[LurkersWillLurk]

I don't like attacking the author for not being a lawyer (mostly because I am not a lawyer either), but it's quite clear to me that their legal interpretation is completely wrong.

To fix the original title: the First Amendment is a censorship law, not Section 230. Or at least, the First Amendment constitutionally protects internet websites that censor their users. It's called freedom of association.

[bilbo0s]

More people outside of the legal profession should have an understanding of that freedom. I feel like our educational system concentrates so much on specific freedoms we have that it ignores other limitations we place on our government's powers. The implicit, and well litigated, restriction against limiting freedom of association is an extremely important example of the "forgotten rights". So when lay people run up against it, they assume there must be some kind of corruption going on, when in fact, it's an obvious consequence of constitutional law that everyone probably should have been familiarized with in high school.

Of course, that's only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to people misunderstanding the law. As the article that birthed this thread illustrates. Which only reiterates the need for our nation's civics classes to do a better job.

[jl2718]

What does “freedom of association” imply?