Conservative opinions about transgenderism are censored as “attacks” on a “protected group.” Conservative views on Covid are flagged as “misinformation.” In May 2020, Twitter censored as a “glorification of violence” President Trump’s “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” tweet, while leaving untouched Nearly everyone agrees that social-media platforms shouldn’t engage in viewpoint discrimination-including the platforms themselves, which deny they do so. One kind of restriction, however, is forbidden: viewpoint discrimination. If you’re a visitor in someone else’s home, he’s free to kick you out simply for offending him.īetween these poles are “limited public forums”-places generally open to the public where speech can be subjected to reasonable regulation. At the other end of the spectrum is private property. But Twitter isn’t a public forum, most obviously because it isn’t run by the government (even though its censorship is sometimes at official behest). Speech protection is strongest in a “public forum.” If Twitter were such a forum, almost all content blocking would be an impermissible prior restraint. The first step to solving these conundrums is to recognize that different free-speech principles apply in different contexts, and there are three key different kinds of forums.
