zlacker

I find it problematic when the prerogative to speak entails a necessary monetary cost to be paid by someone else for amplification and discovery, and that money is private money. Engineers aren’t plentiful or cheap.

If hypothetically every metaphorical YouTube should close for business because perhaps governments shut down ad funding, or if YouTube starts charging money, is my prerogative of speech in peril?

And if AT&T and all the other phone companies converge on the position that I must pay big bucks to talk to people, is that censorship? It’s not like I can easily find a free version of AT&T.

If I am enormously underpowered that I cannot bid for speaking time on TV, is that censorship? I’m basically an incompetent David bidding against Goliaths.

>>threat+(OP)
>If hypothetically every metaphorical YouTube should close for business because perhaps governments shut down ad funding, or if YouTube starts charging money, is my prerogative of speech in peril?

No because it's not related to your specific content.

Even if you were to make the argument that X content doesn't make money and costs too much, if someone pulls the trigger without giving you recourse to resolve issues, then it is violation of free speech.

In your example, if AT&T tells you that you must pay more money to say certain topics, then it's a violation.

If it costs money, it costs money, nothing wrong with that. The issue is intent.

>>threat+(OP)
So this is kind of what I mean by "no a priori definition."

Social media is new. The "right" to broadcast was almost theoretical before the internet. It wasn't what free speech was about.

IMO, we don't have free speech at all on fb/youtube/etc... currently They can close your account and take away your right. They don't need a court and it's all up to them. You have individual speech on those sites.

>>dalbas+d1
One day I'll have to write a thing about freedom of speech vs freedom of reach: what right to people have if any to machine distribution or algorithmic suggestion to other people?

>>threat+(OP)
“Right to Speech” does not equal “Right to Distribution”.

You are free to say what you want without going to jail, physical punishment, or fines (unless your speech is part of committing some other criminal behavior—such as fraud—or civil tort).

But nobody is obligated to provide you the means of distributing your speech.

Thats not to say that there aren’t asymmetric means of disseminating ideas or messages over third-party distribution channels. But you’ve got to be savvy enough to do that, or separately powerful enough to buy your own distribution.

Even owning distribution is pointless if you can’t communicate your ideas in a way that attracts listeners. “Right to Speak” doesn’t equal “Right to be heard”.

>>drekip+51
The counterpoint to this is that putting in a barrier that only some people can pass can work as censorship. If you raise the price very high, then only people with lots of money can use it. This means all (or at the vast majority of) of the content is that which is desirable by the very rich. So by raising the price to a high level you are censoring content that is of interest to the poor but not the rich.

This is actually exactly how big media/big politics operates.

>>pjc50+T1
Write it now. This is the time.

Look... IMO, these tend to go the wrong way from the first sentence. Almost any polemic on this topic starts by assuming or implying that Freedom of Speech means X or that censorship means Y.

The reality is that Freedom of Reach means something totally different than it did 25 years ago. Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Speech didn't use to be the same thing.

We can't keep going to the past and pretend that early republican politicians, early liberal philosophers or early modern lawyers have the answer for everything rights-related. It's ridiculous to extrapolate what Free Speech means in the era of TWitter and Youtube from the early modern era's thoughts on pony mail and leafleting.

What Freedoms we have, or should have, now that technology enables them, is a question for people of now to decide.

>>dalbas+uh
> We can't keep going to the past and pretend that early republican politicians, early liberal philosophers or early modern lawyers have the answer for everything rights-related

Indeed. But people like those things, and use them as anchors for their own political views. Ninteenth-century views of freedom of speech excluded huge areas of material under "obscenity", much of which simply isn't obscene now in the west. Such as "information about contraception".

>>drekip+51
Why does specificity of intent matter? If the government on mere whim decided that I can't use the phone, is that somehow not a violation of free speech? In this scenario, is it any less of a violation just because the government acted on a whim as opposed to any specific intent to manipulate conversation?