[chc]

Surely freedom of speech is enshrined in the Constitution because free exchange of ideas is valuable. When you say that only the government should respect this ideal and allow for exchange of ideas, I don't see how you can say you value free speech much at all. "It shouldn't be illegal" has to be about the smallest value you can give something.

[tptacek]

First, that's not why we have a First Amendment. The Constitution's goal is to create an ordering of government that durably allows the people to govern themselves. Speech must be shielded from restrictive laws, to the extent practicable, in order to ensure that people will have a voice in their governance.

You can see this in the fact that the Constitution guarantees speech, and a right to bear arms, and a right to assemble --- but not a right to privacy, or to bodily integrity, or even to true equality under the law between genders. Those latter rights are also rights, acknowledged implicitly by the Constitution (as Locke --- who also didn't support unfettered free speech --- would say, the government protects rights, but doesn't grant them). Why are these specific rights in the Bill of Rights? Because they're the ones deemed most important to ensuring self-governance.

Second, 'raganwald isn't saying Reddit should be forbidden to host hate groups. He's saying he refuses to patronize businesses that are incentivized to host hate groups and do so without restriction. The antidote to bad speech is more speech, and that's what 'raganwald is doing, both out loud and with his pocketbook.

[braythwayt]

> Surely freedom of speech is enshrined in the Constitution because free exchange of ideas is valuable

That’s an interesting point to discuss, but before we do, are we talking about Reddit?

Any forum that has moderation in the form of downvotes and/or flags does not have a "free exchange of ideas." If we state something unpopular, we get downvoted and/or flagged and our speech disappears rapidly.

The ideal is that downvoting is for making poor arguments, not unpopular arguments. But few people believe this is what happens in practice. In practice, Reddit is moderated, it’s just that the moderation within a forum is carried out by the very people arguing with each other.

In a subreddit like/r/CoonTown, we are not going to find a free exchange of ideas with respect to race. If we want that, we have to go to a subreddit like /r/AskScience, where there is very active and aggressive moderation, and that moderation is associated with a set of laws restricting what you can and cannot say.

I think that there is a great deal of value in the idea of free speech, and in the utopian ideal of a free exchange of ideas. But I am not convinced that allowing all and sundry to create their own subreddits that represent finer and finer slices of single-issue society is the mechanism for enabling a free exchange of ideas.