People who would like to stick it to Zuckerberg etc should realize that this can also be used against sites like this. Beware.
Non Dot Gov websites are not government actors, and are not subject to the First Amendment.
This is all very simple, either they control and are responsible for the content or they are simply a forum, not claiming ownership or responsibility. They cannot have both. The first, responsibility means they insert their bias and are liable for the result. The latter, they don’t. Either way, they make lots of money. More in the latter. As a profit decision, I suspect they’ll opt for the latter eventually.
Selective enforcement is the real issue.
They waited until they were monopolies and a critical election approached to use the agreements to silence their opponents.
If they had enforced them all along, alternative sites would have arisen, which is why they didn’t.
They may not be government actors....but they are picking out items relating to our government.
I don’t like Google, Facebook and Twitter censoring speech based on their political bias, but they are not the government. They are private companies and what folks are using is in reality their property - their means of Internet publishing.
I also don’t like the bias and actual news censoring of the dominant media companies, but there again THEY ARE private corporations.
I don’t think I want courts turning private companies into de facto handmaidens of government “free speech” mandates, by the courts, the executive branch or Congress.
I would hope sooner or later public social & financial persuastion would get them to reform themselves.
There are schedule limits to how many programs can air in a day.
Not so websites, facebook posts, or youtube videos.
A publisher doesn’t have to produce every book, a printer doesn’t have to print every tract, etc...
Those who are now in ‘violation’ didn’t violate any speech codes or copyright matters.
Now THIS could be YUGE!
I think there is enough there to deny them the privilege of shadow banning, account closing, flat out censoring, without destroying parts of the constitution and affecting simple post/respond sites like this one.
It may come down to balancing political time. With equal time or equal sponsored accounts. But I think it should start with revoking all intellectual property patents, copyrights from social media.
Even the name Social Media categorizes these industries as new and in need of regulation.
The biggest problem, the age of scotus ... how much interest and aptitude will they have to learn the technology to correctly rule on this case?
The question is whether a very large Social Media forum becomes a defacto Town Square”. If so, then they become a defacto public square and attempts to censor ideas on that forum would then run afoul of the Constitution. Facebook, Google and Twitter have become the Nation’s Town Square. I expect the hammer is going to come down on them.
In this case you might end up with a 9-0 decision.
They have reaped the rewards of a free and open internet. Their attempts to close it down for everyone else is probably going to fail.
Facebook and Free Republic are private companies and can censor at will