[panny]

But everyone here loves jawboning and agrees the government should suppress speech. Well, at least when their team is in office. Whether it's ICE Block or IVM Block, you can probably find a reason why you too think speech freedom is just a little too free for your tastes.

[JoshTriplett]

> But everyone here loves jawboning and agrees the government should suppress speech.

That sure is quite an assumption you're making.

Governments should have zero control over speech and zero ability to impose consequences on speech. Individuals and most groups should have absolute freedom of association, which is precisely what they're exercising when choosing not to associate with some speech and some speakers

[bell-cot]

> Governments should have zero control over speech and zero ability to impose consequences on speech...

Perhaps you are an "absolute" free speech absolutist, but does that include:

- Swatting?

- Doxxing?

- Yelling "Fire!" in the proverbial crowded theater?

- Liable and Slander?

- Spreading nude pictures (real or faked) or personal medical information without consent?

- Threatening (relatively) defenseless individuals with physical harm?

- Impersonation?

- Blackmail?

[JoshTriplett]

> Perhaps you are an "absolute" free speech absolutist

Emphatically not, in the sense it's commonly used, but I think the distinction between "shunned by private individuals/groups/companies" and "prosecuted" is critically important.

I'm not going to go through all of these point-by-point, but as a couple of examples:

> - Swatting?

Inciting an action should be charged on the basis of the action and the probability of having incited it. Charge them with attempted murder. Also, fix the mechanisms that make it feasible for a person to too-easily call down excessive force on someone's home or office.

> - Yelling "Fire!" in the proverbial crowded theater?

Inciting a predictable panic that gets people injured should get you charged over the injuries. But also, the original version of that phrase was used as part of an abominably bad ruling restricting people speaking out against a military draft, so it's a bad example.

See also laws about fraud: the speech isn't the issue, the deception leading to swindling people out of something is.

Similarly, credible threats to commit a crime should be charged accordingly, not because of the speech but as prevention of an intended/planned crime. (With a great deal of caution, due to the balance between preventing it and the hazards of charging a crime that hasn't happened yet; Minority Report is not a blueprint.)

[cookingrobot]

What are those things? Googling didn’t help.

[belorn]

The later is the case that then supreme court ruled on in 2024 (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c100l6jrjvno).

I suspect it goes to explain why this new bill is bipartisan. That case failed because the plaintiffs did not have a legal standing to sue.

"In a dissent that detailed emails, press conferences, and past decisions, Justice Alito painted the "jawboning" as "blatantly unconstitutional".

Wednesday's ruling, he wrote, "permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think"."

Regardless if one agree with them, it do demonstrate that conservative side think that there is a risk that governments will attempt to persuade platforms to moderate content, and that this is a risk. This new bill seem to make it much easier to give people a legal standing to sue, thus allowing the supreme court to give a different verdict if a similar situation happen again.

[panny]

ICE Block is the app mentioned in the article which the Trump administration pressured Apple to remove from the app store. It allowed you to notify people in the area when you see ICE (presumably to give illegal aliens an opportunity to evade ICE enforcement).

IVM Block is my tongue in cheek reference to the Biden administration doing everything in their power to block discussion of a safe and effective treatment for Covid which would eliminate the legal justification for the EUA on Covid vaccines and spoil their giant investments in those pharma companies.

[triceratops]

> Biden administration doing everything in their power to block discussion of a safe and effective treatment for Covid

I've seen it discussed half a million times.

> spoil their giant investments in those pharma companies.

Whose investments?

[verall]

Are you suggesting ivermectin was a safe and effective enough treatment for COVID that it would obviate the need for the vaccine?

[ToucanLoucan]

So a real thing that people actually made to accomplish something and a fake thing you made up in your head to be angry about.

[sellmesoap]

^^^ Proof that IVM block was very effective!

[khazhoux]

IIRC any FB post claiming that the Wuhan coronavirus originated in the Wuhan coronavirus lab, would be removed and could result in user ban, at request of the federal government.

[ShinyLeftPad]

That was true for a period of time. Something like a couple months if I remember right.

[platevoltage]

What were the consequences for this "request" not being implemented?

[panny]

The revolving door of corruption between the FDA and Pharma industry is pretty well documented. But it looks like my speech freedom is going to cost me some more karma. Darned consequences of speech freedom are at it again.

[ToucanLoucan]

Firstly, freedom of speech does not guarantee you freedom from consequences of your speech. The government can't stop you from saying stupid shit, however it also can't stop other people from telling you you're stupid.

Second, horse dewormer doesn't cure COVID. Censoring dangerous misinformation from fools like yourself who will believe it because it's given to them via the right mouthpiece is a good idea, because if you don't, then you end up with fools like yourself, years after the fact, still regurgitating it.

[jbritton]

There are multiple hypotheses for methods of action for IVM against covid that were plausible and deserved serious funding and investigation by governments. This did not happen. What did happen is the two people who brought it to the attention of congress got slandered the next day in the press and then got their careers destroyed. Anyone else who ever mentioned it also got dumped on by the press. There are over 100 studies now, many of which showed positive results. Most of the studies were small. There have been questions of the quality of many of the studies both the ones showing benefit and the ones showing no benefit. There is one well known fraudulent study and the press loves to extrapolate that to every study. The FDA has admitted to not looking at the data. The CDC and WHO did not write up any kind of analysis. They looked at a couple bigger studies that showed no result and said it’s inconclusive. No government has bothered to look into the RCTs that showed positive results. I don’t know if it works or not. It seems clear to me that profits, politics, power structures, got in the way of finding the answer. IVM is a very safe drug with the proper dosing. 300 to 500 million people in Africa take it yearly for parasites.

[carlosjobim]

> Firstly, freedom of speech does not guarantee you freedom from consequences of your speech.

It really does, that's the entire point. If you go find somebody and physically attack them for what they've written on HN about for example medicine, that makes you the law-breaker.

I understand from the way you write that you might consider it your right to do such things to other people who don't have the same opinions as you, but freedom of speech protects them against retribution from you or anybody else, including from the government.

[jMyles]

Although I agree that ICE block and its various sibling apps and spinoffs are important and do accomplish something meaningful, it's certainly not a "fake thing" that many of the world's foremost experts on the relevant topics were censored with regard to epidemic response.

Facebook's treatment of the BMJ investigation of the unblinding of the Pfizer trial (which of course, turned out to be spot-on) was absolutely shocking, and is just one of the many instances of "ICE block-level" censorship.

(In case you need a refresher on the Facebook-censors-BMJ drama, I summarized it a few months ago here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46232902 )

[jMyles]

Obviously censorship of both the location of ICE agents (or other terrorist threats bearing state decals) and censorship of discourse over the science of respiratory pathogens has been awful; I don't recall anyone here on HN cheerleading either of them.

In fact, it seems to me that you've chosen precisely two areas between which a palpable bridge exists, contradicting the two-party zeitgeist.

HN, for all its many flaws, is one of the few places where important evidence such as the diamond princess dataset and the cochrane review of evidence of mask (in)efficacy received robust discussion and, seemingly, resulted in changed minds.

Likewise, I don't recall anyone but a few trolls suggesting that Apple's assistance to ICE in covering its tracks was a legitimate exercise of state (to the extent that pressure was a factor) or corporate (to the extent that it created market esteem) pressure.