[poorjohnmacafee]

Well every family member and person I've ever gotten to know well enough where we talk politics, believe that the state naturally seeks to increase its power over time, so that people should be skeptical of the state. As cliche as it is to bring up, this is what the American founding fathers talked extensively about. Freedom of speech is the fundamental way that people can push back when governments do this, inevitably as they try to, as every state in every historical period has tried to.

Again, they're either naive or that's what they want and should be honest about it.

[freejazz]

The founders also were aware that the only freedom of speech that you have is from the gov't restricting your speech.

[remarkEon]

This is absolutely not at clear cut as you are describing it. They were well aware that public opinion generally understood is what is supposed to bound government action. I don't have all the Federalist references handy atm, but it is not the case that they would have said "meh if a private corporation does it it's okay". As will all things with those folks it's considerably more nuanced than that.

[freejazz]

I don't actually think it's more nuanced than that because the constitution is pretty explicit about "free speech" and the founders certainly weren't advocating that publishers have to publish things they didn't want to publish so maybe you can do us all a favor and explain where you think the nuance is as opposed to just suggesting it has to be more complicated than that.

[Jensson]

Lets say we have a company that pays politicians to do what they want, this is what you call free speech. This company also has the power to silence peoples voices on the public forum of that day, this is what you call free speech. Do you think this is what the founders intended by "free speech"? I do not, these two together means that the line between government and big corporation gets blurred, and that now effectively the people who decides what gets legislated are also the people who are free to censor people.

[freejazz]

The founders didn't intend anything for "free speech" save for what they enshrined in the constitution. I'm not sure how that could be more clear. Facebook is not a public forum. Back in the founders time, the only public square was the actual public square. There were even fewer publishers with even fewer opportunities for people to have their ideas amplified and disseminated, and even back then they did not think that xyz printing press had any obligation to publish anything anyone wanted to.

[PrincessJess]

They didn't account for a corporatocracy.

[freejazz]

Is this an argument? Do you think more people had more access to publishing in their time compared to today? I'm really struggling to understand why you think you are making a slam-dunk argument and that you haven't actually said anything of substance isn't helping me get there.