News Analysis
Recent controversies stoked by alleged efforts of leading tech platforms to ban or “de-platform” content on political grounds—which some claim was behind Twitter’s temporary blocking last week of all links to articles running in The Epoch Times—have prompted fresh debate over the legal rights of users of these platforms and what the First Amendment does, and does not, guarantee.
In the view of some legal experts, while the spirit of the First Amendment unmistakably favors freedom of expression, its explicit language leaves those who have been banned or blocked with little legal recourse, calling for new approaches, including potentially an antitrust case against the tech companies whose dominance is so entrenched that they shape public discourse in a putatively free society….