First Amendment maintains freedom to express but does not state there's an obligation to be heard.

You are free to ignore people as much as you want. You should not stop them from uttering those words in the first place though.

> First Amendment maintains freedom. It does not state there's an obligation. You are free to ignore people as much as you want. You should not stop them from uttering those words in the first place though.

So you're fine if YouTube/Google chooses not to reproduce and distribute certain messages?

I think the point is that it depends on their reasons. The U.S. government imposes restrictions on broadcast content, but these restrictions are on extremely shaky ground, and they rely heavily on not venturing into viewpoint discrimination and focusing entirely on content discrimination (i.e. sexual nudity on ordinary daytime television).

1) There's an argument that deleting the comment disallows the expression in the first place.

2) Sure, private companies can do what they want. My point is that they just use the first amendment, because the current nebulous definitions aren't really working.

> 1) There's an argument that deleting the comment disallows the expression in the first place.

That argument doesn't hold water. If someone pins a message to my corkboard, I'm disallowing the expression if I express my disapproval by removing it?

> 2) Sure, private companies can do what they want. My point is that they just use the first amendment, because the current nebulous definitions aren't really working.

The First Amendment only works because non-governmental actors in society are allowed to decide what to publish, what to pass on, and what to throw away according to their own standards. It's not some blanket "everyone allow all" rule.

Most pamphlets are judged to be garbage and go into the trash, much to the consternation of their authors.

1) This is the platform vs publisher discussion. I'm just stating it as a potential case.

2) You agree with me. Again, my point is not that they shouldn't do that, but that the filter they use to do so is so highly subjective and opaque that it's no longer useful.

>> The First Amendment only works because non-governmental actors in society are allowed to decide what to publish, what to pass on, and what to throw away according to their own standards. It's not some blanket "everyone allow all" rule.

> 2) You agree with me. Again, my point is not that they shouldn't do that, but that the filter they use to do so is so highly subjective and opaque that it's no longer useful.

No, I don't. I think it's fine to have opaque, highly subjective standards; and such standards are can be very useful. My standards about what I publish, what I pass on, and what I throw away are like that. The costs of transparency can be extremely high, and subjectivity just can't be avoided. In some cases, my judgement may differ from theirs, and I may even say so, but ultimately subjective judgement can't be avoided.

1) That argument is false because the comment could be expressed on another platform or their own platform (e.g. a personal website).

2) That doesn't make sense in the context of a privately owned company, the 1st amendment doesn't define a standard for speech, it outlines explicit limitations of the government.

What if those words they utter are death threats and call for violence against a group? Should that be protected against the First Amendment?

No, and this has been widely litigated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

I see there’s a lot of court cases listed in that Wikipedia entry so it seems like it'll have to be decided by a judge on what is considered free speech or not, because language by nature is vague and can interpreted in many different ways.

So there is no such thing completely “free” speech if there are constraints.

Have you read any of the cases? They get pretty detailed about what is and isn’t allowed. This is not the first time we’ve been having this debate - far front it. Though, some seem unaware that there’s a substantial body of court history on the subject, both American and otherwise.

As long as they are not going to immediately cause violence but generic "Death to America" chats are absolutely protected.

Newspaper has editorial control, while Google and YouTube pretend to be platforms. Phone company doesn't censor your conversation, but also doesn't take responsibility for their content. YouTube has much more in common with it than with a newspaper.

An open forum is not the same as letters to the editor.

It's more analogous to people talking in a bar.

> An open forum is not the same as letters to the editor.

I disagree.

"I rented this hall [for this open forum], and now I’m going to turn off the lights."

You really don't see the difference between an editor selecting one person to speak, versus a forum where almost everyone gets to speak?

> You really don't see the difference between an editor selecting one person to speak, versus a forum where almost everyone gets to speak?

There is no difference. If I invite people to come to my place to talk in some kind of forum, I have no obligation to let people who I think are disruptive or offensive stay, nor do I have an obligation to preserve any record of their words.

There's also an important difference between "your house" and a common open forum with tens of millions of people.

> There's also an important difference between "your house" and a common open forum with tens of millions of people.

No, not really. The only difference that's important is between forums run by the government and forums that are not. In the case of the latter, the people who run it have an extremely free hand.