Let's Create 'First Amendment Zones' on Social Media

What's the solution? One path would be to create "First Amendment zones" on each site, where political speech would be treated identically to speech in the public square.

True, social media companies are private entities, while the First Amendment was written to restrict government action.

In Marsh, a 1946 case decided on a 5-3 vote in a decision written by First Amendment champion Hugo Black, the court found that free speech cannot be censored on the streets of a company town, even though the company owned and built those streets: "When we balance the constitutional rights of owners of property against those of the people to enjoy freedom of press and religion, as we must here, we remain mindful of the fact that the latter occupy a preferred position," Black wrote.

In Packingham, the court unanimously ruled that North Carolina could not restrict registered sex offenders from the use of social media such as Facebook, because such social media had become too central to First Amendment freedoms.

"The Court has always sought to protect the right in this spatial context. ... While in the past there may have been difficulty in identifying the most important places for the exchange of views, today the answer is clear. It is cyberspace - the 'vast democratic forums of the Internet' in general and social media in particular. Seven in ten American adults use at least one Internet social networking service. ... Facebook has 1.79 billion active users. This is about three times the population of North America."

Congress should therefore amend section 230 to create "First Amendment zones" on the giant social media sites where political speech is treated identically to the way that same speech would be treated in the actual public square.

Even under the First Amendment, there are still penalties for slander, libel, child pornography, disclosure of troop movements, criminal conspiracies, incitements to violence ... and these penalties would continue to exist for speech on social media just as they do for speech in the public square.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/10/31/lets_create_first_amendment_zones_on_social_media_144575.html