That’s one view. It’s not the only view. In general you are, of course, correct. Constitutional rights only limit the government, not people or companies. It’s

That’s one view. It’s not the only view. In general you are, of course, correct. Constitutional rights only limit the government, not people or companies. It’s “Congress shall make no law …”, not “People and companies shall make no contract …”. But it’s not that simple. In Germany† there is the third-party or horizontal effect of constitutional rights („mittelbare Drittwirkung“). This is, for example, relevant when it comes to discrimination. The famous example you will always hear quoted if you learn about German constitutional law is the Lüth decision∆. Therein the German constitutional court decided that a call for the boycott of a movie is covered by freedom of speech and the film company can’t sue for damages. Knowing that constitutional rights in general only limit the government (and the reasons for why that is so) is a great starting point, but it doesn’t have to be the end of the conversation. I think, for example, that critical communication infrastructure needs to allow for and enable freedom of speech – and because of that it can be necessary to limit what companies responsible for this infrastructure can do to their users. The important question for me is then whether Google+ is critical communication infrastructure. I don’t think so. There are too many easily accessible alternatives. But Facebook might be … — † I’m not terribly familiar with US law. I want to have at least a half-decent understanding about what I’m talking. ∆ Wikipedia has a great article about it, sadly only in German: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lüth-Urteil http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lüth-Urteil