(This is a companion post to that about censorship below.)
The idea and right of ‘free speech’, like the related notion of censorship, is bound to the relationship of the citizen to the state, and concerns the citizens’ ability to speak or otherwise express opinions and positions freely, without prohibition, restriction or modification by the state or other citizens in public forums and physical spaces, with ‘public’ in this context meaning either the non-privately owned ‘commons’ or publicly funded and provided specific places, like state universities’ grounds, municipal parks, city plazas, etc., and not to guests in privately controlled or owned places merely open to the public.
In such rightly termed ‘public’ places, funded by taxes (not to be confused or conflated with privately held or provided places and forums open to the public), the right of free speech is rational, needful, and is rightly deemed paramount, as they are genuinely public, and, so long as automatic association of every person everywhere to at least one state or another remains non-optional, free speech will remain necessary to any nominal notion of the maintenance of free societies.
The principle and right of free speech necessarily and specifically applies where the above conditions exist (and even then, rules and bounds apply, and always would, even if only courtesy based). It does not apply, however, between private citizens in non-public forums or physical spaces, and one cannot be said to have been ‘censored’ should one’s person, presence or speech be removed from a privately owned or created space or forum, whether physical or digital. One can be said to have been restricted or disassociated from in such a circumstance, but not censored. States censor. *
A non-owning or controlling party has no right of free speech in such a setting, where his presence is not likewise a right, his affiliation non-obligatory. Where removal or restriction exists in such a setting, the operative principles and rights in play are those of association and property. One cannot demand or cite a right to free speech in or on another’s privately held space or property, whether social media chat board or someone else’s living room.
These realms can overlap in privately owned settings open to the public, like in a tavern, but being open to the public does not make the setting a publicly provided one that citizens have a right or obligation to access. In that space, Patron A (PA) cannot legitimately demand that Patron B (PB) cease speaking aloud about what PA considers an unwelcome topic, and can overhear. Unless the tavern owner gets involved, both patrons are in the commons, in a place neither of them own or control, and voluntarily, and so PA’s recourse is either to disassociate, i.e., move away from PB or leave the tavern entirely, or to involve the tavern owner. If that happens, should the owner take PA’s side, the owner (or his proxy, a manager, e.g.) may, exercising his rights of property and association, ask PB to, either: cease discussion of the controversial topic entirely in his tavern; lower his voice or change his location in the tavern to get away from PA; or quit the premises.
PB does not have any ‘right’ to free speech in this latter context, with the owner now involved and taking a position, as the state isn’t involved and neither patron has any right of place to be in the tavern, nor any requirement to be there.
This same issue comes up increasingly now in social media forums, with people complaining routinely that they have been ‘censored’ by and in forums created by other private citizens, while incorrectly referring to forums (the particular chat boards – the tenants) and their platform (say, Telegram – the landlord) as ‘public’ ones, implying them to be publicly provided services and spaces, something they have a right to be in and post on. They are not that.
Some social media platforms are plausibly, maybe even verifiably, said to receive funding from the state, to be arms of state intelligence services, and where true, then it could be rightly argued that citizens are funding the platform, and thus do have a right to be on the platform. But a right to be on the platform and create a channel or chat group of one’s own is not at all the same as demanding access to a channel or board created and controlled by someone else and then further demand an unhindered right to post, regardless of any rules or goals the board might have. That would be like being a tenant of public housing, paid for with tax money, and then demanding a right to enter any and every other unit in the complex, in addition to your own, and do what you would while there. Whoever paid for the building, if not your own apartment (or board) you’ve no right even of access to it, much less speech while in it. If you’re there at all, you’re a guest, and the rules of the house apply.
A privately created and controlled forum (channel or chat board), whether on a privately held or publicly provided platform, is merely open to the public, at the pleasure and discretion of the forum’s creator. It is not a ‘public service’. No different than a tavern or someone’s house, which no guest can claim any right to access, much less cite an add’l right to speak in without hindrance about whatever they might care to, in whatever way, and at whatever length they would.
The right of free speech, while a legitimate, necessary and coherent one in officially public settings, is not relevant or rational in privately held ones. Even if it rationally could be said to exist in that context – it cannot – it would not be the paramount right then as it is between the state and citizen (disassociation not being an option there), being eclipsed by the rights of both association and property in that context.
People of the libertarian/freedom community ought contemplate and reconcile this overly connected, broad and significantly misapplied concept of the ‘right’ of free speech, and the related notion of censorship, because the lack of clarity surrounding both is causing a lot of freedom advocates to be ironically advocating directly against the rational and always relevant rights of association and property on a regular basis.
The right of free speech, or even the need for one, might be entirely subsumed in a voluntarist world by those other even more fundamental natural law rights, which are always relevant and logical aside from any relationship to a state. If necessary to claim or assert it at all – perhaps in the informal ‘commons’ it would still be relevant – it would not carry the same weight of importance, as there would be no state to officially curtail it, and no common pool of treasure to quarrel over. Disputes would be managed and bounded by rights of property and association, by codes of conduct, reason and courtesy, and by the consequences of direct trespass.
In the meantime, and regardless, there is no right of free speech for guests in private settings.
* A new word needs coining to describe the limiting of speech where the state is not involved.
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