Many people pointed towards lgbt content being taken down and said: "Look, you guys brought this on yourselves." The implication being that some vocal lgbt people were pushing for censorship of other people, but it ended up being used against themselves.
I think the solution is to require platforms over a certain size to allow all of these things. Platforms are not held responsible for many things due to being platforms. The government could amend those rules and say that if they want to be protected under those rules and they are larger than X then they should allow freedom of expression/speech.
Platforms such as Twitter, reddit, and Facebook are already treated by many like public spaces. Perhaps this would fall in line with their.
> Many people pointed towards lgbt content being taken down and said: "Look, you guys brought this on yourselves."
Nah, LGBT content being taken down or deemed obscene despite not being explicit or pornographic is the default state of society and has only recently (past 20 years) been more permissive.
This is true and you might think that recent history would give the left pause about calling for increased censorship, but that does not appear to be the case.
The public street is the broader net where everyone can have a voice and decentralization is probably a more useful strategy. If you feel strongly that free speech on the internet is essential don't ask facebook to tolerate deplorables while others demand it kick them off.
When the deplorables kick puppies and blow up children you will certainly lose the argument.
Instead consider building or contributing to decentralized communications that are challenging to block under the ideal that a platform where its hard to block deplorables from communicating with one another is also free of interference for more savory communications.
I'd say these are the online equivalents of pseudo-public spaces[0], "[spaces] that seem public but are actually owned by corporations"
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jul/24/revealed-pseu...
Gab very much wants you to believe they're just a Twitter alternative with no intrinsic slant (though they've been overt about being a home for nationalists in their own materials). But that's just a grift.
E.g. breastfeeding on Facebook, lgbt content generally, the drone strike reporting app on iOS, sex work adverts after FOSTA etc.
Then there's the illegal stuff like fraud websites, ddos control domains, and anything to do with copyright infringement.
It's noticeable which people only show up to defend far right speech on the internet.