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1. dalbas+(OP)[view] [source] 2022-11-03 11:05:34
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.

replies(1): >>pjc50+G
2. pjc50+G[view] [source] 2022-11-03 11:09:57
>>dalbas+(OP)
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?
replies(1): >>dalbas+hg
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3. dalbas+hg[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-11-03 13:06:00
>>pjc50+G
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.

replies(1): >>pjc50+qv
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4. pjc50+qv[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-11-03 14:13:38
>>dalbas+hg
> 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".

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