[mancerayder]

I think it's fair to say the target of the censorship actions are non-mainstream views more broadly.

I agree with you we've been overly conditioned to worry about government censorship and not private platform censorship, and yet the former have elected leaders while the latter are unaccountable to the public.

That was in a sense Merkel's shock and public criticisms of the deplatforming actions. It's ironic because the criticism wasn't that there was censorship, it was that private companies were allowed to do it and not government.

Who is right, the American laissez-faire pro-corporate/neoliberal philosophy or the traditional European approach that wants government to have that duty?

[ttt0]

> Who is right, the American laissez-faire pro-corporate/neoliberal philosophy or the traditional European approach that wants government to have that duty?

I'd prefer neither and that they'd just stop censoring people, no matter if it's the far-left or far-right. But America has the advantage of the First Amendment (assuming that's not going to be repealed). So maybe I'm naive, but I think in this particular case, at least the government would have to obey the free speech laws, unlike private entities.

[gavanwoolery]

Someone else on HN (I cannot recall who), stated something along the lines of (paraphrasing):

"Centralized power can be abused in the hands of the government or the private sector [via monopolies]"

Whether or not you agree, I thought this was an elegant way of phrasing it. The cure, IMO, is to ensure that both ultimately answer to the people, although I have no idea how that is practically enforced.

[monopoledance]

It's funny, because Merkel's party is actually pushing for the decision about what counts as "hatespeech"/"terrorism" to be made by the platforms themselves. The CDU wants there to be nothing edgy at all. Pretty similar to China's "social credit dystopia" moral panic, actually. Just different means.