Youtube now totally owns online video, there isn't any competitors that are even close. Facebook has almost half the world signed up to its platform. This isn't someone's online forum or a news site. These companies completely own their respective parts of the industry.
The major social media sites like Youtube, Twitter, Facebook are so large they are considered to be a "public private space" (I forget the exact legal term).
These platforms agree to DMCA safe harbour where they are considered to be a "platform" and not a "publisher". That means they shouldn't be censoring anyone on their political opinions and must be politically neutral (otherwise they are taking on the role of a publisher as they are acting as an editor), now IANAL but there is certainly an argument that can be made. Whether a judge would rule it so, who knows.
This is worth watching:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZCBRHOg3PQ
Tim Pool in this video manages to point out quite clearly how Twitter terms of service are political and they don't even realise it.
There was a recent decision that POTUS twitter feed is a public space (https://theconversation.com/federal-judge-rules-trumps-twitt...) . We can easily see this extended to any US elected official.
And there is also historical context in an 1980 decision in Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins where, based on Californian law, private property of the shoping mall was deemed open to political speech (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._R...)
When its a private, non-political forum, the corps can do as they choose. But once politics and political speech move in along with public elected officials, all bets are off.
(Thanks to hn:dexen for the links. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20268802 )
> The distinction, in this case, is that's it's NOT about using an existing forum for something. Web pages do not come with comment sections by default.
But social media does. And so does a lot of websites that use either wordpress plugins, Discus, or other sites.
And nothing I cited requires a comments section to be made... But when it is, there's precedent for forcing whomever's running it to make way for political speech when politicians are stumping and talking there.
> It's like requiring a shopping mall to build a stage for people to have political speeches on. I feel few people would say free speech is infringed upon if every mall doesn't build such a stage.
The very act of having a floor in the private mall was enough. You don't need a stage. And even gathering signatures for a political reason is reason enough. Seriously, go look up the Pruneyard rule. You can try to derail it with 'whatifs', but that is precedent.
You're talking about the latter, which is a constitutional right protected by the government. What people are talking about here is the concept of unrestricted speech, which is a much broader ideal, necessary for a healthy society, and is definitely under ever-increasing pressure as the world moves towards entirely different communication mediums. When most conversation moves online, the lack of public open spaces in that digital environment is a valid cause for concern and definitely deserves discussion.
The confusion (ours, not yours specifically) might arise because some talk about free speech the principle and others talk about free speech the legal norm. (The latter is prominently codified in the US constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights).
It's not the same and the principle isn't exclusively about government.
Free speech is also a very old ideal and exists in places where the US constitution doesn't apply and places where human rights aren't implemented through local policies. It can be violated in places where there is no government at all.
There's this great Wikipedia article on the topic which introduces first the idea, then different implementations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech
Not all speech is legally allowed, is this extensions going to deal with copyright violations, threats, libel, etc. Or even someone posting the name of a person arrested on a news story when the laws disallow that information being public.