Private Companies vs the First Amendment



When it comes to the first Amendment, the government must abide by the laws of the land. Including the first amendment. This isn’t necessarily the same when it comes to private companies. One of those companies that often does what they want instead of abiding by the first amendment is YouTube. They hold the power to keep or delete any videos off of their platform that they so desire to get rid of. People sometimes claim that their video getting removed or getting age restricted by YouTube violates their 1st amendment rights, but YouTube has not violated anybody’s rights if they so choose to do this. An Example of this is a recent Supreme Court Case involving YouTube and Prager University where YouTube put age restrictions on some of Prager University’s videos. Prager University’s YouTube Channel is a conservative body where they talk about important issues involving the US Constitution. The case was discussing if YouTube must be a platform for free speech for anybody. The case was ultimately thrown out because the Court ruled that YouTube is not a “’state actor’ bound by the First Amendment.” The part of this that makes no sense to me is that Prager University claims to understand how the 1st amendment works based on the content of their YouTube videos. This leads me to believe that they would already know that this case would be thrown out because YouTube is a private company. Not a government body.

 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/26/youtube-court-first-amendment-117769

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