A tale as old as the Internet (older!) is people arguing about how we represent our morality through legal code. The First Amendment is a law, but it's an impe

A tale as old as the Internet (older!) is people arguing about how we represent our morality through legal code. The First Amendment is a law, but it's an imperfect representation of an idea, and that idea is that everyone has a right to (among other things) express ideas free from organized oppression. A lot of people see "organized oppression" to be exclusively possible by a governing body, but some others see that to mean the platforms themselves. "The First Amendment" is oftentimes used as a conversational shortcut to talk about the moral right of expression. Is it entirely accurate? No, and accuracy matters. However, the conversation doesn't die when the correction is made. Here, it's true that CloudFlare isn't in violation of the First Amendment of the US Constitution, however the argument being made is that they have a moral obligation to stay a "dumb pipe", to prevent the oppression of a minority voice. I'm not making that argument, I just wanted to point out the nuance of invoking "The First Amendment" here, that it's often not literally a reference to the legal authority of the private entity in question.