It’s the first line in our enumerated rights.

This isn’t “oh we should rethink things” this is a matter of natural rights and precedes anything we’ve constructed.

But, and perhaps more importantly, relatively few people at the time could vote - in 1789 it was about 6% of the population as a whole. On the federal level, there was basically no protection of the right to vote at all - there was that bit about states having to have a "republican form of government", but it wasn't codified, and the broad understanding was that property requirements, poll taxes etc are all compatible with it. So, it was a very different environment overall.

(I'm not disagreeing with your basic premise - I support, it actually. But US is not a good historical model for it. I don't think there's any country that really is, or ever was. Those of us who believe that democracy is dead without radical free speech, have to figure out how to make it all work in a way that is, at least, tolerable to those who disagree with us.)

So what if the writers didn't always practice it? If it's been unequally applied - there's no stronger case than to hold people to account with the law of the land.

> It’s the first line in our enumerated rights.

> This isn’t “oh we should rethink things” this is a matter of natural rights and precedes anything we’ve constructed.

I never said anyone shouldn't have the right to express themselves. Do you think it's in the Constitution that you have the unalienable right post any lie you want to YouTube? I don't remember that being in there.

IMHO, lies are toxic to free speech, and it's in everyone's interest (and moral obligation) to do their best to limit their spread.

IMHO you're not interested in free speech unless you're willing to defend speech you find repugnant.

You don't need to protect speech everyone finds unobjectionable.

You need to protect speech that is almost universally opposed.

Minorities need protection, majorities don't, and this the basis of the American notion of freedom - insofar as the individual is the smallest minority.

> Do you think it's in the Constitution that you have the unalienable right post any lie you want to YouTube? I don't remember that being in there.

Clearly it isn't and I believe in freedom of association completely too. If a business wants to not serve anyone for any reason, I recognize that - clearly law has developed to qualify this.

This notion of freedom of association has no bearing on my ability to criticize Youtube for doing something I find wrong.

I can simultaneously believe that what Youtube is doing is wrong and they're completely allowed to do it.

Defending speech I find repugnant is not the same thing as defending a nonexistent right to post lies on Youtube.

Host the lies on your own website. Create flyers and pass them out. Talk to people in public settings. Write to the newspaper (they might not post your lies, but you're free to try to get them). Hold conferences. Do whatever you want. As long as the lies don't violate a few well-established exceptions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...

But the right to have your lies hosted for free (and given a valuable, far-reaching audience) on a private platform, no matter the consequences to others or to the platform itself? It doesn't exist.

I recognize they have a right to do it, but I have a right to make noise about it and criticize them.

We got so many pop-ups, accounts suspended, etc. around the Hunter Biden stuff, and what do you know - it turns out there was substance to the story.

This never happened around the Russian collusion stuff and I suspect most of the city lib elite that inhabits tech companies wouldn't find that a sanctimonious.

Nobody suggested otherwise, and your statement that "you're not interested in free speech unless you're willing to defend speech you find repugnant" is clearly a sidestep. You can support free speech without supporting the nonexistent (and unrelated) right to post lies on Youtube.

I am extremely confident that I can find examples of speech you wouldn't defend. How do you feel about false advertisement? Sharing of confidential military secrets?

Since you aren't willing to defend that speech and fight to make it legal, are you not interested in free speech?

Like, eugenicists in the 1920s would have a whole host of horrid “truths” they thought were scientifically supported at the time. Imagine the hurdles opposition would have in trying to voice their “factual truth.”

General restrictions on state power don't work. Capitalism crushes people. When that state power turns on the majority, the majority complains that their voices are silenced and then they go right back to ignoring the continued problems of the minority.

Perhaps the solution is to approach each situation on a case by case process. Protest and agitate when the state harms people and celebrate when the state protects people. Make harm reduction the goal.

In software people often point to how focusing on metrics can make you fail to achieve your true goal. Similarly, we should focus on the thing that free speech is intending to achieve rather than free speech itself.

I don't believe that the intention of the framers was that free speech was a good in-and-of itself but that making it difficult (but not impossible) to restrict speech has positive outcomes. At the very least, that is my read of things.

I wasn't talking about objectionable opinions or perspectives. I was talking about lies and falsehoods, which are becoming alarmingly widespread. Even now those things don't full First Amendment protections, which is why there can be laws against fraud and defamation, and the Supreme Court has even said "false statements of fact" do not enjoy protection [1].

You've recited many slogans, but it's important to consider what free speech is supposed to achieve, which, IMHO, is to allow progress towards truth. It's also important to keep other considerations in mind, and balance them. If you but too much focus on too small an area, you can easily find yourself becoming a Paperclip Maximizer.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

Or, a better quote from the syllabus:

> Although the Court has frequently said or implied that false factual statements enjoy little First Amendment protection, see, e.g., Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U. S. 323, 340, those statements cannot be read to mean “no protection at all.”

Go is arguing that free speech is required for democracy, and that democracy is why we want free speech.

The founders didn't like democracy all that much though

We don't "want free speech," it exists and a government that represents free people will recognize that.

The founders arrived at a consensus with representative democracy. They realized the dangers of democracy.

That there's a conversation about YouTube censoring people says that it is perfectly possible for free speech to not exist. It's not a physical law of the universe

Yet you can still release bad code. Code review is people looking at your idea/code and judging for themselves. Giving feedback.

Here we're trying to prevent that code from even being seen by others.

Ah yes, because Switzerland is such a hell hole.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

What I'm saying is that the US is huge. And diverse. It's a scaling issue.

I hear that every time Switzerland is mentioned. I've yet to see a strong argument to suggest why it wouldn't scale in this day and age.

What I think doesn't scale is centralized systems like France, where all money flows to Paris and rarely any back. Switzerland on the other hand is extremely federated, to the point each canton, often smaller than average cities, have their own school system. Most tax money stays on the local level and didn't go to Bern. This independence IMHO is the critical factor for scaling that would work for moch larger countries.

As to the homogeneity: US has one language any natively born American speaks. Switzerland has 3, with a considerable political divide between the French and German spanking areas. Finally Switzerland has 20% Foreigners vs 10% in US. So again I would very much challenge you there.

It's funny you mention the school systems. They aren't centralized in the US. Heck, they aren't even necessarily centralized by the states! In the areas I've attended school, it's been by county. And even the one I graduated high school under was administratively treated as three separate school systems (because even at the county level, it was pretty large). It's one of the few areas left that haven't been completely taken over by the Federal government.

Yes, English is widely spoken in the US, but there are areas where it's a distant second. It may surprise you to learn that the US has no official language. I live in South Florida and it's not rare to encounter areas were on Spanish is spoken. There's an older dialect of German still spoken in parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. And there are areas on the West Coast where Vietnamese, Japanese and Mandarin (I think it's Mandarin is the most widely spoken Chinese language) are spoken.

I am surprised at the 20% (I found figures saying it was as high as %24) in Switzerland, but I would still contend that the US is still diverse. There are cultural differences between New England, the South, Texas, the Midwest, the Southwest and the West Coast that are probably just as deep as the French/German divide in Switzerland.

[1] Just prior the the US Civil war.

[2] Just after the Great Depression and World War II.

[3] And for all my voting life time, Congress has had lower polling numbers than any President, yet we keep electing the same yo-yos to office ("Congresscritter X is an idiot, but X is my idiot!").

Calling Switzerland homogeneous because everyone there is white is as racist as saying that China and Japan are the same because they are all yellow.

The US is less diverse than Switzerland and using the current system when it was half the population of Switzerland. The only reason why we do not have direct democracy is because it's a lot harder to rob a country blind when everyone is involved in the decisions.