By Christopher Cole (October 19, 2021, 6:53 PM EDT) — Conservative activists cannot pursue legal claims that Google and subsidiary YouTube trampled their First Amendment rights by taking down QAnon-related videos, since the online firms are private companies, a California federal judge ruled Tuesday.
The group of John Doe and named plaintiffs hit the tech firms with the suit in October 2020, saying not only that their free speech was violated when YouTube suspended their accounts, but that the companies breached their terms of service and good-faith covenants.
The suit sought to tie the tech giants’ actions to efforts in Congress to condemn QAnon as a political movement, telling the court…
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