Today's post brought to you by: The Internet.
If you live in the United States, or any country with similar constitutional rights, you do have a guaranteed freedom of speech. That is, you are free from government censorship, for the most part, barring death threats or straight-up treason.
And that's good. I'm glad that this country doesn't believe in mandating a religion or arresting people for making fun of politicians.
However, the concept of constitutionally guaranteed free speech has been wildly reinvented by people who A) Don't know law from a hole in there ground, and B) Want to be jerks without suffering repercussions.
Today, I saw the following things:
-An author crying censorship because a digital provider decided not to carry his eBook
-A person who thinks that the Twitter Terms of Service are unconstitutional
-An angry internet denizen who says that closing the comments section on an article about online harassment is violating his right to free speech
So let's clear some things up.
This idea that all speech is constitutionally unfettered is new, it's erroneous, and frankly, it's childish. Can you imagine if everyone who ever wrote a letter to the editor tried to sue the paper for refusing to print it? Or if people insisted that standing on your front lawn screaming obscenities at your window was covered by freedom of speech and assembly? And yet, this is how some self-important commenters feel the internet should be.
It's not. Each platform, run by a private company, is allowed to limit how you use that platform. They can even tell you that you're banned from the clubhouse. It's not even remotely illegal or unethical. If I ran a bookstore, and you came in berating other customers for buying books you personally didn't like, I would kick your nuisance ass out. So it is with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and comment sections all over the internet. If you don't play by the rules, you don't get to play. Period. The constitution does not say otherwise.
I keep seeing people, and even companies, getting drawn into arguments about this, which is a shame.
It's simple. Are you a government? If so, go do your job, and don't go around prodding people's opinions with laws. It won't work, anyway. But if you're not a government, and someone is telling you that it is their constitutional right to be a threatening or otherwise obtrusive jerk, you may safely escort them off your property and leave them to howl at the wind.
If you find yourself about to be drawn into this argument with someone, please send them this XKCD comic:
And then ignore them.