A recent Supreme Court ruling may put the damper on efforts by the president and his defenders to stop social media giants from censoring and blocking accounts of people who make abusive, bullying, fascist, or other extreme posts, political and non-political. Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, was actually about cable TV public access channels, but the court's ruling sheds light on the right of media companies to censor user-generated content.
Remember that the First Amendment does NOT guarantee free speech in all situations. What it does is prohibit the Government from taking actions that limit free speech (including all levels of government).
The cable company in this case censured and eventually banned the plaintiffs from providing content for the company's community access channel, as the result of a program they produced that was critical of the cable company itself. The plaintiffs claimed that because the community access channel was set up as a public forum, their rights were violated.
The Supreme Court majority noted that although the cable company had a contract with the city, it was essentially operating as a private company, and not as an agent of the city. Therefore, the court ruled, the cable company is not bound by the First Amendment. It returned the case to the federal district court for review, taking into account this guidance.
It seems to me that this is VERY relevant to the question of social media companies removing content or banning users. Facebook and Twitter are not in any way agents of the government. They are clearly private companies. Thus they have the right to set rules and boundaries about allowable content, known as the Terms of Service.
Of course, there are complications, like the false positives resulting from the use of algorithms to try to identify violating content, which implies that the companies need functional appeal processes.
But when people post in social media, they need to remember that they are still really playing in somebody else's sandbox, and nastiness CAN have consequences.
