Free speech isn't free in the same way that free beer is. The idea is to avoid restricting what messages are allowed as much as possible. It's not about giving any particular individual a platform so much as making sure that the platform is open to a variety of ideas.

A system without restrictions favours the rich, it favours the dishonest, and it favours those who wield the best weaponized psychology. (And it favours most those with all three.) Your passing reference to platforms being open to a "variety of ideas" is—and I'm sorry in advance for the snark—but it's just adorable.

While I am in fact adorable, you've misunderstood my comment. It's difficult to talk about Zuckerberg's defense of Facebook's policy without having an accurate definition of the principle of free speech. That isn't to say that unlimited free speech is necessarily good or bad. For example, while many people on HN lean towards holding that principle as an ideal, the community also discourages excessively snarky comments.

And a system with restrictions like you want favors the authoritarians, those with the best real world bullying/harassment operations, and those who are well connected.

I’m sorry but liberal democracy isn’t the best form of government because the people are smart (they never have been), it’s the best form of government because the alternative is recurring political violence.

I'm sorry but liberal democracy doesn't infer a strict libertarian view on political campaign messaging.

I don't want to assume you're American, but your fatalistic view of government sure does point towards that. I suggest you spend some time looking at how other liberal democracies handle this challenge. Online political advertising remains a challenge everywhere but usually the same legal and ethical frameworks apply—even if the frameworks still fail at the margins.

And to be clear, my objection isn't to all online advertising but specifically to Zuckerberg defending Facebook's stance by appealing to free speech. I don't think any Government should force Facebook's hand; I think they should seek to protect their social license and act independently as Jack Dorsey recently did.

So far as I can tell most other liberal democracies either handle the issue much the same way as the US does or they just flat out ban political parties that are too “fringe”.

I wouldn’t trust anyone who wanted to be the censor to be the censor.

Few countries are like the USA if you’re willing to look close enough. The differences are there even if they don’t scream out at you.

That's part of the point of being rich. Most systems favor people with more money and smarter messaging.

There is always a restriction. The platform isn’t open to a variety of ideas but to the biggest spender.

Separately, while some politics revolves around untestable statements of preference (e.g. Purple team “freedom is more important than equality” vs. Teal team “equality is the best foundation upon which freedom can be built”), there are also statements of fact and it is dangerous to allow demonstrably false claims to spread (Antivaxxers are probably the least controversial example of a dangerously wrong meme on this forum, but others exist all the way back to ancient Greek democracy).

Democracy isn’t Magic: If Antivaxxers got 99.9% of the votes they would still be wrong, the only difference is they would cause more harm.

That implicitly means it's biased towards the status quo.

I am staunchly opposed to all the “free” offerings of our more progressive presidential candidates - free healthcare, free college, etc - but free beer could sway my vote.

"Free" as in "from prior restraint by the government".

It's not a coherent comment in the context of the US 1st amendment.

Free speech, as a value, is a broader concept than mere lack of government restraint on speech. It can also pertain to the exchange of ideas in certain private forums.

And by the way, the First Amendment disallows not only prior restraint, but many other government restraints on speech as well. It's just that prior restraint is considered the most egregious and hence subject to the greatest judicial scrutiny.