Prodding private companies into censorship by proxy is a dangerous government tradition, por Jesse Walker (Los Angeles Times, via Reason):
When YouTube, Facebook or Twitter cracks down on some form of expression — conspiracy theories, radical rants, terrorist propaganda — some of the targets inevitably complain that their freedom of speech is under attack. (This feeling of victimhood may be what sent Nasim Aghdam to YouTube headquarters, gun in hand.) There is a strong retort to this: These are private platforms with a right to decide what they publish. It is no more a violation of the 1st Amendment for YouTube to muzzle a channel (...) than it is for this newspaper to refuse to run a column calling for Minnesota to invade Wisconsin.
But what if a private platform suppresses speech because it’s afraid the government might otherwise step in?
Just as one effective end-run around the 4th Amendment is to ask private companies for data they slurped up on their own, the 1st Amendment can be sidestepped when officials pressure the private sector into self-censorship. The end result can be rules more restrictive than the companies would impose on their own — and more intrusive than the government could get away with if it tried to impose them directly.
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