Queen Elizabeth II has died

HN exists (partially) to surface interesting news and foster discussions of that news - flamebait is never interesting and it doesn't lead to interesting discussions. We of the internet discovered, during the usenet days, that reducing a conversation to a shouting match is boring - so to promote a more healthy dialog HN specifically removes inflammatory comments unless they bring an interesting topic to light (and even then it's just nicer to communicate in a polite manner) - as this is the goal for this private forum it's completely within its right to restrict discussions that go against that goal and restrict users that repeatedly violate that goal. The internet is a large place and there are plenty of other forums that cater to other forms of expression - the first amendment exists primarily to make it illegal for the government to say such places can't exist - it doesn't obligate all places to act in such a manner nor mandate the existence of such places.

Private entities are allowed to do whatever they want with their platform regarding speech. Twitter, HN, etc. are not obligated to give everyone a megaphone.

There's no way you don't know this already. It comes up every week.

It has been co-opted fairly recently -by some- to mean that no one can silence you anywhere. This is a new interpretation, and unrelated to the USA constitutional right to free speech.

This has never been the case. If you say something offensive to me in my house, I can rightfully remove you. You can continue to say the thing somewhere else, just not in a private house.

Hacker News -in this instance- is a private house. If they allowed unlimited free speech, they would have to allow personal attacks, spam, off-topic submissions, etc... Part of the value of HN is that the speech IS NOT free.

You and I can come here and trust that the conversations will meet a standard, banning people who flagrantly abuse that standard is also a form of free speech.

edit: after seeing your edit, it looks like this is a disingenuous question intended to start a flamewar. If that isn't your intention, you should be careful about how you phrase things.

This is meta navel-gazing and is generally not considered on-topic or useful here. That's probably the main reason for the downvotes.

To try to answer the question though, since we're already here:

There are two (at least two) definitions of "free speech" in the US. The "strict" one related to the Constitutional principle enshrined in the 1st Amendment which basically means that the government can't make certain speech illegal and then put you in jail or otherwise punish you for what you say. For better or worse, the courts have generally ruled that there are limits to that though, hence the old saw about "yelling fire in a crowded theatre".

Beyond that, some people look at free speech in a colloquial sense as meaning something like "I can say anything I want, anywhere I want, anytime I want, and nobody can interfere in any way with my doing so". This would mean, for example, that a private web-forum like HN banning an account could be seen as a violation of "free speech". This is not even close to a universally accepted definition, but at this point I guess we could say it's close to being "widely adopted" at worst.

I think most Americans though, accept that as an individual no one of us has standing to compel another individual, or private organization, to assist in transmitting, propagating, relaying, or distributing our speech. So HN banning an account may be distasteful to some people, but it's not a violation of the principle of "Free Speech".

YMMV.

Likewise, I would caution you about your own phrasing, particularly << So, there--the enlightened, FREE Western man or woman or "it", please tell me, is your freedom of speech an illusion and only applicable to Moslems? >>

You have had your question answered thoroughly, but you have escalated to examples that have already been explained (in one sentence: private companies can choose what to publish (Hebdo) and what not to publish (HN, Twitter) without government interference), and chosen a phrasing that is generally acknowledged to be insulting to non-gender conforming individuals.

This isn't a debate in intellectual good faith.

The answer to your question is that HN is just a specific type of web forum a specific set of rules. It's not an anything-goes place and never has been, and it's hardly the "western world".

Who decides whether the guidelines are fair? well, that has to be someone's job and it happens to be my job, so for now it's I who decide.

Since you've broken them badly in all kinds of places recently:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32671575

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32660805

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32659189

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32648075

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32646308

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32628649

(and that's just a few examples), I've banned your account. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.

people who do nothing but shout their arguments without engaging in good natured discussion are therefore equally not welcome. as a community we need the ability to stop those people from derailing our discussions.

the problem with flaimbait is that it is that it motivates people who like to shout. in a perfect community where noone engages in shouting matches, flaimbait would be unable to start any fights. it would therefore be harmless and ignored. but rarely is a community perfect, and so it is helpful to remind people to not do that.

to know why this particular comment was flaimbait it may be necessary to learn more about the topic and what kind of responses it draws out. understanding this is the job of the moderators. and while the moderators aren't perfect either, they are doing a god job so far, and instead of rejecting particular moderation actions it would be better to find different, less controversial ways to approach the topic in question, which in this case surely did happen. the topic brought up by the banned account has been discussed on this site multiple times in a more civilized form.

right here we have an example of an engaged civilized discussion. this is as it should be, however it is off topic, so people would still be in their right to downvote all of the comments in this subthread, including mine. we can and should have this discussion, but not here where the topic is the death of the british queen and not freedom of speech.

The problem is, the mods at Twitter may have a disagreement with a user and ban them arbitrarily, like they did with Peterson. Pretty soon, you will not be able to read anything except what appeals to the Twitter mods. Your thinking will be forced and re-defined and you won't be able to say what you think, because of the repercussions.

[...]

In a world where you can only say what you are allowed to say, people will stop thinking and everybody will say similar things. I hardly call that "freedom" and "pursuit of happiness".

i agree with your general sentiment, which is why i pointed out the difference of how germany treats its freedom of opinion. a few years ago a new law was enacted that requires the swift removal of online hate speech and one of the first people blocked because that law was someone making anti-muslim comments. so no, there is no allowed hate speech there.

the difficulty is to figure out what is to be considered hate speech and what isn't. some of that we may have to learn through trial and error.

the new law is controversial because it forces companies to act on mere notification without a court order. which, while considered normal in the US, is not how germans like to do things.