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cm_silva

Where does the first amendment fit in with this?

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The first amendment means that the government(s) cannot prosecute you for what you say. But there are exceptions:

- You can be prosecuted for the effects of speech, e.g. inciting people to riot/commit crimes;

- Threats of violence are not protected;

- Misleading claims in advertisements are not protected;

You can still be sued in civil courts for libel/slander, or the effects of your speech.

And people have the right to shun you if they don't like what you say.

It does not mean that a publisher is obligated to publish your speech. A newspaper does not have to publish your letter, a blog can delete your comments, and Facebook or Twitter can delete your posts or even suspend your account.

Here is what the first amendment says:

>Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The main question here is whether the government is abridging the freedom of speech.

If they are only requesting for removals and not doing it directly, that may not be against the letter of the law but it certainly goes against the spirit. N.B. I'm not a lawyer.

And I'm not going to go into the times that first amendment alone has been trampled, because life is short.

Misunderstood by Americans as it isn't absolute (FB and Twitter can just take your stuff down) - and nonexistent outside of it.

It's specifically talking about the government. In this case, it was the government doing the censorship so first amendment applies.

It's not the government doing the censorship if the private site can choose to refuse. In this case both were in cahoots, but that was (is?) Twitter's prerogative.

No, the government is requesting something to be taken down. Short of the exceptions mentioned up above, the platforms are not obligated whatsoever to follow those requests.

My understanding is that there is already court precedent that the government can’t do this (use private companies to do their censorship even if it’s not strictly guaranteed to happen).

There is, even if the companies can refuse. The government cannot ask companies to censor something. This is a direct violation of the first amendment.

News to me. What case established it?

I would be pretty surprised if this was true but 3rd Party Doctrine is in good standing in 99% of cases.

Edit: Yeah, it appears this is not true at all. The government of course cannot coerce a private company to do this (which is obvious since that'd be tantamount to the government itself doing the censorship), but they absolutely can request it. https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/19/when-government-urges-p...

I'm not an American, so I wouldn't know.

The question was: How does it fit in? Because the government is involving itself in actions of censorship, even if it is one step removed.

Similar to how I can still be accused and convicted of a crime, if the only thing I did was facilitating it? I'm not a lawyer, but I hope I'm getting my point across here.

The First Amendment generally only applies to governments. If companies exert government powers--company towns are the canonical example here--it can apply to them, but only to the extent that they are exerting such powers. The other way you can get state action is if there is some degree of government coercion (essentially, you have to be unable to say "no" to a request).

There are some colorable arguments that the government has exerted such coercion over Twitter et al in recent years, but I have never seen a lawsuit alleging such a connection that properly made those arguments, as those people instead prefer to make cockamamie theories such as "§230 makes everybody state actors."

There is court precedent that government cannot use private entities to silence speech, as they are doing in this case. This is a pretty cut and dry violation of the first amendment. Expect lawsuits.

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