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right. But as an advertiser, there are so many places to spend money that why would one invest in a really distasteful (albeit legal) product? X is a cesspool of unpleasantness.

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Sep 7·edited Sep 7

They shouldn't. X is worse than a cesspool of unpleasantness, it's a platform for anti-democratic evil. Ugh. (Where's my barf bag!)

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Sep 7·edited Sep 7

"They'll think what I tell them to think" -- Citizen Kane.

Fully 233 years after the U.S. Constitutional Bill of Rights was passed in 1791, the debate continues over the meanings and limits of Freedom of Speech.

As Keith repeatedly said, correctly in my opinion, all speech is permissible as long as it's legal. And therein lies the rub. As Keith later noted, "lies and hate are non-deterministic." That's the problem.

Because on the one hand, the Supreme Court has recognized that the First Amendment permits restrictions upon the content of speech in a “few limited areas,” including obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement, fighting words, and speech integral to criminal conduct.

But on the other hand, it all depends on who you ask.

I'm clearly not a legal scholar, but it seems evident to me that this debate is unresolvable. Because the offense is in the eye of the beholder (including the courts).

Good luck with resolving that debate. I'll check back in a few hundred years to see how you're doing.

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Separately, on the point of whether advertisers should boycott X, it seems to me that advertisers should be free to spend wherever they see fit. If placing ads on X is deemed to be potentially detrimental to their interests, they should be free to advertise elsewhere. There's no law I know of that compels companies to advertise on specific platforms. That'd be undemocratic.

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