[Rylinks]

This is wrong, even in the United States. There are rare circumstances where a company's property is open to the public to such an extent that they become subject to first amendment restrictions (e.g. Marsh v. Alabama). Some states, such as California, have even greater restrictions on private parties in their state constitution. CA's constitutional speech protections prevent shopping malls from expelling petitioners from their premises, even if the mall disagrees with the speech.

Extending this body of law to, say, Facebook would have problems, of course. But I don't think it's so clear that all sensible adults know that censorship is only something the government does, and are happy letting any corporate behavior, no matter how extreme, pass without scrutiny.

[groby_b]

I stand corrected. And am happy to learn about Marsh v. Alabama, thank you!

The larger point I was trying to make still stands. I think.

Specifically, that speech in a private context is not subject to the same amount of regulations as speech in a public context (with the incorrect interference that only the govt can restrict speech in a public context). Marsh v. Alabama specifically argues that the sidewalk in a company town is equivalent to a public space. (And I think that does hold interesting questions for large web sites).

But free speech rules still apply to a lesser extent on both commercial and private properties. The idea that "censorship for comfort" in general is bad is misguided.

(In the context of above lawsuit, I'd love to hear a lawyer expand on if content restrictions qualify as restricting speech in a semi-public content, or if they qualify as making the space less public - i.e. are they barriers to access, or to speech?)

[Rylinks]

I agree, and if I were forced to answer I would say that even the CA constitution probably doesn't apply to Facebook et. al.

I think the point I have in mind is that there are less restrictions on speech as the venue becomes more private, and this is for good reasons, large websites as a platform for mass conversation are relatively new, and come with their own benefits and drawbacks when they choose to restrict speech. And because these trade-offs are new, the debate should be about these pros and cons, rather than flat statements that censorship is bad, or that private companies can do whatever they want, no matter how severe.

It should be a policy debate. The CA constitution probably doesn't apply, but the legislature can intervene anyway, and I don't think an argument that says "these platforms are important enough to modern-day communication that they should do so in some manner" is completely insane.