Wow, that is an amazing way to describe it. I've never heard that before. That is a great framing of the debate: free speech doesn't mean free reach. I don't know who made it up (kudos to you if you did) but having terms to describe each part of the issue is very helpful. TIL
It's a useful framing to to have, because "reach" is indeed the issue. Analogies to "guy yelling in the town square" aren't valid with Twitter because the town square doesn't have algorithms that moderate how often the town crier is audible to the public. And the town square also never had automated bots that parrot the criers' views (or contrary view) at zero marginal cost.
if Musk takes over Twitter, we'll be able to see how much 'freedom' he tolerates when the topics are things he has personal interests in.
So, what if all the publishers in one country just so happen to decide that Mr. Solzhenitsyn's book "Gulag Archipelago" is politically very uncomfortable to the ruling elite and all decline to publish it? This was Finlandized Finland in the 1970s. (To be clear, government didn't formally ban it. All publishing houses were privately owned companies. Yet somehow the decision was made.)
Maybe nobody is entitled to book publishers providing "free reach" of publishing your book, especially in thousands of copies. Yet something went wrong there. I don't have a catchy slogan for it, but sometimes the decisions to prevent reach are functionally antithetical to the purpose of free press.
