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Comment by devrand | Hacker News Reader

How is the First Amendment in any way related to YouTube?

The first amendment talks about freedom of expression. The parent comment was saying that it was first for a reason i.e. because freedom of expression is important.

Freedom of expression is relevant to Youtube because Youtube is a platform for expression.

Sure, but it's entirely irrelevant to a private company. The quote was in reference to government tyranny, not some rule imposed by a private company. The spirit of the Second Amendment isn't to encourage a well-armed militia to overthrow a private company.

If you don't like the rules of YouTube, go elsewhere. The true spirit of the First Amendment is that you have the right and freedom to do so.

I think you're ignoring the point being made. The point stated wasn't "The first amendment applies to Youtube therefore freedom of expression should be allowed on Youtube". The point stated was closer to "Freedom of expression is important so it should be allowed on Youtube".

Congress shall make no law .... abridging the freedom of speech

Freedom of speech/expression is only freedom from the restriction by the government.

Youtube can refuse to publish anything it wants to. Zero people have an inalienable right to publish on YouTube's private platform.

The point as I took it had nothing to do with the First Amendment legally applying to Youtube. Simply to do with the importance of freedom of expression (which of course does apply to Youtube), as exemplified in the First Amendment.

isn't congress literally talking about such a law now? something about holding tech companies accountable for their users content? so congress is breathing down the necks of tech companies which now "choose" to refuse publishing certain content. what interest would youtube have to censor otherwise? no censoring = more views less work.

It's the spirit of the First Amendment that people are concerned about wrt silencing of particular perspectives. Of course YT is privately owned so the First Amendment doesn't literally apply.

I'm not saying I'm necessarily in favor of or opposed to the action described in this post, but I do wonder if beyond a certain scale platforms like YouTube and Twitter should be treated as de facto public forums.

Obviously 1A doesn't apply as-is, but maybe some equivalent should be implemented that does. At the same time, I'm not sure that's entirely fair since they aren't publicly funded. Or maybe it is still fair, or maybe there's some reasonable middle ground.

I agree with this. The fact is that nobody could've foreseen that a private entity could have so much power over public discourse. Nobody could've predicted the impenetrable network effects of social media a century ago. The laws need to be updated to reflect this new reality and to protect open discourse.

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