I've written about freedom of speech extensively in all manner of forums, but the one thing that has become clear to me lately, is that people are genuinely uninterested in the philosophical underpinnings of freedom of speech. Today they would rather quote an XKCD comic, than John Stuart Mill's seminar work On Liberty.
Because of this, I've decided to try to reframe the original notion of freedom of speech, into a term I coined: Open Ideas.
Open Ideas is nothing more than what freedom of speech has always been historically: a philosophical declaration that the open contestation of ideas is the engine of progress that keeps moving society forward.
Today the tyranny of the majority believes freedom of speech is anything but that. They believe that "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences", despite the fact that such term came from nowhere, has no author, and in addition all great free speech thinkers argued precisely the opposite. The great thinkers argued that if people are afraid of expressing unpopular opinions, that is functionally the same as government censorship: ideas are suppressed, society stagnates, and progress is halted.
So far I have not yet heard any sound refutation of any of these ideas. All people do is repeat the aforementioned dogmatic slogan with zero philosophical foundation, or mention First Amendment details, which obviously is not equal to freedom of speech.
How is anything I've stated in any way an inaccurate assessment of what is happening?
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The difference between talking outside and online, is that real spaces aren't moderated or owner by other people. The supermarket cannot stop other people from hearing your voice, your local park cannot make you invisible to other people. Your destribution is only hindered by the laws of physics. Imagine if, in real life, you were told "You aren't entitled to use the sidewalk", or "If nobody lets you use your local bridge, maybe you should reflect on your behaviour", or perhaps "Your local water company can refuse to sell you water if your political views do not align with theirs". This is the important difference, which it feels like you're brushing over or not noticing
I’m not brushing over it or not noticing. You’re making completely false equivalencies between publicly owned and privately owned.
Now you might argue that X or YouTube etc should be publicly owned (I.e. commandeered by the state). But thats a completely different argument.
Good thing you bring up those two terms, they're making the difference. I'm saying that the internet is privately owned, and that the fact that real life isn't, is the main reason we have any sort of freedom at all. The rest of the difference is purely mentality. It doesn't feel weird for people to say "We shouldn't allow people on the sex offender registry on our website", and yet, you don't hear of sex offenders being banned from walmart, or blacklisted from electricity companies, and for some reason, this doesn't lead to either company being accused of aiding sex offenders. If we ran the real world like we ran the internet, then you could easily kill people just by making them unpopular. They'd be unable to buy food, to drink water, to find a place to sleep, to get a car, etc, with the argument that anyone who provides a service to criminals are criminals as well. Which is why that idea is insane.
I recall reading that a company should either act like a platform or a service, rather than try to enjoy the advantages of both but admittedly not in dept.
You won’t find me disagreeing that the privately owned internet is a bad thing. Protocols such as SMTP and HTTP are sort of owned by everyone, but log in to Facebook.com and everything you do there (or even, for a long time, everything you do ANYWHERE ON THE INTERNET while your Facebook-logged-in cookie was active) is owned by them. Mass adoption of public social media protocols is long overdue.
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If you gave a speech in the liquor isle about the dangers of alcohol, you’d be removed. You’ll also be removed for causing a disturbance. It happens all the time. Homeless people yelling at the voices in their head get kicked out quite often.
But that's because they're being a nuisance. If they spoke about the wonders of alcohol, they'd be removed all the same, so they're not kicked out for being anti-alcohol. I guess we can define "freedom of speech" as unbiased moderation, in short, it's "neutrality". So even with freedom of speech, spam is not allowed, but you can advocate in favor of any ideology as long as you do it in the proper manner.
Another important thing to note is that rights are limited when and only when they conflict with another persons rights. There's a hiarchy of importance, so certain rights overwrite others in certain contexts. This makes it appear as if precise definitions aren't possible with human-related problems like rights, but I still think it is
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