[geodel]

I agree. I see this all the time when otherwise reasonable people spout "oh well, Google/FB/Twitter are private companies so free speech argument does not apply to them and that racists/nazis etc aren't owed anything by social media platforms."

[jquery]

Step 1 is to normalize censorship for racists. Step 2 is to redefine racism until it captures most of your political opponents, up to and including "supports free speech" as a racist viewpoint.

[cwyers]

This is based on a slippery slope argument: if the major platforms can ban speech inciting violence against Jews and African-Americans, then what's to stop them from doing it for other classes of speech? The answer is that the public outcry for kicking off other kinds of users is likely to be more pronounced and more justified. I'm not shedding any tears for the Daily Stormer or Gab, and I don't view them as canaries in the coal mine.

[jquery]

Relying on public outcry to defend free speech is by definition guaranteed not to work, because the only speech that needs protecting is unpopular speech.

[repolfx]

Is it? The public outcry against what these firms are doing is pretty loud. Members of Congress have expressed concern. Even Vox has published stories about Twitter suppressing content from conservative politicians (but no democrats). It has no effect.

Moreover how do you measure "public outcry"? The very point of censorship is to stop public outcry. If the media aren't writing stories and anyone who expresses concern is deemed to be supporting hate speech and banned, then it will look a lot like nobody cares even if many people do.