The first amendment is about the government. Your speech is not illegal. The government cannot persecute you for your opinion or beliefs. It has absolutely nothing to do with your ability to be heard on the internet.
I must admit I find your reply a bit frustrating, because I literally began my comment by addressing what I feel is exactly your argument:
> I very strongly feel that we should be very careful to avoid adopting a legalistic attitude towards freedom of speech. That is, I am opposed to the argument that private corporations are not bound by the first amendment, and therefore it's okay for them to suppress content. I agree that they're not bound by the first amendment (I don't claim to understand the nuances of the "platform" laws so I won't address that), but that's different from saying that we as a society should want our private platforms to engage in such censorship and suppression.
In other words, do you see how your response is taking exactly the "well, technically it's legal" attitude that I was talking about, and how my point was about that there is a difference between what is legal and what we actually want in a society?
You're completely ignoring the fact that corporations are comprised of people, and as such have First Amendment rights of free speech and self-expression of their own.
I understand your letter of the law/spirit of the law position on free speech. I agree that the dichotomy is frustrating, for a ton of issues beside speech.
I disagree that "platforms" answer to a higher calling than I do. The first amendment is a contract between a US citizen and the US government. I'm not shrugging off your argument as "this is how things are"; I believe this is how things should be.
Many of the comments in this thread focus on large players' significant influence on the information that Americans consume. I don't think this has anything to do with free speech law; if anything, it's an anti-trust issue. Forcing for-profit, non-governmental organizations to publish all speech of all Americans sounds like a nightmare. I don't want to live in that society.
Neither of those are cases of the government prosecuting you for opinion or belief.
One is the government prosecuting you for destroying government property. The other is the government prosecuting you for sharing information that you are not allowed to share.
It has always been the case that certain forms of protest are legal, and certain forms are not. Protesting in ways that are illegal doesn't mean that your right to free speech is curtailed. You can still say whatever you want, you just can't say it while burning cars or whatever.
> It has always been the case that certain forms of protest are legal, and certain forms are not. Protesting in ways that are illegal doesn't mean that your right to free speech is curtailed. You can still say whatever you want, you just can't say it while burning cars or whatever.
All four cases involve some form of protest against the government. All four were peaceful; They did not harm others. All four involve the Supreme Court upholding their convictions.
> Your speech is not illegal. The government cannot persecute you for your opinion or beliefs.
Don’t you tell me that the government doesn’t try to censor speech or that they can’t.
Corporations should not be allowed to persecute based on option or beliefs either. Corporations already cant persecute based on sex, race, religion, orientation or age. Why should beliefs be any different?
Employers may not discriminate based on these things. They can let you go for what you say. It's called employment at will and I should have the right to remove someone from my private company who is toxic to our culture. If someone is acting unprofessional, I can see no way to force the company to retain them.
This is completely separate from private publishers and platforms. Should a magazine or news paper be forced to publish anything? Does YouTube not charging you for producing content somehow change their relationship?
