That's actually exactly what the First Amendment of the United States Constitution explicitly prevents.
What it doens't prevent, though, is what you're actually upset about. Private corporations and individuals can censor all day long in the United States. It's a great misunderstanding that they're somehow not entitled to that.
It's not a first amendment issue because the first amendment only forbids the government from censoring speech, and private companies are not the government.
However, it's still a free speech issue, and it's still a censorship issue. Just not a first amendment issue.
Private companies can still censor and can stifle/forbid free speech.
No, people disagree on the meaning, scope, nature, and purpose of “free speech”, despite agreeing that “free speech” is a good thing.
It's true that the First Amendment (especially when combined with incorporation under the 14th) directly embodies a reasonably close approximation of one of the viewpoints of what free speech is all about, while simultaneously looking like a narrow special case of one of the other viewpoints.
But the nature of the disagreement here is not confusion between a principle and a legal embodiment of that principle, but a fundamental clash of beliefs about the nature of the named principle.
1) Google has decided that it does not want this content on their platform.
2) The totalitarian government has decided that nobody can access this content on any platform.
Encouraging the harassment of families of school shooting victims is pretty heinous, and not something I'd want affiliated with my brand. I also wouldn't want my brand to become a platform for someone who perpetuates conspiracy theories that cause true believes to pick up weapons and become terrorists, simply because that's how he makes a buck.
After all, both Google and Twitter have spent close to a decade silencing religious extremists on their platforms. Where were the free speech advocates when fundamentalist Muslims were silenced on Twitter and couldn't use the platform to spread their message?
Meanwhile, in China, the government dictates all censorship. Google is required to follow this exactly.
Very big difference.
False, we do not live in ancient Rome, so censorship can be done by people who are not government officials.
>Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient" as determined by a government or private institution
Instead of completely censorsing/hiding things from you, suspected spam is placed in a folder that you can view and decide for yourself whether or not it's worth your attention.