[platevoltage]

I'll give you that Liberals are also antagonistic towards online free speech, but pretending that we have more free speech online right now than ever before is the most insane thing I've ever heard. Just because you can post nazi shit on Twitter now does not mean we have more online freedom.

[nxm]

Please provide evidence that online speech in the USA is restricted in any way, unlike in Europe where you get fined and/or arrested for mean memes

[infinite_spin]

This was pretty easy to find examples of.

https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/when-complaining-about...

https://ij.org/press-release/supreme-court-rejects-appeal-of...

https://www.rcfp.org/supreme-court-throws-out-1876-criminal-...

https://www.fire.org/cases/larry-bushart-v-perry-county

There's a lot more.

[TFNA]

When OP said we have more free speech than ever, and some here quibble with that, it's not necessarily about coercion under legislation. The early web saw a hell of a lot of racist or angry flamer posts on any site where any reader could comment. A classic example are GNAA posts in nearly every comment thread on Slashdot, HN's forebear.

Today's internet has, for the masses, contracted into a limited number of commercial platforms that have strict moderation for brand-protection reasons. Many platforms have outright removed fondly remembered discussion fora (e.g. IMDB, or Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree) just so they don't have to bear the expense of moderating and ensuring no posts threaten their brand image.

I imagine that most people here will deem the decline in highly toxic troll posts a good thing, but any veteran of the old internet will still notice that the range of speech met in daily net surfing is less than it once was.

[foco_tubi]

Larry Bushart was arrested and jailed for more than a month for posting a Charlie Kirk meme.

Douglass Mackey was arrested and convicted for posting satirical Clinton election ads, though this was later overturned after he spent months in prison.

[SpicyLemonZest]

It’s the official position of the US government that posting the number 8647 is a crime. I know this sounds like a crazy thing I made up, but they posted a detailed explainer (https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-grand-jury-indicts-fo...): any reasonable person, they argue, would know that this number is a threat to kill the President.

It's also true, I should acknowledge, that the US has a strong system of checks and balances against stupid proclamations like this and a generally oppositional culture around speech restrictions. It's unlikely I'll be arrested for posting 8647, or indeed for pointing you to other illegal numbers like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech_Flag, and if I were I'd wear it as a badge of honor. But just because Americans are successfully fighting it doesn't mean there's no issue.

[platevoltage]

Do I need to list the people who have been threatened with deportation for pro-palestine speech or can you find those yourself?