[otvsh]

I'm wondering if a tipping point will be reached where so many people will be deplatformed that users will start to flock to uncensored sites (think of Gab, but it doesn't have to be Gab) en masse to be able to read what they want to read, to the point where those sites will have enough "normal" users that they won't be complete cesspools like Voat is.

[Karunamon]

What will come first is one of these companies (probably Twitter, Facebook, or Google) will overreach in some way (like nuking the President's account or something else equally outlandish) and force a legal fight on the matter.

The nature of free speech on the internet, when the internet is an interconnected series of other people's back yards, is not a fight that Silicon Valley would prefer to have. This idea carries some amount of legal precedent for physical locations [1].

They'd also rather not have their status as platforms vs publishers reevaluated - the more control they exert, the closer they come to that point of being a publisher, and therefore responsible for the content they host.

[1]: https://law.justia.com/cases/california/supreme-court/3d/23/...