[ExI] free speech

[William Flynn Wallace]

I remember a free speech case of many years ago involving a college
newspaper.  The university censored it and the editor sued.  The ruling, of
course, was that the editor was free to say whatever he wanted to, just not
on the university's paper.

Google and Facebook are private companies and they can censor all they want
to, and I would not take that  away from them, or even force them to use
disclaimers.  We do not need the feds telling private companies what to do
unless it's to safeguard something, like food, or children's toys.

Crazy, wayout, extremists, and all the rest of the nutcases, have just as
much right to free speech as anyone, as the ACLU will tell you.

Free means free.  Sure, we may pay a price for it, but we would be paying a
much bigger price if we didn't have it.

bill w

On Sat, Jan 9, 2021 at 10:04 AM Bill Hibbard via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Free speech is half of open information. The other half
> is transparency and accountability by those with power
> over us. Some people want to limit free speech because
> of the violent mob of QAnon followers at the US Capitol.
> Such crazy conspiracy theories thrive because of the
> rampant corruption among the powerful that can only
> exist with our current lack of transparency and
> accountability.
>
> There are two paths forward. One is free speech combined
> with transparency and accountability:
> https://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/g/human_freedom.html
>
> The other path is ever tighter controls on speech and
> other rights. China is a great example of combining
> lack of free speech with lack of transparency and
> accountability.
>
> The US has done a terrible job of regulating tech
> monopolies, which have the power to greatly limit speech.
> As for example Apple and Google are now requiring all
> their Apps to limit speech. The US Congress doesn't have
> to make any law abridging the freedom of speech; it can
> just farm the job out to the tech monopolies.
>
> Just to be clear, mob violence is not the answer to
> anger at the government.
>
> Bill
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>
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