[leereeves]

That's a very important legal distinction, but it's absolutely irrelevant to the principle.

An honest call for freedom of speech would defend it against all censorship, public and private.

Indeed, between the two, I find censorship by private "oligarchs" more threatening. Public officials come and go, but the oligarchs remain.

(Edit in response to Volundr: We're not talking about small magazines about Harleys here. Someone who has billions of users and power that rivals governments and changes the outcome of elections must be prevented from abusing that power.)

[Volundr]

> An honest call for freedom of speech would defend it against all censorship, public and private.

I cannot disagree with this statement more. What speech you choose to publish and not is a vital part of free speech. If I publish a motorcycle newsletter, and choose to publish a letter to the editor about why Harley's are great, and don't publish another about why Harley's suck that is part of my protected speech. It arguably makes my magazine worse, but that's for my readers to decide. Perhaps they are tired of reading endless articles ragging on Harley's and are pleased to have a publication where they can escape it.

[colburnmh]

And it's not your responsibility to enforce false equivalency, either. You are not required to give equal time to all views. That's one of the ways that disinformation has vaulted into the national dialog so easily: media was offering equal air time to opposing parties and/or viewpoints, even if they knew that one of them was objectively untrue in an effort to be viewed as "unbiased".

[jtgeibel]

Even if we ignore the legal distinction here, you seem to be arguing that it is fine to abandon this principle in this particular case. You've even framed this as "[T]he left is making a big mistake here, defending a company town in the 21st century." It's almost like the rules are set so that the left can never win. When the right's actions blatantly violate the principle of free speech, rather than accept the newly shared common ground with the left and actually defend the principle, it is spun as a bad thing.

[leereeves]

The principle was abandoned a long time ago. I'd love to see a renewed commitment to the principle, but not on an ad hoc basis, case by case, only when it serves someone's interests. An ad hoc call for free speech is not a call for free speech at all.

Edit in response to below: The courts will enforce the law without any input from us. We can only wait and see what they do, if anything. So I'm not discussing that, I'm discussing the hypocrisy in advocating for the principle only when it suits you.

Second edit: It's possible that people simply have different interpretations of the principle, but if that was the case, I'd expect to see a lot more objections to schools that force mandatory ideology on their students, failing them if they disagree; more objections to Canada and European countries when they punish people for their expression; and fewer concerns about Musk taking over Twitter.

What I see instead is people who only call for free speech to defend speech they agree with. Which, as I said before, isn't free speech at all.

[jtgeibel]

> I'm discussing the hypocrisy in advocating for the principle only when it suits you.

Maybe the difference is that not everyone agrees with your expansive definition of the principle of free speech. So what appears to you as advocating for the principle only when it suits your opponents, is simply that not everyone agrees with your particular take on the principle itself.

Its fairly easy to support the interpretation of free speech where the state cannot use its expansive power to punish people for their expression. A forceful (via law) application of this principle to private entities would impact their rights in other ways (such as free association) so it isn't surprising that fewer people agree with this more extreme version of the principle.

[klyrs]

> I'm discussing the hypocrisy in advocating for the principle only when it suits you.I'm discussing the hypocrisy in advocating for the principle only when it suits you.

Only, you're the one who has defined "the principle" in your own terms. I prefer to read "the Constitution." The position that I defend is the one backed by the Constitution. You can portray that as flip-flopping every time I go from defending a company's right to curate content that it broadcasts to attacking government attempts to enforce religious beliefs through censorship and legislative retaliation to speech, but my position is unwavering.

[jtgeibel]

I'm really not following your argument here. It seems like you are saying that free speech is an important principle more expansive than what is currently codified in the constitution, but that because some parts of society have "abandoned" this principle (as if there was ever universal agreement on your interpretation of the broader principle) that now even enforcing the existing law would be too ad-hoc and a violation of the principle. This really seems like a throwing out the baby because there are a few remaining drops of bathwater on it kind of situation.