This is totally false in every sense. Try kicking out every African American customer from your restaurant. The Feds will bury your ass in lawsuits if not hate trumped up hate crime charges.
> be careful what you wish for
Why does everything you say sound more like a threat than a real argument? We can have different laws for the internet and telephone. Who is the “they” you are talking about?
I miss when conservative meant “let’s not spend so much money” instead of “I hate a lot of people and want to be as offensive as possible”
> This is totally false in every sense.
Every sense huh? Seems that's a bit overstated. Your rights to others property is extremely limited, and your example of a protected group does not apply to most groups. I can kick out everyone with last name starting with "A", anyone over 5'6", all left handed people, kids, blue eyed people, in fact, the majority of groups I can think of are perfectly bannable from all sorts of properties.
Very few groups (9 under Federal Law, maybe 10 if newer Genetic Material laws end up fitting) have special exemptions as a class to prevent this. It is in no way a concept that applies to any group except protected classes. These classes are given extra rights that do not apply to everyone.
And it does apply to my property. I can kick out all of any group from my house or car. Because they have no rights to that property.
Example: You certainly can be kicked out of bars for being an asshole. Source: I’m an asshole.
https://definitions.uslegal.com/p/public-place/
Rather than public square:
https://nclplaw.org/area-of-law/rights-of-expression-in-the-...
Generally a public space doesn’t mean you can do anything you want in it, and the owner can restrict speech they deem offensive in their space and expel you. They can not block entry though without reasonable cause, and specifically not on protected statuses.
A public square is publicly managed space and the government can not restrict your speech on it but can restrict your conduct. The bar is very high for the government on a public space (although in practice the modern militarized police does what it pleases). They can also restrict the time and duration of your activity and speech if it’s somehow disruptive to the normal function of the space.
I would say social media is much more like a public space than a public square. It is not a sidewalk maintained by the public. It is not actually a public institution in any way whatsoever (publicly traded equity doesn’t make something a public entity).
As such, they can put up a “no shirt, no shoes, no racists, no service” and kick you out of their place of business.
“public square” isn't a term with a specific definition in US law, its a common-language term occasionally referenced in illustrating the logic of legal decisions, but not always with the same precise meaning.
Public forum is a term with specific legal meaning in First Amendment law, but it refers to a space used for official government business open to the public, not just a place open to the public. The latter is more like a public accomodation (but that is mostly relevant to anti-discrimination law.)
As to social media companies, they too have free speech rights. In the Supreme Court ruling Reno v. ACLU, the judges ruled unanimously that the Internet is a free speech zone, deserving of at least as much First Amendment protection as that afforded to books, newspapers and magazines. As such, your rights to post your beliefs ends exactly where another entity begins.
They're not stopping you from any speech. No one, including older news papers, radio channels, tv stations, etc., ever had to let anyone promote anything. You have no right to someone else's property for the tradeoff they don't have right to yours.
If anything, the social media startups gave vastly more people more voice than any previous medium. For example, we're chatting right now, something we'd not have done in any previous medium.
>must be regulated the same politically-neutral way those public and privately owned communications services are
be careful what you ask for - they might end up regulated like over the air TV or radio, where plenty of things expressible online are completely forbidden.
If telephone calls or mail content were public, you'd get a lot more stuff banned there too.