Wall Street Journal

Big tech companies enjoy legal immunity premised on the assumption they’ll respect free speech.

By Dennis Prager
Courtesy of Wall Street Journal

There is an understandable reluctance among conservatives to allow the government to pass any laws governing big technology companies as a result of their hostility to conservative voices. These conservatives, citing the fundamental American belief in limited government, argue that whatever the big tech companies do, they are not the government. Constitutional guarantees of free speech do not apply to private companies.

This is correct.

But the issue is much more complex. I was asked to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on this matter for two reasons. One is the size of my website, Prager University, which gets a billion views a year, the majority of which come from viewers under 35. The more important reason is that YouTube, which is owned by Google, has at various times placed about 100 of our videos on its restricted list. That means any home, institution or individual using a filter to block pornography and violence cannot see those videos. Nor can any school or library.

PragerU releases a five-minute video every week. As of this writing, 56 of its 320 videos […]