Tea at Trianon: Social Media and the First Amendment

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Social Media and the First Amendment

From The American Thinker:

The Left fears Dennis Prager's five-minute PragerU videos, which use experts, facts, and good writing to counter the overwhelmingly leftist spin in today's education, news, and entertainment. Google, which owns YouTube, has therefore tried to censor PragerU videos by demonetizing them and by marking many as restricted, a label associated with violent or offensive content. Among the videos getting this designation are those discussing the virtues of the Ten Commandments. "Restricted" videos are hidden in general searches and are blocked in schools.

Dennis Prager sued Google for violating the First Amendment, relying on a theory that the platform is so all-encompassing that it has become the equivalent of a public utility. Because Google is based in California, the suit ended up in the Ninth Circuit. PragerU lost in the district court and, on Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit affirmed that ruling.

Writing for a three-judge panel, Judge M. Margaret McKeown held that "[d]espite YouTube's ubiquity and its role as a public-facing platform, it remains a private forum, not a public forum subject to judicial scrutiny under the First Amendment." Irritating as it is to agree with the Ninth Circuit, Judge McKeown is probably correct. The tech giants are not public utilities. They are private platforms, and people can choose to drop out or switch. Competing companies can arise and challenge the sites' dominance. (Read more.)