[oxide]

It isnt censorship. At all.

Freedom of speech doesnt apply on websites. It's their platform, they call the shots.

Dont like it? Start a competitor and pay the bandwidth bill. Google doesn't have to allow misinformation any more than they have to allow someone being an incendiary asshole in a comment section.

[einpoklum]

Social-network, mass-participation and mass-publication platforms, like YouTube, are not "theirs". They are a public resource under formal private ownership. This is not unheard of, of course - in some countries it's like that for water, or electricity, or mass transit, or healthcare, or schools and so on.

Allowing private owners to have total control of these public resources is obviously not what we want or need. The problem is that the formal owners of such resources also have a tremendous amount of influence - as single entities or altogether ("Big Tech") on the politics of states. And this influence is very fundamental to modern democracies, it's not some aberation.

Also:

1. It's nearly impossible to "compete" with such platforms once they are established.

2. Google not only allows misinformation, it intentionally pushes misinformation on YouTube: Sources which are politically acceptable to it are strongly promoted and recommended (e.g. CNN, MSNBC, Fox) - even when they peddle misinformation, which they occasionally do.

[BurningFrog]

It doesn't violate the US constitution, but I'd still call it censorship.

> It's their platform, they call the shots.

Agreed. But let's call spades spades.

[axguscbklp]

It is objectively censorship, it's just not government censorship.

[bcheung]

What about net neutrality and "common carrier"? These seem to be well established goals and values.