Trump sanctions the International Criminal Court and anyone who provides evidence to it, and now pro-Palestinian groups can't post videos of Israeli abuse on YouTube. The First Amendment is nowhere to be seen.
The problem is that in practice, if you can't do YouTube, Facebook, Tiktok, INsta, etc... your speech will not be heard by anyone. It's like if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, the fact that it makes sound is irrelevant. So effectively, it amounts to censorship, even though the government potentially had no hand in it.
Now imagine someone in Trump administration pressured Google with a juicy contract, or the prospect of an expensive lawsuit, and the quid pro quo was dumping these videos that annoy "our Israeli friends". This kind of "pay to play" is at minimum corruption. It may also fall of short of constitutional guarantees for free speech. Ironically, it is exactly the same thing a lot of members of the Trump administration have accused Biden of doing (exhibit: the so called "Twitter Files" etc... ), although I don't believe this went anywhere in federal courts (am I wrong?)
I honestly don't know what the answer is. But I would not be surprised if in 50 years time, some of these large companies get regulated as "utilities" and are no longer able to yank "videos" from their platform just because they feel like it. And every time they "abuse" their powers, I feel like we get an inch closer to that onerous regulation.
nitpick - Youtube is bound by the US Constitution, it is the highest law of the land. 1A[1] is only about binding the government/congresses power though so youtube is not bound by 1A.
[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/
When the government pressures companies to censor Constitutionally protected speech, that is a First Amendment violation. If it weren't, the First Amendment would have no practical meaning.
Perhaps not, but they could courier the evidence on a DVD to the Hague.
Also, do you have any actual evidence of political debanking in the US? I can't find any references to it other than the propaganda of the current administration.
https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/google-admi...
Make of it what you will.
https://www.wired.com/story/republicans-claim-biden-censored...
right.
The lesson to draw from Gaza is that if you become inconvenient to "the people in power" tomorrow, you would meet the exact same fate.
e.g.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918
There is nothing unique about what is happening now.
It is a statement of fact about the nature of the US state (and would apply to most western ones tbh). Freedom of Speech is simply a privilege that those in power grant you when it is convenient to do so. It will be taken away when expedient to do so.
The post I was replying to seemed to believe it was a novel situation.
Freedom of speech is meant to protect us from government censorship. Trump sanctions would fall into that category, but a social media site censoring what they don't want to host seems like fair game.
The article answers this:
> YouTube, which is owned by Google, confirmed to The Intercept that it deleted the groups’ accounts as a direct result of State Department sanctions against the group after a review.
Sanctions were put in place and YouTube followed policy to not allow content from sanctioned groups. That sounds like a loophole, and could be found by a court to be a violation, but it isn't nearly as cut and dry as people here seem to be making it out to be.
Yes, according to the article. That argument is made over and over in it, it’s hard to miss. “Forcing” doesn’t just mean directly requiring the action, it also means the threat of “this is not going to end up well for you if you don’t comply”. Of course, you can argue that Google could and should fight it, but that doesn’t change what the government is doing.
> but a social media site censoring what they don't want to host seems like fair game.
Again, the article makes it really clear they are doing this as the direct result of government actions.
I saw multiple references there to the government sanctioning groups and that YouTube took down videos based on the sanctions. That very well could be a loophole and a court might deem that a first amendment violation, but it isn't as simple as finding communications where the government directly requested those videos to be taken down.
> “Forcing” doesn’t just mean directly requiring the action, it also means the threat of “this is not going to end up well for you if you don’t comply”.
Which is definitely what the current administration does. If you need an example, look at the recent Jimmy Kimmel case.
I could see a court deciding this YouTube situation is a first amendment violation. I don't know of any law or precedent that makes it a clear cut case given what is described in the article.
Jimmy Kimmel is on the air today, having walked back his nonsense about the political allegiances of the Charlie Kirk killer. If the outcome is the political left in America is even fractionally less likely to incite violence against anyone they don't like the speech of, then that's a great outcome.
That it was even off, based on threats made by the government, is the point. Bad things by one party aren’t suddenly OK because a different party beat them.
I am as against the Republicans doing this stuff even 5% as much as the Democrats did, so I'm glad the Trump administration turns out to have not done anything to get him off the air.
1. The right was making all sorts of claims about the killer before they knew anything about him (this is a true statement).
2. Donald Trump is not acting at all like someone who's in mourning (this is also a true statement).
Neither of those statements is inflammatory or ignorant. They're both objectively true statements that pretty much everyone who follows the news is aware of.
Beyond that, you're ignoring the fact that ABC only "chose" to suspend Jimmy Kimmel's show after they were publicly threatened by Trump's FCC chair.