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Free speech is person-to-person in the sense that it only works if a person has it in practice, regardless of where the suppression is coming from.


I think the meaning of "free speech" is critically important here.

Being free to say what you want without government reprisal is (and should be) a fundamental right. In the US, there is significant legal precedent around this, and the instances where your right to free speech is impinged is limited to things like directly inciting violence.

However, if you get "cancelled" by society for something you have said (i.e. you lose business opportunities, friends, your job, you get banned from a forum, etc) then that doesn't qualify as impingement on your "free speech". That's just other people exercising their freedom of speech to tell you that they don't like what you said. Having "freedom of speech" does not mean other people are obligated to listen to what you have to say.

Freedom of speech != Freedom from all consequence for anything you say


By that logic, removing LGBTQ literature from school libraries is just "consequences" then. They don't have to listen.


If the government is allowing some people to suppress others, it’s still the government doing the suppressing.

Note that not being able to use other people’s computers/bandwidth is not suppression.


Hate speech is free speech. "Not being able to use other people's computers" is nice, but when private discussion forums make functionality changes that help to alter the outcome of elections, things start getting deadly serious, and we need to stop dressing up what we're doing in nice language like "not being able to use other people's computers/bandwidth". Just say it: we need to reserve the right to censor some individuals at will.


You are free to spend your time and money to help people broadcast whatever message they want.

And others are free to not spend their time and money to help people broadcast whatever message they want.




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