The distinction between free speech as a legal right and cultural value
If you are reading a piece about free speech and content moderation on platforms like Twitter, look to see if it meaningfully engages with the concepts of spam and porn, which are both fully legal speech, and both heavily moderated with little controversy. (This piece does not.)<p>Why does this matter? Because free speech, free expression in general, is a means to express values and beliefs. Our values and beliefs are integral to the way we each evaluate the content decisions of private parties like social platforms, publishers, and people.<p>No one values spam, so no one writes hand-wringing essays about whether it is ok to kick spam and spammers off social media. Most people recognize that porn, even if they like it, is not something that should be in everyone’s faces all the time, so there is little existential concern for free speech as a whole when porn is excluded or hidden from some contexts.<p>You cannot expect to make sense of free speech if you try to ignore other values.