Freedom of course always comes at a cost: what constitutes a victory for personal rights and freedom of speech also facilitates the spread of illegal messages, since decentralized networks make it harder to control what information is exchanged. Legality is of course a tricky matter, as some countries instate laws that prevent their citizens from voicing opinions that would be legal elsewhere.

Alas, lawmakers are way behind the curve on this, demanding new "online safety" rules that require firms to break E2E and block third-party de-enshittification tools: https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/online-safety-made-dangerous/ The online free speech debate is stupid because it has all the wrong focuses: Focusing on improving algorithms, not whether you can even get a feed of things you asked to see; Focusing on whether unsolicited messages are delivered, not whether solicited messages reach their readers; Focusing on algorithmic transparency, not whether you can opt out of the behavioral tracking that produces training data for algorithms; Focusing on whether platforms are policing their users well enough, not whether we can leave a platform without losing our important social, professional and personal ties; Focusing on whether the limits on our speech violate the First Amendment, rather than whether they are unfair: https://doctorow.medium.com/yes-its-censorship-2026c9edc0fd

That same enshittification is on every platform, and "freedom of speech is not freedom of reach" is just a way of saying, "Now that you're stuck here, we're going to enshittify your experience."

“What We Mean When We Talk About Freedom of Speech” is based on the research of Sky Croeser, Professor of Internet Studies at Curtin University in Perth, Australia.

Activists within this movement, as well as academics writing about online harassment, have tended to ground their discussions of the problem with reference to free speech discourse. However, this language, with its grounding in the Western liberal tradition, comes with considerable limitations. I argue here that an intersectional approach requires us to explore a much more radical rethinking of the political traditions in which we ground responses to online harassment.

The real question isn’t whether platforms like Twitter and Facebook are public squares (because they aren’t), but whether they should be. Should everyone have a right to access these platforms and speak through them the way we all have a right to stand on a soap box downtown and speak through a megaphone? It’s a more complicated ask than we realize—certainly more complicated than those (including Elon Musk himself) who seem to think merely declaring Twitter a public square is sufficient.

This tweet, along with the reinstatement of Donald Trump’s Twitter account, has caused a whirlwind of discussion and debate on the platform—the same arguments about free speech and social media as the “digital public square” that seem to go nowhere, regardless of how often we try. And part of the reason they go nowhere is because the situation is both more simple and more complicated than many of us want to recognize.

Indeed, judging from the accounts of the many employees who have now gone on record about this issue, the “debates” that have been happening at Basecamp are precisely the kinds of conversations that happen when you have a diverse workforce. Different issues affect different people differently, and being able to speak freely about those differences is the hallmark of a healthy culture. But by framing these discussions as “acrimonious debates” rather than “challenging conversations,” Hansson has positioned himself not as a peacemaker, but as a tyrant hell-bent on taking his toys and going home; shutting down discussions rather than holding space for growth and discovery.

Littlefeather, who had acted in a few films before her infamous moment, says that the federal government threatened to shut down any talk shows or productions that put her on the air.

In France, a wealthyvoter giving 7,500 euros (the current ceiling) to his preferred politicalparty has a right to a tax deduction of 5,000 euros, financed by the restof the taxpayers.

Facebook could shift the burden of proof toward people and communities to demonstrate that they’re good actors—and treat reach as a privilege, not a right.

founded on the principles of the free speech, independent thought and rejecting political censorship and “cancel culture”.

Francis Fukuyama has called "middleware": content-curation services that could give users more control over the material they see on internet platforms such as Facebook or Twitter.

In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech ... Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom, and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech, which is the right of every man ...

Defamation law walks a fine line between the right to freedom of speech and the right of a person to avoid defamation. On one hand, a reasonable person should have free speech to talk about their experiences in a truthful manner without fear of a lawsuit if they say something mean, but true, about someone else. On the other hand, people have a right to not have false statements made that will damage their reputation.

Such is the security of this architecture, that it has prompted law enforcement agencies around the world to complain that they now cannot access a user’s messages, even with a warrant. There is no backdoor—the only option is to compromise one of the endpoints and access messages in their decrypted state.

As EFF has warned, “undermining free speech and privacy is not the way to protect children.”

“not only jeopardizes privacy and threatens the right to free expression, but also fails to effectively protect children from online exploitation.”

The US president has claimed the social media platform is "interfering in the 2020 presidential election" and "completely stifling FREE SPEECH" after it added a warning to two of his tweets on Tuesday.

At Brown’s sentencing, Judge Lindsay was quoted as saying “What took place is not going to chill any 1st Amendment expression by Journalists.” But he was so wrong. Brown’s arrest and prosecution had a substantial chilling effect on journalism. Some journalists have simply stopped reporting on hacks from fear of retribution and others who still do are forced to employ extraordinary measures to protect themselves from prosecution.

While Americans tend to prioritize individual liberty, Europeans are more inclined to value the role of the state. Americans are generally more tolerant of offensive speech than Europeans. That has translated to a greater impetus to regulate tech in Europe.

They can spew hate amongst themselves for eternity, but without amplification it won’t thrive.

Tolerating all ideas does not mean becoming a supporter of them. Saying everything does not mean accepting everything.