content: But then again, I don't think the Founders could have ever foreseen innovations like this when they created the 1st Amendment. The size and scope and power and influence of these companies is second to none in all of human history, so...  Eh, the East India Company is old enough that they'd have known about it. That was pretty powerful. But the thing is, the 1st amendment is specifically a limit on government power. Powerful companies aren't part of the government, so it doesn't apply to them. Unrelated to the founders, there were a few cases where shopping malls were considered a public space that had to act like a public space. Those decisions didn't spread outside the circuit they were from, and eventually got whittled down to nothing.  But, that whittling down was mostly because shopping malls are primarily a place to, well, go shopping, and mandating that they allow public protests etc gets in the way of that primary purpose. Twitter and Facebook have discourse as their primary purpose, so I still hold out a little hope that what failed to stick in the case of malls might possibly be tried again and stay this time.