Comment by afcarv on 17/07/2015 at 03:00 UTC*

1 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)

View submission: Let's talk content. AMA.

I'd like to paste this quote by Murray Rothbard on freedom of speech:

"(...) Freedom of speech is supposed to mean the right of everyone to say whatever he likes. But the neglected question is: Where? Where does a man have this right? He certainly does not have it on property on which he is trespassing. In short, he has this right only either on his own property or on the property of someone who has agreed, as a gift or in a rental contract, to allow him on the premises. In fact, then, there is no such thing as a separate "right to free speech"; there is only a man's property right: the right to do as he wills with his own or to make voluntary agreements with other property owners."*

So basically, any talk of freedom of speech on Reddit is pretty much a bunch of bullshit unless Reddit finds a way to sell/rent portions of it to customers or investors, who may then be able to do whatever they want with their own space/subreddit. However, given that Reddit would still own the platform and servers, they would still be liable to any content hosted on it, so some kind of policy would be needed. I think a proper freedom of speech guarantee would require a transformation of Reddit from an website to a distributed content platform which users could host on their own servers, and thus, claim its property and any responsibilities attached to it. This is a major, major shift, though, and very unlikely to happen.

Replies

Comment by Tor_Coolguy at 17/07/2015 at 08:50 UTC

1 upvotes, 0 direct replies

There is legal, Constitutionally protected free speech, and there is the ideal of free speech based in the enlightenment. People love to confuse them when it's convenient.