Man Can’t Sue YouTube Under 1st Amendment for Removing Comments

Google can’t be held responsible under the First Amendment for removing a pro se litigant’s comments on YouTube, a federal judge said in granting a motion to dismiss without prejudice.

Timothy-Allen Albertson alleged that YouTube blocked some of his comments about LGBTQ+ issues by “‘shadow banning’” them for violating the platform’s prohibition of hate speech. He alleges, in a suit filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, that the shadowbanning violates his First Amendment rights to free speech and peaceable assembly.

But Google is a private entity, Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin wrote, and Albertson failed to ...