If speech has shifted online, to massive social media websites like Twitter, and you don't protect it there, then you have no free speech in your country.
There is no Free Speech if you can't speak freely where speech is actually happening.
So if nearly all speech is moving online to massive social media sites, and you can't speak there freely, but instead your speech is subject to the whims of random employees - there is no Free Speech in this situation.
> It certainly doesn't mean speech without consequences of any sort nor does it mean that you automatically get an audience for it.
But it does mean you can speak. Even if there may be consequences, and even if you don't automatically get an audience.
That's the right I'm supporting here, against an alarmingly large group that seems to consider this right to be no longer necessary, and even undesirable.
> Freedom of speech, of the press, of association, of assembly and petition -- this set of guarantees, protected by the First Amendment, comprises what we refer to as freedom of expression. The Supreme Court has written that this freedom is "the matrix, the indispensable condition of nearly every other form of freedom." Without it, other fundamental rights, like the right to vote, would wither and die.
https://www.aclu.org/other/freedom-expression
As expression increasingly moves online, we will have to find ways to protect it online. A future in which the vast majority of speech happens in private online platforms, that may curtail it at will, is not just dystopian but goes against core American values, and the essence of freedom.
Core american values? There's massive censorship of pornography, there are noise laws, library books are being challanged and removed. A town voted to defund a library because they wouldn't remove a book. Explain to me how it's a core value?
If it's a website with over 50 million users, and it's designed explicitly as a place for these users to express themselves, then calling it "a public square" seems entirely warranted.