Isn’t CENSORSHIP of ANY controversial speech/press ILLEGAL in America?

Question by .Yeshua Fanatik Prophetik.: Isn’t CENSORSHIP of ANY controversial speech/press ILLEGAL in America?
Email monitoring by anonymous Feds, “reporting abuses” to nameless Yahoo! gatekeepers, questions and answers disappearing or being cut short without dialogue of who or why or by whom, one-way access of public profiles personal info… we’re on a slipperly slope people, no wonder we commoners are getting angry and suspicious of all these COVERT actions at so many levels both here and abroad. Hope this ? and your answers survive…

Best answer:

Answer by coragryph
Pretty much.

The 1st Amendment protects against government action (directly against federal, and via the 14th for state/local). So, action taken by government agencies that deny people the opportunity to express and share their opinions and beliefs is generally a constitutional violation.

There are exceptions, such as revealing the locations of troop deployments, identities of undercover police agents, or speech that incites imminent and unlawful action, or which poses a clear and present (immediate) danger to public safety.

As far as Yahoo Answers, that’s not a government agency. Despite how big Yahoo is, they aren’t Big Brother. So, Yahoo as a private company is free to set any policies they want for access to their services. And when you signed up to use Yahoo services, you agreed to abide by those policies.

One would hope that the reporting function is handled objectively, and that people’s accounts or messages are only actually removed for objective violations of posted policies. But if you don’t trust Yahoo to do that, there’s no requirement that you use their forums.

That’s the main reason that the constitutional limits only apply to government action. We don’t really have the same choice to opt-out of interacting with the government the same way we could decide not to use Yahoo. The government is the only game in town, and Yahoo is not (because of anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws). So, the analogy doesn’t quite apply.

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!