Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

people tend to think of it as a freedom of speech issue

First-amendment speech is only a subset of free speech. Unfortunately people seem to hear "freedom of speech" and think that the ONLY place that freedom exists is under the scope of the 1st. Its not.

The Bill of Rights only says that our government can't take it away. Other people are still free to take it away. But when they take it away (and are within their rights to do so) it is a free speech issue. The difference is the argument is not a you can't or you shouldn't be able to, its just a you can but shouldn't.

What people are railing against is not that that reddit, or whoever, has decided not to adhere to the restrictions placed upon congress, but that they've fundamentally changing what it means to be reddit. This is the article's "Very Serious Discussion About What Sort of Community We Are".

It's your garden, so you have the absolute right to pull weeds. The weeds get no say.

Yeah, reddit has complete control. But unless they're happy exercising that control by disabling all user submissions and posts, or actively banning anyone who they don't like discussing the nature of reddits rules, they have given their flowers a voice about the weeds.

Perhaps, when you say that people should STFU and take it, you might be interesting in hearing the thesis of (reddit co-founder) Ohanian's TED talk on social media: "You No Longer Control the Message, and That’s Okay"




The Bill of Rights only says that our government can't take it away. Other people are still free to take it away. But when they take it away (and are within their rights to do so) it is a free speech issue. The difference is the argument is not a you can't or you shouldn't be able to, its just a you can but shouldn't.

Well, it is a free speech issue, but whether one should or not is debatable. I'd prefer they didn't, but I don't know if it's fair to ask that from them.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: