nickhammes, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

You’ve conflated punishment and consequences. You have the freedom to hold some morally repugnant view like white nationalism, and your freedom of speech protects your right to express those views. But your family can hear those expressions, and cut you out of their lives, publicly condemn those views, or you for holding them, without affecting your freedom of speech. A company can refuse to allow you to use their platform to spread those views without affecting your freedom of speech.

What can’t happen is a politician or government official use their powers to suppress your speech, arrest you, unless your speech act harms people, like shouting fire in a crowded theater. People disagree about exactly what those exceptions should be, but except for a few small but loud conservative groups trying to censor things like LGBTQ content, this basic premise is pretty uncontroversial, at least in the US.