The US Supreme Court has a different opinion.

They have ruled that private areas acting as public forums are still subject to the first amendment. See Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins [1]

> A state can prohibit the private owner of a shopping center from using state trespass law to exclude peaceful expressive activity in the open areas of the shopping center.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v....

As the link you provided states, this decision applies to shopping centers in California, whose state supreme court has narrowed its applicability a few times over the years.

This simply doesn't apply to YouTube.

It’s easier to argue that YouTube, Twitter, etc. are public forums. So it seems to me that the argument would be even stronger.

Probably not. There's a reason why the decision was so narrow - they explicitly didn't want to set a widely applicable precedent.

Read the appeals cases. They curtailed spaces like Costco parking lots and strip malls without plazas or atriums, which are different than "common areas". Free speech in common areas was reaffirmed in 2012.

YouTube is clearly a common area.

> YouTube is clearly a common area.

YouTube isn't even an area, much less a common area. (Not to mention that the “common area” thing is not a federal Constitutional requirement but a judicial application of the positive rights in the California Constitution; it is not a First Amendment right.)

It's a publication in which user submissions that Google accepts will be published, possibly accompanied by ads from which revenue is shared with the submitter.

This is a weak argument, nitpicking semantics. Virtual spaces are protected, too. [1] Telephone systems and television cable systems are not technically "areas" either, yet have protections under the first amendment.

Furthermore, you contradict YouTube's own mission statement:

> Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world.

> We believe people should be able to speak freely, share opinions, foster open dialogue, and that creative freedom leads to new voices, formats and possibilities.

> We believe everyone should have a chance to be discovered, build a business and succeed on their own terms, and that people—not gatekeepers—decide what’s popular.

[1] First Amendment Architecture, Wisconsin Law Review, Vol. 2012, No. 1, 2012, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1791125

> Telephone systems and television cable systems are not technically "areas" either, yet have protections under the first amendment.

Users of telephone systems have free speech protections against the operator of those systems not because of the first amendment (and especially not because of applications of that to physical common areas against private property owners, which applications don't actually exist—the First Amendment has specifically and repeatedly been held not to apply even in that case against the property owner), but because of common carrier regulations.

> Furthermore, you contradict YouTube's own mission statement:

YouTube's PR has very little impact on how constitutional law applies to it.

You keep editing your comments, so not sure what I'm responding to anymore. Anyway, I think it's disingenuous to argue that YouTube is not a common space, given that's how they describe themselves and how any reasonable person would describe their platform. Then to argue that virtual spaces are not protected by the first amendment contradicts the principles of free speech, and recent case law.

> Then to argue that virtual spaces are not protected by the first amendment contradicts the principles of free speech, and recent case law.

Since the citation upthread notes that even physical privately-owned common spaces are not protected by the first amendment against regulation by the owner of the space [0], though the first amendment rights of the owner also do not prevent state constitutions (California's in particular) from creating free speech obligations which do bind certain private owners of an extremely narrow class of public spaces, I think it is impossible to argue that virtual spaces are somehow protected under the first amendment by analogy to private common spaces, since the latter aren't actually protected.

[0] there is, IIRC, a different line of cases applying narrowly to government's or individual government official's use of privately owned physical spaces as a quasi-official two-way channel which does create some first amendment protection in that narrow context, and these principles have been extended to online fora, but that's not germane here.

> They have ruled that private areas acting as public forums are still subject to the first amendment

No, they've ruled the opposite, as your own source explicitly states. Pruneyard permitted California to impose free speech obligations on property owners via the State Constitution that the Supreme Court had previously found were not required under the First Amendment. (In effect, it found that the federal First Amendment rights of the property owner did not extend to blocking the state action.)

This is a tired argument. Pretty much everyone knows the legal definition of free speech, pointing it out isn't doing anyone a service on HN.

Free speech is not simply a law. It's a concept society must both value and uphold, or it is a right only the popular and powerful have. If I can't even speak up outside work about my unpopular political beliefs without the economic death penalty - do we really have free speech? I'd argue not really. I don't care too much that the government can't jail me for it - that's a pretty low bar.

While I do agree Youtube has the right to ban whatever they like on their platform, I don't have to think it's a good thing for society - and I will absolutely continue to call these things an erosion of my free speech in society.

Without citizens that vehemently uphold free speech policies, the entire concept folds as soon as we start carving out ever-longer lists of exceptions of those who do not have it.

You are describing the First Amendment, not the concept of free speech.