The 1st Amendment has recently become a hot topic for discussion in the United States as media organizations have begun to censor individuals who disagree with them politically. Though this form of censorship does not fall to one of the six unique freedoms ensured in the 1st Amendment (Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Press, Freedom to Petition, Freedom to Assemble, Freedom of Religion, and Freedom From Religion), it does bring forth a unique argument about the validity behind the censorship of private citizens and the, now former, President of the United States. The most egregious case of censorship comes with Twitter removing former President Donald Trump from their platform while he was still the President of the United States. This silencing of the a world leader that started with Twitter began a domino effect with other social media platforms following suit and banning the former president and even some of his supporters; the average Joe. This is not a 1st Amendment issue though. Since the government is not censoring or silencing individuals, a breach of 1st Amendment liberties cannot be argued. Rather, this is a dangerous attempt by big tech to silence individuals they perceives as a threat to their liberal agenda.
The censorship of President Donald Trump should scare everyone from every political identity. While this censorship is not relevant to 1st Amendment arguments, I think Manny of the concepts taught about the 1st Amendment should be considered when evaluating this type of blatant censorship. The State-Action Doctrine perfectly dissects the 1st Amendment from tech censorship as big tech is not the state, therefore, a claim that constitutional rights were violated cannot be made. One could argue though that public accommodation rights could have been violated. Twitter is a private company that has opened their platform to private individuals. With that, individuals are to be afforded the same rights across the board regardless of identities such as race, sex, ethnicity, and yes political beliefs. By bringing in this claim that Twitter, a public company, that gives access to private citizens, like Donald Trump, then Donald Trump is afforded the same protections as the billions of other Twitter users.
Another egregious example of censorship is the removal of Parler from the Amazon Cloud Services. With Amazon's removal of Parler from their cloud services, millions of Americans- mostly those on the political right- were silenced. This once again is not directly correlated with the 1st Amendment as Amazon is not a government entity. BUT it can be argued, like with Twitter, that public accommodation was violated as a private company discriminated against private citizens. The censorship of the political right is one more step by the elite to silence political "dissidents."
Many of Donald Trump's political opponents argue that his speech to the protestors on January 6th incited the violence that occurred at the United States Capital that eventually led to President Trump's permanent censorship from social media companies. Incitement is a tricky concept and one that is very hard to prove. Incitement is speech that imminent lawless actions where lawless actions must occur. To prove this is very tricky but President Trump's opponents believe it occurred and this is why Donald Trump is going through a second impeachment trial despite being a private citizen.
Recently, because of the actions by big tech companies, state legislatures are beginning to take actions to protect individuals from social media censorship. Like the continuous passing of shield laws at the state level to protect confidential sources, state legislatures are beginning to take steps to protect private citizens from censorship. Two legislators in Kentucky are proposing this legislation. Opponents to this say that this is more of a constitutional violation than censorship. Whatever the arguments may be, the issue of the 1st Amendment is one that has been relevant since the foundation of this country and it is clearly one that will be here for.a long time.
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