The pivotal book about freedom of speech, 'On Liberty' from J. S. Mill, is predominantly interested in freedom from societal suppression, not just government suppression:
"Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant - society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it - its means of tyrannising are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own."
Mill may be the most passionate philosopher to defend this maximalist interpretation of free speech, but he is hopelessly out of date. Mill was a proponent of the 'marketplace of ideas' delusion that has been shown over the past few decades to be an illusion; Mill seems to think that knowledge, and only knowledge, emerges from arguments between dedicated opponents. These quaint bon mots from twee English gentlemen of the Victorian period are about as relevant to modern life as are their opinions about medicine, hygiene, education, and the role of women. Interesting as a historical artifact but not for much more.
You are saying that social censure is no longer something that humans need to worry about. That the concept of is a free exchange of ideas is antiquated, and that the principle of letting people learn from their debates was only valid a hundred years ago? All because of some tech algorithms?
This book had no bearing on the First Amendment's conception of freedom of speech, seeing as how it was written several decades after the formation of the U.S.
This book may have been pivotal to British utilitarianists, but it didn't have much, if any, impact on the U.S.
As an ex-Scientologist it saddens me that I have to tell HN readers this, but please read "On liberty" which explains why censorship is a flawed approach.
Before the U.S., nobody even thought free speech was possible. England was the closest, but their version of free speech was still subject to government censorship.
It was the writings of the Founding Fathers, and the Bill of Rights in particular, that established the doctrine that is today known as "freedom of speech."
French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen expressed freedom of speech at roughly the same time as american Bill of Rights, and used formulation that is more general and does not restrict just the government:
"The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, except to respond to the abuse of this liberty, in the cases determined by the law."
