4 ms·

I took a look and I am not sure anymore. I found this: https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/79102/what-is-the-name-of-a-u-s-supreme-court-decision-holding-t

I took a look and I am not sure anymore. I found this: https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/79102/what-is-the-name-of-a-u-s-supreme-court-decision-holding-that-government-cannot https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/79102/what-is-the-na... The first answer links to a couple different cases. I am not a lawyer but it does seem that a private company can be considered a state actor in certain cases. However I cannot find anything to say whether an administration asking a social media company to censor ideas they don't like would would be considered one of those cases or not. Seems like until a court rules on it, it could go either way.

anoonmoose 4y ago
We're reading the responses to that stack exchange question pretty differently if your last line is your takeaway...in my opinion it would be extremely unlikely for a court to rule against "Big Tech" in this case.
- keneda7 4y ago
  So the way I read the accepted answer is a private company can censor. They can make up their own rules and do what they want even if the government is not allowed to do the same. However there is nothing in any of the cases referenced (that I could find) that deals with whether the government can tell a company to censor something and that would other wise be allowed under the company's own rules. For example I make a post on HN. It follows the community guidelines and rules. The post is factually accurate as well. But it pisses the ATF off so they request that HN censor the post and any other future post that may be made about the topic. HN news decides its better to not fight the ATF and censors the post SOLEY due to the governments request. In my eyes this type of situation is the government directly censoring a post they don't like. You remove the governments request from the equation and the post would not be censored as its follows the site rules. As I can't find any existing ruling that deals with the situation above, I said that we won't know until the courts decide. edit: spelling

anoonmoose 4y ago

We're reading the responses to that stack exchange question pretty differently if your last line is your takeaway...in my opinion it would be extremely unlikely for a court to rule against "Big Tech" in this case.

keneda7 4y ago
So the way I read the accepted answer is a private company can censor. They can make up their own rules and do what they want even if the government is not allowed to do the same. However there is nothing in any of the cases referenced (that I could find) that deals with whether the government can tell a company to censor something and that would other wise be allowed under the company's own rules. For example I make a post on HN. It follows the community guidelines and rules. The post is factually accurate as well. But it pisses the ATF off so they request that HN censor the post and any other future post that may be made about the topic. HN news decides its better to not fight the ATF and censors the post SOLEY due to the governments request. In my eyes this type of situation is the government directly censoring a post they don't like. You remove the governments request from the equation and the post would not be censored as its follows the site rules. As I can't find any existing ruling that deals with the situation above, I said that we won't know until the courts decide. edit: spelling