For the record, the "yelling fire in a crowded theater" example came from one of the worst Supreme Court decisions of all time, which sent a man to jail for distributing anti-draft literature during WWI. The parent comment isn't necessarily guilty of this, but I've noticed that the people who approvingly quote Oliver Wendell Holmes as a justification for restrictions on free speech almost invariably have no clue about the historical context.
If I could give all the upvotes I ever had, I would assign them to this post right here. It truly saddens me that this one comment represents the exception to this entire thread rather than the majority. Doesn’t it occur to anyone that Twitter is just like any other big corporation out there and this “principled stand” is nothing more than a corporatist trampling of our basic rights? Twitter ceased to be useful to me years ago but this latest action just affirms to me that they really have no clue what freedom is.
