Reply To: Time to revisit the First Amendment

Forget about second amendment for a moment. Should there be any First Amendment limits on social media postings ? It seems like in the current political climate, the assumption is that any such prior restraint would be an attempt to silence the “right” along with the “far-right” (aka white supremacists, Nazis, etc). . Private companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter have imposed their own “terms of service” which allows them to curtail hateful, threatening and racist postings although Twitter has said it won’t apply those rules to political leaders such as the Trumpkopf. They say its important for the world to see his raw vulgarity and demeaning rhetoric rather than censoring him. But for these other social media websites that attract the crazies (e.g. Gab.com) should the government be able to shut them down or block access for the kind of postings (“kill all the Jews”) that the gunman in Pittsburgh had been posting? Would that even work given that you can move website hosting offshore.