The first amendment only frees your speech from state suppression.
Except when they want to hide behind the legal defence of “common carrier”. Can’t have it both ways.
It doesn't interact with the First Amendment at all. Private corporations can make their own rules about what speech they will and will not allow. The First Amendment only deals with the government's ability to censor individuals, not a private entity's policies regarding allowable communications. Most Americans don't seem to understand this.
> I think many Americans understand this very well, and thus resorting to narrow legalistic view of the issue misunderstands their position.
You're being disingenuous here or at the very least you put way too much faith in the average American's knowledge of basic civics / their own government. I've had to point out that the First Amendment doesn't apply to private employment numerous times in the past (i.e., this is not my first comment) in situations where the other commenter literally did not understand the Constitution and the basic history surrounding it. The demographic reading Hacker News is not at all indicative of the U.S. population at large and usually consists of college-educated, middle class knowledge workers.
[edit] Clearly the original parent does understand the First Amendment.
> You're being disingenuous here or at the very least you put way too much faith in the average American's knowledge of basic civics / their own government.
You don't need to known details of government functioning to value free speech. Valuing free speech is one of those natural values most people - at least in American culture - embrace by default, without much need of educating them on the details.
> [edit] Clearly the original parent does understand the First Amendment.
That very well may be (though OP recognized their error in an edit), but the comment I responded to talked about "most Americans", not just one online commenter.
Obviously the threat is assumed. But can congress explicitly threaten a company? Is this all congress needs to do to run around the first amendment in the 21st century - threaten internet companies to do it for them?
Just like it's not a First Amendment violation for you to refuse me to paint racist slogan on the side of my house, does not mean it's a First Amendment violation for me to refuse to run your ads on your site.
>Any advertiser who doesn’t pass will be prohibited from running political or issue ads.
How does this interact with the First Amendment? If I'm paying for a local TV company to run an add, wouldn't restricting my ability be in violation? What if I buy the local TV company and choose which ads are ran?
Edit: What about non-political or non-issue ads that still have a political component? For example, if I was a billionaire wanting to cause some certain political divides, I could definitely create ads that still cause great controversy. For example, spend some money developing a bullet proof school outfit, and then advertise it heavily. It is a bunch of extra work and expenditure I wouldn't do if I could just run gun control ads, but if those were banned are you going to ban any advertisements related to any merchandise that is related to political issues?