Free speech isn't just a legality. It's a valuable principal that's stood the test of time of being one of the few core features of functional societies.
Free speech is a value that we should all uphold regardless whether it legally applies or not. So stop making excuses for bad corporate behaviour.
"Free Speech" isn't a blank check to say and do whatever you want. Even SCOTUS says that direct threats of violence aren't protected by the first amendment.
I'm tired of reading people nebulously defining "free speech philosophies" online to act as a shield to justify nefarious behavior on private property.
Free speech exists as a protection from government censorship, and it doesn't protect you for acting like a dick on someone else's website. This sums it up pretty well: https://xkcd.com/1357/
Defending your position by citing that comic is basically the ultimate concession; you're saying that the most compelling argument you can make for GitHub's actions is that they weren't illegal. (For anyone who doesn't get the reference, look at the hovertext on that xkcd.)
I wasn't citing the comic, I said it was a summation.
The SCOTUS example points out that the people whose jobs are to interpret free speech say it is limited, and that claiming "free speech" a blank check to escape consequences is merely semantics to support a bias.
"Free speech exists as a protection from government censorship"
So what happens when the line between government and
corporation is blurred? The common justification why that
corporations aren't beholden to free speech is that you can
just choose another corporation to spend your time/money on.
What if you can't choose? What if it's prohibitively
expensive to just setup an alternative (perhaps due to
regulatory capture)?
What if there's no competition because corporations have
subtly merged with government?
Maybe it's simply just not right anymore to assume that if
it's a private organisation that they're exempt from
societal/governmental principals.
Slippery slope doesn't have anything to do with this. My point was that societal standards & expectation shouldn't end with the government. Yes it's not required, but that's irrelevant.
People are paying for these corporations through tax breaks, subsidies & other governmental projects (Tesla for example).
It is a slippery slope because you're trying to extrapolate public policy onto private property.
If you're upset with the tax breaks and subsidies, then elect someone who will deal with them. That and your arbitrary expectations doesn't give you entitlement to someone else's private property.
I think the fundamental misunderstanding we're having here is that people on the left side of the political spectrum believe the solution to all answers is more government control. The idea that the government isn't the beginning and ending of social control is outside of their realm of understanding.
I'm tired of reading people nebulously defining "free speech philosophies" online to act as a shield to justify nefarious behavior on private property.
This thread has been very instructive for me. I've come to the conclusion that you either get free speech as a social virtue or you don't. It's clear to me that most people don't and even can't understand it from that point of view.
What that XKCD comic doesn't even consider is what happens when you're the one being shown the door? Would you go quietly?
>you either get free speech as a social virtue or you don't.
False dichotomy. Many people get that free speech is a social virtue, because many people see protection from government censorship as a social virtue. What it sounds like is that you wish was a social virtue is the ability to behave or act in any manor on privately-owned websites without having to face the consequences of your actions.
We can consider hypothetical slippery-slopes about private websites implementing tyrannical policies, but that doesn't suddenly make it a "free speech" issue. Asking "Would you go quietly if banned from a privately held website" doesn't suddenly mean it's a "free speech" issue. Does making a certain amount of noise make something a free speech issue?
There are distributed networks (like bitcoin or other P2P) that are owned and controlled by the communities that support them. Maybe you should consider supporting those instead of trying to redefine "free speech" to fit your beliefs.
If GitHub used their privately-owned website to deliberately offend people, would you be defending them? To me it seems like this argument based on ownership is chosen purely because it is convenient in this particular case.
> having to face the consequences of your actions
This sounds ominous, except the "action" we're talking about is forking a repository that used the "wrong" vocabulary in its assembly title. Taking that into consideration, the response is disproportionate and selectively enforced.
Nobody would say a word if GitHub sent a polite request asking (rather than demanding) the change. I am willing to bet the owner would gladly indulge them.
Free speech as a concept isn't just about the first amendment and isn't just about the law. Free speech can be defended on any number of grounds, and many of them apply equally to privately enforced speech restrictions. For example, consider John Stuart Mill, one of the founding figures of modern liberal thought. In On Liberty, his spirited defense of free speech, he argued that shunning or widespread ostracism for expression of particular views was a danger, and would ultimately harm a society that engaged in it, even if the views being suppressed were obviously wrong.
"Free speech is only first amendment" is a shallow and ignorant view of the intellectual tradition of free expression.
What privately-owned properties do you know of where the owner allows guests or customers to speak as freely as if they were on the sidewalk, without fear of recrimination from the owner in the form of censorship or ejection? I can think of 4chan, maybe some IRC channels.
Mill also said that the Harm principal trumps freedom of speech (i.e. individuals should be prevented from causing harm to others and/or property at the cost of their liberty).
He also says that the offense principal should not trump freedom of speech, but acknowledges that there are cases of offense that cause psychological and social harm that still qualify for the harm principal.
Was the repo code change harmful? Maybe, depending on the definition of property. Mill saw freedom of speech as a path to the truth, and he also understood that principals and rules change over time. I think he might be in favor of Github censoring their repo since it was their property and not a crucial debate towards finding the truth.
Yes. Now, imagine you're in OP's grocery store. It's still private property, but he provides a public service out of it. Can he still prevent you from shouting at him? Do free speech laws cover privately owned public spaces?
Yes, you can eject someone from a store for being rude.
Your ISP is not allowed to censor content (as far as I know) because it is a common carrier. Google is not a common carrier, they can do what they want. If Google can do it, GitHub can do it.
Note that I don't necessarily think censorship is good. I just get annoyed when people mistakenly think they have a constitutional right to not be censored.
OP implied fuck-all, unless you take the ridiculous view that free speech and the 1st amendment to the US constitution are the same thing. For about the 99th time in this thread, they are definitely fucking not, and any arguments which rest on this assumption are, prima facie, fucking stupid.
E: Because I can't reply anymore, addressed to ectoplasm's reply to this post:
Because I said "fuck"? If that is seriously against the rules of HN then I do genuinely apologize (and will probably stop posting here so much). If it's just because I viciously attacked your argument, well, I'm actually pretty sure you're a wonderful person ectoplasm, and I am sincere in saying that, but the argument you're putting forward is fucking stupid, and ought to be called such. AFAIK that's not breaking any rules.
E2:
I have a reply link - I've hit some posting limit.
Not only stupid people make stupid arguments. You are probably not a stupid person. The line of reasoning of the argument you put forward here, most definitely is.
Somewhat appropriately, your comment is against the rules of Hacker News.
> Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity.
edit: To reply without a reply link, you have to click on the timestamp. Your comment wouldn't be civil even if you elided every instance of 'fuck'. Who makes a stupid argument? A stupid person. You didn't really viciously attack anything, you just said I was stupidly wrong.
edit2: What does it even mean for an argument to be stupid? That's not very convincing. Your arguments are also stupid. So we tie?
p.s. I wasn't really offended or anything, I just think it's good for property rights to trump free speech, and the HN rules are an example of that.
It's pedantic, yes, but on the other hand, I think it's important to distinguish between legal and illegal activity, regardless of one's opinions about the moral goodness of the activity itself.
Well, free speech laws don't apply to me on your property. It is legal for you to tell me to shut up or get out.