Social Media Ban and The First Amendment

Reardon, Marguerite. "Why the First Amendment can't protect Trump on Twitter or save parler." CNET. Last modified January 11, 2021. https://www.cnet.com/news/why-the-first-amendment-cant-protect-trump-on-twitter-or-save-parler/.

Donald Trump’s supporters have said that social media companies, Twitter, Facebook, and now YouTube violated the First Amendment by banning. In the wake of the violence on the US Capitol, Apple, Google and Amazon shutdown conservative social media service Parler. According to CNET article, the First Amendment does not apply on the above case, but to the government censoring speech.[1] Companies are said to have their policies and standards which users must follow.  A law professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law addressing CNET said, private companies, like a publisher or a newspaper, are able to determine what can be posted on their platforms and what can’t.” This is correct, but when it comes to Twitter and Facebook and other firms, they are not categorized as publishers. This means that they would be violating the law if they choose to determine what is posted on their platform. It’s the work of a publisher not a service provider. This very topic has been of question even on the labeling and fact-checking. Are the social media platforms allowed to determine and scrutinize what is posted on their platform?

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