That's not censorship. That's the free market at work. Gab is free to host their own website; and if necessary their own DNS servers. Hell, they're free to go Tor-only.
I know that, I am clearly saying I don't want it for any consumer-led efforts.
> That's not censorship
Did you mean to say it's not government censorship or do we just have different definitions of the word? Whether they can host their own site or whatever has absolutely nothing to do with what is and isn't censorship.
Yup
> Nobody's right is being infringed upon here
Of course not, who said otherwise? I just disagree wth the decision taken.
> absolutely relevant to what is and isn't censorship
You don't get to make up your own definition of the word. That someone blocks the speech is censorship, by definition, regardless of whether you can say it elsewhere and regardless of what you might want the definition of the word to be. I'm not going to condescendingly paste the definition here, but it's very clear Microsoft is engaged in censorship here.
Censorship is when any group at all, uses their power, any power, to attempt to silence others.
On the other hand, if you're talking about the personal business fiefdoms of billionaires, then you're quite right--they make decisions based on what the sole owner wants, financial consequences be damned.
I wish we didn't have to wait. I wish there was a large enough group of people that would boycott companies that make up the internet infrastructure (e.g. ISPs, registrars, DNS, CDNs, cloud providers, etc) for censoring lawful content. I wish we didn't require mass media articles to get groups of consumers to act in a common interest. And I would prefer it was absolute, regardless of content, because it's frustrating to watch lots of people agree with one decision and then get shocked when these companies become more choosey on the foundation of acceptability that was previously built. To be clear though, I want no government involvement in any way (on the censoring or non-censoring side).
I for one will point an Azure sales rep (or hiring recruiter) to this as a reason I will not engage with them. I have the same feeling about CloudFlare's decision. And I really don't like either of the censored groups.