Freedom of speech doesn't mean no one can ask you to change what you say, or that you never change your words to please anyone.
It's a very specific concept from the United States Constitution that relates to the government forcing you to refrain from saying things that you want to say. Freedom of speech is the kind of thing that comes up when a government agency puts warning labels on record albums, news media are prevented from reporting on government activities, or butthurt lawyers (coughcough Charles Carreon) try to use the courts to prevent people from criticizing their clients.
The blogger in question felt that the word "badassity" was an essential element of his brand, and that to change his header would dilute his brand in some way. He made a calculated decision that appeasing Chase would negatively affect his brand, perhaps even resulting in a reduction to his overall income in the long run, either directly or indirectly. A post like this one reinforces his brand as a blog with "integrity," and an attitude, and is sure to help offset whatever immediate loss he sees from Chase withdrawing their support.
While he's clearly a skilled and savvy blogger, I really don't see this as a free speech issue. A more accurate title would be "I Just Gave Up $4000 Per Month to Preserve My Brand Integrity."
> It's a very specific concept from the United States Constitution
This is completely incorrect, and it's a little insulting to the users here who aren't American.
Freedom of speech is a value with broad applicability. The United States Constitution enshrines a right to free speech as a limitation of government power, fine, but they don't have a monopoly on the idea. Relative freedom of speech is a characteristic of every forum in which speech and the suppression of speech are possible.
Banning users of a forum limits freedom of speech, removing commentary that goes off-topic limits freedom of speech. Forums are often quite free to set their own rules about who is allowed to say what, and users are often free to choose the forums they frequent, but that's mostly beside the point - speech within any particular forum is free to a given extent, and some people (be they owners, operators, users, whatever) believe that this freedom is intrinsically valuable.
(I don't really see this one as a free speech issue myself - to me, this one is about the credit card company preserving their brand integrity.)
Those words were indeed ill-considered; the concept dates at least into the English Bill of Rights about a century before the US one -- and of course it was also a value in the French revolution.
However, the point of the comment you're replying to still stands. If I merely say "We will only maintain a business relationship if you stop saying X, Y, and Z," then turning down that business relationship is not a free-speech issue. My sending you money to change the way you speak is not an abridgement of your freedom of speech, because accepting it is purely voluntary. It might be a matter of "selling out" but it's not a matter of "freedom of speech."
Cf. the FunnyJunk/Oatmeal debacle happening right now, where there was a tangible legal threat: "Take down your blog post or I will sue the crap out of you. Oh, and pay me thousands of dollars."
> If I merely say "We will only maintain a business relationship if you stop saying X, Y, and Z," then turning down that business relationship is not a free-speech issue.
I think if there's any problem here it was with the way it was put. I don't think anyone would have had a problem if Chase had said, "We're terminating our relationship with you because of your blog's content," but the idea of them suggesting he change to maintain the relationship seems to have struck a chord. Perhaps it would have been better to leave that possibility implicit, but... The more I think about it, the more I think this blogger is drumming the issue up to generate traffic to make up for his loss of revenue.
I'm not disagreeing with your statement about credit card companies, but to me it is hilarious that American credit card companies and banks still honestly believe that the customers think of them as brands which represent the epitome of honesty, integrity, and family values.
We know that, and they know that, but its still crucial to keep up the mechanisms of being honest,etc.
Consider the jewellery chain in the UK that sold cheap junk. Customers knew it, and the company knew, but everything was profitable until the CEO explicitly said the wares were junk. Then the sales went into free-fall.
I sort of view them like politicians: grab bags of stinky stuff, and some bits of professed policy which I might find useful in narrow contexts. In that regard, they can be value-ranked, and value-rankings within demographic groups can be brand managed.
It's not necessarily that they believe that. It's that they desperately need their marketing material to represent that. Quite probably because they realize it's a potential weakness in their image.
The blog post is from an American blog, so noting that specific concept of freedom of speech from an American point of view is perfectly fine in this case. And in the American concept, freedom of speech is a constitutional concept regulating what the government can do to individuals.
Even in America, we have a concept of freedom of speech that extends beyond the First Amendment. Obviously his Constitutional rights have not been abridged, but that doesn't mean that it's not a free speech issue.
No, it isn't a freedom of speech issue, not in any sense of the term, and conflating this situation with it devalues the concept greatly. He has all of the freedom of speech he desires. One's freedom's do not extend to coercing others.
He was not forced to do anything - he was given a choice: either we continue to pay you, and you abridge one line that we don't like being associated with our product, or you keep on saying whatever you wish and we have no requirement to pay you.
Both parties are free to set any terms (as allowed by law) on the deal which both will agree to. If both don't agree to the terms, you have a standard failure to negotiate a deal. If one does something in the future which causes distress to the other party, the other party can certainly demand redress. If the party which caused the issue refuses this, why should they be forced to submit to his whims with no freedom of their own? And what does that have to do with freedom of speech? He's still saying what he wanted to say, is he not?
By that standard, nothing short of cutting your tongue off would be an infringement of your freedom of speech. Under the Sedition Act of 1918, nobody was "forced" to do anything; they were just imprisoned if they said bad things about the government.
This sort of hyperbolic conflation is exactly why it's stupid to relate a business transaction to "free speech." There is exactly zero relationship between what I said and putting people in jail for speech. (FYI: putting people in jail for saying things that you don't want is equivalent to forcing people to say what you do want.)
I was tempted to not reply since the comment was being downvoted, but clearly you've garnered some support for your argument giving the people the running the credit card company the right to choose whom they pay for what services and why is equivalent to incarcerating people for speaking their minds.
The argument you're making here, is that every company must -pay- people for exercising their free speech, even when it harms the company. By your argument, it's a violation of a person's free speech for a company to fire its spokesman after they go off on a racist rant on-air, and that marketing firms should be paid by their clients even if they chose to make an ad which disparages them?
Since when does your right to free speech take away my right to association?
Not only do I entirely agree with this, but the title of the blog post makes it seems like he was acting less out of a concern for free speech and more out of a desire for attention. "Hey guys, look at me! I'm giving up money for free speech!"
There is definitely a brand integrity aspect to this but you are making light of what I think is the more significant aspect. What he claims is that this is a test of his own personal financial independence at work. A challenge to the value of being financially independent and the sacrifices required to attain the goal. In his words, "this is really a test of what financial independence is all about." That seems accurate. If he champions himself as financial independent, it would be personally dishonest to then do something undesirable for the sole purpose of further financial gain.
There is brand integrity there, but I think there is also personal integrity and resolve.
As others have mentioned, the idea that "freedom of speech" is a concept originating from and specific to the US Constitution is staggeringly ignorant, and the idea that freedom of speech can only be infringed by the government is too.
Freedom is about what the less powerful can do even when opposed by the more powerful. Money is one of the rawest forms of power in the modern world, and so if someone threatens to decrease your income significantly unless you change what you say, they are unambiguously flexing their power at you and impinging on your freedom of speech.
Any previous customer of mine that doesn't continue to buy and wear my T-shirts filled with "obscenities" are denying me my freedom of speech by threatening my income (since I've set myself up as a T-shirt merchant); they are built into my forecast projections as repeatable sales, and they are not allowed to not deal with me.
1. There is a difference between not buying and demanding change. If I demand that you stop selling obscene t-shirts, or threaten to stop buying any of your t-shirts, I'm infringing your freedom of speech.
2. I don't see where anybody said that Citi shouldn't be allowed to do what they did. But that doesn't change it from being a form of censorship.
There is no difference if the consequence of failing to meet the demand is the demander not buying, or not doing business anymore. It is just stating the conditions for continued relationship ahead of time, and providing an alternative course of action. How harshly would the bank be judged if they simply dissociated and gave the blogger no option to adjust?
The fact that the blogger is continuing to blog as he sees fit counters any objectively verifiable assertion that censorship was involved.
I believe the term censorship is best left for those situation when a state agency (which one might be able to argue many large banks are anymore) demands changes or cessation of communication under pain (or threat) of fine, imprisonment, or death.
Thank you. He wrote a blog post about turning down a profitable offer in order to keep his semi-profitable current scheme as well as choices he made on how to represent himself.
We are reading about this here on hacker news because he's being promoted here to compensate for that lost money.
That's wonderful. Whoever posted this, thanks for wasting my time. If it was the author, you truly need to get a degree in management because you're adept at wasting technical people's time.
It's not just essential brand securing. Making the changes according to the requests would open up the way for referral agents to manipulate him in any way they like. It's basically telling them "yeah, I'm for sale. Give me money I will say whatever shit you like"
Maybe a more accurate term for what the blogger values--instead of "freedom of speech"--would be "artistic freedom" or "editorial independence". The blogger values the ability to write whatever he wants without bowing down to an advertiser's opinions. Every post is a "director's cut" edition (to throw in movie metaphors), rather than a bland studio-appeasing release.
At the same time, the fundamental concept in "freedom of speech", "artistic freedom", and "editorial independence" seems to be the same: the ability to express what you want to express without pressure from an external authority. Of course, coercion from a government creates much greater pressure than insistence from a boss or an advertiser.
It's a very specific concept from the United States Constitution that relates to the government forcing you to refrain from saying things that you want to say. Freedom of speech is the kind of thing that comes up when a government agency puts warning labels on record albums, news media are prevented from reporting on government activities, or butthurt lawyers (cough cough Charles Carreon) try to use the courts to prevent people from criticizing their clients.
The blogger in question felt that the word "badassity" was an essential element of his brand, and that to change his header would dilute his brand in some way. He made a calculated decision that appeasing Chase would negatively affect his brand, perhaps even resulting in a reduction to his overall income in the long run, either directly or indirectly. A post like this one reinforces his brand as a blog with "integrity," and an attitude, and is sure to help offset whatever immediate loss he sees from Chase withdrawing their support.
While he's clearly a skilled and savvy blogger, I really don't see this as a free speech issue. A more accurate title would be "I Just Gave Up $4000 Per Month to Preserve My Brand Integrity."