Google Resists Becoming Digital `Town Square' in Censorship Spat
Google Resists Becoming Digital `Town Square' in Censorship Spat
(Bloomberg) -- Conservatives have fretted for months that Google, Twitter and Facebook use their power to stifle politically charged content. Now it’s a judge’s turn to weigh in.
Google is seeking the dismissal of a lawsuit by a nonprofit maker of informational online videos called Prager University, which accuses the Alphabet Inc. unit of illegally restricting access on YouTube to its conservative messages.
Silicon Valley’s social media giants are under attack from both the left and the right for not doing enough to police hate speech, terrorist propaganda and Russian election meddling. At the same time, conservatives including U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas have questioned whether the increasing use of filters to restrict content has gone too far and threatens speech that isn’t dangerous.
If Prager prevails in its suit, it would be the first time a private company -- and a social media platform, in particular -- has been held to the digital equivalent of a town square, subject to the same free-speech access requirements as the government, according to attorney David Greene, civil liberties director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“It would be huge. It would create thousands of lawsuits instantly,” Greene said. But he said he doesn’t think Prager can force YouTube to be treated as a public forum.
‘Public Space’
“YouTube doesn’t fall into the category of government-controlled public space, it doesn’t have that type of presence or function,” Greene said.
Prager, formed in 2011 by radio talk show host Dennis Prager, says YouTube holds itself out as a free-speech platform with 30 million daily visitors. But a filter that YouTube says is used to protect young, sensitive viewers from inappropriate content is actually “a political gag mechanism to silence PragerU,” according to the complaint.
The complaint was filed by the Los Angeles-based law firm of former California Governor Pete Wilson, a Republican who served from 1991 to 1999.
Prager says its videos use news interviews and animation formats to discuss current and historical events such as the Korean War, Supreme Court decisions and the environment.
The nonprofit’s website lists more than 40 of its five-minute videos -- more than 10 percent of its collection -- that it says have been restricted by YouTube’s filter. Titles include “Is Fascism Right or Left?,” “College Made Me a Conservative” and “Gender Identity: Why All the Confusion?" The videos aren’t blocked for users who haven’t installed the filter.
‘Plain and Simple’
In its 2017 complaint, Prager slams Google as a censor of conservative voices engaged in “speech discrimination plain and simple.” It contends that more liberal speakers on YouTube channels whose content includes profanity or graphic material remain unfiltered, such as Buzzfeed or Bill Maher.
YouTube’s “restricted mode,” created in 2010, is an optional feature that allows users such as schools, libraries and parents to block depictions of sex, drug abuse, violence, war, terrorism and profanity. It uses a filtering algorithm on video metadata and considers objectionable content flagged by public users.
Google says it has broad protection under the U.S. and California constitutions to exercise editorial control and judgment over the filtering, much like the movie industry’s prerogative to give films an “R” rating.
The company argues that it’s immune from Prager’s lawsuit under a federal statute that shields internet platforms for decisions about what to publish, the Communications Decency Act.
U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, was scheduled to hear arguments Thursday. But she told lawyers she will issue a ruling without holding a hearing.
‘Radical Effort’
Prager’s “radical effort to expand constitutional law to restrict the rights of private online services to protect their users from potentially objectionable content is dangerous, contrary to all authority, and should be rejected,” Google argued in a court filing.
Twitter is facing similar censorship claims from an alt-right devotee of the platform who says he was banned from the site in 2015 not for advocating violence but because of his politics. Charles Johnson alleges Twitter violated his free-speech rights and breached a contract with him in the January state-court complaint in Fresno, California. Twitter declined to comment on the case.
At a congressional hearing in January over the spread of extremist propaganda online, Senator Cruz voiced concern that filters may go beyond terrorist content and target political views.
“The pattern of political censorship we are seeing across the technology companies is highly concerning,” he said.
Greene of the EFF said he doesn’t like social media platforms engaging in content modification. Although they have a right to do it, they don’t do it well and they don’t generally have due-process protection that allows those subject to filtering to appeal, he said.
But amid growing public concern over online dangers ranging from child trafficking to false news stories, Greene said, the trend is toward more filtering, not less.
“This lawsuit would limit the ability to moderate content.”
The case is Prager University v. Google Inc., 17-cv-6064, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California.
--With assistance from Robert Burnson Selina Wang and Mark Bergen
To contact the reporter on this story: Pamela Maclean in San Francisco at pmaclean@pacbell.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elizabeth Wollman at ewollman@bloomberg.net, Peter Blumberg
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