Hardly. Especially on the left. Including such issues as the ban on breastfeeding photos, ban on trans people using their names, and widespread failure to ban hate speech.
(I'm sure I've seen one case of someone recieving a pile of death threats, reporting them, getting told they were "not offensive", then reposting them as an image to say what sort of garbage facebook tolerates .. and then getting that post deleted by facebook. But not any of the original abuse.)
The problem is that free speech of any value has to be facilitated by the likes of Facebook and other companies. If companies control who gets banned for saying something, and their goal is largely profit-driven, and the consensus is to make communication habitable for the most consumers(as opposed to actual expression of ideas beyond vapid Instagram photos), we are essentially screwed. The left is at an advantage because they have the facade of being the ones who fight for social injustice and those who are "historically oppressed", which are things that most people, including many conservatives, can't really argue against on face value; when they are handed the keys to media power, they behave just as conservative religious fundamentalists would, just with their own particular set of ideas that are not always congruent.
That is why I find the public's support of censorship, and the socially-acceptable level of vexation over "offensive" ideas, to be very disturbing. I find that I cannot even trust a large number of people who I know, and I think many people have discovered the same thing, which is why platforms like Facebook have turned into digital ghettos.
Well this sounds unfortunate ...
> might get a reputation for being a bunch of things you're not
.. but that's just other people's free speech?
> I'm often seen as a conservative for bringing up the fact that violent crime in America is down
True, and also free speech. I'm slightly surprised this labels you as a conservative.
I'm not really seeing the "world of hurt", just a world of other people's free speech?
No. That saying "Hey, I want to own my own semi auto rifle." leads to someone thinking you are alt-right has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Their expressing their view of you being alt-right does, but the logical jump itself does not.
Now, people are free to think what ever they want. Not exactly given in a single Amendment, but people would agree holding some belief is a freedom. But we can still say that some beliefs being wide spread is a bad thing.
>True, and also free speech.
Their spreading their view of grandparent as being conservative is free speech. Their actually having this view is not related to free speech at all.
Take a comparison, imagine extremely racist views became extremely widespread and people kept bringing them up. Even though this is free speech, we still put limits on it. For example, the notion of creating a hostile work environment and the penalties that can bring.
Furthermore, the country most in favor of limiting free speech to protect minorities, Germany(70% pro, 29% against, total population) , ironically has the most experience with the dangers of both extremes of allowances on speech. On one hand the Nazi's were able to rise to power partly because they were able to publicly scapegoat groups of people who were eventually slaughtered en mass. On the other hand you have the Stasi who would torture and murder people based on a whiff of being critical of the ruling party.
Look, I'm for free speech, but lets not pretend that its an issue that doesn't require a modicum of nuance to approach.
They're not publishers, so your argument falls apart in the very first sentence.
I don't recall a time in history when services (what Facebook et al. are) were allowed to police the content of communications made with their service. I don't recall AT&T, when they allow customers to communicate using their telephone lines, being allowed to police the content of those communications. I don't allow printer manufacturers being allowed to police the things people print.
Before you reach for the keyboard to type the words, "that's different" - no, no it's not. It's not different at all. Facebook offers a service. They aren't publishers. My analogy is closer to reality than yours. It just so happens that Facebook is technically able to police my speech, and so you've chosen to shrug and say it's okay. If AT&T had been technically capable of listening to my speech and policing it, what argument would you make that they shouldn't be allowed to do that? Whatever argument you come up with, I make the same argument for facebook.
> I'm for free speech, but
"...but I'm not really for free speech."
It's all or nothing. You either accept it as a principle because you understand that it's literally the most important principle, or you don't. In your case, you don't.
This is because by posting on facebook or appearing on google you are implicitly now a representative of them because they're branding is all over that homepage. If you say something that facebook really disagrees with and would rather not say they have every right to not say it.
It's why Cloudflare didn't drop the Daily Stormer until after DS started to try and say the CF was on board with their views.
What law you would write and who it should apply to? You think Facebook should be mandated to host all non-illegal content, yes?
What about Flickr? What about Gardening.com? What about NoNazisAllowed.com? What would you propose as the legal standard for deciding who is a common carrier and who is not?
I don't have a horse in this race, but let's at least start the discussion with something concrete.
Has liberalism and free speech only existed in the time span where there's been regulated common-carrier type "services"?
Lets roll back the clock to before AT&T. Was there free speech and liberalism? Was any printer required to print anyone's manuscript? Was any newspaper required to be open to all opinions? Was any private person or organization required to spread those opinions across the world?
Historically, Facebook is much more like an open-to-the-masses publisher/distributor than you claim, with the difference resting more in economics (cost of publishing) than anything else. But that difference is hugely significant in practical terms - an unrestricted Facebook doesn't have much historical analog at all, hence the debate.
EDIT: apparenty people do talk about free speech, but they seem unaware of their rights.
The ideal "find your words despicable but defend your right to say them" is not all that common in practice, never has been. It's an idealist's position.
I'd guess that the results have more to do with political leanings on the underlying issue, than the free speech one. IE, the more concerned with hate speech, the more illiberal they are in the survey. Change "offensive to minority groups" to "spread lies about the President," and I suspect a different spread.
It needs to be courts who defend these things and they'll do it, if the laws are there.
I had to look that one up. A tankie is a hardline stalinist who defends old USSR policies in all cases. I really have a hard time believing that there is a rise in people like that.
The whole "antifa is just as bad"/"hard right and hard left are the same" thing just helps mask the real rise of the alt-right who have amassed a lot of power, they just helped elect a president. The hard-left has nowhere near that much power.
Tankies? I think of that as the Communists who supported Stalin's invasion of Hungary in the 1950s. What does that mean here?
I have no idea what chunk of the actual population they are, but I know a lot of people in Antifa self identify as tankies. I could be wrong though, usually am.
[0] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/20/40-of-millen...