>Come on. Shouting “fire!” In a crowded room is not free speech and no company in their right mind should support that

Actually, shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater IS explicitly free speech in America, and in fact, the idea that it's not is a layman's mistake (or a wives tale if you prefer) that is corrected in basically freshman legal classes.

In modern legal discussion, the idea of "fire in a theater!" is basically an immediate identifier that you are not educated in this part of the law at all and your opinion is low quality.

Not trying to insult you here, I too have used this very analogy on the internet in the past, just laying out what exactly others see when they see what you wrote.

>Shouting “fire!” In a crowded room is not free speech

stop using this dumb analogy. it was invented to justify prosecuting people for speaking out against the draft, and it was later denounced by the very person who coined it.

in this case it's more like: a random person who never went to the theatre before shouted fire in the theatre, the person was summarily booted from the premises and banned by the theatre staff. then later on the police come by and shut down the theatre because they hosted fire-shouters.

It's incredible how this perception persists completely devoid of nuance or understanding.

"Making fun of transsexuals" is a rather euphemistic way to portray 2,000 page threads dedicated to harassing and bullying single individuals primarily about their gender identity.

It’s co-ordinated bullying and harassment of a minority group to deny them the same rights to free expression that those doing the bullying enjoy. Free speech without consequences doesn’t work. See also gamergate.

It absolutely is. It would and should get you banned from HN. In particular, people phoning in bomb threats and fake calls to the police is harrasment.

Because it's not permitted by the HN guidelines and rules.

But free speech means being able to insult and make fun of anyone, where it's accepted, of course. (I'm only talking about speech here, I'm not talking about bomb threats or any intolerant "action". These should have immediate and extreme consequences. )

I am against racism or making fun of someone's gender, but I completely support their right to free speech. Those for whom free speech is conditional, including many "progressive thinkers", I would rather not associate with.

Free speech is and always has been conditional in the United States and other nations.

The US specifically has a panoply of exceptions to free speech law, some modern (EDIT: not hate speech, but yes creation of a hostile work environment via rhetoric, divulging classified information, the extraordinary legal injunction of prior restraint of speech if the speech can cause injury and its legality will be resolved in an imminent legal case) and some dating back to the founding of the nation (sedition, treason, espionage).

The interpretation of the First Amendment protection is extremely broad (as it should be) but not unlimited.

Hate speech (both punching up and punching down) is protected speech in the USA. So is "injurious" speech that is not defamation or fraud. It's a common mistake.

True threats and a specific form of incitement are NOT protected. Section 230 offers a site protection from some of the liability (otherwise Twitter would have been shut down years ago). But a person posting unprotected speech is fully liable.

Bomb threats, real world harassment and fake calls to the police are strictly banned on Kiwi Farms. Making fun of transsexuals is not. Nor is the latter illegal, as much as some in this case and in this comment section wish it were.

If legality is your bar to clear, then you should support Cloudfare as well, since what they did was perfectly legal.

I don’t know how we’re still retreating to “private companies can do what they want” in the free speech debate on HN. It’s clear that those who want Kiwi Farms gone are resorting to illegal means such as DDoSing to get what they want. A very small number of companies like Cloudflare can effectively defend against this. In this position they act as utilities, a category of private businesses that is held to strict standards of free speech. Sadly the law has not caught up to this reality.

In their market position, Cloudflare has the power of a small government. In American capitalist society in particular, there’s increasingly no daylight between large corporations and the government. If the big companies say you can’t speak, what good is the right?

What Cloudflare appears to have done is cave to a Twitter mob in violation of their own stated principles and common sense. This has irreparably harmed not only Cloudflare’s reputation, but the prospects for free and open speech on the Internet.

"SWATing" is not just harassment, I think it should qualify as attempted murder. I think there should be mandatory prison sentences for SWATing, and I think juveniles should be put through some kind of juvenile-prison if they do it.