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McKEOWN, Circuit Judge:
Using private property as a forum for public discourse is
nothing new. Long before the Internet, people posted
announcements on neighborhood bulletin boards, debated
weighty issues in coffee houses, and shouted each other
down in community theaters. Juxtaposed with today’s
digital platforms, these analog means seem quaint.
YouTube, LLC alone has more than 1.3 billion users—more
than 30 million visitors every day—and 400 hours of video
uploaded every hour.
Despite YouTube’s ubiquity and its role as a publicfacing platform, it remains a private forum, not a public
forum subject to judicial scrutiny under the First
Amendment. Prager University (“PragerU”) sees things
differently and claims YouTube’s outsize power to moderate
user content is a threat to the fair dissemination of
“conservative viewpoints and perspectives on public issues,”
and that YouTube has become a public forum.
PragerU runs headfirst into two insurmountable
barriers—the First Amendment and Supreme Court
precedent. Just last year, the Court held that “merely hosting
speech by others is not a traditional, exclusive public
function and does not alone transform private entities into
state actors subject to First Amendment constraints.”
Manhattan Cmty. Access Corp. v. Halleck, 139 S.Ct. 1921,
1930 (2019). The Internet does not alter this state action
requirement of the First Amendment. We affirm the district
court’s dismissal of PragerU’s complaint.
https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/02/26/18-15712.pdfTo the surprise of nobody the first amendment does not apply to private websites which host content.
PragerU is a YouTube channel run by oil billionaire Dennis Prager. He is upset that he can't force YouTube to host his propaganda. Considering he has a ton of videos about how the government should butt out of everything, it's ironic that he would sue YouTube to force them to host his content.
This post was edited by Thor123422 on Feb 29 2020 11:57am