[fragileone]

> American citizens may have freedom of speech, but they find themselves with vanishingly few public forums in which to exercise it fully.

Well put. As we've also seen from numerous leaks and incidents over the years, big business and government often works hand-in-hand, with revolving door policies and barely legal indirect bribes happening regularly.

That the government is now seeking to curtail the First Amendment by exerting pressure on these companies should be alarming to anyone.

[drewrv]

It seems to me like there are more forums for free speech now than ever before. When in our history has it been easier for the average citizen to find a platform to host their views?

[prvc]

Yesterday. After that, last week, easier; then last year, yet easier; 5 years ago, easier still, and so on. I will not speculate as to when the maximum was reached, but it was somewhere between the creation of the internet and the present.

[aww_dang]

>When in our history...

Before the masses were corralled into walled gardens. If a free and open Internet was a threat to gatekeepers, walled gardens are the solution. You can say anything you want on their platforms, as long as it adheres to the party's content guidelines.

The gate-kept illusion of freedom is arguably more toxic, because it normalizes the curated garden of propagandized views.

Yes, you have more options than broadcast TV, newspapers and radio. Especially if you espouse mainstream views which one would easily find on those sources.

There was a time before eternal September, let's call it August. Google searches were populated by independently run forums and websites. Tech giants were not bent on imposing their political will. Individuals were getting the word out about Hans Blix on independent sites. One can only wonder how Twitter or Facebook's fact checkers would handle that today.

"Experts confirm Saddam has WMD"

In the august days before fact checkers and Facebook, users could still obtain free hosting. They could even post on forums without learning the basics of HTML. That's when the history of the Internet turned.

[piokoch]

Good luck posting your doubts about Covid vaccination results on Twitter, FB or YT. You will not even notice how fast your wrongthinking will be detected and removed.

[criley2]

It's terribly put. The American concept of freedom of speech has nothing to do with access to public forums but rather is a limit on government action against your ability to run your own forum (newspaper, etc), and if you consider that when the Constitution and Bill of Rights were actually written, most Americans had significantly less forums. A few newspapers made up almost the entirety of public forums when the right was written, and none of them were forced to publish political content they disagreed with.

In fact, when you realize that the internet has provided more forums for free speech than any technology in history, it beggars belief to suggest that there are less forums now than before.

We are at the ultimate highpoint of access to freespeech forums in American history, and to suggest otherwise is nakedly ignorant conservative propaganda pushing an emotional angle against technology corporations who enforce common sense rules against violence, terrorism, and hate speech on their private networks.

I maintain that until Fox News or conservative talk radio is mandated by the government to stop suppressing my free speech rights to have access to the network to say whatever I want, that Facebook and Twitter should not be forced to support insurrection and violence masquerading as free speech.

It's hard to understate how outrageous this lie is. It's like suggesting "folks today have less access to electricity than at any point in American history". It's such immensely stupid lie that how could anyone fall for it?

[simiones]

While I don't think the original claim is in any way obvious, and you may well be right overall, you're also making a huge mistake in your look at history - newspapers are not and have never been "public forums" (except to the minor extent that they occasionally published letters to the editor).

Instead, historic public forums were mostly related to in-person meetings - town halls, clubs, pubs etc. These have not been outlawed nor disappeared entirely, but they are almost entirely atrophied. Instead, public discussion has moved almost entirely online. This has created a complex situation, as online forums are almost always private property, unlike the forums of the past.

This situation is creating an unprecedented situation for free speech - as private mega corporations, not bound by the first ammendment, are now in control of a huge percentage of public communication. It seems pretty clear that Facebook or YouTube can't just be handled as publishers, nor as network operators, nor as broadcasters, nor as any other traditional form of communication. We will need to invent a new concept of how such communication should be regulated and moderated.

On the other hand, it's also true there is more public communication, and with higher reach, then probably ever before in history.

[commandlinefan]

You might (might) have a point on an article about somebody complaining about having their Facebook or Twitter account suspended for being too right-leaning, but this article is literally about the U.S. government trying to use judicial pressure to shut down a social media platform.

[josephcsible]

> I maintain that until Fox News or conservative talk radio is mandated by the government to stop suppressing my free speech rights to have access to the network to say whatever I want, that Facebook and Twitter should not be forced to support insurrection and violence masquerading as free speech.

You don't think there should be a difference between platforms and publishers?

[rscoots]

>that Facebook and Twitter should not be forced to support insurrection and violence masquerading as free speech.

Where is "force" coming into this other than various government demands and threats?

[natural219]

He literally addresses your first point a few paragraphs into the meat of the statement. Do you have any kind of rebuttal or historical backing besides "nuh uh"?

[1] https://i.imgur.com/WuvtYIy.png

[ladyattis]

I don't believe Gab and other alt-righters really are being honest about the issue. They're only raising alarm because they're a small segment of society that doesn't get along with the rest of us so they don't have many or any lifelines to call on. For the rest of us, it's just a Tuesday, we've been acclimated to the sad reality that the State can and will infringe on rights whenever it sees fit to do so. This doesn't justify what the Congressional committees are doing but that the alt-right in general would be completely fine with having Congress sending out subpoenas to Food not Bombs or the IWW because they're looney leftists or some other spiel. But the moment the mailed fist of the State decides to smash them they squeal as loud as possible. I'm not taking their bait. They're not the good guys. When they universally agree that the rights of life and liberty are to be respected for all parties including leftists like myself then I might consider helping them. Otherwise, I'm not going to waste my time with them nor should you.

[1MachineElf]

>This doesn't justify what the Congressional committees are doing but that the alt-right in general would be completely fine with having Congress sending out subpoenas to Food not Bombs or the IWW because they're looney leftists or some other spiel.

Imagine all of the people who have been arbitrarily labelled as "alt-right" in social and traditional media. Do you actually think this is what they generally want?

[OrvalWintermute]

I'm alarmed. Mainly by the government coercing industry (lots of them, not just BigTech), getting in cahoots with industry, or directly paying industry (govt is definitely a monopsony in medicine since insurance rates are set off of medicare rates). I used to think govt had little control over our economy, but I was wrong.

Am hoping that our protections will be renewed because of potential loss of market share, and financial interests. BigTech isn't worth much if they go after 45% of their user population, I mean, product. Because of that I still actively use Amazon, Google, Facebook, and others

[phailhaus]

What pressure? Gab is not in trouble. You just don't have the right to conspire to overthrow the government. It's well-understood that Gab is not in any danger, but its members are if they did.

[colonelpopcorn]

Conspiring to overthrow the government is a national pastime in these "13 colonies".

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

Just because the causes have not been enumerated lucidly or coherently doesn't mean that there's not two different peoples in the USA who would like to dissolve the political bands connecting them to one another.

[rscoots]

There are obvious ways the govt can pressure people who've committed no criminal act.

Being put on a no fly list or terrorist watch list are some examples. Happened all the time during the war on terror.

[caeril]

> big business and government often works hand-in-hand

The bizarre irony is that this condition is a core tenet of Fascism, which is something the "woke" anti-free-speechists claim to be fighting against.

[slumdev]

It's pretty common to imagine the worst faults of oneself as being the motivators of one's opponent.

[bsksi]

This reminds me of the story of kiwi farms and how expensive and mentally taxing for the founder it's been to keep it online.

https://kiwifarms.net/threads/biting-the-hand-that-feeds.808...

[UncleMeat]

Total disagreement. There has never been a time in history where people have had anywhere near the capacity to express completely free speech, including wild bigotry, than today.

[BeFlatXIII]

The most recent Congressional Dish episode[1] has a discussion on this exact topic. Now I'm off to a rabbit hole of looking up information on fusion centers.

[1]https://congressionaldish.com/cd-237-hunting-domestic-terror...

[mc32]

Unfortunately people have stopped discussing free speech and our rights around speech on fist principles and have thoroughly subsumed them to tribal interests.

Free speech is good for antifa, bad for pboys. Free speech is good for pboys but bad for antifa.

They are both groups of hoodlums and both have the same rights to free speech, but people will want whoever they agree with more to enjoy it and those they agree with less to not enjoy the rights.