False, False, False! This is not how it works in US jurisprudence. Freedom of speech has to do with fundamental human rights and society. Government, being an important part of this, therefore must abide by Free Speech. However, private parties are also subject to it as well. Free Speech is fundamental, and even supersedes other rights, like property rights.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama
You can still shout whatever you want in the town square,
This is such a dishonest conceit. It's like some dictatorship declaring they have freedom of speech, because while they control the radio, TV, and newspapers, the opposition can still post pamphlets. No, I'm sorry, but the scales of relative power just don't work in a practical sense, either in my examples, or in the one you just proposed!
In 2019, it's like a farmer trying to assert property rights against airplanes overhead. Sorry, but laws do have to change in response to new technological realities.
but you aren't entitled to the audience of any particular publisher.
This is a conceit. The audience relationship is not with people and YouTube. It's with people and a particular creator. It's not the publisher refusing access to its audience. It's the publisher throwing up barriers to the audience.
If there were a monopoly on printing presses, the printing press company wouldn't be allowed to say, "It's my audience, you have no right to it. No Pro Democrat words get printed!" There was a monopoly on telephone wires. It's not as if they would have been allowed to say, "The people connected to my network are my audience! You are not entitled! No Democrat communications over my network!"
What you're defending is just a technological end-run around freedom of speech, which you support because it's your side that would hold all the power.
The holding in that case is quite narrow: "Constitutional protections of free speech under First and Fourteenth Amendments still applicable within the confines of a town owned by a private entity."
You would have to stretch the definition of "town" to include "website" to have it apply.
>> You can still shout whatever you want in the town square, > This is such a dishonest conceit.
Fine, then you can go on Gab, 4chan, 8chan or any of a number of other platforms or sites that accept hate speech to varying degrees. There are digital platforms available for that kind of speech.
> The audience relationship is not with people and YouTube. It's with people and a particular creator.
The editorial aspects of Youtube (including recommendations) are certainly within Youtube's rights to control. Youtube is a brand, not an ISP. Creators must establish a relationship with Youtube in order to publish content on it. There are terms for any such relationship, in the case of Youtube, they are described at https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/policies/#community-guideli...
> If there were a monopoly on printing presses,
There is no monopoly on the technical mechanisms of distributing video online. There are plenty of websites that self-host video content today, and there is no reason that a new provider couldn't attract the creators and audience that Youtube doesn't want.
There are many of them. We're conversing on one right now, in fact. I enjoy civil conversations here with people with whom I disagree deeply about many issues.
However, if mine or anyone else's comments veer to the hateful or inciteful, you can be sure that the moderators will address it by banning our comments or accounts.
> YouTube isn't held liable for copyright infringement
The existence of Youtube Content ID [1] directly contradicts this statement. The whole point of developing Content ID was to enforce copyright on the behalf of, and under pressure from copyright owners.
You couldn't publish the extreme content you see on the internet today in traditional newspapers and television. Mass radicalization didn't occur for all those decades.
The freedom to publish anything you want over a mass medium is something that is only as old as the internet has been generally available to the public, and the tools to amplify and target its reach are only as old as social media.
Whatever right to publish on mass social media that you think is threatened today is only a few decades old at best, but really only since lay people figured out how to use the technological tools of amplification.
You can still shout whatever you want in the town square, but you aren't entitled to the audience of any particular publisher. If those who want to see your content are displeased with that publisher's editorial decisions, they can move to a publisher that has content they want. If there are enough of them to matter, the publisher will either have to change its tactics or lose relevance.