How do you define which speech is speech worthy of protection and which speech is a consequence of speech and therefore not worthy of protection?

For example, imagine some CEO says something politically objectionable, as is their right granted by allowing free speech. Do I have the right to protest or boycott their company as part of my free speech rights or would that be illegal because I'm rendering a consequence for the CEO's speech?

I just have trouble conceptualizing what you think a world with consequence free speech would actually look like.

This is a good question that would require a long debate to answer, but the answer obviously is neither of these two extremes:

- Every entity except the US govt is allowed to enforce consequences for speech

- there should never ever be any consequences for any speech ever

Are you arguing with me or the person I am replying to?

I object to people casually paraphrasing, you have a right to free speech but not consequences of that speech. "Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences" Aside from sounding vaguely like a threat, it's a paradoxical attack on freedom of speech. Here's my point again:

Freedom of speech means a lot of things. One of them is the American-centric perspective of "1st Amendment" + Supreme Court precedent, which is that the government should not be involved in unduly prohibiting speech, and we define a bunch of speech as protected. For example, we exclude imminent threat, which in the U.S. is not protected - I can't go up in a speech and rile people up to go attack another race tomorrow. But I can rail against a race (which in most of Europe would be prohibited speech as it's Incitement)).

Now that I've established it means a few things, let's talk about 'consequences.'. The 1st Amendment protects you from government prosecution for protected speech. It doesn't protect you from getting fired, people following you around with placards because of your speech, Instagram banning you, your ISP blocking you, your bank canceling your accounts, etc.

Yet these are the (non-1st-Amendment-centric) attacks on Freedom of Speech. You can argue they're good, they're not good, whatever.

Summary of my argument: freedom of speech CAN mean freedom from SOME consequences.

Consequences are the WHOLE point. In the U.S. we had McCarthyism, where if you were vaguely left-wing you would lose your job, you would lose your life. In the USSR if you didn't follow party lines you'd lose your job, or be reassigned a shitty job. These are Consequences.

In the Reign of the last decade of a new racialized political activism, some people lost jobs for reasons that were dubious, because they had unpopular views. The Left did it.

Today, the Right is doing it, and they're taking in an extra step.

When does it stop? Ahh, good question! It stops when we begin respecting Freedom of Speech as a principle and not a recycled way to attack our enemies.

Again, apologies for both-sides-ism, as someone who believes in civil liberties, I am a both-sides-ist.