Free speech isn’t a concept that was invented or defined by the United State’s first amendment. What kind of logic is that? When foreign governments kill dissidents, do you say “don’t worry guys, the first amendment only applies to the US government, so nobody’s right to free speech is getting violated here”.

No.

If you know anything about history, you know that attacks on free speech do not have to start or stop with official government sanction. In Soviet Union it wasn't uncommon for dissidents and their families to be nominally "free", while being unable to find employment, housing or otherwise get basics for operating in the society. It worked through a backstage "reputation" system that begins to look eerily familiar.

And BTW, the driving force behind a lot of free speech suppression in the past wasn't "the government" per se but "the party" that happened to control the government.

> It worked through a backstage "reputation" system that begins to look eerily familiar.

A system that was government driven. Don't try to pretend that decentralized consequences are authoritarian.

Hollywood Blacklists during the Red Scare were a backstage reputation system that kept people from being employable in an industry. There was nothing officially government driven about those blacklists. Lots of it was nod and wink and soft coercion. Merely associating with the "wrong" people was enough to get you blacklisted.

Joseph McCarthy and HUAC weren't the government?

Yes, under threat of government sanction, in violation of their first amendment rights, companies were coerced by the government to blacklist people. It was absolutely government driven. I never said it needed to be official.

Official or not, that's not what we're experiencing today, where republican lawmakers are threatening companies for not doing what they want, and the companies are mostly ignoring them.

Quoting Bertrand Russell's "Free Thought and Official Propaganda" from the 1920s:

>Legal penalties are, however, in the modern world, the least of the obstacles to freedom of thoughts. The two great obstacles are economic penalties and distortion of evidence. It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.

>It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.

Mind you, that quote has no qualifiers, so by "earn a living," the implication is earn any living, anywhere. Please give an example of someone has been banned from Twitch for opinions which have made it impossible for them to earn any living, anywhere.