Yeah so, the anti-"fire in a crowded theater" people are right, in the sense that the analogy was dicta in an overturned case whose actual "clear and present danger" test is no longer the standard (specifically, the case held that handing out flyers protesting the draft for World War I was not speech protected by the First Amendment, a laughable proposition today).
The replacement standard instead excludes protection for speech that is both "directed to" and "likely to" "incite or produce imminent lawless action," and these things are construed quite narrowly.
So: it's a bad analogy that was never the actual legal test, doesn't match the current test, and references an overturned case. But that doesn't mean it's actually legal to knowingly falsely shout "fire" in a crowded theater intending to cause a panicked stampede (though note there's more detail about intent and knowledge given there, and there would be other questions).
To a certain extent, trying to stop people referencing this really doesn't matter, though. If you got all the country's internet commentators to talk about "incitement to imminent lawless action" instead, they'd be in all likelihood deploying that phrase in the same places they currently use "fire in a crowded theater" or "clear and present danger." Eliminating this one analogy isn't really going to move the needle on people's understanding of what the First Amendment protects, but the phrase is both enduringly popular and a bugbear of the kind of people who care about this stuff, so the arguments and corrections will continue.
The replacement standard instead excludes protection for speech that is both "directed to" and "likely to" "incite or produce imminent lawless action," and these things are construed quite narrowly.
So: it's a bad analogy that was never the actual legal test, doesn't match the current test, and references an overturned case. But that doesn't mean it's actually legal to knowingly falsely shout "fire" in a crowded theater intending to cause a panicked stampede (though note there's more detail about intent and knowledge given there, and there would be other questions).
To a certain extent, trying to stop people referencing this really doesn't matter, though. If you got all the country's internet commentators to talk about "incitement to imminent lawless action" instead, they'd be in all likelihood deploying that phrase in the same places they currently use "fire in a crowded theater" or "clear and present danger." Eliminating this one analogy isn't really going to move the needle on people's understanding of what the First Amendment protects, but the phrase is both enduringly popular and a bugbear of the kind of people who care about this stuff, so the arguments and corrections will continue.