How does not having social media restrict free speech? Do you think free speech didn't exist before social media?

Arguably, the presence of social media homogenizes the speech we're allowed to have.

good point.

a lot of ppl got reeled into the narrative that social media can democratize (free) publication of conversations and ideas, thou it is dominated by monetary incentives that mandate propaganda/advertising and in turn moderation and censorship.

How does banning an individual from printing books restrict free speech? Do you think free speech didn't exist before the printing press?

I guess if it's only specific individuals/groups that can't print books, it's restricting free speech, if nobody can, it's not.

Not really the same, because the article is not calling for banning any source of social media. How would you even classify social media? We are taking about ad infested hellholes with no incentives other than maximizing revenue, regardless of the content pushed.

The proper analogy would be banning books with certain content, which we already do. You can't distribute a book calling for a specific person to be killed or doxxing them. Doing this on social media in Ethiopia is encouraged, as it drives engagement and has lead to actual deaths of people I know. They have a policy not to moderate this content despite having the resources. Just like they have a policy to make the apps as addictive as possible.

More importantly, Facebook is not a "printed book", it is the printing press. It owns the internet. It's not remotely comparable. And that's why it is a threat to free speech

How is access to a wholly privately owned walled garden in any way relate to printing books? Private networks are by definition not public domain and thus are totally irrelevant to any discussion of free speech.

I would agree if it weren't for the complete transition to privately owned communication platforms. The answer to your question is actually quite simple: because communication via privately owned walled gardens is humanity's primary means of mass communication, just as it used to be printed media.

It would be as if printing presses were so complicated and expensive that the barrier to entry was so high as to price out everyone but a few select publishers. I wouldn't try to over-extend that metaphor though.

That folks have opted to interact (or been manipulated into it if we're really honest) with modes of communication that are outside of 1st amendment protections doesn't change either the spirit or the letter of the law. That would be like saying that if folks suddenly decided to communicate over transcontinental distances via morse code utilizing geophones and large explosions as the transmission mechanism so now the first amendment demands semtex should be broadly accessible to the public.

It restricts free speech in the most direct, literal sense - by... restricting your ability to freely speak.

The historical existence is simply irrelevant. Just like existence of pre-TV/newspaper speech is not a relevant factor in determining whether banning all TV/newspapers in 1950 restricts free speech

Making publication easy on social media has certainly had an impact on public speech, but private platforms do not offer free speech by design.

Naomi Klein went into this in No Logo with shopping malls replacing public spaces where you also don’t have a right to free speech and can be evicted arbitrarily at the owners discretion.

You’ll find virtually all of social media platforms have moderation, usage policies and user banning practices that go well beyond allowing the fully legally protected free speech you are afforded in a public space (in many countries).

If all spaces that attract the majority of people are private and have homogenous terms of use, then free speech ends in all ways except on this technicality.

Edit: removed unnecessarily inflammatory phrasing.

It (practically) doesn't matter what the moderation policies are, a legal ban on social networks will still be a restriction on free speech

What access to tools or avenues for speech should fall under the first amendment then?

This is a telling argument. Newspapers and television broadcasts, while geared towards broad public consumption, were never wholly democratized platforms and that didn't run afoul of the first amendment. It stands to reason that management of content on social media platforms or outright banning the same wouldn't either.

The restriction that this freedom is supposed to save you from is that of prosecution. Nobody is promising everyone a megaphone.

And this whole conversation is about laws mandating something and the resulting prosecution with comparisons to safety standards in saws, not your made up megaphone

I wonder how many would be for seatbelt laws if the addition of seatbelts say doubled the price of car.

    > if the addition of seatbelts say doubled the price of car

Here is the problem: They didn't. So what is your point?

I think this confuses cause and effect.

Seatbelts are brought up so often precisely because they are an intervention with a huge benefit-to-cost ratio. Seatbelt laws were made long after the fact - seat belts for cars started to appear in the 1950s, with the common three-point variant in 1955; the first seatbelt law appeared in 1970 (in Australia). The US started introducing seatbelt laws for cars in the 1980s (though as far as I know, some organizations/insurers required them earlier for employees driving for business).

Which of Haidt's 4 suggestions restricts free speech? Is free speech (for adolescents) more important than the well-being of those same adolescents? Has American jurisprudence aligned on the notion that adolescents have an inviolable right to free speech?