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A comment on How Silicon Valley destroyed Parler. Parent comment

Re:How Silicon Valley destroyed Parler by gamblor956 on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @12:25PM (#25750073)
This book had no bearing on the First Amendment's conception of freedom of speech, seeing as how it was written several decades after the formation of the U.S.

This book may have been pivotal to British utilitarianists, but it didn't have much, if any, impact on the U.S.

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Re:How Silicon Valley destroyed Parler by zajio1am on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @12:39PM (#25750281)
The thread is not about First Amendment, as a specific legal protection, but about general societal principle of freedom of speech.
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Re:How Silicon Valley destroyed Parler by gamblor956 on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @01:01PM (#25750671)
Which has its foundations in the First Amendment...

Before then, "free speech" as a concept did not exist. (The closest was the freedom of religious practice, which is not the same thing.)

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Re:How Silicon Valley destroyed Parler by hertzrat on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @02:24PM (#25752076)
No, it does not. Free speech is a principle of political philosophy. The United States founders did not invent it
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Re:How Silicon Valley destroyed Parler by throwaway829 on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @02:12PM (#25751874)
As an ex-Scientologist it saddens me that I have to tell HN readers this, but please read "On liberty" which explains why censorship is a flawed approach.
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Re:How Silicon Valley destroyed Parler by flyingfences on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @02:19PM (#25751993)
> Before then, "free speech" as a concept did not exist.

Now that is a heavy claim to be making. Do you have anything to back it up?

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Re:How Silicon Valley destroyed Parler by gamblor956 on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @05:48PM (#25755079)
History itself?

Before the U.S., nobody even thought free speech was possible. England was the closest, but their version of free speech was still subject to government censorship.

It was the writings of the Founding Fathers, and the Bill of Rights in particular, that established the doctrine that is today known as "freedom of speech."

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Re:How Silicon Valley destroyed Parler by zajio1am on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @06:03PM (#25755241)
French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen expressed freedom of speech at roughly the same time as american Bill of Rights, and used formulation that is more general and does not restrict just the government:

"The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, except to respond to the abuse of this liberty, in the cases determined by the law."

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