The court case was about the Espionage Act of 1917, and was extremely unconstitutional. It was about speaking about against the draft.

Holmes justified his ruling with the fire statement at the end of the case, but it has nothing to do with constitutional law, it was an emotional statement.

The court case itself was unconstitutional, and that statement everyone repeats has no legal binding whatsoever as it had no bearing on anything. I doubt you agree with the outcome of that case (socialists being imprisoned for speaking out against the draft) so why would you use an emotional statement used to justify it?

Private companies are not free to do whatever they want, there are regulations. When companies get too large they should be regulated. You can argue these companies have possibly outgrown their Section 230 immunities as they are no longer acting as a neutral platform. They are editorializing their content, acting as a publisher. The social media giants are entrenched with government and businesses solely using them for support and communications, you cannot simply move off.

I guess you are very pro corporate and you feel like corporations should be able to do whatever they want whenever they want.

It being legally okay, does not make it morally okay and laws can change to meet the morals. Maybe we should apply the 1A to these platforms.

They held that the government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless that speech is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action".

But yes overall I say their first decision of imprisoning people for speaking out against the draft was unconstitutional, socialist or not.

> Private companies are free to run their business any way they want.

On that aspect, is there a point where they're no longer acting as themselves but as an extension of the government?

- If the government has requested particular action?

- If they're under contract by the government?

- If they've been ordered by the government via a judicial preceding?

- If they've been ordered by the government via law or even just Executive action?

We're well into a time where governments are hiring corporations to do what they themselves are legally barred from doing.

If there are no boundaries, there are few (no?) rules.

Look at the controversy over platforms like parler and gab as well.

This is why I think the ultimate solution is to have platforms that are fully encrypted, anonymized (TOR) and decentralized. This is the only way to ensure people can exercise their freedom of speech without harassment. Basic implementations have already been built, bitmessage, for example but that technology needs to be expanded into more of a reddit-like website. Make posters/comments/upvotes burn CPU cycles to participate and pay rewards to the people hosting/mining.

What do you do when Facebook is the monopolist and you can't go anywhere else?

This is a popular meme, but I'm not certain it's true. Given how many people use Twitter, Reddit, Tiktok, Twitch, Instagram, Discord, etc, it doesn't seem as if they're somehow also unaware that the rest of the web or alternative means of communication exist.

I mean, Donald Trump literally just started his own "social media platform," and his followers have been bouncing around right-wing "alternative" platforms for years. Not even the people primarily responsible for pushing the fear narrative around social media and it's "Orwellian" control of free speech really seem to be suffering under its hypothetical jackboot.

There's exactly one, maybe two of each for each type of media. Twitter for soundbits, Tiktok for video, Instagram for photo - in the past you had your choice of publishers. If one didn't like you you could go to another and at least get the message out. I'm seeing the concentration in the media market with great concern, it gives excessive power to shape opinion to a few magnates. The Trump ban is just a symptom.

We seem to be living in different realities. Where you're seeing media concentrating, I'm seeing it fragmenting and diverge. The big social media silos are popular, but that popularity doesn't translate to control of the medium.

Sometimes those rules are illegal. For both Facebook and HN.

But sure, let's just pretend money means you don't live under any state jurisdiction.

Big pharma can charge whatever they want right? They are private companies. If you don't want that insulin injection or epi-pen then just don't buy one.