They are in no way using a public good, so arguing that they need to follow the rules that we place on public good doesn't make sense.
That's true!
Unfortunately it gets a little more complicated than that.
As providers enjoy PLATFORM protections that align with the ideas of free speech. Meaning they will enjoy legal immunity from content they host so long as they won't decide who gets a voice or why so long as the content is legally allowed. They aren't liable because they didn't have a say in what it was. They are required to remove illegal things of course.
The issue here is the PLATFORMS are now deciding they're going to keep these legal protections they basically require in order to exist - while also acting a PUBLISHERS that curate otherwise legal content to be aligned with their views.
Admit that many of the same people celebrating "they're a private company they can do what they want!" were also yelling "make the cake you bigots!"
This may be a cake-centric issue now that I think about it. Because CF, SV, FAANG are Having Cake + Eating Cake.
We can't hold a platform liable for content because it is technically impossible to perfectly block infringing content, so we realize it is unfair to hold platforms accountable.
However, this doesn't mean a platform can't make ANY effort to control what content is on their system without losing this protection. YouTube doesn't lose safe harbor protection just because they have contentid...
I didn't make this up, it's the entire intent of the system.