Nor is a government. But the founders thought the principle of free-speech was a good one and so we have the 1st amendment.

With the 1st amendment, the government can never censor (with a few exceptions)... however companies can censor whatever they want for whatever reason they want, perhaps ironically, as an expression of freedom of speech.

I'm aware. My point was that the founders of the US Government chose to uphold the principle of free speech. The founders of companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter chose not to.

I see. Your point is that the principle of free speech is something different than the 1st amendment and the authors of the amendment messed up and allowed a loophole.

I think that if a company has enough of a monopoly on information that they become a de-facto governing agency, that they should be forced to uphold the principles of the 1st amendment.

Facebook should be classified as something like a common carrier.

I understand now, and it's hard not to agree with that perspective.

On the other hand, because of the fundamental relationship of the free press and health of democracy, shouldn't there be some kind of criteria for validity the same way that health claims in advertising do, for example? I understand that some things are subjective and impossible to apply criteria to, but what about cases where people are knowingly publishing demonstrable falsehoods to mislead masses of people. Seems like a major problem. Btw, im not sure what my opinion is on this.... Im just "devil advocating", I guess.

EDIT:/foundational/fundamental Im having a hard time with words today. :/

I honestly don't know. I think in general though, we should try to make information be as available as possible. Most of the justification for regulations about communications content comes from a time when most people had only three television channels, and a few newspapers.

Also, China has used exactly the same justification for censoring their information. And they're not wrong. People do knowingly spread misinformation and harm others.

I think that it's a really tempting problem to want to solve. If we could just find some heuristic to know for certain that something was "fake", we'd have it all figured out.

Yes, and I consider that a limitation of the 1st amendment rather than something to celebrate.

Companies above a certain size, should be forced to be open platforms for everybody and everything (as long as its within the law).

Same concept as with net neutrality.

I have no problem with this as long as the company is being honest with what they're doing and why.

A honest company?

Yes indeed. There are many. I would even guestimate that most of them are honest.