[drone]

I'm not sure of any free speech "purist" that conflates the government with private parties. Regardless of how much "power" or "authority" the private party has. In fact, by every measure I've ever seen, a free speech "purist" would specifically say that Twitter has the right to amend, change, alter, or provide any opinion they so choose, no matter how much "authority" they may or may not have.

Every free speech "purist" I've ever met limits their opinion of control to the government.

[betwixthewires]

What's with this arbitrary distinction between "government" and "not government" with regard to rights? You never hear this made when talking about how the government is run by an oligarchy of billionaires.

Free speech "purists" (which I think is a stupid term, one only ever used by critics) set the distinction at having power. Power to silence people. The saying is "speak truth to power", not "speak truth to elected bureaucrats."

[lhnz]

  > Every free speech "purist" I've ever met limits
  > their opinion of control to the government.

I'm not American so don't have First Amendment rights.

There are people that have argued for free speech outside of this narrow lense. John Stuart Mill, one of the original advocates of free speech, argued against censorship by private parties.

He discussed the "the moral coercion of public opinion" and wrote that "the chief mischief of the legal penalties is that they strengthen the social stigma" and added that "It is that stigma which is really effective".

[kanox]

People are often perfectly willing to live with stigma. 70 million people did go and vote for Trump.