Alright that’s still a weird ruling to someone outside America though because something like a shopping mall or a parking lot are public spaces here too as well as anything that is openly visible on the internet. Which makes a lot of sense.
Think of it like your house. You can ask people to leave if they say something you find offensive. That is not infringing on their free speech.
If the owner of a shopping mall wants to ban the word banana, they can ask anyone who says it to leave. That is also not infringing on their free speech. That’s because shopping malls are not owned and operated by the government.
A shopping mall is absolutely not a public space, and if youre shouting slurs into a megaphone, or even just harassing random shoppers with your crazy beliefs, you are definitely going to be dragged out by security. And or/have the cops come to remobe you. I hope you understand how badly you just disproved your own point.
I think you’re misunderstanding the user of the term “public” here. A mall is a public space in the sense that people can go, but it’s not a picnic space in the sense that it’s not operated by the government, it’s a private space. I’m using the term public space in the governmental sense, not in the publically accessible sense.
Also, talking about Europe as a whole is wrong since different countries can still have different rules on the subject.
spujb@lemmy.cafe 4 days ago
@Kecessa@sh.itjust.works misspeaks when saying “public space”—the term they are thinking of is “public forum.” source
The rules around what constitutes a true public forum and what the public forum doctrine even means are fuzzy, but in all cases the term refers to a space owned or created by the government.
Thus, a shopping mall, parking lot, or internet forum, being owned by a private company, is not a public forum and can’t really be defended on the basis of the public forum doctrine.
Finally, as @Blazingtransfem98@discuss.online points out, none of this matters anyway in cases of incitement to imminent lawless action like threats or terrorist speech, which the First Amendment does not protect.
Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
See the US section, the use of the term “public space” in this conversation is acceptable as the term “public” is used in opposition to privately owned and not public in the sense that it’s open to the public like a mall is.
.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_space
spujb@lemmy.cafe 4 days ago
that’s fair, i’ll edit to say speaks unclearly rather than misspeaks. thanks for the clarification :)