Free Speech Platforms

"Freedom of speech" is a limit on the government, not on private companies.

Yes, talking about it is. Restricting it at the government level isn't. Freedom of speech is a right protecting you from the government, not companies.

Well for better or worse, our freedom of speech only limits government interference. You and I and every other private citizen is free to say, and to not say, anything they like within an extremely broad range. While private companies may have an ethical requirement to avoid censorship, they don't have a legal one. No matter how big their datacenters, no matter how large their audience, you don't have the fundamental right to force them to rebroadcast your message if they do not wish t

Yep, typically freedom of speech applies to government censorship. A private party can shut you out of their system as they have no responsibility to provide you with a platform. "Freedom of speech" is so often a misused/misunderstood concept.

As a reminder to everyone: the constitutional guarantee to freedom of speech means that the _government_ cannot censor any views (outside of certain exceptions for threatening language, and the like). It does not mean that a private entity has to enable speech that they find objectionable.

I'm not conflating anything. I stated a fact, that the federal government cannot punish you for exercising freedom of speech, nor can it restrict your speech. Private companies aren't beholden to those restrictions on their own platforms. The person above the one I replied to was the one conflating the two, as I said.

The right to free speech constrains only the government. As a private individual or corporation you remain free to censor anything within your power. If Disqus doesn't want to work with Breitbart, they have no obligation to continue working with Breitbart, whether that decision is based on politics or anything else.

No, of course not.Free speech, as codified in the first amendment, restricts what the GOVERNMENT can't do, not what a private company can do.Their microphone, their mute switch.

It's constitutionally protected from the government infringing upon it. As Facebook is not the government, they are perfectly free to limit speech in any way they choose.

Free speech in the US isn't absolute, but the Constitution prevents the government from banning most types of speech. By contrast private companies are free to ban anything they want on their platforms, for any reason or no reason at all. Whether it's morally right for powerful tech companies to use that power is another question entirely.