[neonate]

"Free speech means congress isn’t allowed to silence the media"

That's the narrow redefinition of free speech that's currently in vogue with people who want to crack down on free speech. The whole time I was growing up, until quite recently in fact, free speech meant the freedom to speak your mind. The idea that people would routinely get fired for voicing their opinions, which is the world the new ideologues want to create for us, would have seemed shockingly unfree.

The classic cliché of the limits of free speech is "yelling fire in a crowded theater". That's where society used to draw the limit. Those lines are being way, way, way moved, and the people moving them are pretending that they're just reiterating the old standard. It's a radical shift, and everyone who doesn't subscribe to this orthodoxy can feel it, even if they're too vulnerable to be able to stand up to the priests.

[Reelin]

I completely agree with the sentiment of what you expressed.

However, I have to nitpick for accuracy. Despite becoming a cliche, "yelling fire in a crowded theater" was never actually the standard in the US. Currently it's "imminent lawless action". (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action)

[neonate]

I just mean that culturally it's the classic example that people would always bring up to illustrate the limits of free speech. The legal standard is a different question of course. But that's part of the issue here. Free speech isn't just a narrow legal question. It's a cultural value, and it's under assault in a way we've never seen in our lifetimes. The fact that "yelling fire in a crowded theater" was never actually the legal standard (which is interesting by the way!) supports this point.

[snowwrestler]

Companies can fire employees who they believe are being disruptive to a productive workplace. This is not a recent development in America.

Also, firing someone stops them from receiving a paycheck, not from speaking.

[neonate]

Whacking their knees with a crowbar wouldn't stop them from speaking either, but we don't do that when someone expresses a wrong view, nor should we try to get them fired. Free speech as a cultural value requires that people actually be free to speak. If one fears losing one's livelihood, one is not free to speak. That's obvious.

For a long time, it was the left who championed this. Noam Chomsky, an archetype of the left, has always been one of the biggest free-speech advocates in the US, and takes a far more expansive view than "free speech only means the government can't put you in prison". He advocated for Walt Rostow, a technocrat whom he had condemned in print as a war criminal, to be allowed to teach at MIT. But he's a libertarian socialist, and the left has taken an authoritarian turn.

The social-media driven ideological lust for driving wrong-speakers out of their jobs (and inflicting anything else the mob can muster) is clearly a recent development in America, and you have to go back at least to McCarthyism to find anything comparable.

[xzel]

To preface I'm going to be loose with the actual decision of Citizens United: Ironically, since the Supreme Court ruled restrictions on spending money was a violation of the first amendment, one could argue that losing your paycheck, and your ability to spend money you would have otherwise had, is a form of losing their speech.

I'm not sure I believe any of that but I think it is an interesting idea.

[dependenttypes]

You can't have the freedom of speech when there is a chance for retaliation.

[raxxorrax]

True, it also means to leave people to their opinion. The reduction to government is certainly short sighted at least.

People reiterating it to justify banning people have to live with the fact that they too might get excluded.

We have certainly dogmatic speech rules around racism and sexism while most people don't really perpetuate it, but can still be penalized if some schmuck thinks you have crossed a line of imagined decency.

Companies are really bad at policing speech, of course it would be restrictive. People demanding more of it should just be ignored because they haven't thought it through.

[kls]

I agree with you to a degree, but would argue there has always been a distinction about what is allowable as civil speech in the workplace, e.g if I cuss out a co-employee I would expect to be fired, even though I was just freely expressing myself. What I find disturbing is the firing of individuals for what they say outside of the workplace e.g on social media, and then due to internet outcry the person is fired. This is far too close to your workplace being able to decide what you are allowed to think, for me to be comfortable with, and it is becoming a norm.

[zimpenfish]

> free speech meant the freedom to speak your mind

As long as you were white, reasonably well-off, and probably male, yes. It did not mean that for almost everyone else.

Also "speaking your mind" has never been (and never should be) consequence free. There was just no recourse for the majority to apply consequences until recently.

> The idea that people would routinely get fired for voicing their opinions [...] would have seemed shockingly unfree.

I'm pretty sure people have been fired for voicing their opinions all the time - it just wasn't white folk, especially men. And not just fired - plenty of people have been killed for voicing their opinion in the USA since day 1. Just not really white folk, especially men.

> That's where society used to draw the limit.

Because society used to be a lot more lopsided in terms of diversity, power balance, etc. Now the balance has shifted and some of the people who previously had all the power do not like it one bit.

[neonate]

> As long as you were white, reasonably well-off, and probably male, yes. It did not mean that for almost everyone else.

There's some truth to that, but the solution is obviously to extend the same freedom to everyone, not dive into authoritarianism.

> There was just no recourse for the majority to apply consequences until recently

It is not at all the majority who are "applying consequences". It is a small vanguard of extremists, most of whom conspicuously belong to the classes they criticize.

[dependenttypes]

> There was just no recourse for the majority to apply consequences until recently

And this was a good thing. Before that the majority applied said consequences via witch trials.

> I'm pretty sure people have been fired for voicing their opinions all the time - it just wasn't white folk, especially men. And not just fired - plenty of people have been killed for voicing their opinion in the USA since day 1. Just not really white folk, especially men.

Said people did not have the freedom of speech. It would be great if we changed that so that it applies to everyone.