Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

Re:Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWar... by busterarm on Thursday May 02, 2019 @03:00PM (#19811368)

Actually you're not entirely correct. Private property rights have been ignored in court cases before where that property was the "public square".

This has come up in cases of corporation-owned/built towns meant to house workers that then violated their residents (i.e, employees and their families) free speech rights in said towns. Constitutionally protected speech was upheld vs Private Property rights.

There have been very good arguments made that the same should be applied to Facebook, et. al.

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Re:Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWar... by dclusin on Thursday May 02, 2019 @03:44PM (#19811936)

This is super interesting. What was the specific argument for company towns? I'm not a lawyer, but I could imagine an argument where since the company town took on government functions, then it therefore should be treated as such with regards to constitutional protections. Am I close?

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Re:Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWar... by busterarm on Friday May 03, 2019 @01:00AM (#19815724)

I don't exactly recall but I think they focussed just on private property rights since extraterritoriality isn't a thing (really that would make the government panic).

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Re:Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWar... by olivermarks on Thursday May 02, 2019 @03:42PM (#19811907)

Exactly what I was thinking when I wrote my down voted comment. FB et al are enabling a public forum. If a town is built with a public town square the city can't subsequently decide who to ban from it based on their views, only if they are drunk and disorderly, a public nuisance etc.

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