing the society one way or another if you just start encouraging free speech without any tools to interpret and deal with it and its cognitive load. Either you have people eventually start being able to handle intellectually honest discussions, or everyone starts spewing shit and the people just succumb to the most enticing argument they hear and start parrotting it. (The latter is what we are seeing in today's society.)
You seem confused about what freedom of speech is. It doesn’t mean you can run your mouth anywhere you want without repercussions. It’s about the right to criticize ones own government without prosecution.
People have the right to tell someone they disagree with that they aren’t welcome here anymore. It’s kind of like ‘yeah I heard your opinion and it’s not welcome here’ - no freedom of speech has been infringed upon; I have the right to tell you to buzz off if I do please too
Freedom of speech is not solely "about the right to criticize ones own government without prosecution". It's fair to discuss it as a concept in itself.
Especially when the past leadership of the very company the article is about has enthused the free speech angle of the company.
But kudos for putting it in a sentence and not lazily breaking out that xkcd comic.
I actually agree that with the second part of your initial comment in that a private company can enforce the rules of speech that it sees fit.
What I was getting at, is that there seems to be this knee-jerk reaction recently where when someone mentions freedom of speech and a private platform in the same sentence, it's like a trope that lets people say "a-ha! this isn't a freedom of speech issue as it's not government, disregard all of this!".
It seems that people treat freedom of speech solely like a legal doctrine, when it's a broad concept that has legal implications in jurisdictions worldwide. I guess it's fair to say that the conversation will always sway towards what legal protections are offered or infringed, but that shouldn't prevent us talking about how private companies and individuals choose to explore it.
I think you're definitely getting at my point. There's the recognition of your inherent freedom of speech in the Bill of Rights, but it is not derived from the piece of parchment, just recognized by it. And if the US Federal Government can't impede that right, why should some random corporation that's never even turned a profit be able to?
Maybe what we need then is a term separate from 'Freedom of Speech', which is inherently tied to the constitution, so that people can break away from what you see as a parrot-like response and engage in the greater debate of 'Should we be listening or not?' regardless of government involvement. It would make for a much larger and more rich discussion, I'm sure.
I just don't like the idea that private companies have some obligation to be bi-partisan; because that's the way some people are throwing around the term "Freedom of Speech" like it's this ticket to say whatever you want to anyone you want.
That goes to the core of the problem though. The term isn't at all inherently tied to the constitution. It's an American-centric trope. I'm neither American nor live there so the constant clawing of the phrase back to that is tiring.
But it chooses instead to be a proaganda outlet that lets everyone participate, but select politicians participate on a preferential bases with greater latitude, reinforcing the power of the already powerful and further marginalizing the already marginalized.