Free speech is not a critical component of ensuring democratic government is held to account, but rather ensuring that power is held accountable when used against the powerless. Free speech is the answer to the age old question Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?, or Who watches the watchers?

What the xkcd comic completely misses is the fact that government is not the only place where power resides today. The US free speech laws was created at a time when kings ruled absolute and governments had few restrictions, and so you needed fundamental laws written in a constitution in order to hold a newly founded government in check. Today, arguable Google and Facebook wield more power than most governments and so a law that is limited to government is no longer suited to keep the watchers in check.

In contrast, the EU has free speech rights laws written in more modern time and it does not limit itself to governments. This demonstrate quite nicely how the xkcd comic falls into a US-only context. If you are being boycotted, canceled and in general discriminated because of your speech, your free speech rights might be violated under EU law. A lot of it depend on the power dynamic between the watcher and the watched.

>However, it does not mean your favourite website has to grant you or anyone else complete freedom to say or do whatever you want.

You are doing a little bit of a bait and switch here, no?

"Saying" and "doing" (contrary to some more modern political agendas) are two very, very different things.

One (saying) is how ideas (good, bad, conspiratorial, etc) get exchanged.

The other (doing) can quickly run into other people's rights as a human.

It is obvious that physical actions need to be restricted to protect people.

But the idea that words or an ideas need to be restricted, when you can just not listen, or read them, or block them, etc is kind of nonsensical.

It is also implied in the second quoted line above that online speech is different than free speech in general. But in a practical sense because of modern usage and dependence, it is not.

Would you be ok with phone companies scanning your phone calls and blocking people that use "forbidden words or ideas" that they detect from using their phone service or any other phone service? Probably not because you have come to think of phones as a necessary way that people communicate today. You can't really have a job, or relationship, or other social integration without one. And that includes people that you do not agree with or that are legitimately crazy.

Social platforms, due to network effects, are also becoming that way. There is a modern problem of "free speech" that goes something like this:

- One person says something online that others do not like or is not popular at a specific time for a specific reason.

- Others put pressure on the platform to silence that person.

- "Go make your own platform if you want to say those things" ... HN says.

- Except, you can't really.

- Because people will then use social media to get your hosting site to drop you, get your payment processors and banks to drop you, etc. Go make your own hosting platform? Go make your own bank? Go make your own Internet?

It used to be a common refrain in the US, at least, that the proof of how strong our freedom was, was the fact that we let people openly talk about crazy conspiracies, literally preach hate, say disgusting things and our response was to counter them with simple talking points and then as a group shun their ideas or use our speech to make fun of them (or educate them and change their mind!) and things like that. The ACLU famously would protect the speech of Nazis and KKK members.

Now, apparently, we are far too fragile to hear crazy or hateful people say nonsense, even when we have the ability to silence them for ourselves by not clicking on their posts, or blocking them from our view.

No, now we need to make sure that not only do we not hear their speech, but that no one else accidentally hear any speech that we don't like as well.

I am not sure that we are better off this way. Unpalatable speech should be in the open where we can deal with it, not pushed to the edges where the "crazies" need to start innovating ways to communicate out of public view. That seems more dangerous some how.