Most people would agree free speech doesn’t mean a local restaurant has to serve you. But what about other businesses?
Can dentists refuse to treat you?
Can hospitals refuse to give you life saving treatments based on your political views? Many hospitals in the US are private businesses.
Most people agree that social networks can kick you out. But what about ISPs? Can they refuse your business?
And if ISPs can refuse your business, what about water or electricity companies?
Certainly freedom of speech means freedom from certain consequences. As codified in the First Amendment it means freedom from certain legal consequences. Of course freedom of speech is broader than 1A though.
Yes.
> Can hospitals refuse to give you life saving treatments based on your political views?
Ask a Catholic hospital to do an abortion.
> And if ISPs can refuse your business, what about water or electricity companies?
We have specific law for these sorts of scenarios. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_utility
The procedures to deal with incomplete miscarriages are the same as for abortion. Delaying such procedures can have horrible consequences. Some Catholic hospitals have played this game, delaying and delaying until sepsis or some other condition becomes life threatening. If they wait too long, the pregnant woman may die.
My question is, should a hospital be able to deny treatment to a person based on that person’s previous speech? Is potentially being denied at the emergency room just another “consequence” of saying unpopular things? What if the hospital is privately owned, and the potential patient has slandered the owner or doctor in the past?
And when utility companies try to stop servicing areas because of the profit loss, these local governments absolutely will fine the shit out of them for it.
That doesn't change your point, but that particular example isn't a good one.
Water and power shut off to houses having parties during lockdown. Certainly a form of protest, and assembly, and yet here we are.
We've long accepted limits on assembly; pretty much any building you enter other than a private home will have a "maximum capacity x people, by order of the fire marshal" placard somewhere.
Using Covid as an excuse for emergency executive powers was a failing of state and local governments across the US.
While las Angeles was cutting power to houses, my kids were in private school in person building life skills. So many of their peers are socially stunted. It’s sad.
The article even indicates this action took place under "the city's party house ordinance, which became law in 2018".
A hospital that doesn’t take Medicare has no obligation to give you any treatments.
What if I live in an area where there’s only one hospital and it doesn’t take Medicare, do I just need to watch what I say so I don’t piss them off and they deny me life saving treatment? Even if that may happen to be legal, is that what the law should be?
If you're a raging asshole, yes.
And what if that dentist is the only one within 50 miles? Even if it happens to be legal for the dentist to deny you, should it be?
Aside from the narrow question here, my broader point is that “consequences for your actions” is the whole question we should be discussing and I don’t think the term “cancel culture” is that helpful in actually exploring that issue.
What do you think about the (former) NFL team owner whose voicemail containing racial slurs was leaked. It was not supposed to become public: should he not have faced any consequences for it on that basis? IIRC, he was forced to sell his franchise by the other teams.
If the receiver of the voicemail leaked it, that's a consequence that the owner should have been prepared for - that sort of thing happens all the time, like with Alec Baldwin.
If it was the phone company that leaked it, then I think that is a different story. Abusing data from a platform advertised as private, perpetrated by someone who does not even know the people in question, is wrong. Nobody is prepared for the consequences of petabytes of conversation data to be analyzed by random people they don't even know. This is the situation I'm more concerned about.
Well, I mean, quite literally, it is. It's always listening to you, and that's how it knows when you say "Alexa". And IIUC all these audio recordings are sent right to AWS and stored indefinitely.
"There were even sensitive conversations that somehow triggered Alexa’s “wake word” to start recording, including my family discussing medication and a friend conducting a business deal."
This replaced the previous standard of "clear and present danger."
That is literally true.
News organizations are sued all the time for libel or slander, sometimes for good reason.
Hell, Fox had to backtrack on some of their voting machine coverage, recently, for precisely this reason.
In fact, this is generally true for all freedoms.
Honestly, I challenge you to name just one other human right where you believe there is no legal or social restriction on how you can exercise that right.
Those are consequences, and I don't see how you can have some utopia where that isn't viable. Then you just live in a world where you are forced to listen to the broadcasted thoughts of idiots.
For example, if I say something controversial to my SO at home it shouldn't cause me to get fired because Alexa overheard and its recording leaked?
I suspect there is a lot of nuance to both sides here. Like if the president of the US tells racist jokes to their lover in private, then public consequences after a tell-all book may be in order. (By public I mean people may chose to vote them out.)
What if yer dog gets mad at you yelling at the television and bites you, that was a consequence, right? so ha! I've totally proven how silly you are for thinking that you should be able to make a statement to yourself about muhammed without actors in the middle east calling for your death!
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When people talk about consequences for saying stupid things, this is exactly what they're talking about. Embarrassment for saying completely assinine things, not losing your ability to support yourself because you made a stupid joke when you were 14.
If you can't understand the difference between the two, that's a you problem.
You can bury your head in the sand and pretend this sort of damage isn't happening regularly, but the rest of us choose not to.
I raised my head up high and actively looked for the story by Googling "lost business daughter joke" and came up empty.
Stand on your own two feet.
Your argument forgets that it's also free speech to react to something objectionable. If the government forced me to do business with you without my consent, that would be compelled association, which is more similar to how Mao's government behaved in the 50s.
But if consequences means there is a coordinated effort among major corporations to punish and prevent you from speaking by de-platforming you or anyone who gives you a platform--that isn't freedom of speech (regardless of whether its allowed under the 1st amendment or not).
US social media banned covid misinformation as defined by US health officials. Why is banning covid misinformation as defined by Chinese health officials any different? Shit, the Chinese policy isn't even that different than the US's view 18 months ago--US lockdown protestors were vilified.
There might be some difference between “consequences to the message” and “consequences to the speaker” but I’ve never seen anyone try to tell those apart.