Facebook Violating 1st Amendment?

I know, they're a private company, blah, blah blah.

But, if they provided a special portal to the federal government so the government can tell Facebook to silence a particular user, does that constitute a violation of the 1st Amendment?

Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai ran for US Senate in Massachusetts as a Republican and made allegations of voter fraud on Twitter. These tweets were then deleted by the far-left tech giant. Later it was discovered that they were deleted at the direction of government employees of the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s office.

Discovering this, Dr. Ayyadurai filed a federal lawsuit by himself, alleging that his federal civil rights were violated when the government silenced his political speech in order to affect an election.

In late July 2021, Dr. Shiva released another explosive report.

Dr. Shiva revealed how election officials and government actors work together to coordinate with social media platforms to silence speech in America.

Facebook apparently still has something similar
https://www.facebook.com/xtakedowns/login

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PatKirby · M

Good question. Free speech has been slowly eroding, especially in the last ten/twenty years. I believe one of the problems, and this is a clever work around for these tech giants, is that they function as a public company in order to get maximum click traffic, yet they set themselves up as private companies with limited liability so they can basically do what they want with impunity. This method appears to be an intentional move so they can sneak around the 1st Amendment. The end net result is the curtailing of free speech.

There is no automatic trigger besides an apparent legal threshold that brings immediate public attention to this important issue unless someone of consequence notices and is willing to bring it to the consciousness of the general public. Again done through that same medium - public discourse itself where that free speech is modulated and even threatened. A bit of a paradox one might say. With the election coming up soon it does appear that those who most care about this issue and will both bring attention to and fight for the 1st Amendment are thankfully speaking up.

I see stronger headwinds for the good ole' 1st Amendment on the way real soon. Enough is enough. The left needs to grow up and leave behind their infantile presumptions that they have the right to 1) control other people's lives, 2) never hear other people's opinions, and 3) there are two sets of rules - one for them and one for everyone else. Furthermore, grow beyond their entitled expectation that when they're offended, others have to care. The left is not a prima donna sent from heaven here to lecture and codify their childish views of social order into law, or throw tantrums. The time has come to put up or shut up.