New in PJ Media:
Barack Obama’s sumptuous Hawaiian waterfront mansion is squared away, and he is done reminding Joe Biden that he is far more popular than the present hapless pseudo-president, so what’s a wealthy alleged elder statesman with time on his hands to do? Obama could have taken up surfing or beekeeping or started appearing in movies playing the president, but instead, he appears to have decided to go to war against the freedom of speech. Two weeks ago, he called for “regulatory measures” to rein in online “disinformation,” and on Thursday he amplified that call, claiming that the First Amendment simply doesn’t apply to the social media giants who have so much control over the parameters of the public discourse today.
Speaking at Stanford University, Obama repeated a claim that he has made before, but which doesn’t grow any less ridiculous by constant repetition: he was, he claimed, “pretty close to a First Amendment absolutist,” but no sooner had he said that than he explained that the First Amendment really didn’t matter in discussions about today’s public square.
“The First Amendment,” Obama deigned to explain, “is a check on the power of the state. It doesn’t apply to private companies like Facebook and Twitter.” Obama has not been known up to now as a strict constructionist regarding the Constitution, which he has been only too happy to regard as an eternally malleable “living document” when it served the Leftist agenda to do so, but strictly speaking, he is right. The First Amendment says: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” But Facebook and Twitter (and YouTube and Instagram and all the rest) can restrict speech all they want because they are not government entities subject to regulation by Congress.
In saying this, however, Obama ignores several crucial facts. One is that while the First Amendment does indeed prohibit only the government from restricting speech, the freedom of expression is a revered principle in the United States, and the social media giants exercise an outsized power over that freedom today, for they control all the principal means of communication that people use nowadays to exercise that freedom.
Imagine if a hundred years ago, in 1922, three or four like-minded and powerful conglomerates bought up all the newspapers in the country and systematically began excluding points of view with which they disagreed. No one would have had any problem seeing a serious threat to the freedom of speech in this, and few, if any, would have shrugged it off by saying that these were private companies, so there was nothing anyone could do. The federal government for well over a hundred years has pursued antitrust action against huge companies that had foreclosed upon any competition; if any corporations warrant such action against them today, it’s the social media giants.
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Infidel says
So he has two waterfront properties – Hawaii and Martha’s Vineyard? My, that man does believe that the oceans will rise! I suspect that in addition to being a crypto-muslim, he’s also a crypto-amphibian ?
mortimer says
A crypto-democrat … Obama is a neo-Marxist attacking the First Amendment and approving of censorship … so long as conservatives are the only ones who are censored.
Long live the Vanguard of the Proletariat, the GUARDIANS of NEWSPEAK and NEWTHOUGHT.
Death to the enemies of Scientific Globalism!
(sarc/off)
CogitoErgoSum says
The question that needs to be decided is whether platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are publishers or public utilities. If the platforms (mostly run by Democrats) have full control over what information and opinions may be allowed to be communicated over their platforms then they are publishers and they should be held liable for any false information their editors publish. However, if they provide only the infrastructure for a communication service available to the public they are utilities similar to a telephone company. Obama knows this is the real problem that needs to be addressed but he also knows that the Democrats will lose their control over the flow of public information (and the Democratic Party’s power to mold public opinion) if they lose control over communication platforms that are actually public utilities. Obama doesn’t care about freedom of speech for the people as much as he cares about power over the people. I have trouble just looking at him standing in front of the U.S. flag.
James Lincoln says
I’m not an attorney, but this is how I see it from my personal research:
Facebook, Twitter, etc., are either publishers or platforms.
Defined as publishers, the companies can restrict speech on their platforms as they see fit. Their editorial decisions are protected by the First Amendment. However, they are open to lawsuits over the content.
Defined as platforms, the companies cannot be liable for content users post on their sites. This is from Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Apparently, they describe themselves as platforms – but in reality they are publishers.
In other words, they want it both ways.
mortimer says
They want to eat their cake and have it.
Someone should be calling them ‘tyrants’, because they are TYRANTS.
Pierre Delecto says
So Barack is the first Obama to hold US citizenship?
What explains his deep emotional ties to the American volks? His redundant loyalty, his tearful devotion to our principles, our culture and our destiny to fulfill the dreams of the Enlightenment, to elevate the human spirit in celebration of liberty and dignity.
Or I have I confused him with someone else?
somehistory says
Yes, private companies can restrict speech, just as a family can tell a guest that certain words shall not be spoken inside the home.
However, in recent times, not that long ago actually, the *government*….not necessarily a legit one…was telling these “private companies” not to allow people to post things that they decided was spreading…lo and behold…things that this ‘government’ was trying to suppress. Things such as, biden didn’t win the election; the “virus” was released from a lab; the jabs are not vaccines; climate change is something that happens naturally and to use it to restrict freedoms is wrong….and there are other things of course…Jan 6 was not an insurrection unless one counts what those *in charge* were doing…
so, the ‘private companies’ acting on behalf of the government…even one such as exists now…cannot legally restrict freedom of speech. They are doing it, but it is not legal if they are doing it at the command of biden or stinky, lying, “bo.”
gravenimage says
Obama: First Amendment Doesn’t Apply to Social Media Giants
………….
This is tough, because these are actually private companies.
But as noted it is not as though Obama has shown respect for private property much before, and would not if most of these companies were either conservative or for allowing everything to be posted regardless of political content.