Beginning 1 September, we will need to geoblock Mississippi IPs

Speech isn't just shouting into the void; it's dialogue back and forth between two or more different people. Social media sites such as Hacker News and the WELL facilitate this, even when they aren't businesses, in much the same way as a dinner party or a church picnic does.

Sure, speech happens on and is facilitated by social media sites, but that doesn't imply that operating a social media site is a form of speech any more than operating a notebook factory is.

If having a dinner party at your house gets you busted by the police, you are not living in a liberal society. If notebook factories are under tight surveillance to ensure that their notebooks are serialized and tracked because bad people might use them to plot crimes, you are not living in a liberal society.

I agree, there are better grounds to oppose such measures than "this violates the notebook factory owner's freedom of speech" though.

No, it violates the potential notebook buyers' freedom of speech. The factory owner's freedoms don't come into it.

Sounds like we are in agreement then, the root of this was

>A blog is speech, but I wouldn't say that deciding to operate a social media site is speech.

I agree in that narrow sense—but shutting down social media sites denies the sites' users their human right of expression, as well as other basic human rights*. The fact that the site operator doesn't necessarily suffer this harm† seems like an irrelevant distraction, and I have no idea why you brought it up, or why you keep repeating it, if you agree that the site users are being illegitimately harmed.

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* See UDHR articles 12, 18, 19, and 20. This is not an issue limited to the provincial laws of one small country.

† Unless the site operators also use of the site, in which case they too do suffer it; this is in my experience virtually always the case with the noncommercial sites that it is most important to protect.

In the context of "Law requires age verification for social media sites" and "This is an example of the kinds of onerous regulations physical business owners have to comply with being forced on website operators", I took your comment that "Websites aren't necessarily businesses; they're speech." to mean that operating a social media website wasn't like operating a business because it's a form of speech.

Conversely, if your restaurant is well known for hosting criminals plotting their next gig, it will be put under tight surveillance.

And if the police has reason to suspect that there is illegal gambling happening at your dinner party they can obtain a warrant to bust your party.

Hell even if your party is to loud and annoys the neighbours the police can and will shut it down.

I don't follow.

If social media sites are shut down but I am free to post my opinions on my personal blog site, how is my freedom of speech affected?

Did I not have freedom of speech before social media existed?

Is there an implication in freedom of speech that any speech facilitating service that can be offered must be allowed to operate? That's at least not obvious to me.

I echo what others said: There are good reasons to oppose all this, but blanket cries of "free speech" without any substance don't exactly help.

> Speech isn't just shouting into the void; it's dialogue back and forth between two or more different people.

In some cases this arises in US Constitutional law as the freedom of other people to seek and encounter the speech, though I'm not sure if there's a formal name for the idea. (e.g. "Freedom of Hearing".)

It sounds like you are falling into the sort of confusion that leads people to sometimes wonder if murder is actually wrong in a world where cancer and hunger exist.

I am fairly sure I am not confused. Instead I believe the post I am replying to didn't actually advance a coherent argument, but just appealed to emotions.

I am not sure that I have ever encountered anyone confused in the way you describe either...

On the contrary, you appear to be suffering the confusion that a service which facilitates a legally protected activity cannot be regulated, interfered with, or discontinued in the general case. Typically only targeted, motivated interference would constitute a violation.

Shutting down a notebook factory for dodging sales tax is not a violation of the rights of would-be purchasers.

freedom of association

That usually gets used in more of a "you guys can't make a club together" sense, as opposed to "you aren't allowed to search for that keyword."