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This is a late stage capitalism issue where too much power has been consolidated into the hands of too few, and so much as a single comment made publicly can blacklist you from participating in any cultural event for the rest of your life.
Think of how many radio stations, venues, internet channels etc have been bought up by megacorp.
We have all the bad parts of a Gibson cyberpunk dystopia and none of the flying cars or bio-enhancements.
It absolutely is. Freedom of speech means free speakers. If you're going to face petty punishments for the rest of your days because your criticized the "wrong" people then you are not a free speaker.
If you're serious about a free society that means you have to cop criticism, disrespect, and even mockery, most especially and particularly if you're in a position of power.
Madison Square Garden and its investors have the freedom to bar anyone they see fit on their own property. Their portfolios are only getting larger.
That’s late stage capitalism.
The intent of 1A is to protect the freedom of speech from those in power. The fact that non-government entities now wield the power to suppress speech doesn't change the fact that this is an infringement of free speech.
in the sense in which the entire constitutional apparatus is falling appart
because citizen-president Trump is a power bully
but this was bound to happen. as we transition from orality to literacy to digital-literacy and beyond
consider why the laws are written down. consider the way language became computer languages. and then realize that what was written down must now grapple with the new technological paradigm of digital paper that writes on itself
it's like we have (re-)discovered paper and the very idea of writing down the law is a techno-social innovation sweeping the land
The entire First Amendment is one sentence:
> 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.
Nowhere in there does it say anything about "those in power" in a way that it could possibly apply to a private party.
Of course that doesn’t mean that it’s a good thing to happen, or that there should not be any laws preventing it.
If the state doesn't in fact do these things then you have a different state and the constitution is just a piece of paper.
In fact, the opposite is true: The government forcing private individuals or companies to tolerate speech on their premises or carry it in their media is considered compelled speech and as such a First Amendment violation itself.
Whether that’s still the best way of doing things is a different question, but that’s what the First Amendment is/does.
It absolutely is not. In fact it is a restriction on the state.
The rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights are inherent. They are not derived from the government. We have them by nature of existing. The Bill of Rights prohibits the government from infringing on these inherent rights.
A person was distributing fliers in a 'company town.' Company towns were essentially privately owned 'towns' on privately owned property. They were told to stop and leave, they refused, and were arrested for trespass. The case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court where it was thrown out. Wiki has a pretty nice synopsis of the critical point:
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The state had attempted to analogize the town's rights to the rights of homeowners to regulate the conduct of guests in their home. The Court rejected that contention by noting that ownership "does not always mean absolute dominion". The court pointed out that the more an owner opens his property up to the public in general, the more his rights are circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who are invited in.
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That's unlikely to matter here but it's an important nuance to the 1st Amendment. It's also important for the future because it will, sooner or later, likely end up applying to social media companies who are doing everything they can frame themselves as a digital 'public square' for speech.
The judiciary is a branch of government.
You can assert rights but if you don't have those rights in practice then the assertions don't help you.
Really we're going backwards here
Digital literacy in the younger generations is dropping, and even language literacy is not where it used to be
It's kind of shocking to see these stats regress in my lifetime but they are
Democracy isn't just a form of government, it is also a type of society. Part of being a democratic society is that people are generally able to respectfully express themselves without fear of being punished for unpopular opinions.
> 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.
It precisely says the government cannot limit your speech and is intentionally silent about everyone else.
Well, yes, but I'd say the more important part is that students are having their visas revoked and being pulled off the street into immigration detention because of social media posts.
Government does, but other entities don’t.
I am not saying I agree or like it, just that 1st amendment doesn’t specifically apply here.
The general idea of freedom of speech applies and there may be state, local laws or other federal laws in play. But that’s more “in spirit” and wouldn’t hold up in court.
It’s like people being censored on Facebook or YouTube - “Don’t like it? Build your own Facebook or YouTube, pal”. Here it’s “build your own MSG, pal” I guess.
> In Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, the Supreme Court distinguished a private shopping mall from the company town in Marsh and held that the mall had not been sufficiently dedicated to public use for First Amendment free speech rights to apply within it.
A company towns per-se don’t exist anymore in US? There are developer owned neighborhoods though. Mixed zoned areas with everything owned by a corporate entity, so could apply there perhaps?
Democracy doesn't just mean you get to vote on some things.
You have people in this thread asserting that freedom of speech is an inherent right while simultaneously supporting a corporation's ability to infringe that right and suppress speech through petty punishments.
Your main problem is that you're misconstruing the nature of freedom. Freedom isn't merely freedom from things, it's also the freedom to actually do things.
The reasonable democratic thing to do here would be to propose new legislation explicitly covering the protection of speech "on private property", pass it if deemed desirable, and just be done with it.
Of course, the problem with that is that such a law might be seen to actually contradict the First Amendment (compelled speech and all), so it would possibly have to be a constitutional amendment, and that's obviously not happening. I really have no idea on how to get out of this mess, yet doing so seems extremely important.
That's why I said that such protections will likely end up applying, sooner or later. The precedent for moving stuff from the private to public domain (in terms of protections of users) is quite clear and there's a willingness among the court to act on such, so this applying to things that provide free open access to far more people than any government can reach, and then try to act as their untouchable and unconstrained overlord by appealing to 'private property', is probably inevitable. Of course "inevitable" has no meaning. It could be 5 years from now, or 50.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Community_Access_Cor...
> It only says that government won't make laws restricting it.
These are the same thing. Further, private corporations have editorial control over what they allow in their publications or on their platforms which is also free speech. Or are you suggesting that the New York Times is required by The First Amendment to publish every letter it receives? That a website is required to leave scam comments or spam up? The no corporate owned platform can moderate in any way?