Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The Congress is not censoring. Corporations are not covered by the 1st amendment last I knew.
I know you always hear ignorant people spouting off about their first amendment rights in many cases that have zero to do with the government, but that is just it, they’re are ignorant of what it is.
The first amendment means the government can’t suppress free speech (in most situations).
It has nothing to do with whether private companies can refuse to host speech that is related to terrorism.
There is no debate here. It factually isn’t.
You can try to argue there’s something else wrong with it, but it definitively does not violate the First Amendment.
There IS
There is what? To whom are you responding?
And what’s there to debate?
Then make it.
There is a debate, because so many people are framing it as a breach of 1A. Are you telling me not a single doper feels that way?
internet crashed while trying to respond
What ever happened to the right wingers who said that bakers don’t have to bake for gay weddings? Private companies can’t be forced to process the demands of those they disagree with politically. Ergo …
There is no debate because it is not a first amendment issue. Private companies are allowed to do what they want in this case.
I suppose it’s possible there’s a Doper who feels that way, but there’s some real loons on this board, to be honest.
Anyway, it’s factually not a First Amendment issue.
As for whether it’s right or not, that’s a separate question. My thoughts on that one are pretty much this:
Not a single correct doper feels that way. I can’t speak for those who are ignorant of the first amendment.
Not only is it not a First Amendment issue:
# 47 U.S. Code § 230 - Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material
“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.”
No one who reads the text of the first amendment feels that way.
Were social media’s recent bannings a law made by congress? The amendment, as you quoted it, only restricts what the government can do, not what private companies can do.
Now… as BigT points out, there may, in fact, be a problem if a small number of tech companies have an undo influence on public discourse. Maybe there’s a monopoly/oligopaly that needs to be broken up, or maybe there’s some other issue. But it’s not a first amendment issue.
I agree that there isn’t a “First Amendment” issue here (or even, from a non-U.S. perspective, a “free speech” issue). There might conceivably be an oligopoly issue incipient in all this.
In technical terms, I think that if ICANN just somehow refused to recognize a namespace–say, wisians dot com, on the grounds that everyone knows Wisians are all shiftless and untrustworthy, and they’re all welfare cheats, and they control Hollywood and all the big banks, and they stabbed us in the back and that’s why we lost The War–that would be a genuine free speech issue. I’m not 100% sure ICANN can even do that, but if they did, I would have a problem with it.
No, I don’t feel that it’s a debate, because I actually understand what is, and is not, protected by the First Amendment.
Generally, private companies can do what they want but there are limits. The 60s saw legislation passed which limited what private businesses could do when it came to serving minority groups for example.
But again, as of 2021, private companies are not required to allow people to use their platforms to push their political ideology. Especially when that ideology is tied to domestic terrorism or attempts to overthrow the government.
Fox news isn’t required to promote communism or give a platform to communists, and twitter isn’t required to give a platform to right wingers. And again there is the issue of domestic terrorism and attempts to overthrow the government being done by these same people.
Perfectly said.
Could the OP, who started this debate, take a stab at explaining why they think that there is a 1st Amendment violation? Beyond just quoting the amendment. I would be interested to hear their argument.