You do not, should not, and will never have a "right" to "free speech" in media that are privately owned and managed by others. You have a right to not have a government censor your speech. The federal government cannot compell you to remove an editorial from your blog criticizing the government. They may not compell your isp to bar traffic to that blog. Insofar as the ISP is a government mandated oligopoly, it's reasonable to argue that they may not block access to your ip. Must a blogging website provide you hosting? No. You never had such a "right" and you never will. You can argue that they have a duty to provide you equitable and fair service, but we rarely use duties in western political philosophy (an example would be Australia compelling citizens to vote).
Private citizens may or may not publish your material on their media at their discretion. You have zero right to any of their bandwidth, resources, or otherwise, again, in general. Furthermore you shouldn't, because that would in fact be tantamount to governmenr infringement of the freedom of speech of those private citizens.
The internet is pivotal to modern communications, yet it is effectively entirely private. If the citizens and their representatives felt strongly enough to create common carrier laws for telegraphs (see a sibling comment for more details), why should we feel differently about speech that travels over channels designed and built for communication across internet?
> governmenr infringement of the freedom of speech of those private citizens
Those "private citizens" are actually corporations making billions of dollars in profit to provide us, in part, with communication channels on their platforms.
You don't have a right to free speech on the comment section of my blog, or my twitch chat stream, or my discord channel. Those platforms enable me to moderate that content. If they lacked that feature, it wouldn't support or undermine anyone's rights, mine or yours.
How property rights for those resources convey corresponding constitutional rights of users (or other government imposed requirements, see for example insurance and healthcare) is something that is continually in tension and requires constant litigation.
As distinct, say, from the twitch chat feed on my speedrunning channel.
The first telegraph network banned journalists who reported bad things against the telegraph company. They manipulated stock prices and influenced elections. That is why common carriage laws were made, which required communications platforms to provide neutral service to everyone.
I'm sure that you would have been there, bravely defending the coal barons right to shut down journalists trying to report on union organizing, because they are a private corporation and they can do whatever they want on their property and not answer to anyone. You would have screamed "muh freeze peach" at journalists trying to report about labor abuses. Because they are not entitled to use the private telegraph network.
Of course the line between ubiquitous large platform and government is blurry. That is why communications companies over a certain side must be forced to platform everyone, and can only be permitted to ban them when they have met certain criteria.
In general though, yes, you have no right to have a particular editorial published in the new york times on your behalf. What the press deigns to publish is protected. You're also free to start your own paper, or blog, or whatever.
NO, you really aren't free to do that.
If every means of communication is in private hands, and access is denied to you, then you effectively have no free speech.
I am really depressed by the radical libertarian corporatism here on HN.
If an oil company brought all the land around your house, and put up a wall on all sides, and refused to let you leave, I feel like people here would defend that. Because you are not entitled to be on other people's private property or what ever. And it was your fault for living in the center of the land they brought, and no freedom from consequences.
And the first mediums of mass communication were 100% private, so to reiterate what I said before, everyone should be cool with them systematically excluding people they consider to be "nazis". To them, union organizers and journalists are a dangerous threat to public order...
Shut up journalist, you are not entitled to use their private telegraphs that were subsidized by the government. You were banned because of your hateful speech against our corporation. No freedom from consequences, loser. Go whine about muh freeze peach elsewhere.
The post you replied to said that those things would have to carry you. What are you even ranting about at this point?
> If every means of communication is in private hands, and access is denied to you, then you effectively have no free speech.
Which is a theoretical risk only. But I'd say the answer is that you can buy whatever size internet connection you want and then host it yourself, in the exceptionally unlikely situation that no data center in a thousand miles will rent you space.
(This would require 'common carrier' rules to be broadened very slightly, I'm aware things aren't perfect.)
That's exactly what this discussion is about - you're not free to start a blog. Running any form of web site on the internet requires the support of multiple private companies, which can and do shut sites down at their whims.
I doubt ISPs would easily cut someone's home internet off. Is there precedent for that?
2. Some ISPs (possibly overlapping 1. or not) explicitly disallow hosting of any service on their Internet plans that they categorize for home use in their Terms of Service.
Access to some blog-hosting SaSS is another issue entirely.
I'm content to provide my own stack from the server up. There is no realistic scenario where I can be deplatformed from purchasing hardware sufficient to host a blog.
But really, by your logic, they have no right to report on union organizing, because it's a private company and they should be allowed to cover up human rights abuses, because the first amendment does not protect it, or something.
You're really getting the power dynamic wrong here, carelessly swapping between powerful institutional actors and individual actors as though they were interchangeable and pretending I made a value judgement about a strawman you constructed. My point is that the issue is complicated and deserves more care. The ideologues claiming to champion a distorted, unbounded "free speech" flatten every issue and refuse to engage with the complexities of harm.
They employ a technique that allows them to lazily wave away every piece of evidence we have about what is necessary to foster healthy, constructive, inclusive communities online and offline.
It's worth remembering that at that point in time, the anti-union faction was strong and brutally violent.
The issue you're grappling with is something that has no clear cut answer, namely: the question of whether doxxing is ever appropriate, and which major publications still face intense heat over. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/reader-center/whistle-blo...
We in the modern US simply do not have a frame of reference for how brutal these activities were. Being outed as a union contributor in many cases was equivalent to a death sentence. A small excerpt from when a union activity was "doxxed" to the union busters:
>>> More than 200 vigilantes or "citizen deputies", under the ostensible authority of Snohomish County Sheriff McRae, met in order to repel the "anarchists." As the Verona drew into the dock, and someone on board threw a line over a bollard, McRae stepped forward and called out "Boys, who's your leader?" The IWW men laughed and jeered, replying "We're all leaders," and they started to swing out the gang plank. McRae drew his pistol, told them he was the sheriff, he was enforcing the law, and they couldn't land here. There was a silence, then a Wobbly came up to the front and yelled out "the hell we can't."[4]
Just then a single shot rang out, followed by about ten minutes of intense gunfire. Most of it came from the vigilantes on the dock, but some fire came from the Verona, although the majority of the passengers were unarmed.[5] Whether the first shot came from boat or dock was never determined. Passengers aboard the Verona rushed to the opposite side of the ship, nearly capsizing the vessel. The ship's rail broke as a result and a number of passengers were ejected into the water, some drowned as a result but how many is not known, or whether persons who'd been shot also went overboard.[6] Over 175 bullets pierced the pilot house alone, and the captain of the Verona, Chance Wiman, was only able to avoid being shot by ducking behind the ship's safe.[5] <<<
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_th...
To be slightly hyperbolic, it's impossible to say something of substance that doesn't offend someone. If all we're allowed to say is that which doesn't offend anyone, then nothing of substance can be said.