Sure, by the private individual. The problem is many things that were major moments in world history didn't pass the ruling-class's "minimum legitimacy requirement" at the time. Top-of-my-head examples: the Magna Carta, the Protestant Reformation, Indian Independence, anybody else's independence, Snowden, etc.

The Magna Carta is literally an agreement among the ruling class.

By "legitimacy" I don't mean that people agree with the conclusion being expressed, but that people agree it's at least an attempt at a structured argument based on actual facts. The 95 Theses were complaints against real injustices, not a set of fabricated smears.

Colonial independences generally were discussable - and discussed - at the time and in advance of their happening.

> The Magna Carta is literally an agreement among the ruling class.

Not in the way you're thinking. This is at the time when the King had absolute or near absolute authority. King John was the ruling class. While it was the English nobility that opposed the king, they did so (1) at great risk to their own safety, and (2) as the only ones in a position to do so. Certainly no serf could have accomplished this -- they would have been killed.

Second sentence of the (excellent) Wikipedia article about it:

> First drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury to make peace between the unpopular King and a group of rebel barons, it promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown, to be implemented through a council of 25 barons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta

> the King had absolute or near absolute authority. King John was the ruling class.

In theory, perhaps. But the barons could and did challenge the King with a degree of success. The king did not have a practical monopoly on the use of force. So the description of Magna Carta as an 'agreement among the ruling class' seems reasonable.

> but that people agree it's at least an attempt at a structured argument based on actual facts

This is far easier said than done. Just for starters, which "people" get to decide, and that's not even getting into the messy details at analyzing any arguments or facts.

We know who gets to decide - the owners of the communications platform and those who influence them. If Apple wanted to be more inclusive in the decision making, they could choose to do so.

More precisely:

We know who gets to decide - the owners of the communications platform and those who influence them, under current democratic legislation, which is completely subject to change according to the will of the citizens of a democratic country.

It's interesting how easy it is to observe stereotypical right-wing pedantically technical justification behaviors be adopted by the left (feel free to correct me if my assumption is wrong) as the topic of specific discussion moves around various dimensions of reality.

What is the major moment in this Infowars topic?

Step back and see the bigger picture. I think most of us think Infowars is a weird nuisance. But I was responding to the claim that political opinion should have to meet a pre-approved "minimum legitimacy requirement". If this is normalized, no other, actually important issue will be able to gain traction.

It’s either the targeted harassment campaigns against parents who’ve lost children, or the attempts to push the idea that liberals are planning a civil war and they need to be violently resisted. It may sound like he’s trying to incite violence but that’s just because you haven’t stepped back and appreciated the larger picture.

and yet all those things happened, in many cases without having to extend free speech to insane degrees.

No, there doesn't need to be an minimum reasonableness to speech for it to be protected. The ravings of a lunatic are and should be protected. The issue of where to draw the line between speech/persuasion/debate and harassment/threats/shouting-fire-in-a-crowded-theatre is an important thorny one, but it is completely separate from the quality or reasonableness of legitimacy of the speech.

I don't know anything about the facts of the case at hand. I am responding to the argument, made above and many place in this thread, that the only sorts of protections on free speech are legal ones, and that in particular they don't apply to legal actions taken individuals or private organizations.

It's not like Apple is deleting his media. Apple is deleting the pointers, as they don't want to be associated with him (which is perfectly reasonable - I wouldn't want that either).

His right to free speech is not infringed. He is still free to host the RSS feed and the media files however he sees fit.

We all acknowledge that it's a violation of the first amendment if the government simply makes it hard to access speech even if it's still technically available. The government can't order Google to stop indexing your website even if they allow your website to remain online.

Plenty of people here have argued for the gravely mistaken position that free speech protections should only apply to the government, but I've never heard anyone argue that private individuals and organizations are morally bound to protect free speech in certain circumstances but this only applies if they are completely wiping out the speech rather than just making it difficult to access. I don't understand why that would be the case.

The key word in your argument is 'morally'. What's moral is fluid and varies from person to person. I think it's perfectly legitimate to suppress free speech locally when you protect it globally - for example, in the case of hate speech that demands free speech of certain groups to be globally suppressed.

wouldn't it infringe on Apple's free speech to force them to keep the pointers? they're making a political statement by removing them