[geofft]

Then how do you decide what is (or should be) a right and what is not? Suppose someone claims a right to gay marriage, or a right to employ only people of their race, or a right to bear arms - how does society (the citizenry, the legislature, and/or the courts) decide whether that is indeed a right?

Absent a holy constitution given to us by the divine, the way we decide what is and isn't a right is we look at its effect. Places that recognize a right to bear arms, for instance, do so because they believe that arming the citizenry protects them against abuses of the government. Places that don't do so because they believe that disarming the citizenry protects them against crimes from other citizens. To the extent that one of these views is correct and the other is not, it is not because they guessed wrong about the nature of the universe - it is because one argument is correct and another is not.

Free speech is not axiomatic. Free speech is a right (and I agree it is a right!) because it has particular positive effects on society, through the benefits of open and unfiltered public discourse.

And the same reasoning helps us define exactly what "free speech" is. We make significant restrictions on free speech - classified information, copyright and trademark law, slander and tortious interference, electioneering laws, unauthorized practice of medicine or law, fraud, etc. - in the expectation that those restrictions serve to benefit society, and in the understanding that if we were to allow these forms of speech, they wouldn't really serve the goals which we see free speech, overall, as helping. If I were to say "I am a licensed doctor and I think you should take two pounds of Vitamin D a day," we understand that the benefit of me adding that statement to the public discourse is nil, and the harm is great, and so we don't recognize that as protected by free speech.

[FeepingCreature]

I mean, we could try using the democratic process, that seems to have worked reasonably well so far.

But you're right that I hold free speech to be a right for its own sake. So it's that I first believe that to be a right, on grounds of personal preference, and then I advocate for it because of that. But obviously I cannot convince someone on that basis - though that goes for pretty much every preference.

That said, I think the particular issue here is that the abrogation of the right of free speech created by this action did not come about through any particular instance of the democratic process, and is not actually based on any process of formally weighing rights against one another, but rather who can threaten to cost companies the most revenue.